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Global warming is a more polarizing issue than gay marriage or abortion, according to an Associated Press article citing a new Yale University poll. Yale researchers found only 17 percent of Americans are “extremely concerned” by global warming and want immediate action, while another 28 percent are “concerned,” but don’t think it’s an immediate problem. The poll estimates about 10 percent of Americans reject global warming’s scientific validity, and 11 percent think the science behind global warming is dubious. Roughly 27 percent of the population doesn’t know what to believe on global warming, and the remaining 7 percent don’t care. “It’s more politically polarizing than abortion,” Dr. Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, wrote in a press statement. “It’s more politically polarizing than gay marriage.” The Yale poll found that individuals “extremely concerned” or “concerned” about global warming are more likely to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton than individuals who are pro-choice or pro-gay marriage. Individuals who reject global warming’s scientific validity are more likely to vote for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump than pro-life or anti-gay marriage voters. Despite the polarization, researchers found Americans who were “extremely concerned” about global warming listed it and “protecting the environment” as their top political issues. Every other category of concern about global warming regarded it as less important than “the economy,” “healthcare,” or “terrorism.” This result closely matches other polling. Despite the heavy media and political pressure, Americans aren’t very concerned about global warming compared to citizens of other countries, according to a Pew Research Center study published in December. Thirty-six of the forty industrialized nations surveyed were more concerned about global warming than America. Ironically, the Yale survey notes that people with the most extreme positions on global warming on both sides were the best-educated groups on the science. Individuals skeptical of global warming were at least as well educated as ardent believers. Surveys cited in the research indicate that about 90 percent of Democrats and 80 percent of independents believe global warming will be a serious or very serious problem for America, but barely half of Republicans feel that way. Polling was conducted in March 2016 from a nationally representative survey of 1,204 American adults with a margin of error of 3 percent. Yale pollsters previously determined that one in seven Americans think that global warming is a sign of the apocalypse. The previous poll asked more than 1,200 adults their religious views regarding the end of the world and found 4 percent of Americans believe global warming is “definitely” a sign, while another 10 percent believe it’s “probably” a sign of the end of days. Eighteen percent said they were “not sure” if global warming meant the apocalypse was near. Follow Andrew on Twitter Send tips to andrew@ dailycallernewsfoundation.org. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. |
NEW YORK -- A federal investigation confirmed Wednesday what CBS News reported on last year: that many wounded veterans are being overmedicated in VA hospitals. Some overdoses have been fatal. The Inspector General in the Department of Veterans Affairs discovered the problem is widespread. Lance Corporal Jeremy Brooking CBS News Lance Corporal Jeremy Brooking was just 19, a Marine serving in Iraq, when a sniper's bullet tore through his chest in 2007. "I actually died twice," he says. "They brought me back to life." But Brooking says his real nightmare began when he got back home to Indiana. He says the most dangerous place on earth turned out to be the VA. The VA's answer for his physical and mental trauma was drugs -- lots of them. "Twenty-three different types of pills, easily over 100 different pills a day -- most of those were narcotics, anxiety meds and sleeping meds," Brooking says, noting he was sleeping 23 of 24 hours in the day. "I'd wake up, eat, sleep and take more pills," he says. He and his wife Tia begged the doctors to take him off the pills and try a different form of treatment. Jeremy Brooking holds the pills he was prescribed by VA doctors. Jeremy Brooking Brooking says doctors would reply, "We don't do that. ... We don't get people off narcotics. Our job is to write prescriptions." On Wednesday, the VA's Inspector General found: Ninety-three percent of long-term narcotics patients were also on a sedative called benzodiazepine. When mixed, the two drugs put patients at an increased risk of fatal overdose. Only 9 percent of VA patients taking narcotics were seen by a pain clinic. Less than half of narcotics patients on multiple drugs had their medications reviewed by VA staff. A private doctor took Brooking off the VA's two dozen medications and prescribed him just one -- suboxone, which treats his pain while fighting narcotic dependence. "I can't count how many friends I've lost due to narcotics," Brooking says. He has lost more friends from the service back at home due to narcotics than he did while in combat. Since CBS News broke the story, the VA says it has initiated some reforms and 40,000 fewer veterans are now being prescribed narcotics. The department also says more comprehensive pain management approaches are being implemented at VA hospitals around the country. |
“First thing in the morning, what do I see, a pile of shit staring at me.” In an attempt to get people in India not to leave their shit just lying around – literally – the U.N. has hit upon a novel solution – an anthropomorphic cartoon turd who’ll lick you in the face. Unlike, say, Senhor Testiculo, Mr. Poo is a villain, as seen in the online game where you have to flush his turd minions away. Now, if I were to ask you, “Seeing as how this is a campaign intended for an Indian audience, what do you imagine would be the most stereotypical thing they could do to market themselves?” and you said, “Why, a music video full of singing and dancing bowel movements and a disco toilet, of course!” we’d be right on the money. You wanna see it? Of course you do. It’s actually catchy as hell. |
Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. In August 2013, in an article titled, “It Was Kind of Like Slavery,” Mother Jones recounted the experiences of five former students who had returned to the notorious Florida School for Boys (a.k.a. Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys) to draw attention to the horrors they’d encountered on “the black side” of the once-segregated campus. On Thursday, forensic researchers from the University of South Florida announced that they’d identified the bodies of two more children buried on the campus, one white, one black. The boys—Earl Wilson and Thomas Varnadoe—are the second and third set of remains to be identified since the researchers began excavating at least 55 graves at the school last year. The remains of George Owen Smith were identified in August. State officials shuttered the school in 2011 after more than 100 years of operation, and repeated, sustained allegations of abuse, sexual assault, and even murder. Before Dozier closed, a US Department of Justice investigation found ongoing “systemic, egregious, and dangerous practices” there. Wilson, who was 12 when he died in 1944, is the first black child identified to date. The school was bad for most boys, but the situation was certainly worse for the black students, who were forced to perform grunt labor, for example, while the white kids were allowed to learn a vocation. According to USF, Wilson was one of nine students housed in a “small confinement cottage” known as the “sweat box.” Several days after the boys were moved into the cottage, Wilson was allegedly killed by four of his fellow students. |
If I told you that it was not only possible for you to make great gains in strength and muscle mass by spending two hours a week in the gym you would probably think I am trying to sell you on the latest fad or gimmick, but in actual fact, that is all the growth stimulation you really need to become larger and stronger – provided it is set up properly and intense. The vast majority of people who wouldn’t believe this is possible have likely been led to believe that on has to be on one of those typical high volume, high frequency routines that we see in every issue of the most popular muscle magazine. The truth is, that the lion’s share of those routines would constitute overtraining for the average trainer with a fair metabolism. Sure, it’s likely true that everything works for a while, but over time, the body can only handle so much before stagnating. Volume and frequency are two variables with an inverse relation: raising one, means lowering the other. The volume and frequency are too much and there are typically too many single joint exercises in them as well. A drug free weight trainer (90%+ of those in any given gym at any time) cannot cope with the volume laid out in the average routine laid out by pro, non-naturally trained bodybuilders. (consider Arnold Schwarzenegger’s split routine). What his books and the magazines alike don’t mention is that he (and most other professional bodybuilders like him) were or are on 3-4 drugs at any given time and didn’t have full-time jobs. There is no way that even the average intermediate trainer can recover from this volume. The linked routine above is stereotypical of the same ones repeated ad nauseum in the main “muscle magazines”: too much of everything, too often, too many needless isolation exercises. Most people we see in any gym trying to pack on muscle also have “real lives”. Daily work coupled with domestic responsibilities, recreational activities etc., all take their toll on the body’s recovery abilities (and never mind the huge stress that economic issues causes for the average person). Most pro bodybuilders do little else other than eat, sleep and train. Add drugs to the mix and it is easy to see how following their advice is a sure-fire way to halt your progress and train yourself into the ground. Even some of the most knowledgeable trainers today spend most of their time working with athletes, and often recommend training regimens that are too much for the average trainer who’s nervous system cannot fully recover from them. Weight training to achieve optimal growth stimulation for the average trainer must be a) reasonably brief, b) intense, and c) infrequent. If you are looking to gain muscle while at the same time priming your metabolism, you must focus on compound multi-joint exercises. Strength training that uses these basic compound exercises is also key to burning body fat and providing the base for “functional strength” that spills over into any athletic activity you do on the side, whether its playing football on the weekends, martial arts, or when its your moving day. Weight training using heavy compound exercises like squats and deadlifts entails that you need to exercise less frequently because when you increase strength and size, your recovery ability (neurological adaptation) does not increase at quite the same rate, so one needs to keep in mind that proper recovery entails resting the nervous system fully more than it does resting the soft tissues. Is Training Twice a Week Enough? What the Research Found As it turns out, there is research that suggests that the difference between training with weights twice a week or three times a week is negligible. A recent study compared weight training twice a week with three times a week workouts in adults over age 60: Chest press strength increased in both the 2 times/week and 3 times/week groups over the 8-week training period by 20.84% and 20.18%, respectively. Lower-body (leg press) strength also showed improvements in both groups: 22.34% in the 2 times/week group and 28.12% in the 3 times/week group. There was a slight, but nevertheless significant gain of lean body mass from pre- to post-training (2.4% and 1.9% for the 2 days and 3 days groups, respectively). However, functional performance remained unchanged in the groups. We found that short-term resistance training 2 times/week or 3 times/week elicited comparable muscle strength and lean body mass adaptations in older adults. The maxim “less is more” applies to many things, especially weight training. It is a myth that you need more than one exercise per “body part” if you are training heavy with enough intensity. A large part of our efforts are wasted with added sets of unnecessary exercises. “Pareto’s Principle”, also called the 80–20 rule, states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the benefits come from 20% of the efforts. Focusing on progressing your strength on the basic exercises, using compound movements with proper form, eating a slight surplus of calories and protein while limiting empty calories and garbage like refined/processed foods, finding time to rest properly, getting enough sleep, being consistent and most importantly believing in yourself to become the best possible you. That, coupled with the routine below – is all you need to grow and get stronger more than you ever thought possible. Consistency and intensity of effort, over time, will reap rewards for you that you’ve never thought possible. Its the slow and steady that wins the race. Why An Upper-Lower Split? For minimalist training I generally favor an upper lower split for several reasons. One, you are less likely to get overuse injuries, since all the movements which stress the same joints/connective tissues are generally hit on the same days. For example, when doing the lower body day, its squats and deadlifts which will stress the knees and lower back. On upper days, all the heavy bench pressing and overhead press will strain the anterior delts and triceps tendons, respectively. Hitting them all on one day and then having an extended rest period will allow you to hit them harder the next time, because you will have maximized recovery in those areas. Contrast that with the famous 5×5 routines which have you squatting and benching on one day, and the 48 hours later, you are deadlifting and overhead pressing. See what I mean? Every 48 hours you are nailing the shit out of your triceps tendons, shoulders, knees, and lower back. I favor this type of training for beginners because they a) have better recovery ability since they are usually younger athletes, and b) beginners will typically not be strong enough to be moving serious enough weight to start tearing things. When you have been training for some years, or are an older trainer starting out, it is highly advisable to use an upper-lower split for the above reasons. The 2 Day a Week Minimalist Power and Bulking Routine: Lower – Mondays Squat – 3×5 (followed by 3×15 with 50% 1RM) Step-Ups, Split Squats, or Lunges – 3×10 Stiff-legged Deadlift – 3×8 (followed by 2×10 50% 1RM) Calf Raises 3×15 Hanging Leg Raises (pikes) 3×10 Upper – Thursdays Close to Medium Grip Bench Press – 3×5 (followed by 3×15 with 50% 1RM) Overhead Press 3×5 (followed by 3×15 with 50% 1RM) Kroc Rows (elbow out) 3×15 Pullups or Chinups 3xFailure DB Curls 3×12 The Parameters: The routine is to be done with a minimum of 2 days off in between sessions, on a one on, two off rotation. 