text stringlengths 0 100k |
|---|
Chris Matthews wondered on his Thursday show why some of the potential candidates for the 2012 Republican nomination who work for Fox News have been trailing in polls. Speaking to Time magazine's Michael Scherer and the New York Times' Nate Silver, Matthews discussed the Donald Trump phenomenon before, as he is wont to do, turning a corner into another topic. Towards the end of the conversation, he mused that several candidates, including Newt Gingrich--who worked for Fox News for years until the network suspended him in March--and Sarah Palin have fallen back in recent polls, especially as Trump has risen. "By the way, working at Fox has turned out to be kind of the roach motel," he said. "I, mean anybody who has gone over there to work seems like...they haven't been able to come back from it. I'm going through these people. Gingrich is not doing well, Palin seems to have vagued out into the sunset. The people who work over there don't seem to be doing too well as presidentials." Trump, Scherer noted, was an "NBC guy." "That's why I've sort of been nice to him," Matthews said. WATCH: |
A Christian lobby group has called on the federal government to filter out online pornography for Australian internet users. The Australian Family Association wants a mandatory internet filter, requiring households to opt-in if they want access to adult material. In 2013, the Coalition released a policy document backing the idea of an internet pornography filter. Malcolm Turnbull, who was Shadow Communications Minister at the time, quickly backtracked by saying the document was "poorly worded and incorrect" and reaffirming his opposition to internet filtering. Government emails obtained under Freedom of Information by Crikey have shown that the government is still sensitive about internet filtering. The documents show that in 2015, the Australian Family Association wrote to government eSafety Commissioner Alastair MacGibbon, calling for an internet filter. Emails from Mr MacGibbon to Communications Minister Mitch Fifield reportedly refer to "sensitivities around the concept of filtering for pornography". According to the emails, the government has not changed their policy and remains opposed to a broad internet pornography filter. © Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2019 |
His loyal supporters see a Hall of Fame career, the best of fan-friendly examples and the top power hitter in Chicago Cubs history. His critics see stats that were allegedly inflated by performance-enhancing drug, corked bats and an ugly end. But Sammy Sosa's numbers don't tell the whole story, for better or worse. "Sometimes people make a comment, people talk, but they don't know how I go about my business," Sosa told ESPN.com. "One thing I do not understand: A lot of teammates, I helped them a lot, but they have me like I was one of the worst people in the world. "Regardless of what happened, nobody will scratch my number from the board. I have no problem with Chicago or the new front office. It is a surprise [how things are today]. ... I gave them all my life when I was playing. I asked myself, I really ask myself, 'What have I done so wrong that the people today sometimes treat me like I don't deserve what I did?'" In 1994, my first spring on a major league roster, I got to know Sosa. Spring training is fairly relaxed early on, and it is a good time to talk to players without the madness of the season in our faces. My Spanish was strong, so whenever I wanted to clarify my point, I could do so in Spanish. We had a collegiality to our friendship. I learned about his first days in the big leagues before his Cubs tenure and some of the difficult adjustments he had to make around relationships, culture, language, currency, fashion, housing, interviews. "The first year was like you were going to the moon for the first time," Sosa said. "I did not know how to speak the language ... but I knew how to play the game." His aptitude and passion for baseball were clear. The skills, the work ethic, the hustle were evident. General manager Larry Himes never stopped waxing about Sosa as a model for everything in a ballplayer. When the strike canceled the 1994 season, Cubs manager Tom Treblehorn and his staff went to Double-A to help the prospects. One day, Himes gave us a speech about major league clubhouses. Sosa was the shining example with a whole host of attributes to emulate. Not long after, Sosa was in the stratosphere of big league producers, and he no longer needed the loyal sponsorship cover that most players needed. Sosa was sponsoring himself with his charm and the numbers he was putting up. By 2003, when the Cubs raced into contention in the second half, Sosa was an empire. He had his own personal coach/assistant whom he worked with on a daily basis, he might have been on a private jet or two, and he wasn't the same top-notch defender or the guy trying to steal 40 bases, but that was replaced by 60-home-run power. I never saw the ritual or work ethic diminish. Sammy Sosa hit 609 home runs, with his best season coming in 1998, when he hit 66 home runs. PETER PAWINSKI/AFP/Getty Images I played with Sosa for about three seasons with the Cubs. I still saw a player who loved the fans, played with a smile, produced prolifically and followed many rituals -- from the time he hit in the cage every day to the number of cups of water he needed to splash on his face and the song he ordained for the half of the season to carry us through. "Killing Me Softly," "I Believe I Can Fly," "Return of the Mack," "In Da Club," even an entire collection of Whitney Houston songs, long after her peak, blasted incessantly in the clubhouse. I know eventually there was beef over his boombox, but while I was there, it didn't seem nefarious. He just seemed to be a guy who survived on routine. During the Cubs' magical run last season, so much of Chicago's history was brought out to celebrate. Beyond the usual icons -- Ryne Sandberg, Fergie Jenkins, Billy Williams -- there were the memories of cornerstones of the Cubs' past, such as Ernie Banks and Ron Santo. Even the invocation of celebrity power such as Eddie Vedder, Bill Murray, Jon Cusack and Vince Vaughn brought a sense of the time it took to reach this point. But one question was never answered for me: Where was Sammy Sosa? Amaury Telemaco, a former teammate of mine and a native of Sosa's Dominican Republic, said, "It is as if someone or something is trying to erase Sammy from history. I don't understand what happened." Sosa's final games with the Cubs in 2004 did not end well. He was battling injury, he was battling offensive struggles (by Sosa expectations), the team got eliminated late in the season, and he was upset about his place in the lineup. He arrived at the stadium 70 minutes before the game, then left 15 minutes after it started without ever putting on his uniform. That was not a great moment, but I am not sure that makes the top 100 of bad decisions by a baseball player. "I asked for permission of my manager, Dusty Baker. I did something terribly. It was the last day. We lost 60, 70, 80 games. They were looking for someone to blame," Sosa said. "I made so many mistakes. I regret it. I am a mature man now. I did not recognize the mistake I made at the time. Today, I realize that I could have done better, but it is the past. I am living in the future and the present, not the past" "I really ask myself, 'What have I done so wrong that the people today sometimes treat me like I don't deserve what I did?'" Sammy Sosa Then there was the corked bat incident and the PED allegations. But so many players from the steroid era are similarly situated and have been welcomed back by their home fans. Manny Ramirez failed the drug test twice after the drug policy was in full effect, and he was a hitting coach for the Iowa Cubs. Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds had a chance to coach. Jason Giambi apologized himself into good graces. Alex Rodriguez was able to play out his career and is now at Yankees' spring training as a special adviser. Ryan Braun is seen as a potential key piece to some team's playoff hopes, if not those of his lifelong organization in Milwaukee. There is plenty of forgiveness to go around for many players. They might not get in the Hall of Fame, but they have an MLB home, and it seems like Sosa does not. Even his Hall of Fame vote sits at a paltry 8.5 percent. Six-hundred-plus home runs? Even if you make a blanket argument against those thought to be PED users, you cannot explain that gap between him and others. "They have no case against me," Sosa said. "Never failed a drug test. Sort of surprised I do not get that many votes. I see other players getting so many votes. Why am I not getting treated the same way? McGwire and I brought baseball back. One day I will tell my whole story." Today, Sosa is focused on family and business. His four older children are in college, and his two youngest are home with him and his wife. He does a lot of traveling for real estate deals in Paris, Hong Kong, Dubai, London, Panama and, of course, the Dominican Republic. He has used his baseball connections to create a career outside of the game. "I am not the kind of person who goes back to the field," Sosa said. "I have a good vision of what I want outside the field. Maybe one day my dream is to buy a baseball team, but this is my dream. "I am happy. I don't want to talk about it so much. I do not want people to think I am looking for something. I am OK. I am fine. I love my life. I have my family, my friends." Seeing the Cubs finally win it all was satisfying for Sosa. "Very happy, very proud for the city of Chicago, the whole organization. I was very satisfied," Sosa said. Maybe I'm missing something, maybe there is some skeleton so large that it is locked away, but if not, we must acknowledge that Sammy Sosa was an integral part of Cubs history. He did a lot of good for the Cubs and the city. What is broken should be repaired. No one has to be blamed, no one has to be wrong or right. There just needs to be a recognition that how it stands does not align with what is and has always been an asset to the Cubs: a tireless loyalty, bigger than self, big-hearted and forgiving, a sentiment that existed well before the 2016 championship. "Whatever happened with the organization, I have no control over it," Sosa said. "I have always been the same guy. Most of the time, why the relationship has not been the same, maybe the comments that people make that get to the ownership. And that is why you don't see Sammy Sosa with the Chicago Cubs." |
At the southernmost point of the Norwegian coastline by the village of Båly, Snøhetta has designed Europe’s very first underwater restaurant. With its immediate proximity with the forces of nature, the restaurant, which will also function as a research center for marine life, is a tribute to the Norwegian coast and to Lindesnes – to the wild fauna of the sea and to the rocky coastline of Norway’s southern tip. Under’s namesake holds a double meaning: In Norwegian, “under” can just as well be translated into “wonder.” Half-sunken into the sea, the building’s monolithic form breaks the water surface to lie against the craggy shoreline. More than an aquarium, the structure will become a part of its marine environment, coming to rest directly on the sea bed five meters below the water’s surface. With meter-thick concrete walls, the structure is built to withstand pressure and shock from the rugged sea conditions. Like a sunken periscope, the restaurant’s massive acrylic windows offer a view of the seabed as it changes throughout the seasons and varying weather conditions. Through its architecture, menu and mission of informing the public about the biodiversity of the sea, Under will provide an under-water experience inspiring a sense of awe and delight, activating all the senses – both physical and intellectual. Snøhetta has also designed Under's website. For more information, see under.no. |
"The recent Kansas election [Congress] was a really big media event, until the Republicans won," Trump tweeted. "Now they play the same game with Georgia-BAD!" | Getty Trump says media downplayed Kansas victory President Donald Trump on Sunday night accused news organizations of downplaying the special congressional election in Kansas after the Republican candidate won — and suggested the same will happen in the upcoming Georgia special election. "The recent Kansas election [Congress] was a really big media event, until the Republicans won," he tweeted. "Now they play the same game with Georgia-BAD!" Story Continued Below Interest in the recent race in Kansas was high because it represented an unexpectedly close battle for a House seat long and easily held by Republicans. Interest in Tuesday's election in Georgia is high for the same reason. In last week's race, Democrat James Thompson lost to Republican Kansas Treasurer Ron Estes by about 7 percentage points in the heavily Republican 4th Congressional District. They were vying to replace Mike Pompeo, Trump's CIA director. Pompeo and Trump both won the district easily in November. In Tuesday's election in Georgia's 6th District, any candidate who receives more than 50 percent of the vote will win the race outright. The election will go into a runoff between the top two vote-getters if no candidate reaches 50 percent. Democrat Jon Ossoff, who is one of 18 candidates, has been causing a stir in the district, which was left vacant following the appointment of Tom Price as Health and Human Services secretary. |
Ahead on Monday night's televised trip to Manchester City, Alan Pardew insists that his Newcastle side are "more than ready" By Dan King - Newcastle United Digital Editor Manchester City will be one of the favourites for the Barclays Premier League title, Alan Pardew admits, but the Newcastle boss believes his side can claim a positive result at the Etihad Stadium on Monday night. Last season's runners-up have had a change of manager and made some big-money buys during the summer so the Magpies could barely have asked for a tougher fixture to begin their campaign. But United lost just once in pre-season and Pardew insists his team is good enough to go toe-to-toe with the Blues in front of a sell-out crowd and millions watching across the globe. He said: "I think we're in good shape and for us, with the game being on Monday night, it's a psychological game for us in terms of putting ourselves in the mind of everybody with a really strong performance - and hopefully get some points out of what is obviously a tough game. "They've again invested heavily, Manchester City. They're obviously going to be one of the contenders for the title so it's a tough game for us but we're more than ready for it. "The ideal scenario is to get a result of any kind and I think we've got the players to do it. We carry some fabulous players - (Yohan) Cabaye, (Fabricio) Coloccini, Papiss Cisse - so we've got an opportunity and hopefully we can take it." Manuel Pellegrini has replaced Roberto Mancini and, with a new man at the helm, Pardew knows that it could take time for his ideas to be fully implemented - but he's not expecting too much to change in terms of the Citizens' philosophy. "I think his style is not too different to Mancini's but I think there is an emphasis that they're going to be a little bit more forward-thinking, put a little bit more pressure on us maybe when we've got the ball, so it'll be interesting to see how honed that is in the first game," Pardew said. "But if they're going to play a high press against us then we need to take care of the ball. "There's always that special feeling when the Premier League is kicking off. It's the best division of football in the world in my opinion so to be part of it and have a strong team like we've got is very exciting. "The only injury that's really affecting affecting us for Monday night is (Loic) Remy who we brought into the Club with a calf injury, but he's getting some work that should get him back on the training ground next week, hopefully. Other than we're at a good level of preparation in terms of our first game." |
We’ve been waiting for the 2014 BMW M4 coupe for some time now, and while that range-topping car has yet to be released, the next best thing, the 2014 BMW 4-Series Convertible M Sport has been spotted testing yet again. This time, the prototype featured a bright red paintjob. While it’s yet to be confirmed just what new features will appear on the 2014 BMW 4-Series Convertible M-Sport compared to the regular BMW 4-Series, it’s likely to incorporate slightly more aggressive front and rear bumpers as well as a more aggressive rear diffuser and a new set of 18-inch alloy wheels. Additionally, a selection of other dynamic improvements are expected in the M-Sport. The BMW 4-Series coupe gets an increased wheelbase with lower suspension. The suspension rides 10mm lower than the outgoing 3-Series Coupe. The platform is 26mm longer, 43mm wider and 16mm lower. The car is said to have the lowest center of gravity than any BMW currently on sale. The 2014 BMW 4-Series Convertible will be offered with the same engines as the coupe. This means three different options will initially be available. They include the 420d with a 4-cylinder turbo diesel engine producing 181bhp, the 428i with a 2 liter 4-cylinder engine producing 242bhp and lastly the 435i with a 3 liter 6-cylinder engine producing 302bhp. Later on, BMW will introduce a 420i with 181bhp, 430d with 254bhp and 435d with 309bhp. [Via TopSpeed] |
Details Created: Friday, 13 September 2013 10:03 Written by Robert Claridge 40 years ago on 11 September 1973, the democratic government of Chile led by President Salvador Allende was crushed in a brutal military coup led by General Pinochet. Three years in preparation, the coup would have been impossible without massive covert backing from US imperialism, the hegemonic power in Latin America at the time. 4,000 militants were murdered or disappeared in the years that followed. The fate of over 1,000 remains unknown. The legacy of the Pinochet years today lies in massive inequality and an economy controlled by a handful of enormously wealthy families dependent on the export of copper. The article below was published on the 25th anniversary of the coup in 1998 and examines the lessons of the Allende government. Chile: lessons of the coup FRFI 144 August / September 1998 1973-1998 25 years ago, on 11 September 1973, a military coup deposed the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile. In the ensuing blood bath, thousands of communists, socialists, workers and peasants were murdered, Allende amongst them. The national stadium in the capital, Santiago, was turned into a concentration camp, where hundreds were tortured and shot whilst the ruling class celebrated with champagne parties. In the following years, the country was ruled by military terror. Torture and disappearances were routine. Political parties and trade unions were banned. Real wages were slashed so that by 1987 average daily food consumption had fallen from its 1973 level of 2,692 calories to just 2,227. By 1996, when the poorest 50% of the population received just 17.3% of national income, the richest 10% got 41.6% or $4,000 per month. The middle class - 30% of the population - earned about $1,000 per month, enough to buy the private health and education that the mass of the working class could never afford. Today politicians such as the British Labour government's Minister for Welfare Reform Frank Field, flock to Chile to study its privatised welfare system; he now extols the virtues of their privatised pension scheme. ROBERT CLOUGH examines the lessons of the coup. A facade of democracy has been restored. General Pinochet, the leader of the 1973 coup, finally retired as head of the armed forces in March of this year; he is now a senator for life, with legal immunity from any prosecution for the terror for which he was responsible. His regime was a vital ally of British imperialism; it provided covert bases for the SAS during the Malvinas war, and it has been an important destination for British arms sales. The rise of Unidad Popular All this is a far cry from the situation in 1970 when Salvador Allende was elected President as a self-proclaimed Marxist on a programme which called for the nationalisation of foreign industry and the introduction of socialism. To understand how this was possible, and how it ended in bloody failure, it is important to understand the evolution of capitalism in Chile, its dependency on imperialism, and how this moulded the political character of the parties which led its working class. In the late nineteenth century, Chile became British imperialism's source of nitrates for fertiliser and explosives. The British-owned nitrate mines in the north of the country employed up to 100,000 workers; when 10,000 of them struck in Iquique in 1907, troops machine-gunned a mass meeting, massacring over 2,000 men, women and children. Between 1904 and 1914, US companies took control of the Chilean copper industry. Kennecott took over El Teniente, the world's largest underground copper mine, and Anaconda, the world's largest open-cast copper mine, Chuquicamata. US investment rose from $5m in 1895 to $200m in 1914. Chile became the world's second-largest producer of copper, its economy completely dependent on the world market for copper, iron and nitrates. By 1929, annual Chilean tribute to the US in the form of repatriated profits on direct investment and servicing of bank loans came to $100m; in 1940 US direct investment totalled $592m, second only to pre-revolutionary Cuba in Latin America. Chile: a neo-colony In the post-war period, Chile become little more than a neo-colony of US imperialism. In 1964, the US accounted for $1bn out of $1.2bn foreign direct investment. Such investment was fabulously profitable for the US companies involved. Between 1913 and 1963, Kennecott and Anaconda exported $4.1bn profits. In 1969, Anaconda made profits world-wide of $99m on investments of $1,116m: in Chile, it had made $79m of those profits on an investment of only $199m. In the six years between 1964 and 1970 Anaconda made $426m profits, and Kennecott $178m from Chilean copper. By the end of 1970, US domination was almost total. ITT ran the national telecommunications system through a 50-year concession granted in 1930. US companies controlled 50% of Chilean manufacturing, 60% of the iron, steel and chemical industries, and nearly 100% of engine assembly, radio and TV, pharmaceuticals, and of course copper. The result was economic stagnation, and deteriorating conditions for the Chilean working class. In 1956, one hour's labour was sufficient to buy a kilo of green vegetables, or a litre of milk. By 1965 this had risen to two hours, and 1969, three hours. In 1965, a married Chilean worker with an 8-year-old child had to spend 66.8% of his earnings on food; by 1969, this had risen to 82.3%. Agriculture was extremely inefficient as a consequence of the pattern of ownership. In 1965, there were 730 estates of more than 5,000 hectares; these accounted for 16,795,000 out of the total of 30,648,000 hectares available for cultivation - more than 50%. On the other end of the scale, 123,696 holdings of less than 5 hectares totalled only 207,000 hectares. The great landowners were only interested in getting an income sufficient to support their parasitic lifestyle. Consequently 60 per cent of their estates were left uncultivated, and the rest was poorly mechanised. It was sufficient that they had access to a plentiful supply of cheap labour from the landless rural proletariat, which lived in desperate poverty. The Chilean crisis in 1970 By 1970, Chile had become the second most indebted country per capita in the world (after Israel), owing $3.8bn, most of it to US banks. Successive governments had borrowed ever more extensively to pay for the lifestyle of the middle class, a quarter of the Chilean population; the dependent ruling class needed their support against the rising threat from the working class. In 1958, a coalition of Communists and Socialists had narrowly lost the presidential election, polling 356,000 votes against the 389,000 of the conservative winner. Fearful of another Cuba, the CIA pumped $20m into the 1964 election campaign of the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei. He won by a substantial margin, but only with radical promises of land reform and partial nationalisation of the copper mines. His government was a fiasco. Having promised to give land to 100,000 out of 350,000 peasant families by 1970, it met only 15% of its target in the face of landowner resistance. The 'Chileanisation' of the copper mines made no impact on production, and whilst the government underwrote mining debts of $632m, the companies exported profits to the tune of nearly $620m. Lastly, the economy continued