3 sets (so called “working sets”) of 5 reps are to be done, not counting warm-up sets! Where specified, there are 3 sets of 15 done with 50% of your one rep max. These “down sets” will facilitate hypertrophy When it is possible to do a 7th rep on the last set, raise the weight Strive to raise the weight regularly Schedule a “deloading week” every 4th – 6th week, where the weight is dropped 20-25% on every exercise for that week Throw in 2 days a week of energy systems training like skipping, sprinting, running stairs and work on flexibility. It might not be a bad idea to hit yoga 3x a week and then do 15-20 minutes of cardio after. What to Avoid: Adding exercises. Believe me, there is more than enough work here to build big arms! Adding extra sets and reps. Ditto. There is more than enough here with 3×5 on all the exercises. Not resting enough in between sessions. This routine will work best for most people done on a one on, two off rotation. Especially for old guys like me! The Benefits: You can expect increase in your basal metabolic rate You will loose bodyfat, getting leaner you gain muscle You will have more free time which will pay off in opportunity cost alone You will notice improved energy levels Being an upper-lower split, you will gain a more proportionate, athletic build You will have more time on your off days to pursue other activities, like energy systems training, GPP, MMA, sports etc. Imagine the shape you would be in doing MMA or other martial arts, boxing or similar 2-3 times a week and hitting the weights with this routine twice a week! I firmly believe that besides the excellent push pull legs routine, this routine, is the most productive one I have ever used. It is also a perfect program for someone doing another activity on the side, be it cycling, climbing, MMA or whatever. If your life is crazy hectic busy, you could also simplify this sort of workout routine. |
I spent my spare time over the last 7 years researching this issue. This resulted in the book under the above title published in Digital format only on Amazon. com At the 2005 and 2014 United Nations review conferences on the progression of the pursuit of the UN Millennium Development Goals. It was reported that the ratio of people living under abject poverty conditions in Sub Saharan Africa, have increased from about 25% to almost 50% of the SSA population. While the various Asian regions, are rapidly reducing their impoverished populations. With Asian abject poverty ratios dropping from about 25% to about 5%. Compare the following two reports. 2014 MD goals Sub Saharan Africa Report and Asia All Report. Why? Many authors have taken up the challenge to try to explain why most of decolonized Africa and her Leaders appear incapable of leading their countries and people to live in peace and generate economic well-being for their commoners. Some of them even propose actions to overcome African Poverty. Many of these, like for example Prof Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University and the UN, try to apply Macro Economic models from the Western World to Africa. Normally done in the typical English speaking American or British Culturally Imperialist manner, moderated by a bit of charity. None of these proposals and actions have worked in practice so far. These failures occurred despite mountains of cash being funneled into Sub Saharan Africa via Aid and Grant programs, the number of people living in abject poverty in Africa continues to increase! These projects did not work because they failed to respect African Culture by taking it into practical consideration. I wrote this book after more than seven years of research, looking for the real practical reasons for Africa's increasing poverty and how it can be overcome. I ask readers to please not consider it an Academic Treatise or a book by a Professional Author. I am simply a practical retired ex-Marketing man who tried to explore the issue in basic practical terms so that it could be accessible to all. My Introduction explains my basic thinking, background, and why I took on this project. My biggest fear is that superficial readers and reviewers will not read it with an open mind and simply stereotype it as Cultural Imperialism by a Racist White Afrikaans speaker. This was certainly not my intention with this book. However, this book asks readers to temporarily place their currently held opinions on the back burner, while intellectually exploring some alternative thought patterns before accepting or rejecting them for considered factual reasons. In short, readers are asked to follow the example of the people who made the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment cultural revolutions possible. This book proposes the Bi-Ecology idea of Human lifeculture development over the last 60 thousand years. I needed a word to describe the cultural aspects of man's daily lifestyle, in practice. So I created the word lifeculture as a descriptor for Aristotle's idea, you are what you repeatedly do. The basic premise of the Bi-Ecology idea is that while the environment where Africans developed their lifecultures had relatively easier survivable, reasonably constant, warm to hot temperatures with plenty of sunshine. The Northern Hemisphere areas that gave rise to the societies that generated the modern Economically Developed world, had large temperature variations with mild to warm summers followed by bitterly cold icy winters and limited sunshine intensity for major portions of the year. This is where the founders of today's dominant economies lived, lost their dark skin pigmentation and developed their modern wealthy lifecultures. The low temperature extremes of the Northern Hemisphere's cold dark wintry ecology, killed people with inadequate skill, work intensity and applied knowledge portfolios. Only the ones who learned fast enough and worked hard enough survived to propagate the positives of their lifecultures. This book analyses the cultural ingredients that developed into the modern £$€ lifecultured societies. It proposes that a number of mind revolutions such as; Christianity, Judaism, The Bible in Latin, The Renaissance, The Reformation, The Enlightenment, The Agricultural Revolution, The Industrial Revolution and presently the Knowledge Revolution are keys to the lifecultural development of these societies. These keys drove the people of the £$€ lifecultured societies to intellectually explore, extract and accept the good from newly proposed think patterns, compared to their traditional thinking, and adopt them into their lifecultures. In this manner displacing the excessively constricting belief and loyalty systems carried over from antiquity through the Dark Ages to the start of the Renaissance. Systems that originally placed God and Kings or Traditional Leaders on almost impregnable pedestals that had to be feared and respected beyond logical reason. These mind revolutions opened the intellectual doors that enabled commoners to grow to prosperity on personal merit, By allowing free market trade of specialized skills between people, to render all participants more productive. Producing wealth and the modern more comfortable lifestyle in the process. Due to the easier survival environment, African cultures in turn seem not to have developed similar mind revolutions, and from this the resulting empowerment of their commoners. The Ancestral Spirits, Kings and Leaders are still seen to be feared and respected above any logical understanding, reproach or questioning. The sharing element of Ubuntu seems not to have motivated many of the African commoners of intellectual merit, to fully use their capacities to their own benefit. Conversely Ubuntu also appears to have motivated many "lazy bum" tribe members to demand their share of any benefits found or generated, simply because they feel entitled. African leaders still seem to live on impregnable pedestals. The book "Why are Africans so Poor?" analyses the negative roles of some of the facets of Ubuntu under the influence of Ithongu and traditional leadership in African poverty. It then proposes a variety of mechanisms to overcome the fundamental hold back factors, without destroying the key positive elements of the true Ubuntu culture. In short, it recognizes that past President Thabo Mbeki was right to pursue an African Renaissance. To get a quick overview of the Introduction and the first two and a half Chapters. Go to the book on Amazon.com "Look inside". Amazon estimates that published normally, this book will come to about 300 pages including more than 500 hyperlink-ed references and about 50 pages of Addenda. So it is not a long winded read. This book will only be made available in digital format as I want my readers to have instant access to the hyperlink-ed data I based my analysis on. Pieter D. Rossouw Author |
Nun Flips The Bird At Siena Saints Basketball Game There are plenty of ways to subtly give someone the finger. There’s the old “There’s something in my eye” trick. And the “I’m picking my nose but not really” trick can also work. You can add this new way of flipping someone off, courtesy of this nun, who is a fan of the Siena Saints. Meet the “I’m going to hold this sign with my middle finger extended” trick. Nobody is immune from March Madness. Clearly someone is on the side of this nun and the Siena Saints, as they beat Niagara 77-70 to win the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Tournament and its NCAA tournament berth. Hopefully they won’t face Boston College or Gonzaga, or else things might turn violent. Photo: [SI.com] Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed or get Sports Rubbish in your inbox every day! |
In a recent dialogue session, Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen was asked about female conscription, and he answered that it should not be for reasons of equity. In other words, it should be only for demographic reasons - if there are not enough young men to defend the country. To start young women thinking about this possibility, a volunteer corps has been started. I wholly agree that female conscription should not be undertaken simply for equity reasons. It has been argued that the moral equivalence of national service for women is bearing children, and while this is not directly comparable - not all women bear children, and some bear more than one, for example - the debate quickly degenerates into a male-female divide with emotionally competitive overtones. The reasons for female conscription must instead be underpinned by national need. However, as I argued in my recent Third S R Nathan Lecture at the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) on the topic of Security and Sustainability, national need can be more broadly defined than as simply military defence. In the Singapore 50 years from today, there will possibly be a defence need - but most certainly a social need - for all our young women to be trained in the skills needed by a rapidly ageing society. Therefore, we should start to prepare for this eventuality. The whole notion of Total Defence, which Singapore subscribes to, is that for a small city-state, military defence is only one part of a more complex equation. Whatever is critical, not only to the sovereignty of Singapore but also its economic, social and political sustainability, is a strategic imperative which requires full support from its citizenry. In this context, female conscription for military defence should be considered only as a final resort should male conscripts be unable to fulfil military needs. But conscription may still be warranted, to serve the equally important social and community needs of an ageing population whose well-being is a strategic necessity. That would still fall within the ambit of Total Defence. But let us deal with purely the defence need first. The defence imperative WILL the time ever come when universal female conscription becomes necessary to infill for male soldiers? And even if it does not become an absolute necessity, should we prepare for the possible eventuality, given the very long timeframe required for debate and preparation before any implementation? After all, much debate and preparation will clearly be necessary. There is a huge caveat or qualifier to the overwhelming 98 per cent support of NS by our citizens, which an IPS survey discovered. The same survey revealed that only 9 per cent of all Singaporean women surveyed - and 13 per cent of those under 30 - supported female conscription. A different study found broadly the same results: A higher proportion - 22 per cent - of Singaporean women support female conscription, but only 9 per cent said they were willing to do it for two years. In other words, it's great for my father, husband, boyfriend or son to do NS, but not me. If we are to change young Singaporean women's views about female conscription - which by the way is gender-neutral in the Conscription Act - the first challenge is to convince them that there is indeed a demographic dilemma. Going by past attempts to raise the issue and the lukewarm response, much convincing remains to be done. Current demographic trends from the United Nations show that in a "no-change" scenario - meaning we assume current total fertility rates (TFRs) and no in-migration - the male population aged 15 to 24 will decline by around 35 per cent between now and 2040. That is a drop of one-third in 25 years. The rate of decline will continue so that in 50 years' time - by 2065 - the same male NS-age cohort then will be less than half of its size today. As the nature of warfare changes, the classic image of thousands of foot-soldiers charging up a hill will necessarily evolve, possibly to one with armed drones skilfully and remotely controlled - by women. New technologies requiring more brain than brawn are inherently female-friendly and will increasingly enable women to serve meaningful roles in the military. Today, women make up 33 per cent of the Israel Defence Forces, 15 per cent of the US military, and 7 per cent of the SAF regular forces. More than 90 per cent of the positions in the Israel Defence Forces are available to female soldiers. Starting next year, 100 per cent of vocations in the US military will be available to women. While it is premature today to conclude that military conscription for two years for women will definitely become necessary, I would argue that we need to start changing mindsets soon. Otherwise it will be too late should the need actually arise one day. Short-term stints ONE way is to introduce universal female conscription for a form of non-military, shorter-term duration focused on supporting our civil defence, Home Team, community and health-care institutions. Universal female conscription could start with the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY), Ministry of Education (MOE) and Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) taking the lead, and with the Ministry of Defence only providing whatever necessary technical support is needed, so that this massive undertaking does not divert our military from its main role. It could last several months and be held during the interlude between graduating from secondary school and entering tertiary institutions or entering the workforce. Decentralised to the schools level for logistical purposes but with expertise provided by the uniformed services - the Home Team as well as SAF - the programme organised by MCCY could comprise a mix of school-level day classes, field practices and Outward Bound-style residential training. An annual equivalent of reservist training lasting several weeks during school term breaks could enhance the relearning and refinement of paramedical, para-civil defence or para-police capabilities. Social imperative WE NOW come to the social reason for female conscription. The intention is to train future generations of female citizens who are not just actively engaged in the ongoing Total Defence of the nation but also equipped with real-life skills which are different from, but no less important than, those of their male counterparts. Singapore in the next 50 years will certainly need a far more comprehensive voluntary services sector; national servicewomen could clearly contribute to their country in this area. One may object at this juncture to say this is tantamount to getting young women to perform cheap labour in place of foreign nurses on full wages. My answer is yes: Female conscription for social purposes would indeed supplement and to some degree even replace foreign professional caregivers. And what is wrong with that? It will be a bleak and dismal Singapore when our own citizens do not feel it is their duty to perform vital tasks critical for the well-being of our society, on the grounds that it can be equally performed by foreign workers. If the same reluctance is applied to soldiering, then one might argue that it is better to outsource this to foreign mercenary soldiers than to require our young men to be conscripted. Singapore is one of the fastest- ageing countries in the world. If our birth rates remain as they are now and there is no net in-migration, in the next 50 years the percentage of people over 65 years old will jump threefold and even overtake Japan, which is acknowledged as a fast-ageing society. Today only about one in 10 Singaporeans is considered elderly; in 50 years this will be nearly one in two. While the elderly can try to be more self-reliant - with the aid of robots, for example - the strain on our social services will be enormous. Singapore already does not have enough trained nurses to service current hospital needs; imagine the strain on community services for the elderly by then. The silver tsunami advancing our way needs an interpretation of Total Defence which involves our young women being trained to counter this threat, while being psychologically prepared to also undergo military training in a more distant future should the military need become a necessity. An important point, however, is to maintain the fundamental ethos of universal national service - so it should be truly universal for all young Singaporean women and not be on a voluntary basis. The argument for equity is applicable here: If our young female citizens are needed for defence of the nation or for community and social work in an ageing and declining population, that responsibility should fall onto every young female citizen. Young men may well counter: Why not let NS be totally neutral and allow men to opt for caregiving and women for two-year military service? I think the answer is obvious: It should be fine for women to opt for two-year military service rather than three- to five-month community conscription. But to allow men to swop a two-year military regime for several months of Home Team training is obviously to undermine the whole egalitarian intent of NS. In the course of preparing my lecture, and now article, for this topic, I've spoken to many young women on the subject of female conscription. Once I made clear that the proposal is for only several months during an educational transition, I found the response to be overwhelmingly positive. Most young women I met are keen to acquire practical skills in physical self-protection, civil defence and paramedical care. Their love of country and society is certainly no less than that of their male brethren, and they are keen to demonstrate it. Let's give them a chance to show it. stopinion@sph.com.sg The writer is executive chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings and the 2014/15 S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore at the Institute of Policy Studies. |
Protesters at Camp Schwab Main Gate, Okinawa Ever since the end of America's Vietnam catastrophe, experts on both sides of the Pacific have sounded warnings about anachronistic, wasteful, and dangerously misguided U.S. military policies, seemingly perpetuated by inertia, in East Asia. Yet their recommendations are ignored and new policy initiatives thwarted. As a candidate for president in early 1975, Jimmy Carter advocated removing U.S. forces from South Korea. Of Carter’s meeting that year with researchers at the Brookings Institution, Senior Fellow Barry M. Blechman recalled, "I told Carter we should take out the nukes (nuclear weapons) right off and phase out the ground troops over four or five years. I said the most important reason was to avoid getting the U.S. involved with ground forces almost automatically in a new war which is, of course, why the South Koreans want them there." However, Major General John K. Singlaub, U.S. Forces Korea Chief of Staff at the time, publicly criticized Carter’s proposed withdrawal and CIA Director Stansfield Turner privately expressed misgivings.1 It was never implemented. Retired Admiral Gene R. Laroque, Director of the Center for Defense Information, also favored U.S. troop withdrawal from South Korea. And he advocated closing U.S. bases in Okinawa as strategically unnecessary and fiscally wasteful.2 Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA consultant and later Director of the Japan Policy Research Institute, has written that South Korea “is twice as populous [as North Korea], infinitely richer, and fully capable of defending itself.” 3 Johnson also explained why “defending Korea” and “defending Japan” are false rationales for perpetuating the oppressive burden of U.S. bases in Okinawa, documenting the many atrocities committed by U.S. forces there, even after its reversion from U.S. military occupation to Japanese administration in 1972.4 After an 18-month crisis during which North Korea announced its intention to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the U.S. and the DPRK signed the Agreed Framework on October 22, 1994. It committed North Korea to freeze operation and construction of nuclear reactors suspected of being part of a covert nuclear weapons program in exchange for two proliferation-resistant nuclear power reactors. The agreement also committed the United States to supply North Korea with fuel oil pending construction of the reactors.5 In June, 2000 South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung met North Korean leader Kim Jung-Il in Pyongyang for the June, 2000 “Sunshine Summit,” That same month U.S. President Bill Clinton moved further toward rapprochement, easing long-standing sanctions against the DPRK imposed under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Secretary of State Madelaine Albright traveled to Pyongyang in October for talks with the Kim Jung-Il government to prepare for a Clinton visit, and North Korean officials met with Clinton at the White House. According to an October 23 report in The Guardian, “South Korean officials welcomed [Albright’s] visit. . . Kim [Jung-Il] has shown surprising willingness to reciprocate Mr. Clinton's moves to seek an accommodation between the two countries.” Everything seemed on track for the establishment of diplomatic relations until the 2000 presidential election when a Supreme Court ruling gave George W. Bush the win over Vice President Al Gore. Clinton then got cold feet and declared he would leave the final decision on the reestablishment of diplomatic relations up to the next president. The Bush-Cheney administration promptly killed the initiative, declared North Korea and Iraq to be 2/3 of an axis of evil, and invaded Iraq two years later forcing “regime change.” In a likely response, the DPRK proceeded to manufacture nuclear weapons. Thus ended prospects for a rapprochement. As for the dangers of another war on the Korean Peninsula, Taoka Shunji argues in the article below that, if U.S. forces left Japan, North Korea would have no more reason to target them with missiles. Taoka also points out that withdrawing U.S. forces in Japan would relieve Okinawa of its disproportionate burden of bases, though his proposal to move the Marines in Okinawa to a Japan Ground Self Defense Forces base on the mainland seems unrealistic, considering the Japanese government's insistence on keeping the Marines in Okinawa. In mentioning the possibility of the U.S. imposing even greater costs on Japan for U.S. forces stationed there, Taoka refers to Donald Trump’s complaint during his campaign that the Japanese government doesn’t pay enough for them. In fact, judging from what Trump said, he seemed unaware of the approximately 557 billion yen (4.8 billion dollars) Japanese taxpayers are already shelling out (so to speak) every year. This is perhaps another of his campaign assertions he will disavow as president. If not, and Trump does in fact demand more money from Japan, Taoka invites him to play his “Trump card” so Japan can let America pull out its military. SR White Beach Navy Base, Okinawa TRUMP’S ELECTION: AN OPPORTUNITY TOREEVALUATE U.S.–JAPAN RELATIONS The Benefits for Japan of a U.S. Military Withdrawal Taoka Shunji Statements during the American election campaign by people uninformed or uninterested in foreign policy were like a mixture of bits and pieces stirred into a fruit punch. Yet there was a certain consistency of opinion that “we can no longer be the world’s policeman” and “we must fundamentally reevaluate our alliances.” With the end of the Cold War, the Eastern Bloc has disappeared. That the Western alliances remain unchanged is a historic anomaly. Reevaluation is sorely needed. This year Japan is paying 556.6 billion yen (4.8 billion dollars) for the stationing of U.S. forces here, 165.8 billion yen (1.5 billion dollars) for land-leases, and, according to last year’s figures, 8.8 billion yen (77 million dollars) to subsidize the bases. About all the U.S. pays for are the troops’ salaries. If our costs go any higher, we should consider treating the U.S. military as a mercenary force under the command of Japan’s Self Defense Forces. Aircraft carrier at Yokosuka Navy Base, Kanagawa Prefecture The claim that the American military protects Japan is false. There is no component of U.S. forces here with the mission to directly defend Japan. For example, the 7th Fleet is based at Sasebo and Yokosuka to maintain American naval supremacy in the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean. The Marines, which are used in land warfare, ride aboard their ships. They do not defend Okinawa. The fighter aircraft at Kadena Air Base (Okinawa Prefecture) and Misawa Air Base (Aomori Prefecture) are deployed to the Middle East. All of Japan’s air space is defended by Air SDF. In Okinawa the U.S. Air Force’s ammunition depot at Kadena and the Navy’s storage facilities at White Beach have nothing to do with defending Japan. However, if U.S. forces were to return to the United States, the American government would have to pay for them. Therefore, as has been noted in Congress any number of times, it is cheaper to keep them in Japan. According to the U.S.-Japan Defense Guidelines, “Japan is fully responsible for the defense of its people and territory . . . supplemented by U.S. forces." Even if American forces were to leave, there would be no gap in Japan’s defenses. Should the U.S. seek to increase Japan’s financial burden now, it would violate the host nation support agreement (“sympathy budget”) concluded late last year for a five-year term, meaning that it is o.k. anytime for the U.S. to kick around Japan. Jet fighters at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa The benefits of withdrawing U.S. forces would include (1) solving the base problem in Okinawa, (2) relieving Japan of an annual burden of close to 557 billion yen (4.8 billion dollars), and (3) greatly reducing the nuclear threat since, if U.S. bases in Japan were removed, North Korea would have no reason for missiles targeting them, or South Korean and U.S. bases in Korea. Realistically speaking, America is unlikely to relinquish its position as the world’s No. 1 sea power. If the U.S. wants to maintain naval supremacy in the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean, it cannot abandon its ship maintenance and repair facilities at Yokosuka and Sasebo. The U.S. currently uses the airfield at Iwakuni (Yamaguchi Prefecture) for planes assigned to its aircraft carriers, and the bases in Okinawa for Marines on stand-by for deployments. But the Marines do not have to be in Okinawa. They could move to the Ground SDF’s Ainoura Garrison, conveniently located in Sasebo (Nagasaki Prefecture) next to the U.S. Navy Base. Finally, if in the future Japan told the U.S. it was free to pull out its forces, the U.S. would probably want them to stay. In the meantime, in demanding Japan pay more for them, Trump would seem to have his "trump card," but Japan would actually have the upper hand. Overcoming the myth that American forces protect Japan would give us the chance to clearly assert our true interests. The Foreign Ministry and the administration would then need to muster the courage to let President Trump play his card. |