to stagnate: between 1967-70 it grew by only 1%. Such conditions fanned discontent. Illegal occupations of farms and urban areas soared from 24 in 1968 to nearly 600 in 1970. The number of strikes quadrupled to 1,000 a year, most of them illegal. The response was repression: seven protesters were shot dead in Santiago in 1967; in 1969, riot police evicted 100 peasant families squatting land near Puerto Montt in the south, killing nine people in the process. CIA intervention This was the context of the 1970 election. Once more, the CIA pumped millions of dollars into the Christian Democrat campaign, buying advertising space in the media, paying bribes to those whose votes could be bought, and funding an anti-Communist press campaign led by El Mercurio, the Chilean equivalent of The Times. Despite this, Salvador Allende, as candidate of Unidad Popular, a coalition of Communists, Socialists and Radicals, won the most votes, 1,070,000 or 36.2% of the total, with the conservative Nationalists getting 1,031,000 and the Christian Democrats 822,000. The result created a crisis. The Unidad Popular programme - for nationalisation, welfare and accelerated land reform - represented a serious threat to US interests. However, the Christian Democrat-dominated Congress would have to confirm Allende's victory since he had not won an overall majority. Following the 4 September election, US imperialism went into overdrive to prevent his ratification. The Committee of 40, chaired by Henry Kissinger, and responsible for all covert US actions throughout the world, met to consider the possibility of financing a coup. President Nixon told the Director of the CIA to 'make the [Chilean] economy scream'. The CIA offered unlimited bribes to Christian Democrat congressmen to oppose Allende. The US ambassador to Chile warned that 'not a nut or bolt will be allowed to reach Chile under Allende....Once Allende comes to power, we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty...' ITT offered the CIA a 'seven figure sum' to finance the conspiracy; company Vice President William Meeriman wrote on 9 October 'approaches continue to be made to select members of the armed forces in an attempt to have them lead some sort of uprising - no success to date'. Given the choice between Allende and the National Party candidate Alessandri, Frei and the Christian Democrats knew they would have to support the former if there was to be any chance of containing the unrest of the working class and peasantry. However, they insisted that Allende and Unidad Popular give a number of guarantees which would severely limit their scope of action. These included agreement to maintain the existing judicial and political system, ensure the continued independence and existing size of the armed forces, and prevent state interference in the freedom of the press. A bombing campaign by CIA-financed fascists failed to make the military move; army commander-in-chief General Schneider made it clear that he would support Allende if Congress confirmed his election. When fascists ambushed and murdered Schneider on 22 October, public outrage made Congress's endorsement of Allende two days later inevitable. Unidad Popular: the first two years Unidad Popular came to office committed to an extensive programme of industrial, agrarian and social reform. It nationalised mining and metallurgical industries, along with the largest monopolies in the textile, electronics, chemical and brewing industries, and 16 commercial banks. Real wages increased substantially. Universal primary schooling became a reality; the number of children going to secondary school rose 18% annually; those going on to high school rose by nearly 35%. There was free school milk for children under 15, and important gains for women: apart from equal pay, all workplaces with 20 or more employees were obliged to set up nurseries, and women were entitled to a year's maternity leave with full pay. Land redistribution, having stalled under Frei, was greatly accelerated leading to the formation of hundreds of co-operatives. The rise in real wages stimulated a boom: GDP rose 8.5% in the first year, and unemployment fell from 7.2% in 1970 to 3.9% a year later. However, Unidad Popular's nationalisation of the copper industry became the excuse for a US financial and trade boycott which soon had a dramatic effect on the Chilean economy. With the agreement of the Christian Democrats, Unidad Popular had refused to pay compensation to Kennecott and Anaconda because of the excessive profits these companies had made between 1955 and 1970. The US embargo on spare parts meant that by 1972, a third of all state-owned buses were immobilised, as were a third of the specialised lorries in the Chuquicamata mine. Lines of credit from US banks were cut from $200m to $30m. As increasing wages fuelled demand for imported consumer goods, so the balance of payments went into the red. This was compounded both by a fall in the price of copper - from 66 US cents per pound in 1970 to 48 cents in 1972, at a cost of $500m to the economy - and by the need to increase food imports as a result of both agricultural dislocation and increased demand. Foodstuff imports rose from $165m in 1970 to $383m in 1972 and eventually $619m in 1973. The US credit squeeze meant that by 1973, the Chilean economy was insolvent. Although the Chilean ruling class had managed to hamstring Unidad Popular through the constitutional guarantees, it realised that this was not sufficient to restrain the working class and peasantry. Hence, in collaboration with the US, which provided $40m through the CIA, it waged a campaign of economic and political destabilisation so as to recruit the middle class to its side. Meanwhile, the US stepped up military aid; after South Vietnam, the Chilean military became the second largest per capita recipient of such assistance. In the face of this offensive, Unidad Popular started to retreat. The principle members of the alliance were the Socialist Party and the Communist Party. The Communist Party drew its strength from its base in the trade union movement and amongst sections of the privileged working class both manual and white collar. Throughout the period 1970-72 many of its members were drawn into state administration, whether it was to supervise land reforms or to lead the distribution committees which sought to control prices and distribution of consumer goods. The Socialist Party was split between a section closely tied to the Communist Party and a more radical wing which was supported by other smaller sections of Unidad Popular such as MAPU (Movement for United Popular Action) and the Christian Left. The Communist Party was very much on the right wing of Unidad Popular; it had argued for the inclusion of the Christian Democrats within the alliance, and when that was defeated, had pushed for the acceptance of the constitutional guarantees which were the pre-condition for Christian Democrat ratification of Allende's presidency. It argued that Unidad Popular could only survive if it managed to recruit the substantial Chilean middle class to its side - farmers, small capitalists, white collar workers and professionals. Hence it opposed moves which might threaten the interests of these privileged layers. Until 1970, their standard of living had depended on foreign loans, credit and delayed payments rather than an expanding productive system. In the short term, Unidad Popular had no choice but to continue this arrangement to buy the middle class support it craved as a counter-balance to the pressures from the oppressed. Cynics spoke of a 'transaction to socialism' as Unidad Popular sought to finance the privileged consumption of the middle class; Fidel Castro, who visited Chile in autumn 1971, expressed concern about 'a revolution of consumption, not investment'. The class struggle intensifies Yet as production slowed down from 1972 and inflation accelerated, events were to show that it was not possible to satisfy the interests of the working class and poor peasantry and at the same time sustain the privileges of the upper working class and middle class. Shortages of consumer goods, both real and artificial, created a black market whose inflated prices excluded the working class. In response, the government set up Juntas de Abastecemientos Popular (JAPs) to control the distribution of essential commodities. These often acquired a popular character as they policed distribution in working class areas, opposing shopkeepers and other retailers who looked to make money on the black market. More fundamentally, in ensuring that the working class got more, they also ensured the middle class got less, and so became a particular target of ruling class hostility. In the countryside, expropriation and redistribution of land still faced resistance from the rich landowners, who funded local militias to terrorise the poor peasants and landless workers. And although the reforms were aimed at estates of 80 hectares and above, it was the owners of smaller estates - 40 to 80 hectares - who often proved the most ruthless exploiters and implacable enemies of the poor. In 1971, there were 1,758 rural strikes and 1,272 land seizures; over half of the latter involved farms of less than 80 hectares. There could be no reconciliation between the landless workers and the middle farmers, and Communist Party appeals to stop the occupations and strikes fell on deaf ears. In October 1972, the ruling class felt confident enough to organise a nationwide lock-out. The spark for this was a protest by 50,000 lorry owner/drivers at shortages of spare parts. Factories were closed down by their owners; lawyers, doctors, nurses and teachers came out in support of the ruling class. The response of the working class was immediate: it took over factories and organised production on its own account. Militias were set up to police working class areas against fascist attacks, and to defend truck owners willing to break the ruling class blockade. Cordones industriales - literally industrial belts - which organised factory committees on an area basis - spread throughout Santiago and the major cities. Commandos communales joined together factory workers, neighbourhood assemblies, women's organisations and slum-dwellers also on an area basis. Allende and his government were caught between the working class and oppressed on the one hand, and the ruling class on the other. In November, at the demand of the Christian Democrats, military leaders were taken into the cabinet as a guarantee that congressional elections would take place in March 1973. Unidad Popular promised the lorry-owners that their fleets would not face nationalisation. The Communist Party urged a slowing down of the pace of reform in order not to alienate the middle class. It was also concerned that grass-roots organisations such as the cordones industriales would undermine the control of the working class it exercised through the trade union movement. The Communist Party Minister of Economics urged the return of all occupied factories to their owners, only to back down when the working class refused to comply. The period had also seen new forces come on to the political scene - the majority of the working class who were outside of the trade union movement, vast numbers of whom lived in the shanty towns around Santiago. By and large ignored by the Communist Party and Socialist Party, who concentrated on better-organised and more privileged layers of the working class, these layers began to provide political support to organisations on the left of Unidad Popular such as MAPU and the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR). Whilst electorally they supported Unidad Popular alongside the rest of the working class, in their actions they were forced to go beyond what Unidad Popular found acceptable, thereby accentuating the political crisis it faced. The coup is prepared The ruling class went into the March 1973 elections confident that it would gain the two-thirds majority in Congress it needed to evict Allende and his government. The result confounded their expectations: Unidad Popular increased its share of the vote to 44%. General Prats, the army commander, pronounced himself satisfied with the outcome and left the cabinet. The ruling class and its US backers were in turmoil. There was no choice now but to increase the campaign of terror and sabotage as preparation for a coup. June 1973 saw yet another ruling class lockout; instigated by the truckowners, it extended to sections of the most affluent miners in the El Teniente mines. Bombings, shootings and terror became the norm. A breakaway union of truck owners which supported Unidad Popular and attempted to break the strike came in for special treatment: fascists assassinated its president. Committees of workers and peasants came together to break the ruling class blockade. In the period 17-24 June there were 77 bomb attacks. General Prats was attacked publicly for his refusal to intervene; on 29 June a section of the army in alliance with the fascist Patria y Libertad organised a coup which was speedily defeated. This was a signal to the ruling class to redouble its campaign: it was now terrified that unless it moved quickly, it stood to lose everything as workers and peasants were forced in practice to ignore the calls for restraint that came from Unidad Popular and its allies. There were also alarming signs of disaffection within the rank and file of the armed forces. In August, Luis Corvalan, Communist Party General Secretary, denied that working class actions were a threat to the army: 'They are claiming that we have a policy of replacing the professional army. No sir! We continue and will continue to support keeping our armed institutions strictly professional.' At the same time as he was saying this, 43 sailors were arrested in Valparaiso for disclosing preparations for a coup; Allende denounced them as 'ultra-left' and stooges of the MIR. El Mercurio called for an 'Indonesian solution' referring to Suharto's massacre of 500,000 Indonesian communists, peasants and workers seven years earlier in 1966. 'Djakarta' became a slogan of the right, painted on Santiago walls; General Prats resigned as middle class women demonstrated outside his home. Allende appointed General Pinochet in his place. The army started searches of factories, housing estates and slums up and down the country allegedly looking for arms. Socialists and activists were arrested and tortured; some were murdered. On 4 September 1973, up to a million people marched through the streets of Santiago in support of Unidad Popular on the third anniversary of its election. The mood was sombre and subdued: the participants were aware of an impending coup, but had been given no lead from Unidad Popular. On the night of 10 September, the Chilean navy put to sea from Valparaiso for manoeuvres with US warships; by the time the ships returned early the following morning, hundreds of sailors identified as UP supporters had been murdered, many thrown overboard. At 11am, British-supplied Hawker Hunter jets swooped over Santiago and bombed La Moneda. Within hours, Allende was dead; he and his bodyguard had held off tanks and fully-armed troops for more than three hours. Elsewhere, pockets of workers with a few small weapons managed to resist for up to three days. By that time, thousands were already dead; it remained for the US to offer its support to the new regime which could not have succeeded without the financial and military aid that it had provided. Conclusion Unidad Popular failed because the main parties in the coalition had no confidence in the ability of the working class to organise and run society in its own interests. It therefore sought to adjust its policies to the prejudices of the middle class, and constantly courted middle class respectability. But the middle class cannot provide any solution to the problems of capitalist society - it will only follow the lead of the more powerful of the two contending classes - the capitalists or the working class. Hence in practice, Unidad Popular found itself paralysed - unable to confront the ruling class, and yet terrified of the revolutionary drive of the working class and oppressed. It tried to hold the balance between the two, which in practice meant holding back the working class and giving space to the ruling class to prepare its onslaught. Although both the Communist and Socialist Parties were mainly working class in composition, their leaderships drew their politics from a more privileged layer altogether. The lesson is that leadership of the working class has to be of the working class, not only socially but also politically. |
The Connor McDavid effect will be put to the test once again Tuesday. Nail Yakupov is staying put past the trade deadline, and it appears he'll have every opportunity to show the Edmonton Oilers what he's capable of in the final 18 games of the season. With Benoit Pouliot reportedly sidelined indefinitely due to a separated shoulder, Yakupov will slot in next to McDavid and Jordan Eberle on Edmonton's top line against the Buffalo Sabres. "He's been waiting for this opportunity & we're giving it to him. We expect big things." Coach McLellan on Yak joining McDavid & Eberle — Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) March 1, 2016 The 22-year-old forward has struggled mightily this season, failing to register a point in his last five games, while recording just three goals in 20 contests since returning from an ankle injury on Jan. 14. The good news is, McDavid can certainly elevate his play. Two-thirds of Yakupov's 15 points in 42 games this season have come while playing on a line with McDavid: Games Points With McDavid 13 10 Without McDavid 29 5 Growth in production is nothing new for players playing alongside the 19-year-old rookie phenom: Player Games Without McDavid Points Games With McDavid Points Jordan Eberle 37 22 14 16 Benoit Pouliot 34 14 27 21 Amid endless speculation surrounding Yakupov's future with the Oilers, there's clearly no better time than now for the former first overall pick to turn his career around. If not, it's certainly possible he could find himself playing somewhere else in the near future. |
“Regression to the mean” is one of the subtlest concepts in statistical literacy – and yet it’s terribly simple. In plain English, “regression to the mean” is the idea that normally, things are pretty normal. That is, if you observe something abnormal – a high fever, a high share price, a long, unseasonable stretch of sunny or rainy days – then chances are that all will soon fall back within normal range. If you’re sick, you’ll probably get better (this is why so many quack cold remedies “work” – they take your mind off the passage of time while you wait for regression to the mean to assert itself). Regression to the mean applies to commerce. An advertising technique that works very well today will probably work less well over time, as repetition and competition eat away at its novelty. Look at those “ghost ads” on the sides of faded Victorian buildings: apparently, it was once profitable to advertise soap with a slogan like “It makes you clean.” Remember when Xynga’s “social games” like Farmville seemed to colonise the limbic systems of everyone you knew, stealing away their hours with a fiendishly addictive game-mechanic? In short order, most of Xynga’s players grew inured to the game’s temptations, leaving behind a rump of especially susceptible players who were not enough to sustain the game, nor its makers’ high-flying share price. Likewise, the “surveillance business model” of building up detailed electronic dossiers on internet users in order to predict what they want to buy and how to sell it to them produced some genuinely impressive results in its early years. The serendipity of seeing an ad for something you had been thinking about proved very powerful in the early days of Facebook and the first generation of “retargeting” services. But a look at Facebook’s ad-card rates shows that the novelty of this technique wears off fast. Facebook was founded on the premise that it could use its mounting dossier on your behavior to figure out how to sell you things faster than your natural defenses would repel its pitches. If that ideology was borne out, you’d expect to see the company’s cost-per-thousand ad rates climbing into the stratosphere. Instead, they’re damned close to the rate you’ll pay for regular, minimally targeted display advertising elsewhere. The quarterly Facebook investor calls tell the story: Facebook’s growth area for revenue aren’t from predictive, targeted ads. Instead, the company is making good money from venture-backed games firms that pay “per acquisition” – from users actually installing their games. As Facebook doesn’t have to pay itself to advertise on its own service, it can simply wash its service in ads for games until the acquisitions take place. The cost per acquisition on Facebook is substantially in excess of what any game company could hope to earn from an average player, suggesting that this line of business is due for a crash. The other profitable line for Facebook is sneakier, and possibly longer-lived. The company can easily see which of the commercial/brand/business pages on its service are growing fastest. These correspond to the businesses that are exerting the most energy to get their customers to follow them on Facebook and making Facebook most integral to their daily business. When Facebook’s algorithms predict that a business is well and truly reliant upon Facebook to reach its customers, it simply switches off the business’s ability to reach those customers, so that new updates only go to a small fraction of the company’s followers. Thereafter, a Facebook salesperson gives the business a call and offer to turn the tap back on – for a price. That’s not the surveillance business-model. It’s a much older one: the drug-dealer business-model, where the first taste is free. The Big Data success stories for predicting human behavior over long terms don’t bear scrutiny. It’s not a triumph of big data to predict that someone searching for “used cars” might respond to an ad for used cars. Neither is it sorcery to predict that a woman who buys folic acid is pregnant. It’s not big data to get paid when someone clicks on a loan application or installs a game. Markets don’t solve all our problems, but they do not have much patience for an irrational, ideological commitment to techniques that don’t deliver. Facebook doubtless has internal fiefdoms that will be threatened by the company backing off its surveillance commitment, but it is also growing non-surveillance-oriented tendrils as fast as it can. Unfortunately, spy agencies aren’t subject to this kind of discipline. The fact that the billions spent spying on everyone, always, has spectacularly failed to catch any terrorists is taken as proof that they’re not doing enough surveillance – not that untargeted, mass surveillance without particularised suspicion is a waste of money. Of course, it helps that there are so many contractors and suppliers who lobby for spies to buy more of their gear and services. Every technology is overhyped at its birth. The Gartner Hype Cycle has Big Data sliding into the long, deep “trough of disillusionment.” As the cycle astute observes, overpromising doesn’t mean there’s no there there. As big data techniques stabilise into a few applications where it works well and long, more of the surveillance business model will blow away. |
Jada Toys has sent out the word that their Robocop 2014 Action Figures and Toys are on the way. Feel free to look at the new images and information for Robocop 2014 12 IN Talking RoboCop 3.0 Product Details Item No.: 84129 Brand: RoboCop Category: Action Figure Scale: 12 IN Paint: Black • 12” Talking Action Figure • 5 Points of Articulation • 10 Alternating Phrases from the Movie • Taser Gun and Machine Gun Accessories 4 IN RoboCop Action Figure 1.0 Product Details Item No.: 84125 Brand: RoboCop Category: Action Figure Scale: 4 IN Paint: Silver • 9 Points of Articulation • Includes Taser and Machine Gun accessories 4 IN RoboCop Action Figure 3.0 Product Details Item No.: 84125 Brand: RoboCop Category: Action Figure Scale: 4 IN Paint: Black • 9 Points of Articulation • Includes Taser and Machine Gun accessories 4 IN RoboCop Police Cruiser 3.0 Product Details Item No.: 84126 Brand: RoboCop Category: Action Figure Scale: 4 IN Paint: Black • Removable 4” Figure • Pullback Motor • Spring Loaded Shooting Projectiles • Includes EM-208 target” 6 IN RoboCop Light up Action Figure 1.0 Product Details Item No.: 84128 Brand: RoboCop Category: Action Figure Scale: 6 IN Paint: Silver • 6” Feature Action Figure • 9 Points of Articulation • Light-up Visor 6 IN RoboCop Light up Action Figure 3.0 Product Details Item No.: 84128 Brand: RoboCop Category: Action Figure Scale: 6 IN Paint: Black • 6” Feature Action Figure • 9 Points of Articulation • Light-up Visor • Includes Taser and Machine Gun Accessories RobocCop Helmet Product Details Item No.: 84130 Brand: RoboCop Category: Action Figure Scale: NA Paint: Black • Basic Plastic Helmet for Role Play • Adjustable Strap RoboCop Chest Plate Product Details Item No.: 84131 Brand: RoboCop Category: Action Figure Scale: NA • Basic Plastic RoboCop Role Play Chest Piece • Adjustable Strap RoboCop 3.0 Police Cruiser R/C Product Details Item No.: 84134 Brand: RoboCop Category: Action Figure Scale: NA Paint: Black • 12” Radio Control Cycle • Full Function Radio Control • RoboCop 3.0 Look for these toys to hits shelves very soon. Like this: Like Loading... |