Photo working group assigned by the Federal Aviation Administration to research the use of electronics on airplanes is expected to recommend relaxing the ban on portable devices during takeoff and landing. But the group has postponed its final report until September, two months after its original deadline. The group is expected to endorse permitting a wider use of devices during takeoff and landing, including tablets and smartphones used only for data, said a member of the panel, who declined to be named because members are not permitted to speak publicly about internal discussions. Talking on cellphones will still be prohibited during all phases of flight, the person said. These recommendations are outlined in a draft document that the panel member has seen. News of the draft document was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.The panel hopes to allow “gate-to-gate” use of electronics, the person said, meaning devices could be left on in a limited “airplane mode” from the moment the gate door closes on the tarmac until the plane arrives at the gate of its destination. But panelists are still concerned about the use of electronics during landing, the person said, so the recommendation could change. Photo The advisory group was supposed to deliver its findings by July 31, but it asked the F.A.A. for an extension until September, which the agency granted. “The F.A.A. recognizes consumers are intensely interested in the use of personal electronics aboard aircraft. That is why we tasked a government-industry group to examine the safety issues and the feasibility of changing the current restrictions,” a statement from the F.A.A. said. “We will wait for the group to finish its work.” Over the last two years the F.A.A. has come under increased pressure to relax the rules for devices on airplanes. Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, has threatened to introduce legislation to overturn the rules if the F.A.A. does not act. “It’s good to see the F.A.A. may be on the verge of acknowledging what the traveling public has suspected for years — that current rules are arbitrary and lack real justification,” Senator McCaskill said on Friday. In December, the Federal Communications Commission urged the F.A.A. to relax the rules for devices on airplanes during takeoff and landing, noting that the use of electronics can “empower people to stay informed and connected with friends and family.” Not everyone supports lifting the ban. Some say there are good reasons to prohibit the use of electronics on planes beyond the question of whether they produce electrical interference. “The broader picture here is that all carry-on items are to be stowed completely for considerations of physical safety: reduced likelihood of loose objects in the cabin,” David Carson, a former co-chairman of a group commissioned by the F.A.A. in 2006 to explore the dangers of devices on planes, said in an e-mail. “There is also the factor of reducing distractions so passengers are more likely to pay attention to flight attendant announcements.” The F.A.A. created the working group last year. The group, which first met in January, comprises people from various groups related to the industry, like Amazon.com, the Consumer Electronics Association, the Association of Flight Attendants, the F.C.C. and aircraft makers. Under the current F.A.A. guidelines, travelers are told to turn off their tablets and e-readers for takeoff and landing. The rules date to 2006, before tablets and smartphones were commonplace. Under those standards, the F.A.A. permits passengers to use electric razors and audio recorders during all phases of flight. Airline stewards have also been asking for a change in the rules. In an interview last year, Stacy K. Martin, president of the Transport Workers Union Local 556, which represents more than 10,000 flight attendants, said the current rules were too stringent and flight attendants did not want to police passengers. “We’re not going to be able to get anything done if we have to ask people if they’re wearing sunglasses or computer glasses and if their watch is a computer,” he said, a reference to wearable computers that passengers may soon be wearing on flights. Last year, the F.A.A. began approving the use of iPads in the cockpit for pilots in place of paper navigation charts and manuals. A study recently released by the Airline Passenger Experience Association and the Consumer Electronics Association found that as many as 30 percent of passengers said they had accidentally left a device on during takeoff or landing. In 2010, 712 million passengers flew within the United States, which means roughly 214 million people accidentally left a device on at least once during takeoff and landing. A yearly report compiled by NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System has not found any evidence that consumer electronics interfere with a plane’s avionics. |
Summers in D.C. are infamously muggy, a wretched heat that’s compounded by oppressive humidity. Even within the District’s borders, however, the actual temperature and level of sun exposure can vary greatly. This article will look at where you can hide from the heat when the temperatures start to climb, and which neighborhoods are most at risk of negative heat-related health outcomes. What is an urban heat island? Those of us who live and work in D.C. during the summer know all too well that we experience a more intense heat than the rest of the region. The reality is that D.C. is an urban heat island, both at the city-level (it is hotter than neighboring counties) and at varying intensities within its borders. Urban areas often contain sources of additional heat in the form of infrastructure, car exhaust, or heat-absorbent materials such as asphalt and concrete. Those living in denser urban communities are more likely to face temperatures well above the area average on any particular summer day. Where are the hot spots in D.C.? The map below shows D.C.’s temperature range, derived from NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite on August 17, 2015 at around 3pm. On that particular day and at that time, the officially recorded temperature was 93°F. However, as you can see, the map of D.C. shows a wide range of “true” values at that time of day, from 75°F (surface temperature of the Potomac River, however, sections of Rock Creek Park were 76°F) to 102°F in neighborhoods such as Ivy City, Trinidad, and the Navy Yard. Adjusting for humidity, the heat index in many of those neighborhoods easily reached 115°F Where are the trees? One mitigating factor of urban heat islands is vegetation. Parks, street trees, and green space can aid in cooling their surrounding areas. You can see the impact of parks and other green spaces in the map below, which shows the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) in D.C.—the amount of live green vegetation in an area. The index varies on a scale from -1 to 1. Values between -1 and 0 are usually bodies of water, and you can see the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers in bright red. Meanwhile, positive values range from 0 (asphalt, concrete, and bare soil) to 1 (tropical rainforest); in D.C., the highest NDVI value is around 0.59, in the blue-marked areas like Rock Creek Park. It’s immediately noticeable that the NDVI map is practically an inverse of the temperature map, with the exception of waterways; further analysis shows a strong (negative) correlation between NDVI and temperature in these areas. In other words, areas of land with high levels of vegetation also tend to have lower temperatures in the summer. (The surface temperature is technically cooler on the surface of the water, but since you’ll be exposed to the sun, it might not feel that way to you!) If you want to beat the heat in D.C. this month, head to tree-filled spots like Rock Creek Park, Fort Dupont Park, or the Arboretum. Who is vulnerable during a hot weather event in D.C.? When extreme hot weather events hit D.C., heat is no longer a minor annoyance—it is a life-threating natural phenomena. In D.C., an “extreme heat event” is defined as when the heat index reaches 95°F and the local heat emergency plan is implemented. Heat waves have the worst health effects in urban areas where there are larger concentrations of people who are particularly vulnerable to the heat. Many factors can influence who might be vulnerable to hot weather events. Multiple studies on the subject agree on a variety of variables that contribute to the vulnerability of populations; certain groups are considered “at-risk” during an extreme heat event because they may be less likely to or unable to seek medical help should they suffer from heat related illnesses, often for intersecting and overlapping reasons. Adults ages 65 and older and children are two of the most vulnerable groups, as are those with underlying conditions (such as diabetes or cardiovascular disease) or experiencing persistently poor physical health. Studies have also found that people living below the poverty line, those with lower levels of education, those without health insurance, non-white populations, and adults who are living alone are at heightened risk for heat-related illnesses and death, especially if they are 65 or older.[1] Cities often make a special effort to conduct outreach to members of vulnerable groups before and during heat events, but getting people to act can be a challenge. For example, adults 65 and older tend to have higher mortality rates during heat waves, either in direct response to the heat itself or because the heat exacerbated other conditions or illnesses. However, one study of four North American cities found that most older adults did not view themselves as particularly vulnerable to the heat, and less than half changed their behavior in any way in response to heat warnings. Those that did change their behavior did not always do so in ways that made them safer. For instance, while many older adults recalled advice that they should “stay inside,” some stayed in their homes with the windows closed and a fan on (without air conditioning)—a situation that “can rapidly enhance dehydration, and inhibit radiative and conductive heat loss.”[2] And even among those who had air conditioning, about a third said that cost was a factor when deciding when to use it. (For more information on how to stay safe in hot weather events, see the CDC’s heat safety recommendations and list of warning signs for heat-related illnesses, as well D.C.’s Heat Emergency Information at DOH.) Identifying which neighborhoods are most vulnerable to heat-related illnesses with the Heat Vulnerability Index Using composites of social, economic, and health-related demographics, along with temperature and vegetation variability, influenced by several studies, I created a Heat Vulnerability Index (HVI) to locate populations that are at an increased risk of heat stroke or other heat-related illnesses.[3] The map below visualizes heat vulnerability at the census tract resolution, with neighborhood clusters outline in black. HVI Scores range from 0 to 1, with 0 indicating the existence of little to no vulnerable populations and 1 indicating the largest vulnerable populations live in those areas.[4] The map also includes layers indicating the locations of pools, spray parks, libraries, and other designated cooling centers. Cooling centers are air-conditioned District buildings where people can find relief from the heat. They include many senior centers, emergency shelters, and government buildings such as the Reeves Center. Update 7/2/2018: The information on this map is from 2017; for current information on cooling centers and other heat-related resources, visit dc.gov/page/heat-emergency-information or call 311. Click here for a full-screen version. As the map shows, the neighborhoods at highest risk of heat stroke or heat-related illnesses include those of Buzzard Point, Edgewood, and Washington Highlands. Data such as this can aid in strategic planning during extreme heat events and prioritize resources such as temporary cooling centers and increased educational outreach in high-risk neighborhoods where facilities are lacking. About the data Social and economic demographic data acquired from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 2015. Health data acquired from the Center for Disease Control, 2014. Imagery used to derive temperature and NDVI values acquired from NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite and downloaded from the USGS’s Earth Explorer repository. You can find complete code for the analysis and visuals on my github page. A complete write-up of how the Heat Variability Index was calculated is now available on the D.C. Policy Center Data Blog. Notes [1] Sources include: Schwartz, “Who is sensitive to extremes of temperature?: A case-only analysis.” (2005) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15613947 Whitman et al., “Mortality in Chicago attributed to the July 1995 heat wave.” (1997) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9314806 M.S. O’Neill and K.L. Ebi, “Temperature extremes and health: impacts of climate variability and change in the United States.” (2009) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19136869 Berko et al., “Deaths Attributed to Heat, Cold, and Other Weather Events in the United States, 2006–2010.” (2014) https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr076.pdf [2] S.C. Sheridan, “A survey of public perception and response to heat warnings across four North American cities: an evaluation of municipal effectiveness.” (2007) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17024398 [3] It should be noted that vulnerability to heat is often a dynamic topic. The overall utility of an index is sensitive to scale, measurement, and context. More: Wen-Ching Chuang and Patricia Gober, “Predicting Hospitalization for Heat-Related Illness at the Census-Tract Level: Accuracy of a Generic Heat Vulnerability Index in Phoenix, Arizona (USA).” (2015) https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1307868/ [4] Due to available data sources, this index is based on data on District adults, but children are also particularly vulnerable to extreme heat events. Original feature photo of Georgetown fountains by Ted Eytan. D.C. Policy Center Senior Fellow Randy Smith is a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Specialist and a lecturer at Hood College in Frederick, MD. He has an MSc in Geospatial and Mapping Science from the University of Glasgow. He has a passion for maps, baking, and running. He lives in Tenleytown with his wife. |