It's the beginning of the bike season, which means you're bound to see a few of these folks on your first ride. Cartoon and images by Michael Jantze. You're finally out and about on your bike. The snow is long gone and your local trail police say it's dry enough to ride. As you pedal along, re-acquainting yourself with skills that lay dormant for several months, you might spot a few rare, early-season MTB creatures. #1: The New Leaf Yayyyy! He’s getting fit! He’s in the woods! His reflectors are shattered, his derailleur wrapped around the chainstay, and his rear tire is flat! You’ll know him by his jeans shorts, New Balance sneakers and Gatorade water bottle. EXPERIENCE: An Epic Mountain Bike Journey Help this guy. Take the kickstand off his bike. Tell him there’s not much need for the cable lock wrapped around his seat-post. Adjust his helmet. Show him how to tighten a skewer. Give him a gel or a snack. Make sure he knows his way back to the trailhead. We all want this person to succeed. It’s a long road from Fred to Shred; think back to when you started. The New Leaf will get fitter, buy a hydration pack, realize he needs to swap a few components, and find a local shop that will get him up and running. Be kind. #2: The Silent Humblebrag This woman has been training in secret all winter to drop her riding buddies on the first group ride like it’s no big deal. Not being first eats at some people. She’s pre-riding the trail they might pick next weekend so she can fly over stuff they’re hitting for the first time - in order to crush their souls. We all want a jump on our skills, but she’s actually going out and getting it. A-list shoes and bike. Whatever she’s wearing, it’s perfectly regulating her core temperature for optimum performance. She’d talk, but probably works in media or PR and needs to nail segment QOM, then get back to the lot before her inbox starts blowing up. #3: The Shadow A hammer. You meet at a trail junction, try to keep up, and instantly get humiliated. Damn, did she spend the winter on the Australia/Argentina/Spain circuit? She’s perfectly polite, offers you a gel, compliments you on your bike when hers is obviously a $10K prototype weapon, then hips you to the fact you should be riding a shorter stem. INTERACTIVE: Singletrack Switzerland She’s geared out with a shirt that matches her bike, both in logo and color. You try to ask a fumbling question about whether she’s sponsored, but that’s really all you can get out, for as fast as she arrives on the scene, she vanishes. Perhaps you’ll glimpse her again one day. If you’re lucky. You’ll tell tales about seeing her to your friends, but they’ll think you’re lying. #4: The Fat Bike Cult Leader This guy’s hooting about his fat bike and how he rode through the whole winter. You might be the first person he's spoken to in months. Okay, Woodsy Owl, winter’s over and the normal people are back. Maybe it's time to wash your hair? If the Wyatt family rode mountain bikes, this would be one of them. Beard, flannel, pants, and with a ziplock bag of tuna fish in his pack for a snack. No bread or a fork – just tuna. He’s rolling on fully-rigid steel bike with 5” wheels and a front-triangle pack. Is that the theme to Deliverance I hear? #5: The Builder The builder is not riding a bike. He has marker flags, a McLeod and a chainsaw. He’s just clearing some tree fall, and marking a way around that denuded fall line. Carhartt pants, Redwing boots, and a well-worn flannel. READ MORE: Bike Through The Heart Of The Swiss Alps You feel shame. You stop to help. You do a few minutes of work. Digging a little and moving some logs he’s cut near a sketchy roller. You promise to help more on the next trail building day. You pick up your bike and move on. He doesn't judge you. The next time you go back, the trail is clear, flowy and awesome. In 1850, he'd have been splittin' rails and thinking about public office. From The Column: Ski Town Caricatures |
Hey guys, I just wanted to thank our forum users for their support and thoughtful analyses about Apple’s new ToS (terms of service) for its iPhone OS 4.0, due to be released this summer. As you are probably all aware by now, the new ToS has led to widespread speculation on blogs and in the trade press about how the change in wording could affect products marketed on the Apple AppStore. As is so often the case with “legalese,” the new ToS are difficult to parse with certainty and open to broad interpretation—particularly by Apple itself. Some have noted that the strictest possible interpretation could prohibit many products from being marketed on the App Store. Others have argued that under more benign interpretations of the new terms, Unity and others will be just fine. Apple has built a tremendous marketplace for all of us, and it’s great for those who successfully take advantage of it. The flipside, of course, is that the power there so clearly resides with Apple. This is certainly not the first time that developers of all types of apps have faced sometimes confusing changes in rules, or their interpretation. It’s a risk we all run in basing parts of our businesses on Apple. Here at Unity, we are working hard on getting good information, and working to understand whether – or how – the new changes could affect the developer community and others. We have reached out to both official and unofficial contacts at Apple, we are talking to other companies in a similar situation to us, and we’ve been diligent in reading the ToS to get to the best legal (and business-wise) analysis of it. We haven’t heard anything from Apple about this affecting us, and we believe that with hundreds of titles (or probably over a thousand by now), including a significant proportion of the best selling ones, we’re adding so much value to the iPhone ecosystem that Apple can’t possibly want to shut that down. Our current best guess is that we’ll be fine. But it would obviously be irresponsible to guarantee that. What I can guarantee is that we’ll continue to do everything in our power to make this work, and that we will be here to inform you when we know more – as soon as we know more. PS. In the ancient days of the App Store (July 2008), Apple very late changed the kernel to disallow JIT (just-in-time) compilation. What we did instead was spend several months changing Mono to AOT (ahead of time) compile scripts instead (this is why some dynamic constructs in our JavaScript doesn’t work on the iPhone). It was a lot of work, but we made it work to enable all these amazing Unity games to be sold in the App Store, many of which have gone on to be bestsellers and made their creators rich and famous. Thanks again for your support. We’re so very proud of you all. First I would like to thank our forum users for their support and thoughtful analyses about Apple’s new ToS (terms of service) for iPhone OS 4.0, due to be released this summer. As you are probably all aware by now, the new ToS has led to widespread speculation on blogs and in the press about how the change in wording could affect apps sold on Apple’s App Store. As is so often the case with “legalese,” the new ToS are difficult to parse with certainty and open to broad interpretation – not least by Apple itself. Some have noted that the strictest possible interpretation could prohibit many products from being marketed on the App Store. Others have argued that under more benign interpretations of the new terms, Unity and others will be just fine. Apple has built a tremendous marketplace for all of us, and it’s great for those who successfully take advantage of it. The flipside, of course, is that the power there so clearly resides with Apple. This is certainly not the first time that developers of all types of apps have faced sometimes confusing changes in rules, or their interpretation. It’s a risk we all run in basing parts of our businesses on Apple. Here at Unity, we are working hard on getting good information, and working to understand whether – or how – the new changes could affect the developer community and others. We have reached out to both official and unofficial contacts at Apple, we are talking to other companies in a similar situation to us, and we’ve been diligent in reading the ToS to get to the best legal (and business-wise) analysis of it. We haven’t heard anything from Apple about this affecting us, and we believe that with hundreds of titles (or probably over a thousand by now), including a significant proportion of the best selling ones, we’re adding so much value to the iPhone ecosystem that Apple can’t possibly want to shut that down. Our current best guess is that we’ll be fine. But it would obviously be irresponsible to guarantee that. What I can guarantee is that we’ll continue to do everything in our power to make this work, and that we will be here to inform you when we know more – as soon as we know more. PS. In the ancient days of the App Store (July 2008), Apple changed the kernel to disallow JIT (just-in-time) compilation. We worked around this by changing Mono to AOT (ahead of time) compile scripts instead (this is why some dynamic constructs in our JavaScript doesn’t work on the iPhone). It was a lot of work, but we made it work to enable all these amazing Unity games to be sold in the App Store, many of which have gone on to be bestsellers and made their creators rich and famous. We’re so very proud of you. Thanks again for your support. |
As a cold wind whipped over the east Staffordshire hills last month, Ugo Ehiogu gathered at St George's Park with a group including former Manchester United goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel and ex-Liverpool striker Robbie Fowler to take the next step in his developing coaching career. Despite the unseasonal conditions, former England defender Ehiogu began his Uefa A Licence in the knowledge that come June he would be joining Peter Taylor's England coaching staff in the heat of Turkey for the Under-20 World Cup. According to the 40-year-old, the decision - made in April - came as a "surprise". Percentage of black players in latest England youth squads Under 21s: 43% Under-20s: 14% Under-19s: 39% Under-18s: 44% Under-17s: 39% English professional football: 25% Tottenham Under-16s coach Ehiogu is in the set-up to gain vital experience in much the same way that ex-Everton midfielder Phil Neville joined Stuart Pearce's team at the Under-21 European Championship. But former Middlesbrough and Aston Villa centre-back Ehiogu could also play his part in developing the increasing number of black players among England's youth teams. The England Under-20 squad, which plays its first group game against Iraq in Turkey on Sunday, features three black players among a group of 21. Yet from the under-21s through to the under-17s about 40% of players are non-white. That compares with about 25% in the English professional game. Ehiogu is one of 30 qualified coaches on a list issued by the Professional Footballers' Association in an attempt to boost the numbers of black coaches in the professional game. There are only four black managers in England's top four divisions and PFA coach educator Paul Davis believes that increasing this figure will help black players by offering them role models from potentially similar backgrounds. As manager of the under-19s and under-18s, Noel Blake is already a notable example. It is a notion that Ehiogu agrees with and one that, he believes, becomes more important the younger the player is. But he also recognises that a coach's ability to communicate with players can transcend race, age or social background. In between coaching sessions at St George's Park, Ehiogu told BBC Sport: "It's like society. Kids want to play football and when they can see or relate to someone who looks similar to them or came from the same area as they did or have the same background or upbringing as them, they can relate to that. "And when you can relate to someone as a player or an individual you kind of cling onto that so it's got to help. "However, I remember working with Terry Venables for England. He could speak to players in a manner where they listened, so it's all about having a balance. "Once you get to professional level as a player it's less of an issue because you've made that grade, but it's probably more from the ages of 10 to 11 up to under-18s or under-19s football. I think that's probably the key where it needs to be better represented." Ehiogu says that becoming a coach was always at the back of his mind during his playing days. But despite his insistence that he is still very much learning his trade, there is a quiet determination to make it to the top as a manager. Ugo Ehiogu factfile Born: London, 3 Nov 1972 London, 3 Nov 1972 Position: Centre-back Centre-back Clubs: West Brom (1989-1991), Aston Villa (1991-2000), Middlesbrough (2000-2007), Leeds (loan 2006-2007), Rangers (2007-2008), Sheffield United (2008-2009) West Brom (1989-1991), Aston Villa (1991-2000), Middlesbrough (2000-2007), Leeds (loan 2006-2007), Rangers (2007-2008), Sheffield United (2008-2009) International: 4 England caps, one goal "When I was coming towards the end of my playing career at 32, you are getting asked by young players about parts of football in and out of the game," he said. "And when you do it three or four times you kind of recognise that you've got something to give back and obviously coaching comes into that." Fast forward to June and speaking to Ehiogu in Turkey, it sounds like he is already making his mark with England. He says is "impressed and surprised" by the amount of input he has been allowed to provide to the players and it is clear that the tournament-preparation experience he is receiving under Taylor is invaluable. Taylor, who was brought in to manage the group for two months, said Ehiogu's dedication had made an impression with him and the players. "It's nice for any young player playing for their country, to see other ex-players who have had the experience of playing international football and who have also had good careers," Taylor told BBC Sport. "In Ugo's case, he was a big, strong centre-half who played for England and was a tremendous professional. We have some young centre-halves here where all of a sudden I would say to Ugo, 'go and talk to them and explain why you would do certain things in certain situations in games'. "The most important thing is that anybody who wants to be a coach wants to take it seriously, and that is where I have been impressed with Ugo; he really wants to be a good coach." Ehiogu, who also played for West Brom, Rangers and Sheffield United in a 20-year playing career, realises that he must gain qualifications and the know-how before he can go on to the next stage of his career. He has spoken to fellow black coaches who have failed to get interview opportunities despite having the necessary coaching badges, but it does not put him off. "It's hard to say [why they haven't got those responses], you will have to ask those coaches," Ehiogu said. "I suppose generally some people might say they haven't been qualified enough, maybe they haven't been enough of a face around the world of football. "If you are not in the public eye in football, you can disappear very quickly, people think you are out of the game, people think you are doing different things. There needs to be an awareness, you need to get about, watch matches, talk to people and that does spread your influence." The Londoner added: "[The PFA list] is a stepping stone. We are moving in the right direction and that's all you are looking for; an opportunity to put out your plan for the future for a particular club or a particular role and you are just looking for an opportunity to present yourself. If that happens I'm sure that there will be more opportunities for actual appointments." Ehiogu's coaching career might be in its infancy but it appears he is plotting his future in a carefully constructed manner. |
Dear Marriage Supporter, After a week dominated by the Chick-fil-A grassroots support movement there is more good news for marriage that you will never hear on the nightly news. Earlier this week another federal judge rejected the claim that there is a constitutional right to gay marriage! A same-sex couple tried to get Hawaii's marriage laws struck down on the grounds that they are allegedly irrational and rooted in bias towards gay people. Hawaii, you will recall, was the original seat of the litigation wars seeking to impose gay marriage upon the American people. The population of the blue state of Hawaii responded in 1998 by overwhelmingly passing (69 percent to 29 percent) the very first marriage amendment, clarifying that the legislature has the right to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Now a federal judge has affirmed the right of the people of Hawaii to make that determination—and in the process rejected the argument that marriage is rooted in bias or bigotry: "Throughout history and societies, marriage has been connected with procreation and childrearing.... It follows that it is not beyond rational speculation to conclude that fundamentally altering the definition of marriage to include same-sex unions might result in undermining the societal understanding of the link between marriage, procreation, and family structure." "In this situation," the court continued, "to suddenly constitutionalize the issue of same-sex marriage 'would short-circuit' the legislative actions that have been taking place in Hawaii." Bottom line: "Because Hawaii's marriage laws are rationally related to legitimate government interests, they do not violate the federal Constitution." The majority of courts, as well as the majority of citizens, recognize that our marriage laws are not rooted in hatred towards gay people or anyone else! I wish more gay marriage advocates could see this. This same misperception was on display as the MSM tried to downplay Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, because there was no way to cover the story without showing the huge outpouring of support for marriage and for Dan Cathy's right to his opinion. On Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day even Fox News' Shepard Smith went so far as to urge viewers to avoid "National Day of Intolerance": Most Americans—even those who support gay marriage—simply do not buy the extremist rhetoric emanating from Chick-fil-A opponents that opposition to gay marriage is bigoted, hateful and illegitimate. Four big-city mayors, though—people with power—disgraced themselves by suggesting just that. Rahm Emanuel, a former key White House official who is now mayor of Chicago, was in some ways the worst offender. His claim that Chick-fil-A violates something called "Chicago Values" produced pushback very close to home. It was too much even for the very liberal Chicago Tribune: Emanuel and [Chicago alderman] Moreno have changed their tone a bit over the last week, in the face of growing national criticism. But they are still exhibiting intolerance in the name of tolerance. Moreno has called Cathy's comments "bigoted." Emanuel asserted, "Chick-fil-A's values are not Chicago values." Mayor, many of your constituents do not support same-sex marriage. They have a heartfelt view on this. They are not bigots. But you are telling them they don't belong in their city. Take a moment to consider what Cardinal Francis George has written: "I was born and raised here, and my understanding of being a Chicagoan never included submitting my value system to the government for approval. Must those whose personal values do not conform to those of the government of the day move from the city?" Moreno seemed to spoil for a fight with the cardinal, calling his comments "disingenuous" and "irresponsible." Emanuel and Moreno ought to recognize they are losing people across the political spectrum ... because they are being intolerant. But not all were so perceptive: this display of intolerance by high government officials was actually praised by the major organizers of the gay marriage movement. Boston Mayor Tom Menino eventually may have backtracked on his suggestion that he "...would prevent a Chick-fil-A franchise..." from opening in his city, but not before major mainstream gay rights groups endorsed and applauded his stance. For instance, even as most Americans were uniting over a great chicken sandwich and the idea of tolerance for all, the Human Rights Campaign doubled down on using government power to exclude supporters of traditional marriage, calling on more public officials to express similar views to Menino's. The HRC said, and I quote: We applaud Mayor Menino for calling out Chick-fil-A's anti-LGBT practices. We have been asking people to make their own decisions about whether to continue supporting Chick-fil-A based on the facts available, and Mayor Menino has done just that. Mayor Menino's rebuke of Chick-fil-A sends a strong messages[sic] that their habit of supporting hateful organizations that demonize LGBT Americans are out-of-step with not just Bostonians, but the majority of fair-minded Americans. Chick-fil-A is on the wrong side of history, and we look forward to seeing more and more elected officials and businesses speak out against their discriminatory practices. Meanwhile, far from backing down, a major Chicago gay rights group filed multiple human rights complaints against Chick-fil-A charging that Cathy's personal views violate Illinois civil rights laws. Ironically, Anthony Martinez, executive director of The Civil Rights Agenda, said in their press release announcing the filing of the complaint, that Chick-fil-A used to be one of the family's "favorite places to eat" until Cathy's statements made them feel "completely unwelcome." Yet, Chick-fil-A has made clear that its policy is welcoming to everyone: the only one excluding Martinez from eating there is Martinez himself and those like him, who are blinded by intolerance in the public square to any opposing views. I think the Chicago Tribune is right: the gay marriage movement is increasingly demonstrating that the power it has is not going to be used to expand the liberty of all but to suppress dissent. While Rahm Emanuel charges ahead, President Obama is being curiously silent, not only about Chick-fil-A, but about reports that the Democrats are going to endorse gay marriage in the party platform: Susan Crabtree of the Washington Times reports: Democrats are asking supporters to "stand with" President Obama and the Democratic Party in solidarity on gay marriage — even though the White House and Mr. Obama's campaign repeatedly have declined to say whether the president supports efforts to write a gay-marriage plank in the party's platform. In an opening line of an email to supporters with the subject line "Are You Proud?" Mike Ryan, the policy director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is clearly excited about the efforts to include a gay-marriage plank in the party's platform this year. "The Democratic National Convention is moving forward with a plank embracing marriage equality as part of our 2012 platform!" he writes. Both the White House and the President's campaign have declined to say whether the President supports adding the plank, or whether he believes doing so would hurt Democratic candidates in swing states. Enthusiastic private fundraising emails combined with public silence in the mainstream media: what does that tell us? It tells us that the White House knows support for gay marriage is not a winner with the public. WaPo's The Fix confirms this fact: Americans remain just as divided on gay marriage as they were before President Obama's announcement in early May he now publicly supported it. The Pew Research Center poll shows views of gay marriage remain basically unchanged since April, right before Obama announced his support for gay marriage — a reversal from his past public opposition. Support has gone from 47 percent to 48 percent since April, while opposition ticked up from 43 percent to 44 percent. Neither is even close to statistically significant." More significantly, one-third of Democrats continue to oppose gay marriage, and 14 percent say they do so strongly. Rev. Bill Owens (who serves as NOM's liaison to the black churches) and his wife Deborah have been organizing black pastors who oppose gay marriage as leaders of the Coalition of African American Pastors. With support for same-sex marriage lagging in the black community, we expect more major hit pieces like Lisa Miller's in the Washington Post: Miller accused Rev. Owens, who has organized a distinguished group of black pastors in three different press conferences, of being merely "astroturf". But the MSM cannot change the facts: large numbers of Americans, including black Christians who are core Democrats, are very disturbed by President Obama's stance endorsing gay marriage, and they are calling on him to be faithful to their views and values. Here's a Scripps Howard story, one of many on the black pastors organizing effort: Support for same-sex marriage is now in the Democratic Party preliminary platform. Once approved by the full platform committee and voted on at the convention, same-sex marriage will have the party's formal support. But as Democrats institutionalize their support for same sex-marriage, their relationship with the party's most loyal constituency, black Americans, becomes increasingly uneasy. A new survey just released by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life shows 65 percent of Democrats support same-sex marriage compared to just 40 percent of blacks. A group of 3,700-plus black pastors, the Coalition of African-American Pastors, under the leadership of the Rev. William Owens, has moved to formally oppose the Democratic Party and President Barack Obama on this issue. The group is spearheading a "Mandate for Marriage" campaign to gather 100,000 signatures on a petition declaring support for traditional marriage. The petition also calls for Obama "to repudiate his assertion that gay marriage is a civil right." We will continue to work with people of all races, creeds, and political parties who support marriage. Thank you for all you've made possible. With God's help, we will continue to stand—and not only stand, but triumph! Contributions or gifts to the National Organization for Marriage, a 501(c)(4) organization, are not tax-deductible. The National Organization for Marriage does not accept contributions from business corporations, labor unions, foreign nationals, or federal contractors; however, it may accept contributions from federally registered political action committees. Donations may be used for political purposes such as supporting or opposing candidates. No funds will be earmarked or reserved for any political purpose. This message has been authorized and paid for by the National Organization for Marriage, 2029 K Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20006, Brian Brown, President. This message has not been authorized or approved by any candidate. |