Wind farms are being paid more than £1 million a week to switch off their turbines. Latest industry figures show £53.1 million was handed out to green energy companies over the past 12 months for shutting down turbines. The money is paid by consumers through a subsidy added on to electricity bills. The turbines have to be shut down at certain times because Britain’s electricity network is unable to cope with the power they produce. The wind farm owners then receive compensation payments for not producing electricity. On average a wind farm that is paid to switch off earns about one third more than if it produced electricity and sold it to the National Grid. The scale of the payments has ballooned in the past two years. In 2012, wind farms were paid £5.9 million to switch off. In 2014, those payments – known as constraint payments – had increased 10-fold to just over £53 million, according to the think-tank Renewable Energy Foundation (REF), which compiled the figures using official data. The true figure is likely to be much higher because not all payments are made public. Since wind farms first started receiving constraint payments five years ago, more than £100 million has been handed over in compensation for switching off. Over the past year, one wind farm – Whitelee - received more than £20 million for turning off its turbines. Whitelee, Britain’s largest onshore wind farm, with 215 turbines and situated just outside Glasgow, is owned by Scottish Power Renewables, a subsidiary of the Spanish energy giant Iberdrola. The payments are highest in Scotland because electricity demand north of the border does not always match the amount of power produced by turbines and other energy sources. Cable networks to take the extra power south of the border are not completed. As a result, National Grid has to pay the wind farm owners to stop generating to keep supply and demand balanced. It is causing growing concern in Whitehall that payments are spiralling. A letter sent on Dec 17 by the energy watchdog Ofgem to Matthew Hancock, the energy minister, warns of a “significant overall increase” in future constraint costs. The letter, published on Ofgem’s website and uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph, discloses that the “constraint costs” for 23 “large generation” projects – 20 of which are windfarms – totalled £69.4 million in the 12 months to March 31 2014 – more than treble the constraint cost of the previous year. National Grid has revised its estimates for constraint costs, to a total of more than £400 million over the next six years. In the letter, Ofgem’s Michael Crouch wrote: “Since our last report in December 2013, National Grid has refined its modelling approach to estimating future constraint costs. This combined with a larger than expected increase in the underlying numbers has resulted in a significant overall increase in its projections of constraint costs.” Dr John Constable, the director of REF, said: “The reckless policy of wind farm construction in Scotland… has created an ongoing bonanza for wind farms, which are actually paid more per unit to stop generating than to generate.” An Ofgem spokesman said: “National Grid’s costs for making these payments have increased as more renewable generators have connected to Britain’s networks before investment programmes have been completed to build new capacity.” A Department of Energy and Climate Change spokesman said: “National Grid has been paying coal and gas generators – and others – to change their planned output well before wind farms joined the mix. The impact on energy bills is negligible.” Maf Smith, Deputy Chief Executive of trade body RenewableUK, said: “National Grid’s latest figures show that the costs of varying the output of gas are four times higher than the cost of constraining wind so far this financial year. “Just to put these figures into their proper context, less than 3% of potential wind generation was called off by National Grid in 2014, which means that more than 97% was generated as planned. By using more of the cheapest form of renewable energy we have, onshore wind, we can actually drive down the cost of producing electricity and cut people's bills”. |
In its second gay rights case of the day, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to dismiss an appeal of Proposition 8 on standing. The decision of the Ninth Circuit Court striking down Prop 8 was “vacated and remanded,” meaning same-sex couples in California will once again have the right to marry — but marriage equality is not newly legalized anywhere else. Hollingsworth v. Perry considered the constitutionality of a state law: Proposition 8, which amended California’s constitution to limit marriage to a union between one man and one woman. California voters passed Prop 8 through a ballot initiative in 2008, just five months after same-sex couples could begin to legally marry in the state. It was deemed unconstitutional in several lower courts, and the Supreme Court ruled petitioners did not have standing to appeal the district court order. From the full opinion (PDF): We have never before upheld the standing of a private party to defend the constitutionality of a state statute when state officials have chosen not to. We decline to do so for the first time here. The Ninth Circuit was without jurisdiction to consider the appeal. The judgment of the Ninth Circuit is vacated, and the case is remanded with instructions to dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction. It’s absolutely incredible that LGBT couples in California will once again be able to marry — and now, have their marriages recognized federally with the repeal of DOMA moments ago — and we should be thrilled for them. That said, there is tons more work to be done. The ambiguity in the Court’s decision signals that we’re not politically ready to prioritize basic human rights over the vote of a privileged majority. After all, neither decision explicitly states that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right. This decision invites other states to begin their own battles over marriage equality laws that have already passed or those still in the works, and it certainly leaves the door wide open for the Court to make a more definitive decision in the future about the constitutional right to marriage. If the momentum of the LGBT rights movement keeps up, we may see other cases surface before too long. This has been a grueling and emotional battle for many of us, but we have to remember that marriage isn’t the end. We need better treatment of LGBT people in the workplace and in education. We need to protect LGBT people who face a greater risk of homelessness, suicide, wrongful incarceration and violence. Across the board, we need to treat each other with greater respect and greater dignity. The wait for these cases may be over, but the fight for equality certainly isn’t. |
Mayor Rob Ford rectified one blunder and repeated another on his Sunday radio show. On his show three weeks ago, Ford committed an apparent violation of the council code of conduct when he urged residents who support his transit vision to call the taxpayer-funded phone number of the mayor’s office to find out how to run in the next election. He also irked Deputy Speaker John Parker, a conservative ally who opposed him on transit, by singing the praises of a businessman Parker narrowly defeated in 2010. In what appeared to be an attempt to make amends, Ford had Parker on the two-hour NewsTalk 1010 show for nearly 50 minutes Sunday. Ford and his co-host, Councillor Doug Ford (Ward 2), called him an important administration figure and a friend of taxpayers. “The mayor and I have a relationship that goes too far back to allow any one particular hiccup to interfere,” Parker, who served with the Fords’ late father as a Progressive Conservative MPP in the 1990s, said in a post-show interview. “It’s one of those things where we both just move on . . . which I think is what grownups do,” said Parker (Ward 26). Ford also gave airtime to a left-leaning council opponent, Sarah Doucette (Ward 13), for the first time since he launched the show in February. Ford acknowledged in a statement, and then again on the air in early April, that he had made a mistake on March 25 by telling potential candidates to call the mayor’s number. He said he had intended to give out his personal number. On Sunday, however, he told young people to call the mayor’s number to find out how to sign up for his summer football program. The code of conduct says members of council cannot use city resources “for activities other than the business of the corporation.” Doug Ford began the show with an impassioned defence of his brother’s unorthodox schedule, which includes frequent one-on-one meetings with constituents. He seemed to be responding to a weekend Toronto Sun column by Rob Ford’s former press secretary, Adrienne Batra, in which she said the mayor is “often disengaged” from the day-to-day business of running the city. The column was headlined, “Mr. Mayor, where are you?” The mayor, Doug Ford said, improves people’s lives by attending personally to their small-scale concerns, as he does when he knocks on the doors of social housing tenants. “You’re unique. You aren’t like the David Miller, Mel Lastman, or any other mayor that sits behind the desk,” Doug Ford said. “Are you a unique mayor? Yes. But people say, ‘Where’s the mayor?’ The mayor’s out there workin’ his ass off, talkin’ to residents, and fixin’ the problems.” |
Jackpot Rising and Speedleague Join Forces to Deliver the Ultimate Motorsports Fan Experience Jackpot Rising Inc., a provider of interactive solutions for real money tournaments and esports, announced today its partnership with Speedleague to create an immersive experience for the league's motorsports fans. Jackpot Rising is developing an official Speedleague mobile game that will include replicas of Speedleague tracks built in locations around the world, including Tucson, Las Vegas, and the Bahamas. The game will allow fans to digitally race the same challenging tracks as the pros. Jackpot Rising will further intensify that experience by incorporating its patented real-money tournament engine into the game. Both Speedleague and Jackpot Rising are dedicated to delivering fantastic experiences that are unlike any other. William Webb CEO Fans who are 18-plus years old and located in approved jurisdictions, which includes more than half of the U.S., will be able to use their skills to compete against others for real money — just like pro racers. "Both Speedleague and Jackpot Rising are dedicated to delivering fantastic experiences that are unlike any other," said Jackpot Rising CEO and Founder William Webb. "By partnering and collaborating on this game, we'll give motorsports fans even more reason to be excited about Speedleague's great lineup of events." "Speedleague is all about bringing new and exciting types of racing entertainment to our fans," said Brian Gale, Speedleague CEO and President. "The Jackpot Rising game will give motorsports enthusiasts a fun and exciting way to be engaged both during, and in between, our live race weekends." In addition to featuring rally cars, off-road trucks, and UTVs, Speedleague recently announced its introduction of E/RACING, a revolutionary new motorsports series featuring electric-powered rally racing cars offering more power and torque than gasoline-powered versions. The E/RACING series will showcase Speedleague's engineering partnership with Vienna, Austria-based STARD (Stohl Advanced Research and Development). Jackpot Rising launched its tournament platform earlier this year. Built to ensure player protection, security, compliance, and fairness, the platform can integrate jackpot tournaments into any game, including the company's own proprietary iOS and Android mobile games, custom branded games, and third-party game content. As Speedleague continues its worldwide growth, Jackpot Rising will update the game and incorporate new race locations, tracks, vehicles, and stadiums that are added to the league. The release of the Speedleague game is scheduled for late 2017. About Jackpot Rising Inc. Jackpot Rising is bringing real money entertainment to the new age via its patented tournament platform that enables players to play games and compete against each other in real-money jackpot tournaments driving engaging, social competition. The platform is omni-channel, making Jackpot Rising one of the only companies in the world with the ability to offer a suite of competitive tournaments and esports across a wide variety of gaming verticals, including Mobile, PC, Console, and Arcade. Jackpot's solution creates an exciting and thrilling player experience where "It pays to be a winner." The Company works directly with game developers, studios, entertainment venues, brands, and others to deliver new age gaming entertainment both on premises and off premises. Jackpot Rising is based in Dallas, Texas. For further information visit www.jackpotrising.com and follow @JackpotRising on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. About SpeedLeague Speedleague is an international motorsports organization founded in 2015 by Global Rallycross Championship creator Brian Gale. The league’s highly respected personnel have deep experience in event production, sports media and competition management in all major forms and levels of international motor racing. Activities for Speedleague include sanctioning and organizing E/RACING, a new electric-powered rally car racing series, as well as white-label organizing, building venues and sanctioning races for ESPN X Games. Speedleague events are geared to kick off this fall, including the Shootout @ Old Tucson: UTV Grand Prix in Tucson, Arizona on Dec. 2nd & 3rd, and will travel to at least five North American cities by the end of 2018. Speedleague is based in Denver, Colorado. For further information visit www.speedleague.org. Media Contact Brandon Harper, Operations – Jackpot Rising Inc. Tel: +1 214-923-4705 Email: Brandon@JackpotRising.com Source: Jackpot Rising Inc. |