American forces have claimed victory at the Battle of Waterloo re-enactment, after arriving just as it was about to finish anyway. The Americans were accused of reverting to type as they claimed a decisive victory at the re-enactment, despite only making an appearance when hostilities were almost at an end and with French troops fleeing in disarray. As Napoleon’s defeated army streamed from the battlefield, United States fighter jets strafed them with cannon fire and then hit them with a number of guided missiles launched from USAF drones, killing and wounding in excess of one thousand pretend French soldiers. A spokesman for the US State Department was jubilant as he told the American people in a TV broadcast last night: “Once again we have come to the aid of our British allies in their darkest hour and emerged victorious, just like we did in the two World Wars when we showed up towards the end and saved their limey asses.” “Hell, we even won The Battle Of Britain for ’em. Anybody who’s seen Ben Affleck kick Luftwaffe ass in Pearl Harbour knows that.” A spokesman for the French government responded angrily last night: “Look, we don’t really care much about all this because the dead and wounded were not actually French at all.” “I just wish the Americans would stop calling us cheese-eating surrender monkeys. Have they never heard of The French Foreign Legion?” A descendant of the Duke of Wellington refused to comment when we spoke to him last night but he did raise his eyes heavenwards and mutter “Oh for fuck’s sake” under his breath. |
Dele Alli described Mousa Dembele as ‘a joy to watch’ and a player to have made quite an impact on him since his arrival from MK Dons. The Belgian schemer was in fine form on his return to the starting line-up after injury and scored the key second goal as we ran out deserved 4-1 victors against Sunderland at the Lane on Saturday. Dele, 19, has gone from strength to strength this term and pinpointed Mousa’s influence day to day at Hotspur Way. “That’s what Mousa is all about, a great player, a joy to watch,” said Dele. “Everyone can see how good he is and as a youngster, he’s a fantastic player to learn from. “He’s incredible, probably one of the strongest guys in the world! You certainly think that when you play against him! "He’s a great guy as well and that makes it even better.” Below: Dele speaks to Spurs TV after the 4-1 win against Sunderland Meanwhile, Dele was quick to hold his hand up for Sunderland’s opener as Patrick van Aanholt ran in behind him before firing past Hugo Lloris. Thankfully, Christian Eriksen equalised within a minute, Mousa fired us into the lead in the second half and further goals from Christian and Harry Kane saw us home. “Their goal was against the run of play, a bit of a defensive error from myself but credit to the boys, we picked ourselves up quickly, worked hard and left the game with the three points,” added Dele. “You have to learn from your mistakes. I’m still young and I’m going to make them, so I’m sure there will be more – but hopefully not too many! “It was a good all-round performance and thankfully we picked ourselves up after the defeat against Leicester. “We did the same when we lost against Newcastle, it was important we bounced back and went on a run and we’ll look to do the same again, keep winning and go on another good run.” |
ACM News Leap Into the Future? Speculation abounds as to the actual Augmented or Virtual Reality product currently under development by Magic Leap, a firm in which a group of companies led by Google has invested more than $500 million. Credit: Magic Leap Dania Beach, FL-based Magic Leap plays its cards close to the vest. Almost every news story calls the company "secretive" or "mysterious" on first mention. Visitors to the company’s website can view a video of elephants flying out of someone's hands and still images of scenes like a little girl watching a tiny ballerina on her bed. People who have seen the product, which is assumed to be some kind of mobile, wearable augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) device, speak of it in unreservedly glowing terms. Thomas Tull, CEO of media company Legendary Pictures, told The Wall Street Journal the experience was "jaw-dropping." Richard Taylor, a member of Magic Leap's board of directors and co-founder of special effects shop Weta Workshop, said in a press release that it was like "a rocket ship for the mind." Whatever the product is, it is enough to have recently brought the company more than $500 million in funding from a group of companies led by Google. Coming just a year after Facebook bought Oculus VR (maker of the Oculus Rift VR headset) for $2 billion, that investment shows the commercial potential companies see in AR and VR. Still, other products in the space have already tested the market and failed; what's so special about this one? Natural depth perception According to Gordon Wetzstein, an assistant professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at Stanford University and a former research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, Magic Leap may well have solved the big problem limiting AR systems up to now: a natural presentation of depth. "In the real world, we can focus our eyes at different distances," Wetzstein explains. "If we focus on one plane, all the remaining depth is out of focus." Our brain uses such cues, along with stereoscopic vision, to infer depth, he says, "but that's something that's not really supported by any existing 3D display. I believe Magic Leap has cracked this." Current AR displays, such as Google Glass, overlay information on one’s visual field, but that is all in one plane. Something that is supposed to be further away can be shown smaller, but your eye does not actually change its focus to perceive it. "Imagine you're playing a game in which characters are being presented as though they're in the real world," Wetzstein explains. "If a character is very far away, you should be able to focus your eye very far away to see that character." The inability to do that—the fact that everything is on the same plane—creates nausea and fatigue in viewers, and is one of the reasons other AR and VR devices have not become as popular as they could have been. Actually, says Quinn Martin, a lead engineer at 3D modeling company Paracosm, "Magic Leap's been careful to distance themselves from the term 'augmented reality.' In the past, it's been associated with a lot of hype, and very little substance or useful application. The technical limitations that we're moving past are what have prevented AR from being compelling and ubiquitous." So is the product likely to be a headset like the Oculus Rift, something more like Google Glass, or another thing entirely? "I think they can make something that's actually smaller than Google Glass," says Wetzstein. "I would speculate that they have very thin light guides that can be much bigger, so you can have a larger image in a very slim form factor." Wetzstein suspects Magic Leap’s device doesn't simply display images, but processes them as well. "They have some of the best computer vision experts in the world, who've been able to put a lot of computer vision algorithms on mobile devices already," he says, and suggests that they will provide compelling, practical use cases that will support the device's adoption. "Let's say I travel to Japan and I'm not able to read Japanese. If I had a display integrated into my glasses that could, in real time, translate all the text—that would be amazing." Martin also sees some immediate applications that could help the device attract consumers. "The possibilities for games, shopping, and navigation seem ripe for early adoption," he says. Further down the road, Martin suggests, lies a wide range of other possibilities. "What happens when we start using augmented displays at work? When we use them for coding, fire-fighting, manufacturing, cooking, interacting with our robot friends..." One thing we can be certain of: something about Magic Leap sparks people's imaginations. Logan Kugler is a freelance technology writer based in Tampa FL. He has written for over 60 major publications. No entries found |
This publication has been updated. Please see here for the latest version. Rates of teen pregnancy, birth and abortion have declined dramatically in the United States since their peak in the early 1990s. In 2010, some 614,000 pregnancies occurred among teenage women aged 15–19, for a rate of 57.4 pregnancies per 1,000 women that age. This marks a 51% decline from the 1990 peak, and a 15% decline in just two years, from 67.8 in 2008, according to “U.S. Teenage Pregnancies, Births and Abortions, 2010: National and State Trends by Age, Race and Ethnicity,” a new study by the Guttmacher Institute. Similarly, the teen birthrate declined 44% from the peak in 1991 (from 61.8 births per 1,000 to 34.4 per 1,000); and the teen abortion rate declined 66% between its 1988 peak and 2010 (from 43.5 abortions per 1,000 to 14.7 per 1,000). While there was a substantial drop in the pregnancy rate for 15–17-year-olds and 18–19-year-olds between 2008 and 2010, pregnancies among 18–19-year-olds constituted the majority (69%) of teen pregnancies. During this same time period, increasing proportions of 18–19-year-olds reported having ever had sex, yet fewer of them became pregnant. The likely reason is improved contraceptive use and use of more effective methods. “The decline in the teen pregnancy rate is great news,” says lead author Kathryn Kost. “Other reports had already demonstrated sustained declines in births among teens in the past few years; but now we know that this is due to the fact that fewer teens are becoming pregnant in the first place. It appears that efforts to ensure teens can access the information and contraceptive services they need to prevent unwanted pregnancies are paying off.” The study also found dramatic declines in teen pregnancy rates among all racial and ethnic groups. The teen pregnancy rate declined 56% among both non-Hispanic white teens (from 86.6 per 1,000 to 37.8) and among black teens (from 223.8 per 1,000 to 99.5) between 1990 and 2010, and by 51% among Hispanic teens (from 169.7 per 1,000 to 83.5) between 1992 (the peak for this group) and 2010. However, wide disparities persist, and rates among both black and Hispanic teens remain twice as high as the rate for non-Hispanic white teens. Teen pregnancy rates declined in all 50 states between 2008 and 2010. Yet even with ongoing declines, substantial disparities remain between states. In 2010, New Mexico had the highest teenage pregnancy rate (80 per 1,000), followed by Mississippi (76), Texas (73), Arkansas (73), Louisiana (69) and Oklahoma (69). The lowest rates were in New Hampshire (28 per 1,000), Vermont (32), Minnesota (36), Massachusetts (37) and Maine (37). The authors suggest that the demographic characteristics of states’ populations, the availability of comprehensive sex education, knowledge about and availability of contraceptive services and cultural attitudes toward sexual behavior and early childbearing likely play a role in these variations. Click here for the full report: “U.S. Teenage Pregnancies, Births and Abortions, 2010: National and State Trends by Age, Race and Ethnicity,” by Kathryn Kost and Stanley Henshaw. For more information: Facts on American Teens’ Sexual and Reproductive Health Guttmacher State Data Center: create your own customized tables, graphs and maps |
Singer Morrissey has urged bosses at Universal Music to back off after they waged war against a Tumblr page inspired by his lyrics. Graphic designer Lauren LoPrete runs a Tumblr.com page, titled This Charming Charlie, in which samples of words from the songs of The Smiths are used to caption Charlie Brown sketches. Last month, it emerged that bosses at Universal had asked LoPrete to remove the images, but she has hit back by employing a legal team to fight the case – and Morrissey has now spoken out to praise the blog and deny he is behind the move to have it taken down. In a statement, a representative for the star says, “Morrissey would like to stress that he has not been consulted over any takedown request to remove the Tumblr blog named ‘This Charming Charlie.’ Morrissey is represented by Warner-Chappell Publishing, and not Universal Music Publishing, (who have allegedly demanded that the lyrics be removed). “Morrissey is delighted and flattered by the Peanuts comic strip with its use of Morrissey-Smiths lyrics, and he hopes that the strips remain.” |
The nominees for the IRB International Player of the Year Award are out, and there are a few curious choices and notable omissions. And the nominees are: Thierry Dusautoir [Fra] Will Genia [Aus] Jerome Kaino [NZ] Ma’a Nonu [NZ] David Pocock [Aus] Piri Weepu [NZ] That’s a pretty unbalanced selection, with far too heavy an emphasis on Southern Hemisphere players. This shortlist suggests that there’s an enormous disparity between player talent in the hemispheres, a position which the World Cup has proved to be nonsense. Blame the panel. Who are these jokers? Actually, they’re Will Greenwood, Gavin Hastings, Raphaël Ibanez, Francois Pienaar, Agustín Pichot, Scott Quinnell, Tana Umaga and Paul Wallace. Wooops. Difficult to quibble with that level of international experience and achievement, although Pienaar outed himself as a reactionary twit with his halftime comments during the France vs Wales semi-final, and Umaga is – never let it go unsaid – a filthy cheat. Bizarrely, Piri Weepu – who has been named on the bench more often than in the starting lineup for New Zealand this year – makes the shortlist of the six best players in the world. The guy that was keeping him out of the team must have been awesome. No, it was actually Jimmy Cowan. Or sometimes Andy Ellis. Both titans of the game. The short sentences indicate [in this instance] sarcasm. Seriously, what the f*ck is Piri Weepu doing on a list of the best six players in the world? It’s well known that the Mole is a fan of the wee fatso, but he’d barely make it on to a list of the best six scrum-halves in the world [Genia, Phillips, Yachvili, Parra, du Preez, Weepu would be the Mole’s choice at the time of writing]. Once you start bringing the likes of Piri into consideration, the whole shortlist is open to question. How many good games do you have to have? One? Three? Would the people of New Zealand have shat themselves if Piri Weepu had torn his adductor instead of Dan Carter? Would they f*ck. He only started one game in the World Cup pool stages! Of the players listed, the ones the Mole has the least issues with are Ma’a Nonu [who has had a ferocious year] and probably Jerome Kaino; Kaino has held together a New Zealand backrow that was plagued with injuries and has had a truly magnificent World Cup. David Pocock put in an immense performance against South Africa in a game where Bryce Lawrence didn’t bother to ref the breakdown, but just got pwned at the weekend by Richie McCaw in the biggest game of their respective careers. I’m not at all sure that his eight test matches this year – including two in which he was played off the park by McCaw – make him worthy of a nomination. Cowpoke is a smashing player, but his form in Super Rugby wasn’t anything to write home about – the Mole knows that’s not a criterion for judgment of this award, but that same patchy form was there in the first two matches of the Tri-nations, against a piss-poor Boks third choice in Sydney and a New Zealand team that laid the wood on the Wobs in Auckland. In Pocock’s three games against the Boks this season, openside Heinrich Brussow went off after 50 minutes in the Tri-Nations game in Durban [which was his first test in 21 months due to a series of injuries] and after 19 minutes of the World Cup quarter-final. Pocock thus played 171 minutes of rugby against Dion Stegman, Jean Deysel and Francois Louw, and 69 minutes [less than a single game!] against Brussow. Easy to look good against those chumps, frankly, just like it’s easy to look good against Robert Barbieri of Italy, who has started 11 tests in 5 seasons, or a man legitimately old enough to be your dad, 38-year old Russian Vyacheslav Grachev. The Mole is of the opinion that he had two very good performances this season – one in the Tri-Nations against New Zealand in Brisbane [against an All Black backrow that for the vast majority of the game included Victor Vito and Ali Williams, it should be said], and the aforementioned QF against South Africa. Two good games? Woop-de-f*cking-doo, frankly. That McCaw took him to school two out of the three times they faced each other is reason enough in the Mole’s mind that Sur Ruchie should be on the list ahead of him. Sean O’Brien is an enormous and inexcusable omission: he has been very close to the best ball carrier and tackle-breaker in the world this season. Named by the RWC11 tournament website as the best player of Group C, he also scooped European Player of the Year and was unlucky to miss out on Six Nations Player of the Tournament. O’Brien should be right up there challenging for the award, but he doesn’t even make the shortlist. Nonsense. Mike Phillips and Jamie Roberts are likewise hugely questionable omissions; so too Sam the Eagle and Morgan Parra. Laugh if you want, but Parra has taken France to a World Cup final as a scrum-half playing outhalf, and kicked 100% in a semi-final that was won by a single point. He put Jamie Roberts down every single time the huge Newport Express ran at him, despite being outweighed by 30kgs+. He shredded both the English and Welsh defences from outhalf, even if his outside backs didn’t always capitalise on his breaks. How the f*ck does Piri make it on ahead of him? Advertisements |
1 year ago Hi, my lovelies! The Big Ben bell chimes may have stopped, but the first official RTX London countdown is still ringing strong! In the meantime, we have lots of cheeky treats for you. It’s time for us to make good on our promise to release additional VIP and Weekend tickets as well as limited-edition commemorative badges, and announce our spectacular talent list! Read on for more info. First things first, here’s our official list of special guests coming your way: Aaron Marquis Adam Kovic Barbara Dunkelman Bruce Greene Burnie Burns Chad James Chris Demarais Dan Gruchy Gavin Free Geoff Ramsey Gray Haddock Gus Sorola Joel Heyman Kerry Shawcross Lindsay Jones Matt Hullum Michael Jones Additional VIP and Weekend Badges We’ve managed to add a limited number of VIP and Weekend badges for RTX London, but they will go fast! These tickets will be available at www.rtxlondon.com starting this Friday, September 1 at 6:00 PM BST. Keep in mind that VIP and Weekend tickets are strictly non-refundable. If you are interested in exchanging your current badge, we suggest you visit the RT Events forum on the Rooster Teeth site. Many people there will buy/trade from one another. Once you find someone to buy/sell a ticket from, you will need to contact us at tickets@rtxlondon.com so we can have the ticket information switched over. Commemorative Badge Info This year, we are offering exclusive, limited-edition, holographic commemorative RWBY and RTX London badges*. The badges will go on sale at www.rtxlondon.com starting Friday, September 1 at 6:00 PM BST. *These badges are keepsakes only. They do not allow entry into RTX London. Important Dates September 1 (starting 6:00 PM BST): Additional VIP and Weekend tickets and RWBY/ RTX commemorative badges go on sale September 17 (by 11:59 PM BST): Must have purchased your VIP badge or Weekend badge in order to receive an autograph code If you have any questions, please email us at info@rtxlondon.com. We are so excited to see you in just 43 days! <3 <3 <3 B and the Events Team |
THURSDAY, 10:41pm: Jeff Wilson of The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has the year-by-year breakdown of Darvish's contract. The right-hander will earn $5.5MM in 2012, $9.5MM in 2013, $10MM annually from 2014-2016, and $11MM in 2017. WEDNESDAY, 6:41pm: Even if they’d had a relatively quiet offseason, the two-time defending American League Champions could have been a playoff-caliber team in 2012. Yet they spent aggressively on one of the top available arms and became a little scarier in the process. The Rangers have agreed to sign Yu Darvish to a six-year deal in the $60MM range. Agents Don Nomura and Arn Tellem represent the 6'5" 25-year-old and negotiated for bonuses that could be worth another $10MM. Darvish can opt out of the contract after the fifth year, Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram tweets. However, Jon Paul Morosi of FOX Sports adds (on Twitter) that Darvish must hit certain "high-end award levels" to be able to opt out of the contract. The deal is worth just $56MM guaranteed, Wilson tweets. Wilson says the deal includes $4MM in bonuses with the potential to reach even more incentives by winning Cy Young Awards. GM Jon Daniels liked what he saw when he watched Darvish pitch in June, and the Rangers committed a record-setting amount for the right to negotiate with the right-hander. The Nippon Ham Fighters obtain a $51,703,411 posting fee from the Rangers, who topped the $51.1MM Boston paid for the rights to speak with Daisuke Matsuzaka five years ago. Darvish posted a 1.44 ERA with 10.7 K/9 and 1.4 BB/9 in 232 innings this past season and he hasn't posted an ERA above 2.00 since 2007. He'll join a Rangers rotation that looks considerably different than it did a year ago. C.J. Wilson is gone, but Neftali Feliz will move to the rotation and Colby Lewis, Derek Holland, Matt Harrison, Scott Feldman and Alexi Ogando provide manager Ron Washington with an abundance of alternatives for the rest of the rotation. The Angels finished ten games behind the Rangers in both 2010 and 2011, but GM Jerry Dipoto has signed Wilson and Albert Pujols, so the Angels are considerably more threatening entering the 2012 campaign. Prince Fielder may have lost a suitor this afternoon. It's been reported that the Rangers are unlikely to sign both him and Darvish, so agent Scott Boras may turn elsewhere as he looks to find a deal for the 27-year-old free agent. ESPN.com's Jayson Stark tweets that the Rangers feel "less urgency" to sign Fielder, though a deal is still possible. Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com first tweeted news of the agreement, Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News tweeted the value of the deal and Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports tweeted news of the incentives. The Rangers have confirmed the deal. |
I’m very sceptical of the idea that the younger generation are more conservative than their elders, and that this makes conservatism somehow cool, which it isn’t. There have been times where the kids are more reactionary than their parents but generally only as a result of religious movements – and Britain is as atheistic as can be. Young Brits are very liberal and cosmopolitan, even compared to their peers in other European countries. In polls they express low levels of pride in their country and an unwillingness to fight in any theoretical war. The Brexit vote, and the big gap between old and young, showed just how liberal the young are. In fact if the surviving voters from June 23 were counted again the result would surely be closer, as a not insignificant proportion of those who voted Leave must already be in heaven – which I imagine looks like 1950s Britain anyway. This progressivism is far more pronounced among students, which suggests that either intelligence and liberalism correlate or that universities have become very effective means of disseminating social values. It may also be that the free market ideology that is dominant in Britain also promotes a more globalist mindset, which mixed with progressivism is sometimes called ‘neoliberalism’. But things are very different just 22 miles away, where young French voters are enthusiastic about the Front National, something that would be inconceivable over here: Age breakdown of Macron vs Fillon vs Le Pen in Rd 1 Look at the 18-24s & 35-49 for Le Pen Doesn’t fit easily with tolerant youth thesis pic.twitter.com/HTH8UGNRBb — Matthew Goodwin (@GoodwinMJ) February 13, 2017 Why are the French like that? There are a number of theories. One must be the high rate of youth unemployment, which pushes people towards more extreme politics. Another is that perhaps the French don’t go in for Anglo-Saxon political politeness, including Anglo-American taboos about race: the upside of this is that openly racist talk is more frowned upon in Britain and the States; the downside is hypocrisy. But another must be that France is just much further down the road towards Le Grand Remplacement than Britain. Although figures are hard to come by, France probably has something like twice as many Muslims as Britain, around 8 or 9 per cent compared to 4.5 per cent; its outcomes for migrants (and their children) are also far worse than Britain’s. My belief about diversity and tolerance is that it is shaped like a Laffer Curve, so that as a homogenous society sees more newcomers it becomes progressively more tolerant until a point is reached at which this process goes into reverse, partly because there are just too many political and social incentives for division. Britain probably went past that optimum around the millennium, and France is therefore even further ahead. As this study shows, people like a little diversity but really dislike a lot of it, and with good reason. I’d strongly bet against Le Pen becoming president this year – and I correctly prophesised Remain and Clinton – but if current trends continue then she must stand a good chance in 2022. Unless capitalism stops her. Original Article Share This |
With chest hair and hospital scrubs sneaking out from beneath his white lab coat, Dr. Shaf Keshavjee seems armed for the future of lung transplantation. The director of the Toronto Lung Transplant Program and surgeon-in-chief of the University Health Network sees promise in advances that can keep lungs working outside the body longer than ever. What it means, he hopes, is that one day surgeries can be prescheduled instead of surprising staff at, say, 3 a.m. He also praises industry peers who are generating new lungs in labs. “In the future,” he speculates, “can we take organs off the shelf out of the cupboard and just say, ‘OK, I need a size 8 lung,’ and put it in?” Keshavjee’s vision might seem more grounded in fiction than science, though this guy helped create the world’s first organ repair center, in Toronto, nine years ago. That process centralized and streamlined lung transplants while boosting the number of procedures by around 50 percent annually, to 150, and it’s now being used in a facility in Maryland, with similar buildings planned for Florida and Arizona. Next up for the doc: getting the prototype for a new device to market this spring that will assess and repair otherwise unusable donor lungs. Keshavjee wants “super” lungs. Can we make a lung that will outlive the recipient? Dr. Shaf Keshavjee, director, Toronto Lung Transplant Program New scientific breakthroughs could dramatically change the landscape for patients gasping for a fresh set of lungs. Some work involves repairing damaged donor organs, while other research is moving us closer to genetically engineered animal organs that could be placed in humans without getting attacked and destroyed by viruses. And certain techniques are prolonging how long transplant recipients can survive without their own lungs physically inside their bodies — to a record six days, in one recent case. Advances like these have the potential to improve all sorts of important metrics: medical costs, surgery times, hospital errors and, arguably the biggest factor of all, patient longevity. “The goal, I say in our lab, is can we make a lung that will outlive the recipient?” says Keshavjee. “A person who has lung disease should never face lung failure again.” Scientists aren’t there, yet. These days, if you breathed air into a new set of lungs for a month, the odds of survival would hover near 97 percent. But by year three, that would deflate to a little more than 68 percent. Of course, there’s no guarantee you’d even get a lung. In the U.S., more than 1,300 people sit on a waiting list, according to a transplant tracker from the Department of Health and Human Services. Part of the solution is to encourage more people to give up their lungs if they die. But by the time these organs are harvested, packed and delivered, around 80 percent of them are too damaged to transplant or are otherwise unusable. Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic listened to these kinds of challenges when a lung transplant surgeon reached out for help several years ago. Inspired, Vunjak-Novakovic — the director of Columbia University’s laboratory for stem cells and tissue engineering — has since co-led a multidisciplinary team of researchers in developing a procedure that repairs the damage many lungs incur during trips to recipients. The approach, published this year in Nature Biomedical Engineering, includes storing an organ in a chamber for days while ventilating it with air and perfusing it with the recipient’s blood and stem cells. This helps maintain a fully functional lung outside of the body for up to 56 hours — the longest known time for a lung recovered from injury, says Vunjak-Novakovic. The procedure might have worked even longer, but the study, which relied on pigs, was designed and permitted to run only that long. Now, Vunjak-Novakovic’s team will turn to trials with human lungs. “There is still a lot to do until we come to clinical use,” she says. There’s a similar caveat for other procedures that recently have generated glee in the industry. This summer, a life sciences company called eGenesis, which was co-founded by Harvard geneticist George Church, shared how it used the gene-editing tool CRISPR in pigs to deactivate viruses that could infect people who receive a new organ from an animal. It’s still too early to say whether the procedure could enhance pig organs to work as well as swimmer Michael Phelps’ lungs, though when Church was asked about this very point, he reportedly said the organs will go through safety and efficacy testing, including “making sure they’re robust, and maybe they have to be as robust as Michael Phelps’ in order to do the job.” (The company didn’t respond to OZY’s request for comment.) A lot has changed since June 11, 1963, when James Hardy performed the world’s first human lung transplant on a convicted murderer in Mississippi. The patient survived just 18 days. Subsequent recipients survived only days, or weeks, until 1983 — when the first human double-lung transplant recipient, known as patient No. 45, left a Toronto hospital and lived more than six additional years. In January, Toronto once again drew international acclaim after it was revealed that Keshavjee, along with two additional thoracic surgeons and 10 operating room staff, pulled off a world’s first. They had removed the severely infected lungs of Melissa Benoit, a mom from Ontario who was expected to die within hours, and kept her alive without them for six days using advanced life-support technology, including an artificial lung, heart and kidney. The time helped her recover, but also, Keshavjee notes, “We didn’t have new lungs in her case yet.” The operation was heralded as a great success, though what hasn’t been reported since, outside of a brief obituary notice, is that Benoit recently passed away. The cause: an ear infection that ultimately led to septic shock. “We were totally devastated,” Keshavjee says. |
The past 12 months has seen the first decline in digital music sales, since the iTunes Store was launched back in 2003. Digital track sales took the biggest hit, but a decline in album sales was a little more surprising reports Billboard : Overall for the full year 2013, digital track sales fell 5.7% from 1.34 billion units to 1.26 billion units while digital album sales fell 0.1% to 117.6 million units from the previous year’s total of 117.7 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan. As streaming music services continue to grow – including Apple's own iTunes Radio – it was perhaps inevitable that we'd begin to see such a change at some point. Numbers for streaming services aren't so easy to find, but with the likes of Spotify, Pandora, Rdio and Google to name but a few getting in on the action, there are some heavy hitters giving you access to more music for less money. What about you though; did you shift to streaming from purchasing during 2013? Which service do you prefer? Source: Billboard |
- Advertisement - On one hand, you promptly appointed Mr. Immelt to be the chairman of the President's Council on Jobs and Competitive, while letting him keep his full-time lucrative position as CEO of General Electric (The Corporate State Expands). At the announcement, you said that Mr. Immelt "understands what it takes for America to compete in the global economy." Did you mean that he understands how to avoid all federal income taxes for his company's $14.2 billion in profits last year, while corralling a $3.2-billion benefit? Or did you mean that he understands how to get a federal bailout for GE Capital and its reckless exposure to risky debt? Or could you have meant that GE knows how to block unionization of its far-flung workers here and abroad? Perhaps Mr. Immelt can share with you GE's historical experience with lucrative campaign contributions, price-fixing, pollution and those nuclear reactors that are giving people fits in Japan and worrying millions of Americans here living or working near similar reactors. - Advertisement - Compare, if you will, the record of Elizabeth Warren and her acutely informed knowledge about delivering justice to those innocents harmed by injustice in the financial services industry. A stand-up Law Professor at your alma mater, author of highly regarded articles and books connecting knowledge to action, the probing Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) and now in the Treasury Department working intensively to get the CFRB underway by the statutory deadline this July with competent, people-oriented staff. There were many good reasons why Senate leader Harry Reid (Dem. Nevada) called Professor Warren and asked her to be his choice for Chair of COP. Hailing from an Oklahoman blue-collar family, Professor Warren is just the "working class hero" needed to make the new Bureau a sober, law-and-order enforcer, deterrer and empowerer of consumers vis-à-vis the companies whose enormous greed, recklessness and crimes tanked our economy into a deep recession. The consequences produced 8-million unemployed workers and shattered trillions of dollars in pensions and other savings along with the dreams which they embodied for American workers. Much more than you perhaps realize, millions of people who have heard and seen Elizabeth Warren rejoice in her brainy, heartfelt knowledge and concern over their plight. They see her as just the kind of regulator (federal cop on the beat) for their legitimate interests in a more competitive marketplace who you should be overjoyed in nominating. - Advertisement - Yet there are corporate forces from Wall Street to Washington determined to derail her nomination -- forces with their avaricious hooks into the Republicans on Capitol Hill and the corporatists in the Treasury and White House. You have obliged these forces again and again over the last two years, most recently with the appointment of William M. Daley, recently of Wall Street, as your chief of staff. How about one nomination for the People? The accolades on hearing the news of Elizabeth Warren's nomination may actually exceed the enduring indignation were she not to be nominated. Just feed the Senate Republicans to the mass media that would cover the nomination hearings, all that calm, solid, wisdom and humanity that she communicates without peer. See who prevails. Selecting Elizabeth Warren and backing her fully through the nomination process will always be remembered by Americans across the land. Not doing so will not be forgotten by those same persons. This is another way of saying she has the enthusiastic constituency of "hope and change" -- that is "change you can believe in!"* I look forward with many others to your response. Sincerely yours, - Advertisement - Ralph Nader PO Box 19312 Washington D.C., 20036 *If you doubt this observation and would like to see one million Americans on a petition favoring her selection, ask us and see how long that would take. |
While Megyn Kelly's interview with Russian President (and all around global bad guy if one were to believe the daily barrage of leftist headlines) Vladimir Putin did not raise the ire of advertisers, it appears her interview with right-wing provocateur Alex Jones has lurched from social media firestorm to real-world dollars and cents for NBC News. The sit-down has been promoted as a discussion about “controversies and conspiracies.” In a video promoting the interview, Jones talks about the 9/11 attacks as an “inside job.” In the clip, Kelly also brings up Sandy Hook, saying: “When you say parents faked their children’s deaths, people get very angry.” Jones replies: “But they don’t get angry about half-a-million dead Iraqis from the sanctions.” Next Sunday, I sit down with conservative radio host @RealAlexJones to discuss controversies and conspiracies #SundayNight June 18 on NBC pic.twitter.com/7bVz6Fobf5 — Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) June 11, 2017 And now, as The Wall Street Journal reports, J.P. Morgan has asked for its local TV ads and digital ads to be removed from Kelly’s show and from all NBC news programming until after the show airs, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company doesn’t want any of its ads to appear adjacent to any promotions for the interview, the person added. This comes hours after Kristin Lemkau, J.P. Morgan’s chief marketing officer, questioned why Ms. Kelly would conduct the interview. “As an advertiser, I’m repulsed that @megynkelly would give a second of airtime to someone who says Sandy Hook and Aurora are hoaxes." As an advertiser, I'm repulsed that @megynkelly would give a second of airtime to someone who says Sandy Hook and Aurora are hoaxes. Why? https://t.co/luwyCwP7Ti — Kristin Lemkau (@KLemkau) June 12, 2017 On his radio program Monday, Jones said that he thinks Sandy Hook happened, or at least that children died, though there are anomalies about the event. However, he said that was edited from the NBC promotion. “I’m tired of being misrepresented,” Jones said and added that he demanded Kelly’s “hit piece” not air on Father’s Day. WSJ reports that other NBC advertisers have stayed mum on the planned episode, at least publicly. |
NewsAbortion March 18, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – New data from China’s health ministry has revealed that approximately 330 million abortions have been performed in the country since 1971, according to AFP. According to Chinese government researchers, currently about 13 million abortions occur annually, or about 1,500 every hour on average. As well, over the past 40 years Chinese officials have sterilized nearly 200 million men and women, and inserted 400 million intra-uterine devices. Under China’s one-child policy, which was introduced in the late 1970s, Chinese couples are allowed to have only one child, although in some circumstances rural couples may be permitted to have a second, if the first is a girl. The policy is enforced through brutal forced abortions and sterilizations, and the levying of crippling fines, sometimes amounting to several times a family’s annual income. Concerns have been mounting, including in China, that with a rapidly aging population as well as a significant gender imbalance due to the prevalence of sex-selective abortion, the one-child policy is setting the country up for economic and social collapse. Click "like" if you are PRO-LIFE! While there has been a great deal of speculation in recent months that the country may be considering abandoning the policy, Chinese officials have repeatedly reaffirmed the country’s dedication to the policy. According to Reggie Littlejohn, the president of Women’s Rights without Frontiers, the newly released numbers, as devastating as they are, “do not come as a surprise.” “The Chinese Communist Party announced in 2009 that they have 13 million abortions a year,” she told LifeSiteNews.com, “so if you multiply that out over the span of the policy, 336 million would be a realistic approximation.” Littlejohn said, however, that the government statistics are far from complete, failing as they do to differentiate between voluntary and forced abortions and sterilizations. “Of these 336 million abortions, how many women were dragged out of their homes, strapped to tables and forced to abort babies that they want, up to the ninth month of pregnancy?” she said. “How many women died as a result of these violent procedures? And of these 336 million abortions, how many were selectively aborted because they were girls?” Littlejohn cited one incident in April of 2010, when officials in Puning city set out to sterilize 9,550 people. Those who refused were detained. “Such large statistics boggle the mind and mask the hundreds of millions of individual broken lives caused by this brutal Policy,” said Littlejohn. The human rights activist, who has dedicated her life to fighting the one-child policy, pointed to the well-known case of Feng Jianmei, who was forced to abort at seven months last year. A photograph of Feng lying next to the body of her aborted child following the abortion rocketed around the globe thanks to social media, drawing an international outcry. “Forced abortion and involuntary sterilization are violence against women,” said Littlejohn. “China will not be free until the women of China are free.” |
Millions of years ago, tiny animal thieves going by the alias protozoa held algae captive and then exploited and stole their genes for energy production, thereby evolving into a new and more powerful species. But the little protozoan outlaws couldn't completely hide all evidence of the captive algae and have been effectively frozen in time - and then caught in the act by genetic sequencing. The protozoa captured genes for photosynthesis, the process of harnessing light to produce energy which is used by all plants and algae on earth. Scientists assume that quantum leaps of evolution occurred by one organism cannibalizing another, but hard evidence is rare. But when they looked at two specific algae- Guillardia theta and Bigelowiella natans- the team realized the evolution was not quite complete. They could see that their cells had two nuclei. This is unusual because plant and animal cells only have one, so the genes were sequenced to find out more. "We think that the genes for photosynthesis originally evolved only once about three billion years ago. So all plants, algae and blue green bacteria can produce their own energy from light because they have acquired these genes for photosynthesis," says Professor Geoff McFadden from the University of Melbourne. Like prisoners in Alcatraz, the captive algae appear to have been nurtured by their enslavers and the precious sugars produced from photosynthesis became a vital part of the protozoan slave keeper's diet. The captives lived inside the protozoan cell and, under the right conditions, the pair gradually became unified as a single organism- a process called endosymbiosis, literally living inside each other. "We discovered that the captors were initially able to keep many separate clones of their slaves and occasionally pillage one or two for most of the essential genes. However, at some point in time, the number of captives reduced inside each gaoler to just one individual. "So if they broke into the alga's cell to steal the last essential genes, they would destroy it in the process and would not then be able to use the genes to run photosynthesis. So the two cells, one captive and one captor, had apparently reached an evolutionary stand-off situation where both are dependent on each other to survive." Published in Nature. |