A security researcher has identified a Tor exit node that was actively patching binaries users download, adding malware to the files dynamically. The discovery, experts say, highlights the danger of trusting files downloaded from unknown sources and the potential for attackers to abuse the trust users have in Tor and similar services. Josh Pitts of Leviathan Security Group ran across the misbehaving Tor exit node while performing some research on download servers that might be patching binaries during download through a man-in-the middle attack. Downloading any kind of file from the Internet is a dodgy proposition these days, and many users know that if they’re downloading files from some random torrent site in Syria or The Marshall Islands, they are rolling the dice. Malware runs rampant on these kinds of sites. But the scenario that worries security experts much more involves an attacker being able to control the download mechanism for security updates, say for Windows or OS X. If an attacker can insert malware into this channel, he could cause serious damage to a broad population of users, as those update channels are trusted implicitly by the users’ and their machines. Legitimate software vendors typically will sign their binaries and modified ones will cause verification errors. What Pitts found during his research is that an attacker with a MITM position can actively patch binaries–if not security updates–with his own code. Pitts built a framework called BDF (Backdoor Factory) that can patch executable binaries with shell code in such a way that the binary will execute as intended, without the user noticing. He wanted to see whether anyone was conducting this kind of attack on the Internet right now, so he decided to have a look at Tor, the anonymity network, which is used by people around the world. “To have the best chance of catching modified binaries in transit over the Internet, I needed as many exit points in as many countries as possible. Using Tor would give me this access, and thus the greatest chance of finding someone conducting this malicious MITM patching activity,” Pitts wrote in his explanation of the research. “After researching the available tools, I settled on exitmap. Exitmap is Python-based and allows one to write modules to check exit nodes for various modifications of traffic. Exitmap is the result of a research project called Spoiled Onions that was completed by both the PriSec group at Karlstad University and SBA Research in Austria. I wrote a module for exitmap, named patchingCheck.py, and have submitted a pull request to the official GitHub repository. Soon after building my module, I let exitmap run. It did not take long, about an hour, to catch my first malicious exit node.” The exit node in question was in Russia, and Pitts discovered that the node was actively patching any binaries he downloaded with a piece of malware. He downloaded binaries from a variety of sources, including Microsoft.com, and each of them came loaded with malicious code that opens a port to listen for commands and starts sending HTTP requests to a remote server. Pitts informed officials at the Tor Project, who quickly flagged the exit node as bad. “We’ve now set the BadExit flag on this relay, so others won’t accidentally run across it. We certainly do need more people thinking about more modules for the exitmap scanner. In general, it seems like a tough arms race to play,” Roger Dingeldine, one of the original developers of Tor, wrote in a message on a Tor mailing list Friday. In terms of defending against the sort of attack, Pitts suggested that encrypted download channels are the best option, both for users and site operators. “SSL/TLSis the only way to prevent this from happening. End-users may want to consider installing HTTPS Everywhere or similar plugins for their browser to help ensure their traffic is always encrypted,” he said via email. Pitts said that the relay in Russia was the only one he found that was exhibiting this malicious behavior, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening elsewhere. “Out of over 1110 exit nodes on the Tor network, this is the only node that I found patching binaries, although this node attempts to patch just about all the binaries that I tested. The node only patched uncompressed PE files. This does not mean that other nodes on the Tor network are not patching binaries; I may not have caught them, or they may be waiting to patch only a small set of binaries,” he said. This isn’t the first time that attackers have been found using such an attack in the wild. In 2012 the Flame malware was seen using a complicated technique that involved the attackers using a forged Microsoft certificate to impersonate a Windows Update server and distribute Flame to more users. That attack involved a lot of moving parts and was a highly targeted attack, whereas the Tor attack Pitts found is applicable to a much wider potential population. “The problem of modified binaries is not limited to Tor. We highlight the example because of some of the misconceptions people have about Tor providing increased safety. In general, users should be wary of where they download software and ensure they are using TLS/SSL. Sites not supporting TLS/SSL should be persuaded to do so,” Pitts said. |
Dynamite’s Free Comic Book Day offering this year is Dinosaurs Vs Aliens, a preview of the upcoming graphic novel by Barry Sonnenfeld, Grant Morison and Mukesh Singh. Not only do we see art and sketches, but we also get script and background behind the series creation. Which tells so much more about what we’ll be able to expect from the comic. The script makes clear what these images suggest. These are dinosaurs with intelligence, craft and more importantly, culture. In an address to the reader Barry Sonnenfeld explains that with Dinosaurs Vs Aliens, he is retelling the story of the colonisation of the United States, represented by Earth, with the dinosaurs as Native Americans and the aliens being the invading Europeans. Grant Morrison writes; We also get a description, and a naming, of some of the central cast. And, to recall that this isn’t just about the dinosaurs, we also get a look at the aliens… Dinosaurs Vs Aliens: Free Comic Book Day should be available at all participating comic shops on Free Comic Book Day, Saturday, May the 5th. About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist. (Last Updated ) Related Posts None found |
(Of course, at the same time, Britain's second most shout-y tabloid, The Daily Mail, is wailing about Britain's "population boom," powered by those baby-making immigrants who are putting a strain on the country's resources. So you can't ever win.) Some countries that regard their birth rates as too low (less than 2.1 children per woman, which is the replacement rate necessary to maintain a population) have embarked on campaigns to help up it; often, measures include tax credits for children or financial aid in some way. Others, however, are thinking a bit more creatively. 1. Singapore: Lie Back and Think of Singapore Singapore is aggressively tackling their low birth rate problem—with the help of mints. On August 9, 2012, the Singapore authorities partnered with mint-peddlers Mentos ("The Freshmaker") to put together "National Night," a campaign meant to encourage Singaporean couples to let their "patriotism explode" and help the nation increase its 0.78 children per woman birth rate. The resulting ad went viral. "Singapore's population, it needs some increasing/So forget waving flags, August 9th we be freaking ... I'm a patriotic husband, you're my patriotic wife, let's do our civic duty and manufacture life," the smooth-voiced, minty-breathed rapper suggests. "The birth rate ain't goin' spike itself!" But that's not all. Singapore is also tackling the problem where it lives or rather, where it doesn't: The Urban Redevelopment Authority has placed a limit on the number of small one-bedroom flats that can be built in an effort to curb the singleton lifestyle and encourage people to shack up and make babies. Singapore spends around $1.3 billion annually on trying to convince its citizens to get busy, including offering $15,000 parental packages for each child, tax incentives, and extended maternity leave. 2. South Korea: Lights Out South Korea's birth rate has fallen to one of the lowest in the developed world, at 1.2 children per woman in 2010. That's even lower than China, with its aggressive one child policy (it's at 1.6). The low birth rate is in part the fault of a government program to promote smaller families in the 1970s and '80s, but more recently, financial woes are more to be blamed for the baby slowdown—South Koreans have one of the highest household debt burdens in Asia, at roughly 160 percent of income. One of the biggest concerns that South Korean parents have is being able to pay for their children's care and education, so the government is promising to halve tuition fees for state-run childcare and is actively trying to weaken the perception that a college degree is necessary for success. That's one way—but the South Korean government is also taking other, more creative measures. In addition to the cash gifts and incentives offered to staff who have more than one child, in 2010, the South Korean government decided to turn off the lights in its offices at 7pm on the third Wednesday of every month—called "Family Day"—to "help staff get dedicated to childbirth and upbringing." While the official in charge of the program acknowledged that going home early probably didn't have a direct link to making more babies, every little bit helps. |
Have you ever wondered what it's like to be a Bald Eagle soaring above Lincoln Financial Field during the National Anthem prior to Philadelphia Eagles kickoff? Of course you have, and now you can see exactly what it looks like from a bird's-eye view. Pretty cool stuff. Here's some more information about the bird. "Challenger is a 25-year old non-releasable male Bald Eagle cared for by the non-profit American Eagle Foundation. This majestic bird has become a free-flying educational ambassador for his species, soaring through hundreds of stadiums, arenas, ballrooms, and classrooms across the U.S. since 1991. He was blown from his nest at 5-weeks of age and rescued by well-meaning people who proceeded to hand-raise him. As a result, he became imprinted for life." Note that Challenger is not to be confused with Noah, who is a 13-year-old bald eagle that is in the possession of the Elmwood Park Zoo. (H/T to Crossing Broad) |
Vice President Joe Biden says he made the "right decision" not to run for president. "My decision, I know, was the right decision," Biden told Bloomberg News' Margaret Talev in a 40-minute interview aboard Air Force Two on his return to Washington from Ukraine. Biden: If first caucus was April 1st, we'd probably be running "I believed I could win, but that's not enough. I know myself. And I know it takes time," Biden said of the process he's gone through since his son Beau died of brain cancer in May. "You've got to get through the first Thanksgiving--the first empty chair; the first Christmas, the first smell of spring." In a speech from the White House Rose Garden in October , with President Obama and his wife Jill Biden by his side, Biden opted out of the presidential race. Biden is now focused on making cancer research a national priority in his final year at the White House and after he leaves. According to the report, Biden keeps a red folder with the word "cancer" with him that has notes and names as he studies the disease. Joe Biden: Trump's comments a "dangerous brew" "What I'm doing now, I'm meeting with every center of power within the cancer world. I'm meeting with billionaires who have set up foundations. I'm meeting with everyone from the Mayo Clinic to one of the largest outfits that took care of Beau," he said, as well as "all the researchers." Biden hasn't endorsed any of the Democratic candidates in the race, but said he has spoken with all three: Hillary Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley. The vice president also called Donald Trump's politics a "dangerous brew," but predicted it won't last very long. "Even though it appeals to some people who are really frightened and scared, even though it appeals to some prejudice and fears, I don't think it's sustainable." |
Konner then explores the genetic and neurological foundations of basic temperament and gender identity and of formative behaviors such as infant attachment and the acquisition of language, and he describes the interrelationship between the biology and psychology of puberty. Unlike animals that hurtle from infancy to puberty, the humans who have escaped the risks of infancy but not yet embarked on the risks of adulthood experience a sort of mini-transformation during the “five-to-seven shift,” and emerge with markedly enhanced powers of cognition into a period of slow growth. This prolonged halcyon phase, sandwiched between the confusion of early life and the intensity of adolescence, seems evolutionarily designed to imbue children with the culture that our enormous brains make possible—the culture that our species (almost) alone can claim. The sine qua non of culture is socialization, a process we share with many other species. For mammals, it begins with an extreme bond between mother and offspring—a bond that has existed since early in the age of the dinosaurs, when even the infants of egg-laying mammals could feed directly from their mothers’ bodies and demand attention by crying. (Mammalian young cried at high pitches that their mothers could hear but reptilian predators could not.) Although the mother-child bond forms the core relationship, we are cooperative breeders. There is “ample evidence,” developed most prominently by the pathbreaking anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, that “human mothers have always gotten help” from fathers, grandmothers, older siblings, and other relatives. Still, some evidence suggests that kinship is not the be-all and end-all it is often believed to be. Research on the !Kung hunter-gatherer society, for example, shows no particular advantage to having a full complement of parents and grandparents, and in cases in which children have few kin, other adults apparently take up the slack, supporting the idea that indeed, it takes a village. Crucially, the many years that human females live after menopause confer a unique advantage on the species, in that grandmothers are almost always involved in child care, allowing their children, particularly their daughters, to produce more and healthier children. Konner is especially interested in play, which is not unique to humans and, indeed, seems to have been present, like the mother-offspring bond, from the dawn of mammals. The smartest mammals are the most playful, so these traits have apparently evolved together. Play, Konner says, “combining as it does great energy expenditure and risk with apparent pointlessness, is a central paradox of evolutionary biology.” It seems to have multiple functions—exercise, learning, sharpening skills—and the positive emotions it invokes may be an adaptation that encourages us to try new things and learn with more flexibility. In fact, it may be the primary means nature has found to develop our brains. |
Welcome back to my set review! If you missed the previous installments, check them out: Blue Black Here’s the ratings system I’ll be using: Constructed 5.0: Multi-format all-star (and undoubtedly worth too much money). [card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card]. [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card]. 4.0: Format staple. [card]Sphinx’s Revelation[/card]. [card]Burning Tree-Emissary[/card]. 3.5: Good in multiple archetypes, but not a format staple. [card]Elvish Mystic[/card]. [card]Supreme Verdict[/card]. [card]Voice of Resurgence[/card]. 3.0: Archetype staple. [card]Boros Reckoner[/card]. [card]Domri Rade[/card]. 2.5: Role-player in some decks, but not quite a staple. [card]Azorius Charm[/card]. 2.0: Niche card. Sideboard or currently unknown archetype. [card]Naturalize[/card]. (Bear in mind that many cards fall into this category, although an explanation is obviously important.) 1.0: It has seen play once. [card]One with Nothing[/card]. (I believe it was tech vs. Owling Mine, although fairly suspicious tech at that.) Limited 5.0: I will always play this card. Period. 4.5: I will almost always play this card, regardless of what else I get. 4.0: I will strongly consider playing this as the only card of its color. 3.5: I feel a strong pull into this card’s color. 3.0: This card makes me want to play this color. (Given that I’m playing that color, I will play this card 100% of the time.) 2.5: Several cards of this power level start to pull me into this color. If playing that color, I essentially always play these. (Given that I’m playing that color, I will play this card 90% of the time.) 2.0: If I’m playing this color, I usually play these. (70%) 1.5: This card will make the cut into the main deck about half the times I play this color. (50%) 1.0: I feel bad when this card is in my main deck. (30%) 0.5: There are situations where I might sideboard this into my deck, but I’ll never start it. (10%) 0.0: I will never put this card into my deck (main deck or after sideboarding). (0%) Battlewise Valor [draft]Battlewise Valor[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 You’d be wise to avoid this, especially with Gods Willing in the format. Protection from a color is much more valuable than +2/+2, as is costing half the mana. Limited: 2.5 There is an interesting tension when it comes to combat tricks and auras in Theros. On the one hand, the heroic mechanic means that these effects get better, as they can trigger all sorts of cool effects. Sometimes you will play even the very mediocre targeting effects, just so you can turn normal mortals into heroic warriors. On the other hand, bestow cards and all of the combat tricks compete for space, and you really can’t play 8 creature-targeting effects and 11 creatures in a deck. So, even though Battlewise Valor is a strong trick and one I’d almost always expect to play in a normal set, I can see leaving it out here if I end up with enough bestow cards (which are almost universally awesome). Cavalry Pegasus [draft]Cavalry Pegasus[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 If you are in a bad spot and hoping for the cavalry to arrive, you are about to be disappointed. The aggressive decks that want this effect can get 2/1’s for one with great abilities, and don’t need to horse around with 1/1’s for two Limited: 1.5 In a land of good Auras, sometimes a 1/1 flier can be awesome, especially if you have a couple of humans that want to bum a ride. In a more human-heavy deck, this becomes awesome, so the combination of humans and auras gives Cavalry Pegasus a lot of outs to see play. I wouldn’t just run it arbitrarily, and I suspect people are going to overvalue it, but it’s one of those variable-value cards that makes Limited much more interesting. Celestial Archon [draft]Celestial Archon[/draft] Constructed: 2.0 Bestow dodges a lot of the pitfalls auras usually face in Constructed, which may widen their range to more than “put this on a Gladecover Scout”. It does require you to actually want the base body, which is tenuous at best for Celestial Archon, so my interest here more lies in the possibility of using this as an expensive trump in creature stalls. There are probably enough sweet expensive things that Archon doesn’t quite make it, but the split card of the 4/4 and the +4/+4 (with an implied 4/4 later) is powerful. Limited: 4.5 Not only does this turn a creature into a gamewinner in one fell swoop, if the opponent does deal with your monster, you get a 4/4 flying first striker as a consolation prize. Even if you don’t hit seven mana, just casting this as a creature is awesome. Chained to the Rocks [draft]Chained to the Rocks[/draft] Constructed: 3.0 I feel Chained to the Rocks might peak early, if only because it’s so strong that cards like Peak Eruption were put in the same set to limit its power. In a solid RW deck, or a red deck splashing it, Chained to the Rocks is the most efficient removal spell we’ve seen since Path to Exile, and that’s saying something. The drawback here is pretty horrendous, opening you up to a 2 for 1 if your land gets blown up and still making cards like Abrupt Decay into huge liabilities. The power level here is high enough that I think this will be a consideration across many decks and formats, but the power comes with a price. I like the idea of this in a Modern Zoo deck, particularly because of how ineffective land destruction is against decks like that (as well as how easy it is to guarantee you will have a Mountain in play at all times). If the spotlight is focused elsewhere, Chained to the Rocks is a strong card to remember, but I have the fear of getting my Mountains destroyed in a blaze of fire. Limited: 3.5 While this is clearly a card that costs RW, it is close enough to a Terminate that it’s more than worth the awkward cost. Enchantments are much riskier in this set than normal, much like artifacts in Mirrodin block (either of them), but that doesn’t make Chained to the Rocks horrible or anything like that. It is worth considering siding it out if you are low on enchantments and your opponent has multiple removal spells, which is also something true of any enchantment. This set more than most rewards clever sideboarding, and if you only have 1-3 enchantments maindeck, siding them into slightly worse non-enchantments can leave your opponent stuck with useless enchantment removal. Chosen by Heliod [draft]Chosen by Heliod[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 Heliod may have chosen you, but I certainly will not. Even replacing itself doesn’t make this good enough for Constructed, where mana, more than cards, is the limiting factor. Limited: 2.5 The creature count warning applies, but if you have a couple slots for targeted spells, I’d generally choose this. Cantripping is always nice, and triggering heroic is a bonus to a card I’d usually play anyway. This is excellent filler, though not something I’d usually look to pick up early. Dauntless Onslaught [draft]Dauntless Onslaught[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 If heroic is relying on cards like this to make it work, I have to break it to you: it won’t. Limited: 3.0 Even at 50% more expensive, [card]Symbiosis[/card] is a great combat trick. Sometimes it’s just a one for one with 2 extra damage thrown in, but often it will be so much more than that. Decorated Griffin [draft]Decorated Griffin[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 You could paper your room with this and call it Decoration Griffin, but that’s about the only use I can come up with. Limited: 1.5 I don’t think most decks will be lacking in high end, making the Griffin a little lackluster. Though the ability isn’t bad, paying five mana for a 2/3 flier is, so you have to really need mana sinks to want this. Divine Verdict [draft]Divine Verdict[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 This card may have been reprinted, but my verdict hasn’t changed. Limited: 3.0 Removal that can kill large creatures is in high demand in this format, so I’d almost always be happy playing at least one Divine Verdict. Its usefulness does fall off quickly against good players, which is certainly something to consider. Still, if you don’t have a way to kill a 7/7, I see no way to avoid running this. Elspeth, Sun’s Champion [draft]Elspeth, Sun’s Champion[/draft] Constructed: 2.5 It feels like we’ve been living in a Planeswalker-light Standard over the last few months. Domri has been seeing a lot of play, but besides that, the scattered Garruk, Jace, and Sorin sightings are few and far between. Elspeth may not single-handedly change that, but she’s still strong enough to see a good amount of play. Getting three tokens a turn while ticking up makes Elspeth very hard to kill, and most creatures that can threaten her walk right into her -3 ability. Stormbreath Dragon is fairly strong, but past that, there aren’t very many creatures that can go toe to toe with the Sun’s Champion and live to tell the tale. If you do manage to get an emblem, hopefully you have a Curse of the Swine in your deck, but even if you don’t, it’s still pretty good. It’s no Domri Emblem, but Elspeth comes with her own army, so it will often be more than enough. Six mana is a lot, so I don’t expect Elspeth to be a 4-of, or even a 3-of most of the time. I do think that many of the controllish white decks are going to look to her to finish things off, and she does fit nicely into the plan many midrange decks have. Limited: 4.5 Not only is Elspeth nigh-unkillable on the ground, she effectively assassinates almost anything that could potentially threaten her. Add all that to the fact that this set has a much higher than normal proportion of giant creatures and you have a certified bomb. Ephara’s Warden [draft]Ephara’s Warden[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 Besides a stunning similarity to Natalie Portman, there isn’t much going on here. Limited: 2.0 How bad can a tapper be and still be playable? This feels like the updated version of Ember Shot, which certainly pushed the boundary for removal spells. As it turns out, even though Ephara’s Warden can’t tap monstrous creatures or those that have been bestowed powers, she still does her thing well enough to see play. I wouldn’t want many copies, and I wouldn’t hesitate to side her out, but she still does provide a good amount of control over the flow of the game. Evangel of Heliod [draft]Evangel of Heliod[/draft] Constructed: 2.0 I’m a big fan of Cloudgoat Ranger (though not the biggest; Cedric can probably lay claim to that), but Evangel of Heliod is no Cloudgoat Ranger. Costing one more and making an inconsistent amount of soldiers is tough, even if that number is sometimes much greater. Part of the problem with some of the devotion cards is that they pay you off when you already are doing well, which doesn’t make them good comeback cards. The decks that would use Evangel the best are often vulnerable to Supreme Verdict to begin with, and having Evangel produce the most value when Verdict is a beating is unfortunate. This is a strong combo with Spear of Heliod, and that might be enough to side in Evangel if you expect a lack of sweepers and a big board stall. Limited: 3.0 In the worst case scenario, Evangel of Heliod still brings three creatures to the table, and it isn’t hard to make sure you get quite a few more than that. Against non-evasive monstrous/bestow creatures, putting out three or four 1/1’s can be a very good solution, and there are enough ways to take advantage of this that I’m a fan of the card. Fabled Hero [draft]Fabled Hero[/draft] Constructed: 2.0 Silverblade Paladin has put in some hours, and even if Fabled Hero doesn’t have pseudo-haste, it still threatens to do a lot of damage. The lack of Rancor hurts, as apparently Paladins and Heroes are at their best when the hate is flowing through their bodies. Even without Rancor, there are a ton of heroic enablers, and Fabled Hero could be a good three-drop for the deck that is all-in on targeting its own creatures. Limited: 4.0 Even without heroic, a 2/2 double-striker for three is great, and Fabled Hero is much more than that. This not only threatens a ton of damage with a combat trick, it just does a ton even if you don’t do anything, making it a must-block later in the game. Favored Hoplite [draft]Favored Hoplite[/draft] Constructed: 2.0 While this isn’t quite Soldier of the Pantheon, it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump away. If this reliably hits two power by turn three or so, it’s worth the investment, and later the prevention ability becomes more relevant once the creatures get larger. Limited: 1.0 You don’t really want to be blowing combat tricks on turn two or three, but hitting for 1 damage is fairly anemic. Later in the game, growing by one just isn’t that exciting, and overall I’d avoid favoring this when it comes to what you end up playing. Gift of Immortality [draft]Gift of Immortality[/draft] Constructed: 2.0 I don’t know what matchup this is good in, but it’s strange and powerful enough for it to be possible that there is one. Enough removal exiles these days that I’m skeptical, so use at your own risk. Limited: 1.5 Gift of Immortality has all the drawbacks of bestow without any of the advantages. It’s still an aura, still requires a target, but doesn’t even stop the 2 for 1 when you get Griptided into oblivion. It isn’t the worst maindeck card, but I’d be more prone to side it in against an opponent without bounce or exile cards. Glare of Heresy [draft]Glare of Heresy[/draft] Constructed: 2.5 Once again, the cycle of color hosers has some nice cards. Getting rid of a white permanent for good is especially relevant in the world of indestructible gods, and just giving white a solid removal spell is nice. This is flexible enough and powerful enough to earn sideboard space, even if it is pretty far from a maindeck card. Limited: 0.5 It isn’t heresy to call this an awesome sideboard card and a borderline unplayable maindeck one. The only reason I even say “borderline” is that some sealed formats skew heavily towards certain colors, and it’s possible white is one of them (but I make no claims one way or the other). Gods Willing [draft]Gods