Horrible things have been happening to Aleppo, a UNESCO World Heritage site and Syria’s largest city. Large parts of the old city has been destroyed, though not for the first time–the city was sacked as recently as 1440 by Tamerlane, a vicious Mongol conqueror who is estimated to have killed 5% of the world’s people. All told, the Syrian Civil War has killed more than 270,000 people, creating more than 4 million refugees and displacing 7.6 million. These high losses have not resulted in any constructive political change in Syria–Bashar al-Assad’s faction remains the strongest in the country. The conflict has made no one better off aside from the Islamic State, which has used the chaos to carve out a slice of territory for itself: The Syrian government is red, the Iraqi government is purple, the rebels are green, Islamic State is black, and the Kurds are orange. When the Syrian Civil War started, a lot of people in the west were excited by the possibility of overthrowing the Assad regime and creating a new democracy in the Middle East. Instead we have a bloody power vacuum filled in which the only winners are terrorist organizations. What’s interesting about this is that Syria is not an isolated case–the Arab Spring revolutions that turned violent all went so badly, while those that remained peaceful sometimes achieved meaningful results. There are four countries in the Middle East in which the Arab Spring protesters resorted to armed rebellion–Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen. Each of those countries remains gripped by civil conflict and is much worse off. In addition to the 270,000 dead in Syria, there’s an additional 40,000 dead in Libya, 20,000 dead in Iraq, and 10,000 dead in Yemen. Syria and Iraq are not the only Middle Eastern countries that now provide refuge for terrorists. Al Qaeda controls significant territory in Yemen: And the Islamic State has holdings in Libya: Economic data for these war torn countries is limited, but we do have a per capita GDP estimate for Libya indicating that the country has lost half its output since the Arab Spring began: Why are these countries in such terrible trouble? To succeed, revolutionaries need the state’s armed forces to give up the fight. This can only happen when one of three conditions are met: The revolutionaries are stronger than the armed forces and can defeat them in the field in a pitched fight. This is almost never the case because the state tends to have better armed and better organized forces, and it is especially difficult for this to happen if there is in-fighting among different revolutionary groups. The armed forces identify with the revolutionaries and either refuse to fight them or defect to them outright. This happens when there is no sectarian conflict between the revolutionaries and the armed forces and where the revolutionaries use non-violent tactics that encourage the armed forces to sympathize with them. Once the revolutionaries take up arms it becomes much easier for the state to get its soldiers to fire on them, especially if the revolutionaries demonize the regime’s supporters as members of an intrinsically villainous ethnic or religious group. The revolutionaries receive foreign military aid that enables them to defeat the armed forces despite their material inferiority. In each of these countries, the revolutionaries were too poorly armed, too disorganized, and too divided to win with #1. The armed forces have failed to defect because the internal sectarian divisions in these countries make it impossible for the members of the armed forces to imagine that their sects might be treated fairly by a new revolutionary government. Syria is torn between Alawites who remain loyal to the government and the Sunnis who feel victimized by it, and the former do not trust the latter to treat them well if the Assad regime collapses. In Iraq, the Shiites will not give ground to the Sunnis, having seen the way they were treated by Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein when he was in power. Libya remains divided between the west, which was broadly loyal to Gaddafi, and the Cyrenaican east, which resented Gaddafi for overthrowing King Idris and redistributing the east’s oil wealth throughout the rest of the country. Yemen’s territorial division mirrors the Cold War division between the capitalist north and the communist south as well as the religious distribution (mostly Shiite in the north, mostly Sunni in the south). When the military and the revolutionaries consist of opposed sects, the military is not going to lay down its arms or defect. #2 is off the table. That leaves #3–banking on a foreign intervention. In Libya, the rebels got their foreign intervention courtesy of Hillary Clinton, who campaigned hard for it behind closed doors. NATO removed Gaddafi and cleared the way for the rebels to form a new government. But the underlying division between the west and the east was never addressed. It is impossible to have a democracy among factions that are deeply hostile to one another, because a victory for one faction means exploitation and expropriation for the other, eventually leading to civil conflict. That civil conflict can only yield three stable outcomes: Negotiated settlement of the differences that led to the conflict through the creation of institutions that balance the factions against each other, preventing any one faction from dominating the others. Negotiated partition that divides the territory among the factions so that they don’t have to deal with each other anymore and domination is impossible. Genocide in which some or all of the weaker faction is purposefully murdered so that the remainder submits to domination. Foreign interventions that decapitate the head of one of the factions but do not produce a strong negotiated settlement or partition produce unstable outcomes that eventually yield new rounds of exploitation and new rounds of civil conflict. Killing Gaddafi does not vanquish the western Libyans as a political force. Killing Assad would not vanquish the Alawites. Killing Saddam Hussein did not vanquish the Sunnis. The overthrow of Saleh in Yemen did not even vanquish Saleh himself. We don’t want to vanquish these factions–that would be genocide–we want negotiated settlements and, if necessary, partitions. Foreign interventions in these countries on behalf of rebel factions have enabled these rebels to seize power without negotiating, and that sets them up to fail. And foreigners do not exclusively intervene on behalf of rebels. The Syrian rebels waited for a western intervention on their behalf that never came, leaving them reliant on support from Gulf states like Saudi Arabia. In the meantime, the Syrian government received extensive support from Iran and Russia. The result is a messy web of alliances that leaves the Syrian rebels in a relatively weak position: It is very difficult for revolutionaries to prevail against a state via armed rebellion. When they are dealing with an army that is stronger than they are and that they oppose for sectarian reasons, they can only prevail if they are bailed out by foreigners, and unless those foreigners ensure a sound negotiated settlement or partition this “victory” is a fleeting lie. The United States is terrible at promoting negotiated settlements in the countries in which it intervenes. It had nearly 9 years to create a set of institutions that would effectively balance competing groups in Iraq, and it produced a regime that alienated the Sunni population, driving it into the arms of the Islamic State. Iraq ranks 161 out of 168 on Transparency International’s corruption index. Today Hillary Clinton blames the Libyan Transitional National Council for Libya’s woes instead of recognizing that by removing Gaddafi we infantilized the Libyan rebels and allowed them to take the state without negotiating with their enemies and with each other. What’s more, by continuing to intervene in countries we give protesters false hope that they can defeat powerful hostile armies by military means and disincentivize the peaceful protest and negotiation that leads to real settlements. While we often hear about the Middle Eastern countries where things have gone badly, there are a lot of countries where the protesters kept things largely peaceful and won significant concessions, ranging from significant constitutional reforms in Morocco to the outright overthrow of the Ben Ali government in Tunisia. These countries benefited from weaker internal divisions and peaceful tactics, which limited the ability of the government to use force and encouraged negotiation. In Morocco only 6 were killed; in Tunisia just 338. This doesn’t mean every peaceful protest movement will succeed–in Egypt the military threw out Mubarak to appease demonstrators, only to toss out the new Morsi government when that government began threatening Egypt’s secularism, producing a new military dictator and leaving the country in roughly the same place it was before. But unlike Syria, where 270,000 have been killed, Egypt has only lost 4,000, and its economy continues to function. The moral of the story is clear–armed rebellion is rarely the right strategy for revolutionary movements, and its costs are often much greater than its benefits. US foreign policy should reflect this–we should be much less willing to back armed rebellions. |
The South Carolina House will formally receive an impeachment resolution on Gov. Mark Sanford. It's the first bill that will be pre-filed Tuesday as the House opens the door to new legislation ahead of its January session beginning. State Rep. Greg Delleney of Chester left the bill on the House desk last month when the House met in a brief, two-day session to deal with unemployment benefits and perks aimed at bringing Boeing Co. jobs to South Carolina. Delleney said the bill will be the first one in the stack of legislation and it already has three co-sponsors and others may sign on after Tuesday. Delleney says Sanford needs to be impeached because he abandoned the state to rendezvous with an Argentine lover and embarrassed South Carolina. |
A Thin-Film Solar Panel Installation Many people envision solar power as rigid silicon panels mounted on a roof. With thin film solar cells, you’re more likely to not see them, or even know they’re there. This article is about a real-life thin film solar project. Not many bloggers are able to witness the technologies we research and write about. It’s one thing to be able to buy afford a cool “green” gadget (usually not very green), but another to see the many forms of solar, wind, geothermal, etc., which are always changing and developing around the world. So when my employer decided to go solar, you might imagine my excitement. At the moment I work for Magco Inc., a Tecta America company. Tecta is a national commercial roofing corporation that can install green roofs, solar lighting, and solar panels alongside a variety of traditional roofing systems. This solar project is pretty straight forward: our building has a big, flat roof on top of a hill without any shade. You’d have trouble finding a sunnier spot for solar panels. I was double delighted when I heard that they ordered thin-film solar! Naturally inquiring minds wanted to know: why and what kind? Magco bought their solar from Uni-Solar, which produces triple-junction laminate panels. That means they laminate the photovoltaic chemicals onto a thin sheet of metal in three layers; each layer reacts to a different range of light. They also laminate a sealant on the panel to protect it from the elements. The benefit of this system is that it reacts better to low or indirect light. Think cloudy days and the hours around dusk and dawn, a. Uni-Solar’s panels operate around 12% efficiency, but they claim to out-perform other forms of PV solar in indirect light, which means they could produce more electricity in certain real-world conditions (cloudy days). The laminate production method also decreases cost because expensive silicon and mounting racks are not required. In fact, these thin-film solar panels are glued straight onto the roof. (See picture.) Magco chose these panels for another important reason: no roof penetrations. If you mount racks on your roof, you have to fasten them down. That means punching holes in the roof, which can void your warranty and even damage your roof if it’s not done right. Some solar systems, even silicon panels, have found ways to avoid these problems, and anyone looking into solar should ask about the integrity of their existing roof. Another bonus for Magco and thin-film solar was weight: these solar panels roll out like carpet and don’t weigh as much as silicon. That means Magco wouldn’t need to add any structural support. It does snow here, so weight is an important factor! What about the electrical aspect? Special runners help connect and protect wires between panels and represent the only mounted equipment in the system. The wires eventually find their way to a big inverter inside the building, which feeds the electricity to us. A 2-way power meter can then feed any excess electricity back into the grid. Simple, right? Well, for a project this big and complicated you’d definitely want to hire some professionals. If you mix up which-wires-go-where, you could make some very expensive mistakes or just rob yourself of some of your solar power. What if you and your neighbors want to go solar but can’t afford it? Bulk your order and get it done at the same time. Combining your orders will reduce costs in man-hours and equipment (think crane rentals). Naturally you can also get a better deal on the panels themselves if you buy in larger quantity. ** NEW: See an updated article about these solar panels here** Images Courtesy of Patrick Bollinger. |
Dallas County officials are considering asking Gov. Rick Perry (R) to declare a state of emergency for an area that has reported three cases of Ebola. The county commissioners will meet Thursday afternoon to weigh the option, the Dallas Morning News reported late Wednesday. ADVERTISEMENT A state of emergency would activate "appropriate recovery and rehabilitation aspects of all applicable local or interjurisdictional emergency management plans," according to state law.It would also authorize emergency aid and assistance. Governors typically declare a state of emergency after a natural disaster.Perry said Wednesday that he is in daily contact with state health leaders as regularly communicating with White House officials.“This is the first time that our nation has had to deal with a threat such as this," Perry said in a statement Wednesday. "Every relevant agency at the local, state and national levels is working to support these individuals."Dallas has reported two cases of Ebola since Saturday. Both patients are healthcare workers who had helped treat Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who died from the disease last week.Hospital staffers were not expected to be at risk of contracting the virus and were not being actively monitored by state or federal health officials. One of the nurses also took a flight into a Dallas airport just hours before she was diagnosed.Liberia and Sierra, which have recorded thousands of cases of Ebola, have both declared a state of emergency since this summer. |
CHICAGO - There was a shoulder to cry on if he wanted one late Monday, but all Ryan Miller needed was his dad’s ear. “Last night we were up for an hour talking about every goal,” Dean Miller said Tuesday. “Everything.” Ryan Miller allowed five goals on 18 shots in the Vancouver Canucks’ 5-3 loss to the Minnesota Wild and was hooked for the fourth time this season — one game after a 31-save 5-0 win against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Turns out it is a good thing Dean Miller is here, along with many other dads on the National Hockey League team’s fathers-and-sons trip. Ryan Miller always has a lot on his mind. Following his first pre-season game in Vancouver after signing a three-year, $18-million-US contract with the Canucks, Miller answered a question by talking about the rain that day and its affect on humidity and ice conditions inside Rogers Arena. We weren’t sure initially if Miller was joking. He was not. The 34-year-old American is hyper-analytical. According to Dean, Ryan was born that way. “He was one of those kids when he was a baby, somebody might look at him and say ‘isn’t he cute,’ and poke him,” Dean said, watching his son practise Tuesday just down the road from the United Center, where the Canucks play the Chicago Blackhawks Wednesday night. “And Ryan would look at them, like: ‘What was that all about?’ You could see him processing what happened. They poked me, so what do they expect from me? You could see it on his face. Mr. Serious here. He was always like that. “He really thinks things through from a lot of different angles. It’s one of the things that I think made him a pretty good goaltender. When he was coming up (through minor hockey), he was the smallest kid on a lot of his teams and had to be pretty smart to get to certain positions on the ice. He sees patterns and the odds of certain things happening.” Ryan pleads guilty to being an analyst. “I’m the oldest grandchild, the oldest sibling, so I’ve seen my younger (relatives) as infants and young children, and it’s amazing how you pretty much are who you are,” he said. “You can maybe tip one way or another, but I’ve been pretty much like this for a long time. I try not to fight against it. Sometimes I ramble too much, but this is pretty much how I see the world now.” None of the Minnesota goals appeared to be Miller’s fault, although he got across his goalmouth slowly on a couple of them as the Wild, faster and sharper than the Canucks, found gaping holes in defensive coverage. “We’d like to have them all back; that’s how we think, that’s what we strive for,” Miller said. “You want to come up with the timely save, get the guys going in the right direction.” He’ll have more time to think Wednesday night because it appeared Canucks coach Willie Desjardins would start backup Eddie Lack, who stopped all 14 Wild shots he faced in relief. Like all good parents, Dean, 57, seems to be a good listener. The Millers are hockey royalty in Michigan. Starting with Dean’s father, Elwood, 10 members of the Miller clan have played hockey for the Michigan State Spartans. Dean, who was born in Regina but grew up in East Lansing, Mich., played two college seasons in the late 1970s before embarking on a career in computer software, which took the family to both U.S. coasts. Ryan Miller started playing goalie in a rink at a mall in Silicon Valley, where Dean worked as a distribution executive for security software-maker Symantec in Cupertino, Calif. “The ceiling was about eight feet high and it had maybe two lights,” Dean said of the mall rink. Ryan and younger brother, Detroit Red Wings forward Drew Miller, also went to Michigan State. Including their cousins, Kelly, Kevin and Kip Miller, the family has logged more than 3,000 games in the NHL. Ryan said his dad can tell when he is frustrated and needs to talk. “He’ll recognize it more from my body language or my eyes,” Miller said. “He’ll speak up when it’s necessary (but) he gives us space to work things out. Just to be here and spend time with him is great.” Dean figures he made five fathers’ trips during Ryan’s nine seasons with the Buffalo Sabres. Dean just finished a tour with Drew and the Red Wings. “Yeah, he’s doing an NHL schedule right now,” Ryan quipped. Dean Miller said his son is happy in Vancouver, comfortable with the scrutiny and his new team. “You watch somebody’s career evolve over time,” the elder Miller said. “You think, here’s this skinny kid from Michigan who nobody gave a chance to make it at this level, and he’s done it himself. You go through stages: you’re the guy who’s fighting for the job, to the guy who has the job, to the guy who’s fighting to keep the job, to the guy who will help the next guy transition to the job. Watching him go through that maturation and the cycle of life, it’s impressive. It can be disconcerting a little bit, too, so you just try to let him know you’re there and will help him no matter what.” WHO'S NEXT: Canucks at Blackhawks RECENT FORM The Canucks lost 5-3 Monday in Minnesota, continuing a win-loss-win-loss pattern from the last three weeks. Their erraticism is reflected in their margin of victory or loss: two-or-more goals in 10 of the last 12 games. The Blackhawks are also scuffling along, albeit higher in the standings. Their 3-2 shootout loss at home Monday vs. Arizona, above, left Chicago’s record at 8-8-1 in 2015. The Canucks beat the Hawks 4-1 in Vancouver Nov. 23. WHO’S HOT, NOT Canucks RW Radim Vrbata is on a seven-game points streak (2-5-7). LW/C Shawn Matthias and RW Zack Kassian has each scored in his last two games, the latter matching his output from the first four months of the season. C Linden Vey has one goal in 24 games and C Nick Bonino one point in nine. For Chicago, RW Marian Hossa has four goals in two games, but C Jonathan Toews’ two assists on Monday tripled his points from the previous eight games. BONI-YES OR BONINO C Nick Bonino left Monday’s game in the second period after blocking a shot, and departed the rink in a walking boot. He did not practise Tuesday but Canucks coach Willie Desjardins said Bonino could play tonight. If he can’t, Shawn Matthias will switch to C and LW Ronalds Kenins return to the lineup. Canucks D Adam Clendening played four games before his trade from Chicago, but none at the United Center. He makes his debut Wednesday. LACK BACK On the strength of a perfect relief appearance Monday, backup goalie Eddie Lack is expected to start Wednesday night instead of Ryan Miller, who surrendered five goals in 18 shots. It would be Lack’s third appearance in nine days, matching his workload from the previous six weeks. Lack won his last start 3-2 against the Winnipeg Jets last Tuesday and has allowed two or fewer goals in four of his last five starts. QUOTEBOOK “We’ve got to make sure we’re ready. You know it’s going to be a tough game. All five guys (on the ice) have to be committed and have to battle. If one guy breaks down, it’s going to be trouble.” — Canucks coach Willie Desjardins. imacintyre@vancouversun.com Twitter.com/imacvansun |
Leading cryptocurrency Dash has rolled out a new upgrade that reduces its transaction fees to near zero, while doubling its network capacity. The network upgrade – version 12.2 – will cut costs by a factor of ten. Regular Dash transactions will now cost less than a cent, and the InstantSend transactions, which confirm online or at the Point Of Sale in less than two seconds, will be reduced to a remarkably low 2.8 cents each (0.0001 x Current Dash Price). InstantSend transactions historically cost 0.001 Dash or 28 cents. In contrast, bitcoin carries transactions costs of about $6 USD per. “As a payments-focused network, we strongly believe that maintaining low transaction fees is a prerequisite to developing a healthy network over the long term,” Dash Core CEO Ryan Taylor said. “12.2 reinforces the Dash Core Group’s commitment to maintaining a network that is fast, high-capacity, secure, inexpensive, and easy to integrate and use. Most importantly, with this release Dash is demonstrating our roadmap to scale digital currency is actively working, while keeping costs low for our users. Dash is silently becoming the network Bitcoin once promised to be.” Dash said that the fee reduction will be a significant boon for business owners and merchant networks considering adopting Dash as a payment option; they will only absorb a couple of cents per purchase, rather than the 3% haircut they take on credit card and debit card transactions. In addition, the new upgrade will also increase the network’s maximum block size from 1Mb to 2Mb, allowing for about 48 transactions to confirm every second, compared to Bitcoin’s 7. The increase is possible because Dash’s network propagates blocks 100% faster than Bitcoin, and incorporates numerous performance improvements and security enhancements needed to safely enable larger blocks. “Scaling solutions take time to develop, test, and deploy. In the digital currency space, transaction volumes can grow quickly, so we believe it is critical to stay well ahead of anticipated demand. We are actively exploring a number of use cases with partners that would consume a high volume of transactions, so it is important to demonstrate to the market our commitment to scaling our network to meet their needs. Beyond our own network’s growth, there is a real possibility that Bitcoin’s own exponential growth could spill over into other networks. If this were to occur, our network could experience a sudden and dramatic increase in demand. For these reasons, it is prudent to continue adding capacity ahead of the need, rather than reacting to a problem after it occurs,” Taylor said. |
As President Trump sharply condemned North Korea's overnight nuclear test, he also tweeted a jab at an American ally, South Korea, that only added to building tensions, a former top national security official said Sunday. Gen. Michael Hayden, a former National Security Agency and CIA director who has been critical of Trump, stressed that the president's tweets may foul up an otherwise respectable plan to get tough on North Korea. "You gotta watch the tweets, and I think we had an unforced error over the weekend when we brought up the free trade agreement with our South Korea friends on whom we have to cooperate…it's wrong on the merits and its certainly not integrated into a broader approach to northeast Asia," Hayden said on CNN's "State of the Union." Hayden served as NSA director from 1999 to 2005 and led the CIA from 2006 until 2009. The slap at South Korea was among five Sunday morning tweets from the president related to North Korea's claim that it had detonated a hydrogen bomb. "South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!" he said. North Korea said that it had detonated its most powerful nuclear device yet, a hydrogen bomb that could be attached to a missile capable of reaching the mainland United States. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, questioned Trump's decision to admonish South Korea when the nation appears to be facing a growing threat. "We need to be working hand in hand with South Korea, and with Japan," he said on CNN. "Why we would want to show divisions with South Korea makes no sense at all." Schiff also said that there is "some skepticism" in the intelligence community about North Korea's claim that it could put a weapon like this on an intercontinental ballistic missile. But Schiff said that "even if that's not true today," experts believe it is only a matter of time before Pyongyang can make good on its threat. Trump also has said he is considering withdrawing from a free-trade agreement with South Korea, a long-standing economic and diplomatic partner of the United States. Asked by Fox anchor Chris Wallace whether Trump would pull the United States out of the agreement with South Korea, even amid a nuclear threat,, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said, "The president has made clear that where we have trade deficits with countries, we're going to renegotiate those deals." He added that there have been "no decisions" yet with regard to the trade accord with South Korea. As tensions rise between the US and North Korea, the Trump administration has not ruled out possible military action. Trump is convening a meeting of his national security team later Sunday to discuss the U.S. strategy, while Mnuchin said he is drawing up tough new economic sanctions to further isolate North Korea. |
"It's very daunting. It's hard for us to even consider ... saving for a house and we have to hope things will be better in a few years' time when we're a bit older," Ms McCarter said. "At this point I don't even know if it's possible." The latest CoreLogic Rental Index showed households renting in Canberra paid an average of $505 per week - recording the nation's biggest increase with a rise of 1 per cent for the month and 1.9 per cent year-on-year. Australian National University Centre for Social Research and Methods Associate Professor Ben Phillips said rent was housing affordability's biggest issue. "It's really the rental market which is where you have all the social issues and the lower-income families, that's really where the problems are," he said. "Of course, if you're paying a lot of rent it's difficult to get into the market to purchase a house if that's what you want to do. "We've got rents that are really based around quite an affluent city but that hides the reality that yes, we're an affluent city, but there's plenty of people who are lower-income families in Canberra as well who are in that rental market." Ms McCarter is one of many for whom renting remains the only viable option. The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics housing data showed the number of ACT households renting rose slightly over the past five years from 29.3 per cent to 31.5 per cent. In the same period, the number of households who owned their homes outright dipped very slightly from 27.3 per cent to 27.1 per cent. Overall, homeowners - including those with mortgages - dropped from 69.8 per cent to 67.2 per cent. Associate Professor Phillips said he believed investors were driving up house prices for everyone. Tax office figures show at least 45,455 people own rental properties in Canberra. "The housing industry would probably say that it's all about supply, there's not enough supply coming onto the market. Well, Canberra's probably had more supply than it needed population-wise so I don't think that's the reason for Canberra," he said. "I think we've started thinking about housing as an investment rather than just a place to live, so probably investors have bidded up the prices of stock in Canberra as they have right around the country and the world." It's here that ACT Shelter executive officer Travis Gilbert thinks the federal government could step in. "I think the federal government has some tax levers it could pull and this is where I think we would disagree with the Property Council, the Real Estate Institute and the HIA and others," he said. "The interaction between [negative gearing] and the capital gains tax discount appears to have pushed property prices higher since the capital gains tax discount was introduced 15 years ago." Loading While housing stress exacerbates Ms Carter's health problems, including her depression and anxiety, she counts herself lucky to have a nice apartment and a network she can call on for support. "While we're struggling quite significantly, we're still really lucky," she said. |
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption US general Ben Hodges on further cuts to British armed forces A senior US general has warned against deeper cuts to Britain's armed forces. Lt-Gen Ben Hodges, commander of the US Army in Europe, said Britain's position as a key ally and a leading member of Nato would be at risk if its armed forces "got any smaller". The Army, Royal Navy and RAF have been told to make cuts, as the MoD attempts to make £20bn of efficiency savings. It comes as new UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has spoken of the "rising threats" facing the nation. Mr Williamson is attending his first Nato Defence Ministers meeting in Brussels where he is expected to meet the US Defence Secretary, James Mattis, for the first time. Institution 'degraded' In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Lt-Gen Hodges said that if the UK "can't maintain and sustain the level of commitments it's fulfilling right now, then I think it risks kind of going into a different sort of category". The warning reflects concern from Britain's closest ally as the government carries out a defence and security review. All three of its armed forces have been asked to put forward options for cuts as the Ministry of Defence struggles to control spending. It is one of the biggest challenges facing Mr Williamson, who replaced Sir Michael Fallon as defence secretary following his resignation last week. General Hodges has consistently urged Nato allies to do more to meet the threat posed by Russia. During his three years as Commander of the US Army in Europe he has overseen an increased American military presence and a higher tempo of training and exercises. Most Nato countries have reversed recent defence cuts. Image copyright Reuters Image caption Gavin Williamson replaced Sir Michael Fallon as defence secretary But General Hodges warned that if Britain cut its forces further, then "it takes the pressure off other countries" to spend more on defence. The Royal Navy's list of saving options include cuts to the Royal Marines as well as axing the Navy's two amphibious assault ships, HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark. That would limit Britain's ability to carry out beach assaults using landing craft. Responding to those reports, General Hodges said: "I'd hate to lose that particular capability... Whenever you take something off the table unilaterally then you've just made the job a little simpler for a potential adversary." He also expressed concern about cuts to the Royal Marines. He said some of the best British officers he had served alongside had been Royal Marines - naming the current vice chief of the defence staff, Gordon Messenger, as an example. Global commitments "I'd hate to see the institution that produces men like that degraded," he said. Nor does he wants to see further cuts to the British Army. British troops are currently deployed side-by-side with US forces training in Iraq and Afghanistan and bolstering the defence's of Eastern Europe in response to the threat from Russia. With all those commitments, General Hodges warned against more reductions. Image copyright MOD Image caption The Army, Royal Navy and RAF have been asked to put forward options for cuts "I don't see how you could maintain those global commitments if you got any smaller," he said. The British Army has already been cut from 120,000 to 82,000 regular troops. However, it is struggling with recruitment and its current strength is just over 78,000 soldiers. |
Opponents of renewable energy normally rely on economic arguments to bash wind, solar and related electricity generating technologies. Renewable energy is expensive and threatens to make consumers suffer dramatically higher electricity rates, while making U.S. industry uncompetitive the argument goes. But the Energy Information Administration, part of the Department of Energy, has concluded that the price increase fears are overblown. This week, the EIA released "Impacts of a 25% Renewable Electricity Standard," finding electricity rates will be mostly unmoved if the federal government requires utilities to generate more power from renewable sources. Massachusetts Democratic representative Edward Markey, who is working hard to push an RES through Congress as part of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, requested the report. The EIA concludes that if the U.S. were to get 25% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025, as Markey proposes, demand for coal and natural gas would slacken, and the price of dirty fuels would subsequently fall. Savings from lower fossil fuel bills will offset the additional cost utilities face in putting up solar farms and the like. The result: Electricity rates could inch up by 3% or so in 2025 with renewables, versus a conventional power mix. But by 2030, lower coal and natural gas costs will be fully taken into account by utilities, with electricity costs a wash. Potential benefits of a renewables policy could be lower natural gas prices for home heating, cooking and industrial use as well. But EIA's 50-page report doesn't see cost savings anytime soon. Through 2020 at least, there won't be enough renewable energy on the U.S. grid to substantially offset coal and natural gas use, so taxpayers and utility customers are likely to subsidize wind farms without the benefit of lower electric bills. And EIA's estimates are hazy on the matter of new electric transmission lines that would carry renewable energy from remote, windy Great Plains and sunny deserts to big population centers. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu says a national electric superhighway will be needed to make renewables work best. The Energy Department says such a grid will likely cost $60 billion. But EIA factors in the cost of less robust grid upgrades. Finally, the proposed 25% renewable standard is much less ambitious than it first appears. The proposed RPS has lax standards for rural utilities and removes hydroelectric power from the calculation baseline. When all caveats are taken into account, Markey's energy proposal would have just 17% of the country's electricity come from renewable sources. The U.S. could get its clean energy on the cheap. But it won't get as much of that energy as advertised. |
North Korea: UN expert calls for a people-centred approach North Korea: UN expert calls for a people-centred approach GENEVA / SEOUL / TOKYO (25 November 2016) A United Nations rights expert has appealed to Governments and civil society organizations to put people squarely at the centre of their approaches to improve the human rights situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the DPRK, Tomás Ojea Quintana, concluded a 10-day visit to the Republic of Korea and then to Japan – his first trip to North-East Asia after being appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council in August 2016. The Special Rapporteur said he had been privileged to hear first-hand from people who had left the country. “I was particularly moved by their testimonies as well as their resilience. Talking to these victims has allowed me to understand some of the human rights violations that motivate their decision to leave,” Mr. Ojea Quintana said. “It was remarkable that these people were well aware of their rights. Despite all the challenges that they have been through, they now look forward to the future.” “I also met people who have lost trace of close relatives as a result of abductions or displacement during the Korean War. Their suffering is enormous and the urgency for the solution is accelerating with advancing age of victims and their families”, the independent expert told reporters in Tokyo today. The expert also stressed the need to hold perpetrators of human rights violations accountable for their actions, which he said had been reflected in his discussions with government agencies in the Republic of Korea and Japan. Pursuing accountability could also deter further violations, he added. Some civil society groups, the expert noted, were documenting cases and focusing on accountability, while others were trying to expand humanitarian and human rights initiatives by pushing for more engagement with the DPRK authorities. He said both approaches were complementary and all civil society groups deserved his support. “I do not see that these two ways – pursuing accountability and seeking engagement - exclude each other,” said Mr. Ojea Quintana. “The situation in the DPRK is extremely complex and requires a multi-faceted approach. People must always remain central to all these efforts.” The Special Rapporteur will deliver a full report on his mission to the Human Rights Council in March 2017. Read the Special Rapporteur’s full statement: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20934&LangID=E Check the Special Rapporteur’s remarks at the end of his visit to the Republic of Korea, on 22 November 2016 : http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20917&LangID=E © Scoop Media |
OGC Nice to honour victims of Nice attacks with wonderful touch on jersey for season opener This deserves endless admiration. Ligue 1 side OGC Nice are set to get their season started by sporting a special kit to honour the victims of the Nice attack last month. 85 people were killed and 307 injured on July 14 when a cargo truck ploughed into crowds celebrating Bastille Day on Nice's Promenade des Anglais. The attack was the worst act of terror in France since last November's Paris attacks and it has been described as 'the worst day in Nice's history.' So, on Sunday, when OGC Nice start their new campaign at home to Rennes, they will not be wearing their usual black and red stripes. Instead, they will sport a variation of their white away kit but rather than have sponsor 'Mutuelles du Soleil' emblazoned across the midriff, they will have the logo of a heart, which is made up of the names of the 85 people who lost their lives on July 14. It truly is a wonderful touch. |
Microsoft today lost a bid to have a European antitrust ruling reversed, and approximately $1.1 billion in fines will stand. That's slightly lower than the $1.35 billion fine imposed back in 2008, however. The General Court of the European Union found that penalties imposed on Microsoft years ago are valid. The case dates back to 2004, when the EU fined Microsoft for refusing to license access to its technology on fair and reasonable terms, and ordered it to begin doing so. Four years later, the commission found that Microsoft had failed to comply with its order and fined Redmond a record $1.35 billion. Microsoft appealed and asked that the decision be annuled or reduced. "In its judgment of today, the Court essentially upholds the Commission's decision and rejects all the arguments put forward by Microsoft in support of annulment," according to the court's decision. The fine, however, was reduced slightly from $1.35 billion to $1.1 billion thanks to a deal that allowed Microsoft to restrict access to its technology until Sept. 2007, when one aspect of the case was decided. "Although the General Court slightly reduced the fine, we are disappointed with the Court's ruling," a Microsoft spokesman said. "The fine, which was paid several years ago, related to the price Microsoft had proposed for one of several forms of licenses for technology Microsoft was required to make available by the Commission's 2004 Decision. In 2009 Microsoft entered into a broad understanding with the Commission that resolved its competition law concerns." In a statement, Joaquín Almunia, EU vice president, said he welcomed today's decision. "The ruling confirms that Microsoft did not comply with the Commission's decision and that the Commission was right to impose a penalty," he said. "The requirement that Microsoft disclose information to its competitors so as to allow interoperability between the dominant Windows architecture and rival work group servers brought significant benefits to users," Almunia continued. "A range of innovative products that would otherwise not have seen the light of day were introduced on the market. The Commission's determination to enforce that requirement was instrumental in achieving that result." Editor's Note: This story was updated at noon Eastern with comment from Microsoft. For more from Chloe, follow her on Twitter @ChloeAlbanesius. For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag. |
CLOSE Protestors on both sides of the gay marriage debate showed up en masse in Cincinnati as they await the rulings of two Republican-appointed judges. The judges are weighing the fate of gay marriage in four states. VPC Hundreds of people rally for gay marriage on Fountain Square in Cincinnati on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2014 as lawyers from four states argued before an appellate panel at the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals weighing whether same-sex marriage bans are unconstitutional. (Photo11: Leigh Taylor, The Cincinnati Enquirer) CINCINNATI — Two Republican-appointed judges weighing the fate of gay marriage in four states didn't give much away as they peppered lawyers on both sides Wednesday with hard-hitting questions. At the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, three federal appeals judges are deciding the fate of same-sex marriage bans in Michigan, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio. In each of these states, a judge has ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, though all rulings have been appealed. It was especially difficult to read Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton, whose queries fell on both sides of the issue. At one point, he declared that modern-day marriage is about "love, affection and commitment" rather than procreation — poking a hole in one argument against legalizing same-sex marriage. Then, at another, he criticized gay rights advocates for trying to bypass voters. "Changing hearts and minds happens much more effectively through the Democratic process than through the courts," Sutton said. Figuring out how Sutton and fellow George W. Bush appointee Judge Deborah L. Cook might vote on the issue could be key to predicting whether voter-approved gay marriage bans will ultimately be allowed to stand in the four states. That's because the questions and comments from the panel's sole Democrat appointee, Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey, seemed more consistently sympathetic to gay rights advocates. The panel oversaw arguments from lawyers on both sides of the issues in each of the four states. Each state faces slightly different challenges filed by same-sex couples, including the right to adopt children as a couple, to have their names placed on a partner's death certificate, and to have their marriages — performed legally elsewhere — recognized in the states they call home, where gay marriage is illegal. In Michigan, where voters banned same-sex marriage in 2004, has vowed a vigorous fight to preserve traditional marriage. The state argues that voters already have spoken on the issue of gay marriage and that the will of the voters should not be drowned out by a judge. In March, U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman struck down Michigan's ban on gay marriage in a historic ruling that made Michigan the 18th state in the nation to allow gays and lesbians to marry. In declaring the ban unconstitutional, Friedman provided a moral and legal victory to the two plaintiffs: April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, who fought for the right to marry and adopt each other's special needs children. Jayne Rowse, left, and her partner, April DeBoer of Hazel Park, Mich., join a rally in Cincinnati on Aug. 5, 2014. (Photo11: Mandi Wright, Detroit Free Press) Two of the six cases being weighed hailed from Ohio, both of which centered on whether the state has to recognize same-sex marriages performed legally in other states. In the first, same-sex couples sued for the right to be listed as spouses on their deceased partners' Ohio death certificates. In the second, couples sued to have both partners' names on birth certificates of their children. As if to underscore the latter, three newborns cooed and gurgled from the audience during the arguments. The infants were born via artificial insemination to three same-sex couples represented in the Ohio case. Al Gerhardstein, who represents the Ohio plaintiffs, said it was humiliating and harmful that those three babies weren't allowed to have both parents' names listed on their birth certificates. "Those children deserve to have two parents, and they deserve it now," he said. The courtroom in the Potter Stewart Federal Courthouse was packed with spectators and journalists. Some had to sit in audio-only overflow rooms. CLOSE As the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals prepares to hear gay marriage cases whose outcome could affect the laws in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Michigan hundreds rallied in Cincinnati in support of gay marriage. (Aug. 6) AP Outside the Downtown courthouse, rallies began Tuesday night drawing an estimated 700 gay rights advocates, and hundreds more were outside — including about 40 anti-gay marriage proponents gathered in prayer — as the judges took the bench. "We're hoping that the judges uphold the law from the four states rather than ruling according to personal agenda," said Paula Westwood, executive director of Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati. Jane Hoffman of the Pregnancy Center East said that while she has "many dear friends who are homosexuals," she opposes same-sex marriage. "Marriage is what marriage is ... we can't redefine it," she said. A block to the east of the court, more than 20 same-sex couples participated in a commitment ceremony at Fountain Square as the hearing was underway. "This is just one more step, but it's a big step," said Brother Michael Childs of Jubilee Cincinnati, a church that supports marriage equality, as about 300 people gathered for a pro-gay rally. "We feel this is not just an issue of rights but of civil rights." Callie Wright, a lesbian, said she was at the rally because "when you marginalize anyone, you make it hard for them to speak out about other things." The 6th Circuit panel did not make any rulings Wednesday. But its eventual decisions could head to the U.S. Supreme Court. Two other appeals courts already have issued decisions in gay marriage case and arguments are scheduled in a fourth for later this month. "I don't think anyone is under the illusion that this is the end of the road," Sutton said at the conclusion of Wednesday's arguments. "So we'll do our best with it, and do it quickly." Joe and Susie Bruch pray together during an anti-gay marriage protest outside of the Federal Courthouse in Cincinnati on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2014. Lawyers from four states argued the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals panel weighing whether same-sex marriage bans are unconstitutional. (Photo11: Leigh Taylor, The Cincinnati Enquirer) Among the four states arguing Wednesday, Kentucky stood out because Attorney General Jack Conway refused to defend his state's ban, saying that doing so would require him to defend discrimination. Gov. Steve Beshear — like Conway, a Democrat — hired outside counsel to handle the case for the state. The other three states were represented by delegates from their attorneys general offices. Kentucky's defense of the law centers on the premise that opposite-sex marriage promotes procreation, and procreation provides an economic benefit to the state. Attorneys for the other states made similar arguments, but at least one of the appeals court judges wasn't buying it Wednesday. "What's the rational basis for excluding everyone else?" Daughtrey asked. "It doesn't cut down on the procreation of children just because it's two people of the same sex marrying." In Tennessee, a federal judge in March ordered state officials there to recognize the marriages of three same-sex couples while they challenge the state's marriage ban. The judge ruled that they should be respected as married as the lawsuit proceeds. The state of Tennessee appealed to the 6th Circuit. Gay marriage is now legal in 19 states and the District of Columbia. The states are Oregon, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Maine, Maryland, Washington, Delaware, Hawaii, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New Mexico and Illinois. Every legal challenge since the U.S. Supreme Court last June struck down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman, has chipped away at gay marriage bans nationwide. "The trajectory favors the plaintiffs," Sutton said. Eric Murphy, Ohio's state solicitor, agreed, saying that "a victory that comes through the political process is the truer victory." But Daughtrey said the democratic process might be too slow. While questioning Murphy, she pointed to the suffragist movement that fought for nearly a century to get women the right to vote. "If I told you it took 78 years crossing the desert back and forth and back and forth, would you be surprised?" Daughtrey asked of the women's efforts, which ultimately failed: The issue was eventually laid to rest by a constitutional amendment. "The point is you want to do this state by state ... and that doesn't always work." Then, in a moment of rare levity, she added: "I just thought you might want to know that in case you're ever on Jeopardy." Contributing: Amanda VanBenschoten, The Cincinnati Enquirer; Tresa Baldas, Detroit Free Press Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1sbCPmm |
Editor’s Note : We interviewed Erik Noren about his new venture, Cake Bikes, on the Weekly Dose of Fat – Show # 8o. You can listen to the interview here. Our report from last weekend’s, Cake Bike Launch comes from our MPLS correspondent, Lilah! Cake! A new fat bike line – by Erik Noren of Peacock Groove The idea behind Cake Bikes is to create a competitive steel fat bike for commonly shorter riders that feature 24″ HED carbon wheels and specs that offer durability and performance. This Saturday I rode over to Peacock Groove for global fat-bike day to check out the line of new whips. (And enjoy some delicious cake!) The shop is always a spectacle, full of parts and pieces of bikes Erik is tinkering with, creating deep custom in the daily. Recently Erik acquired more space attached to the shop which houses an old dodge van and the new Cake and HED logos on the wall. This space will be the home of Cake, where buyers may meet, test ride and discuss their future bike built right here in Minneapolis, MN. After countless hours of working on building the bikes up for their launch party we were offered 4 complete bikes to demo, 11, 13, 15, 17, inch frames all equipped with HED “big deal” 24 inch tubeless wheels with 4 inch tires. The first bike I was able to demo is the 17″ which was slightly too big for me but let me grasp the feel of Cake’s ride. I later was able to ride both 13″ & 15″ and the 15″ fits perfectly. The 17″ fat bike is very ascetically pleasing. A nice white paint job with powder blue accents. Just like the cake I ate earlier. Yum. Immediately I found as much snow and trails to test this baby out. Handling this bike is like an extension of my body. The steering is similar to a mountain bike, very fluid and forgiving. These wheels perform well through the snow, enough grip on the tire to make descents easy. There is absolutely no toe overlap which I despise as a smaller rider. Riding off camber there was some pedal strike but I’ve been told that the stock cranks on their production line will be shorter, to adjust to that issue. I quickly became confident in riding tighter turns and more fluid than on other fat bikes ,that I’ve trail ridden. 24″ wheels give this bike lighter features but also creates the ability to increase speed rapidly along with the 1×10 Shimano HG50 cassette. On a few descents I really worked over the stock Deore brakes. At higher speeds these brakes worked well and I’m happy with their responsiveness. Shimano SLX offered flawless shifting especially during a climb when it is crucial for your components to respond. Geometry of a frame is so important for riders like myself. Most of my bikes are 48-50cm. Cake’s frames will support shorter riders and still provide perfect fit. My weight distributes well on the 15″ and I was able to handle the bike, how I should, in a race scenario with no issue. Positioning comes naturally on Cake frames to allow for more aggressive or relaxed riders. I have to say I really enjoyed riding Cake and eating it too. A bike, that I might be racing, somewhere down the road. This bike line will offer so many people, comfortable and high performance fat bikes, that wouldn’t normally be given the opportunity. (click any photo to enlarge) In the near future you will be able to order and receive within a few months your very own Cake! fat bike. Stock components will be Race Face, Shimano SLX, Deore and Thomson. Complete bike costs $3400 frame set $1750. There’s also an opportunity to purchase a PAUL Components upgrade. For more information about Cake Bikes visit – http://www.cake.bike/ Share this article! Facebook Google+ Twitter tumblr Email |
Have you ever used a proxy (or a VPN)? Did you pay for it or was it made available for free? Many people use free proxy servers to access sites/content not available in their countries (think Netflix, Pandora, Hulu, and more), or in order to “anonymously” browse the internet. When searching for a suitable proxy, you have surely noticed the relatively large number of free proxies. You try one, and although it’s a little slow, it works. You can now watch The Interview on YouTube even from Sri Lanka. Did you ever think about why it’s free? A proxy works as a traffic relay point. When using a proxy, all your traffic goes through that particular proxy server. This means, that someone, somewhere has to pay for a server and for a good internet connection, so that hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of people could access the internet through it. In life, we already know, there is no such thing as free lunch. Some of the free proxies pay for the internet and hardware by injecting ads into the websites you are visiting. This may help pay for the costs of operating a proxy server, but there is a much more profitable approach (from the perspective of a hacker or a cybercrook). A free-to-use proxy server is essentially a “Man in the Middle,” which spells trouble. Your traffic can be intercepted and modified. All the information you send or receive over a proxy can be read by the proxy provider, including: Logins and passwords Credit card numbers Banking information Besides having access to information sent over their server, they can also modify the data that travels to you. This means, they can inject malicious code directly to your computer – without having to look for vulnerabilities at all – you gave them full access, after all. They can easily infect your computer with various types of malware and a free proxy can turn into a nightmare. Although it is true that paid proxy and VPN providers could do the same. The involvement of money tends to create sort of a bond, a commitment. These providers are already making money. They are usually not in business to steal identities and credit card numbers (at least most of them). In conclusion, if you are located in most of the world and wish to watch Netflix, it is a better idea to pay $4.99 a month or a similar amount to a trusted provider, than to “save” by using a “free” proxy. |
US Innovation: Built On Copying And Permissionless Innovation from the a-history-lesson dept America has always been a society that rewards good ideas and protects property rights in a free-market capitalist system, not one premised on permission-less innovation where others can free-ride or take someone’s creation without even asking. It’s wrong to deny creators and innovators the fruits of their labor or to deprive them of their individual right to profit for the work they legitimately create. That’s why the U.S. Constitution under Article I, Section 8 recognized these natural rights and empowered Congress to secure them in a way that advances honest and legitimate activity. In its adolescent years, the U.S. was a hotbed of intellectual piracy and technology smuggling, particularly in the textile industry, acquiring both machines and skilled machinists in violation of British export and emigration laws. Only after it had become a mature industrial power did the country vigorously campaign for intellectual-property protection. The most candid mission statement in this regard was Alexander Hamilton’s “Report on Manufactures,” submitted to Congress in December 1791. “To procure all such machines as are known in any part of Europe can only require a proper provision and due pains,” Hamilton wrote. “The knowledge of several of the most important of them is already possessed. The preparation of them here is, in most cases, practicable on nearly equal terms.” Notice that Hamilton wasn’t urging the development of indigenous inventions to compete with Europe but rather the direct procurement of European technologies through “proper provision and due pains” -- meaning, breaking the laws of other countries. As the report acknowledged, most manufacturing nations “prohibit, under severe penalties, the exportation of implements and machines, which they have either invented or improved.” At least part of the “Report on Manufactures” can therefore be read as a manifesto calling for state-sponsored theft and smuggling. The first U.S. Patent Act encouraged this policy. Although the law safeguarded domestic inventors, it didn’t extend the same courtesy to foreign ones -- they couldn’t obtain a U.S. patent on an invention they had previously patented in Europe. In practice, this meant one could steal a foreign invention, smuggle it to the U.S., and develop it for domestic commercial applications without fear of legal reprisal. We recently wrote about Rep. Marsha Blackburn's nearly 100% fact free oped about how we need stronger copyright and patent enforcement to encourage innovation. I wanted to revisit that article to drill down on one point:As we noted in response, that's simply not true. And the history of American innovation is actually almost entirely about permissionless innovation and copying someone else's ideas Ben reminded us that a few months ago Bloomberg actually had a really detailed discussion of how early US industrialization, led by the same founding fathers of the US, was all about copying others and permissionless innovation . We wrote about this at the time, but it's worth a reminder, just to see how incredibly wrong Rep. Blackburn is in her oped.In fact, it was a widely supported view that Americans should flat-out copy the innovations of other countries, and this included direct statements from some of the key framers of the Constitution. Take, for example, Alexander Hamilton, considered one of the key people behind the Constitution. He cowrote the Federalist Papers, and his contributions are considered some of the most important in understanding and interpreting the intentions of the Constitution. So, how did he feel about Blackburn's claim that Article I, Section 8 was recognizing the "natural rights" based on innovation and that it was wrong to "deny creators and innovators the fruits of their labor"? Turns out Hamilton says that Blackburn's interpretation of the Constitution and history are both completely wrong:Much of the rest of the article gives example after example of how US innovation and industrialization was based on this exact pattern. And, of course, this is not just an American pattern. We've seen how other countries, including Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands used similar techniques to industrialize. Either way, even a basic knowledge of the history of industrialization shows that Blackburn's claims about the Constitution are completely misinformed. And yet she wishes to base a massive policy shift based on these misunderstandings? Yikes. Filed Under: alexander hamilton, copying, history, innovation, marsha blackburn |
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Claire Corkhill: "We want to know how the mineral phases will behave over time" UK scientists say they have produced a new mix of cement that should be much more effective at containing nuclear waste in a deep repository. The material develops mineral phases that readily trap radioactive isotopes trying to pass through it. Investigations at the atomic scale indicate the cement ought to retain this ability for at least 2,000 years. The Sheffield University team believes the new mix is up to 50% better than previously proposed barrier solutions. At some point the government will choose the location of an underground store for the hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of waste built up over more than 60 years of nuclear operations. A lot of this material will be immobilised and backfilled using cement (the binder in concrete). This cement will need to block the passage of radioisotopes far into the future. The Sheffield experiments have been performed at the Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire. This is the UK's big synchrotron, which shoots X-rays into samples to reveal their structure on the smallest scales. Diamond now has a lab - or beamline, as it is called - that is specifically given over to long-duration studies. Image copyright DIAMOND/S.DILLOW Image caption Multiple cement mixes have been in the machine now for 18 months It has allowed Dr Claire Corkhill and colleagues to probe the changing properties of different mixes of cement over the past 18 months. "We've been able to gather some very high-resolution data, and this has allowed us to make some predictive models so that we can understand what phases are forming, and when, out to 2,000 years, which is exactly when we expect water to start interacting with a geological disposal facility," said the scientist from Sheffield's NucleUS research group. Their optimum cement - known currently simply as No7 - contains blast-furnace slag. The sulphides this introduces react with water to produce sulphate mineral phases that are exceptionally good at sorbing technetium-99. "It's a high-yield fission product; it's only found in nuclear reactors; it's very mobile in the environment - but what we found is that our cement will actually lock tight this technetium-99 into its structure and prevent it being transported into the environment," explained Dr Corkhill. The team's investigations show No7 to be a much better performer than the currently proposed cement barrier, called Nirex Reference Vault Backfill. But this is not the end of the story - further mixes are being investigated to find even more effective solutions. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Trevor Rayment: "The facility works like a karaoke machine" The cement work has been discussed here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) - as has the long-duration experiment facility at Diamond. It is the only one of its kind in the world, and was set up specifically to permit scientists to study the temporal behaviour of materials. Researchers put their samples on a robotic bench and then leave the machine to it. "It's a bit like a hotel for samples, or imagine a karaoke machine," said Prof Trevor Rayment, Diamond's director of physical sciences. "Once a week, automatically and remotely, the sample is wheeled out across a table into the X-ray beam, and the data is collected. "Then, that particular sample is withdrawn and somebody else's experiment is moved into the beam to gather their data. This could go on for two years. "The scientists can stay in the comfort of their offices." A lot of requests to use the facility have to do with battery technology - understanding how materials inside power cells change through countless charging cycles. Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos |
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott speaks during a news conference with Gov. Rick Perry in the Governor's press room, Monday, July 21, 2014, in Austin, Texas. Gov. Perry announced he is deploying up to 1,000 National Guard troops over the next month to the Texas-Mexico border to combat criminals that Republican state leaders say are exploiting a surge of children and families entering the U.S. illegally. (AP Photo/Eric Gay) Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's (R) gubernatorial campaign claimed last week that the candidate "awarded over $1 billion to victims of crimes like sexual assault and domestic violence" -- but a closer look at the numbers reveals the campaign has exaggerated that total. Abbott's campaign made the claim in response to pressure from his opponent, former State Rep. Wendy Davis (D-Ft. Worth), who has spent the past couple of weeks highlighting her work addressing sexual assault and criticizing Abbott for repeatedly siding against rape victims as attorney general. “Victims of sexual assault in Texas have no greater advocate than Greg Abbott, who as attorney general has spearheaded the arrests of over 4,500 sex offenders and awarded over $1 billion to victims of crimes like sexual assault and domestic violence," Amelia Chasse, deputy communications director for Abbott's campaign, fired back against Davis. Chasse had claimed two days earlier in an email to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal that $1 billion had been awarded "to victims of sexual assault and domestic violence," not "crimes like" those. The Abbott campaign told HuffPost it had reached the $1 billion total by adding up all the money the state legislature has appropriated for the Crime Victims' Compensation Program -- which includes legal services grants, a statewide victims notification system and children's advocacy centers -- from 2004 through 2015. According to the latest annual report of the Crime Victims' Compensation Program, $12.4 million was awarded to sexual assault victims and $23.8 million to victims of child sexual abuse from 2003 through 2013. The total amount of money awarded to victims of all crimes during that time period, including including robbery, homicide, driving while intoxicated and arson, equals $782 million -- just short of the "more than $1 billion" in Abbott's claim. Abbott was elected in 2002. “Sen. Davis and her campaign are grasping at straws to undermine Greg Abbott’s unmatched record of fighting for crime victims as Texas’ Attorney General," Chasse said. The Davis campaign claims Abbott is deliberately exaggerating the amount of money he has awarded sexual assault victims. |
Daisy Luther Activist Post The Economic Collapse…people envision bank runs, life WROL (without rule of law), piles of worthless currency, rampant homelessness, and breathless news reports on CNN and the network channels (if you happen to still have access to a television, that is). They imagine a grim, gray world, devoid of entertainment, with unwashed citizens digging desperately through the trash. Because of this apocalyptic image, the idea of an economic collapse seems pretty far-fetched to most people. After all, we still see cars in every driveway, lights in every window at night, children going to school and parents going to work. Everything’s fine, right? The economic collapse is only a conspiracy theory, cooked up by those crazy libertarians and right-wingers, right? Sadly, no. It’s a fact and it’s all around us, right now. The economic collapse has occurred quietly and stealthily. In fact, many people probably think that it has only happened to them, as job losses occur, utilities get cut off, and the pantry gets more sparse. They don’t talk about it because poverty is a humiliating state – they suffer quietly, not realizing that the next-door neighbor is probably in the exact same situation. They don’t realize that they aren’t alone. Less than half of America is employed right now. Despite the deceptively whitewashed claims of the Job Report that say that things are looking up, Breitbart released an article on July 5 refuting their optimistic assertions. While there are technically “more” jobs, this is because positions that used to be full time are now part time – meaning that two or more people hold what used to be one job. According to the article, only 47% of Americans are employed full time. In an age where most families require two parents to work full time in order to make ends meet, this is a devastating economic blow. The administration is careful not to divulge the entire story, instead playing with numbers and percentages to portray growth instead of dismal decline. If today the same proportion of Americans worked as just a decade ago, there would be almost 9 million more people working. Just in the last year, almost 2 million Americans have left the labor force. With a majority of the population not holding a full-time job, it isn’t surprising that economic growth has been so weak. In June, the number of Americans who wanted to work full-time, but were forced into part-time jobs because of the economy, jumped 352,000 to over 8 million. The Jobs’ Report is increasingly measuring only a part of the American economy. While Friday’s report was better than expected, it only measures those who are working or actively looking for work. There is a growing number of Americans slipping through the cracks of the job market. (source) Meanwhile, as income drops, expenses increase. Consumer spending is on the uptick, a sign that the government likes to say is positive. However, people are forced to pay more to get less, just to maintain a basic standard of living with food, utilities, and gasoline. People aren’t spending money on goods – they are spending it on essential items and services. Fuel: The price of transportation has gone up dramatically. The price of gasoline has risen a staggering 294% over the past 10 years. That’s right – 294%!!!! This, of course, affects anything that must be transported, which is, well…pretty much anything. If your food comes from another country or continent, you can add high fuel prices to the cost of that item. If your television was made in a factory on the other side of the globe, tack on some extra transit charges. This one item – the price of fuel, is the catalyst that is making the price of everything else increase. Food: Furthermore, if you are a commuter, the price of getting back and forth to work is higher. So again – you are paying more for the basic essential supplies you need to live your life in your current fashion. The price of food is climbing, and doing so rapidly. Significant increases have occurred over the past two years, particularly in truly healthy foods like fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as organic products. Deceptively, package sizes are getting smaller (or are staying the same size but containing less food). The price, however, remains the same as before, in an attempt to trick consumers into believing that prices are not actually rising. Apparently, 12 ounces is the new pound and 3 quarts is the new gallon. Utilities: Utility rates are climbing, making it increasingly difficult for struggling families to keep the lights on and the temperatures pleasant. The Commerce Department said consumer spending advanced 0.2 percent last month after a 0.7 percent rise in February. The increase, which beat economists expectations for a flat reading, was driven by higher spending on services as outlays on utilities posted a second straight month of hefty gains. Spending on goods, a key measure of underlying demand, fell. Download Your First Issue Free! Do You Want to Learn How to Become Financially Independent, Make a Living Without a Traditional Job & Finally Live Free? Download Your Free Copy of Counter Markets “Utilities made up a pretty decent chunk of spending,” said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania. “When you extract from that, spending was less than impressive in March. The economy is slowing.” (source) The prices of electricity are rising dramatically. Customers have been warned that they will face increases. Smart meters have been installed nearly everywhere. Many places are instituting time-of-day pricing, making it only affordable to do your laundry in the middle of the night. Part of the reason Americans are facing higher prices is President Obama’s War on Coal. (In his own words he promised to bankrupt the coal industry.) If Obama can’t close down power producers through the front door, he does it through the back door, via the EPA. Even though the climate change theory through CO2 emissions has been completely debunked, the EPA is still passing draconian laws to reduce our “carbon footprint” and thus raise the prices on power. Obama has shut down 8 coal mines across 3 states, and he and his buddies at the EPA have plans to scale back production at over 200 coal-powered plants via a regulatory assault. A welfare state More than half of all Americans receive some form of government benefit: food stamps, supplements, health care, to name a few. We are in big trouble because the people who work for a living are being outnumbered by those who vote for a living. Politicians buy votes with giveaways and freebies. (Who can forget the notorious Obamaphone video?) Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse Blog wrote last year, “A recent Forbes article by Bill Wilson estimates that over 165 million Americans are government dependents to at least some degree….” New research from Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee Jeff Sessions (R-AL) reveals that this reality may already be here, with more than 107 million Americans on some form of means-tested government welfare. Add to that 46 million seniors collecting Medicare (subtracting out about 10 million on Supplemental Security Income, Medicaid, and other senior-eligible programs already included in Sessions’ means-tested chart) and 22 million government employees at the federal, state, and local level — and suddenly, over 165 million people, a clear majority of the 308 million Americans counted by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2010, are at least partially dependents of the state. The late Margaret Thatcher warned, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” That is what we’re seeing right now – our insurmountable debt is multiplying faster than Bernanke can print $100 dollar bills, and eventually, this bubble won’t be able to hold anymore and it will pop. That is the point at which the stealth collapse becomes big, real, and undeniable. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.