Willing[/draft] Constructed: 2.5 You get a lot of value for one mana here, and that’s even without taking any heroic shenanigans into account. Countering a removal spell or winning a creature combat is powerful, and the addition of Scry 1 makes me pretty interested in casting this (or at least figuring out how to beat the decks that want to cast this). Plus, heroic is a real thing, and if there is a good heroic deck, I’d be shocked if it didn’t play four Gods Willing. Limited: 3.5 There’s nothing better than moving in on a huge play and having a card like this in your hand, whether that play is activating monstrous, bestowing an aura, or just casting your 6-drop bomb. Putting the shields up for one mana is incredible, and the use of Gods Willing isn’t even restricted to that, as it’s also good to burn early to win a brawl of 2-drops. There are some diminishing returns with this, and against removal-light decks maybe it’s not insane, but I’d take this early and play as many as I could pick up. Heliod, God of the Sun [draft]Heliod, God of the Sun[/draft] Constructed: 2.5 I feel like Supreme Verdict just got a whole lot less effective. Not only does Heliod bash for a ton of damage once you have a good board, he lets you crank out a post-Wrath army with ease. Add in his Spear and you have a two-pronged threat that is resistant to most removal. Vigilance may not be the best, but it’s still relevant, and like most gods, Heliod looks like a great card if the board ever gets stalled (as well as contributing heavily to the possibility of that happening). The gods look awesome to play with, and all of them are going to have a good impact on Constructed. Limited: 4.5 Heliod is one of the best gods when you don’t have much going on, which is normally when the gods are at their weakest. He doesn’t need followers, he creates them! In any sort of close race, vigilance becomes very relevant, and needless to say, a 5/7 can certainly turn the tables. Heliod’s Emissary [draft]Heliod’s Emissary[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 Some of the bestow cards are a big game, but this one isn’t really worth hunting. Limited: 3.5 Just casting the Emissary is great, making this one of the bestow cards that spends more of its time in creature form. A 3/3 that taps their best creature is very hard to block, and if you ever do manage to land it as an aura, there’s no way you are losing that monster in combat. Hopeful Eidolon [draft]Hopeful Eidolon[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 Even if Spirit Link occasionally sees play in Modern hexproof, I’m not hopeful that this will. Paying four for the aura version is just too much, despite the card advantage possibilities. Limited: 3.0 Dropping this on a 4/4, trading it off, and getting five points of life and a 1/1 lifelink out of the deal is pretty nice, and sometimes you even get multiple hits in. If you don’t have any big creatures, this certainly loses some of its luster, but it’s hard to avoid getting at least a couple high drops. Hundred-Handed One [draft]Hundred-Handed One[/draft] Constructed: 2.0 As much of a joke as the card looks like, what with the awesome and insane card text, I actually think Hundred-Handed One (100H1, if you like initials) has some legs when it comes to Constructed. A 3/5 for four isn’t the worst deal, and it can completely shut down the opponent’s offense if they aren’t prepared to deal with him. Limited: 4.0 Not only is this undercosted to begin with, it turns into an absolute beast once you get to six mana. You suffer the same risk of tempo loss as with any monstrous creature, but at least this halts their offense if it does survive. Lagonna-Band Elder [draft]Lagonna-Band Elder[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 In this case, I’d advise against getting the band back together. Centaur Healer does this much more efficiently and reliably. Limited: 2.0 A Warpath Ghoul isn’t the worst fail case, and you do end up gaining the life fairly often here. It’s not exciting regardless, but you have to fill out your curve somehow (is what BenS keeps telling me, at least). Last Breath [draft]Last Breath[/draft] Constructed: 2.5 Take that, Voice of Resurgence! If you don’t care about the opponent’s life total, and many control decks don’t, having a reliable way to interact early and kill opposing Voices is very valuable. Last Breath isn’t the most powerful card, but what it does do is specific and unique enough that it is certainly going to see play. Limited: 2.5 I’d be surprised if I ever cut all my Last Breaths from my maindeck, but I can see only playing one to begin with. It misses often enough that it can be a liability, and giving the opponent four life is often quite relevant. Leonin Snarecaster [draft]Leonin Snarecaster[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 When you are getting one-mana 2/1’s with protection from many of the relevant creatures in the format, it’s hard to get trapped into playing two-mana 2/1’s with marginal abilities. Limited: 2.0 In most formats, this would warrant at least a 2.5, but Theros is shaping up to be slow enough that I don’t know if you want a 2/1 for two all that often. It’s probably still decent, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was not the format for Leonin Snarecaster. Observant Alseid [draft]Observant Alseid[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 They alseid I was crazy for running this terrible card, but look who’s laughing now? Them, at me. Limited: 3.0 This reminds me of [card]Dragon Scales[/card], and if you ever drafted Onslaught-Legions-Scourge, you know that’s a good thing. Vigilance becomes very desirable once you have a giant creature out, and bestow ensures exactly that. This even leaves behind a 2/2 once things get messy, which is also pretty nice. Plus, sometimes you just need to play a creature on turn three, and Observant Alseid also does that. Ordeal of Heliod [draft]Ordeal of Heliod[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 Boy, they weren’t kidding when they called these ordeals. Having to attack three times is a tough sell, even if 10 life is the prize at the end of the rainbow. Unfortunately, any matchup where you want 10 life is going to be a matchup where you can’t really afford to attack three times before getting that life. Limited: 1.0 The ordeals are like the opposite of the bestow cards. They are just as vulnerable as normal auras to getting 2 for 1’ed, and instead of a bonus they make you wait a bunch of turns before the real payoff shows up. I don’t think 10 life is enough of a reward, as large as the number 10 is. Phalanx Leader [draft]Phalanx Leader[/draft] Constructed: 2.0 As a potential Glorious Anthem on legs, Phalanx Leader could be the 2-drop the heroic deck is looking for. This is an actual payoff, one that could justify building a deck around the mechanic, and even if Phalanx Leader starts small, the upside is high enough to be worth exploring. Limited: 3.5 Unless you’ve managed to draft a deck with almost no enablers, Phalanx Leader will be a glorious addition. With this in play, every trick becomes awesome, and even if you don’t have anything, your opponent will have to respect the fact that you will. I might even be tempted to side this in against removal-heavy decks when I’m light on tricks, just because of how much of a target it has on its back. Ray of Dissolution [draft]Ray of Dissolution[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 I hope it doesn’t come to this, especially given that this doesn’t deal with gods at all. I’m not sure why [card ray of revelation]Rays[/card] kill enchantments, but two makes a theme to me. Limited: 2.5 Playing up to two enchantment removal maindeck seems reasonable in this format, especially sealed. In most formats, this would be a strict sideboard card, but here I like playing it main and siding it out when appropriate. Scholar of Athreos [draft]Scholar of Athreos[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 [card]Civilized Scholar[/card] this is not, which I’m sure makes everyone disappointed. This is also not playable, but that’s less relevant. Limited: 1.5 Sometimes you need a Horned Turtle, though less in this format than most. The activated ability isn’t too relevant, though it can justify the Scholar in edge cases if you are BW. Setessan Battle Priest [draft]Setessan Battle Priest[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 What is exactly is so heroic about gaining 2 life? Limited: 1.0 I wouldn’t mind siding this in if you want a 1/3 for two, but the heroic payoff is low enough that it’s barely worth mentioning. Setessan Griffin [draft]Setessan Griffin[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 I’ve played bad cards, but if you settle for this, you are in real trouble. Limited: 2.5 In a GW deck, this is a very strong attacker. I’d hesitate to play it in a non-green deck, but sometimes a 3-power flier is still worth it, especially if you have some good auras. Silent Artisan [draft]Silent Artisan[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 At least Shuhei will be happy. It’s also funny that this is of a higher power level in this set because of the second white mana symbol, thanks to devotion. Limited: 1.5 Look, sometimes you need a [card]Thraben Purebloods[/card]. There’s no shame in that. Soldier of the Pantheon [draft]Soldier of the Pantheon[/draft] Constructed: 3.0 As Josh says, this card is insane. I might not be the biggest Boros fan, Tempered Steel days aside, but even I can respect how much power there is here. Even without the random lifegain bonus, Soldier of the Pantheon would be competitive in the all-time one-drop competition. I’d be surprised if any aggressive white deck didn’t come packing four, and you should choose your removal with that in mind. Every now and then you might catch multiple with Detention Sphere, but past that it’s hard to really get an advantage when dealing with Soldier of the Pantheon. I miss Augur of Bolas already. Limited: 2.5 Unfortunately for Soldier of the Pantheon, Limited is the wrong kind of war. There aren’t that many gold cards, and the Soldier is mostly just a Savannah Lions. That’s not terrible, but it’s not particularly exciting either. Spear of Heliod [draft]Spear of Heliod[/draft] Constructed: 2.5 I like Glorious Anthem, and Spear has multiple advantages over Anthem. It powers devotion, which is now a thing, and can punish the opponent for attacking. Unfortunately, not being able to double up is a real drawback, and will limit the number of spears in my quiver to three at max (and most likely two). Still, this is a strong addition to many of the aggressive white decks, and plays very nicely with many of the other cards in the set, such as Heliod himself. Limited: 4.5 Spear of Heliod is incredible in Limited. Not only is it Glorious Anthem, which is awesome to begin with, it makes it very hard for your opponent to attack. That makes it good when you have few creatures or a lot of creatures, which neatly encapsulates most games. It can be tough if you leave up Spear mana and the opponent destroys it before attacking, so be aware of that risk when planning your turn. Traveling Philosopher [draft]Traveling Philosopher[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 If a Grizzly Bears and a Philosopher fight in a forest and there is no one around to hear it, who wins? Limited: 1.5 If you need a bear, you need a bear. That’s not particularly deep, but it’s the truth. Vanquish the Foul [draft]Vanquish the Foul[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 Foul indeed. Limited: 3.0 You don’t always get to play [card terminate]Terminates[/card], and creatures always need killing. Even expensive and conditional kill can get the job done, and this at least hits all the creatures you will usually have problems with. Scry 1 is a nice bonus, but not a huge part of why this is good. Wingsteed Rider [draft]Wingsteed Rider[/draft] Constructed: 1.0 Three is the most contested spot in white’s curve right now, so unless you are set on winging it, I’d avoid this. Limited: 3.0 Wind Drake that helps devotion is nice, and you get to pick up enough stray +1/+1 counters that Wingsteed Rider is substantially better than Wind Drake. Yoked Ox [draft]Yoked Ox[/draft] Constructed: 2.0 After looking at the picture, I can verify that this is one totally yoked Ox. It’s surprisingly also in contention for Standard play, just because of how effective a blocker it is, and how little it costs. Limited: 1.5 I’d rather keep this in the sideboard so I can figure out what my opponent’s creatures look like, just because of how bad it can be if it’s mismatched. Against fliers and auras, it just does nothing. It is worth noting that the Ox can be a good target for your own auras, if need be. Top 5 White Commons 5. [card]Divine Verdict[/card] 4. [card]Hopeful Eidolon[/card] 3. [card]Wingsteed Rider[/card] 2. [card]Observant Alseid[/card] 1. [card]Gods Willing[/card] The ranking numbers were initially reversed, and have now been fixed. Sorry for the confusion – LSV The value of Gods Willing probably fluctuates the most on this list, just because it’s the card most dependent on the rest of your deck. If you have nothing worth protecting, you need to pick the other cards, but once you have a couple good threats, I like Gods Willing. White has a good mix of bestow cards, removal, and threats, making it a pretty well-rounded color. It doesn’t look particularly aggressive, though a heroic deck might have the best shot of getting there. Top 5 White Constructed Cards 5. [card]Heliod, God of the Sun[/card] 4. [card]Spear of Heliod[/card] 3. [card]Elspeth, Sun’s Champion[/card] 2. [card]Soldier of the Pantheon[/card] 1. [card]Chained to the Rocks[/card] The ranking numbers were initially reversed, and have now been fixed. Sorry for the confusion – LSV White has a ton of interesting cards to play with. Soldier of the Pantheon along with Heliod and his Spear all promote aggressive white decks, while Elspeth enables control more than anything else. Chained to the Rocks is a bit of an outlier, just because of how restrictive its demands are, but it is the most powerful of the white cards. Either way, white has a lot of potential decks, covering all parts of the control to aggro spectrum. Tomorrow, I release the Kraken! LSV |
FISC Says It Will Declassify Ruling That Forced Yahoo Into PRISM from the how-much-black-ink-will-they-use-up? dept The Government shall conduct a declassification review of this Court's Memorandum Opinion of April 25, 2008, and (2) the legal briefs submitted by the parties to this Court in this matter. After such review, the Court anticipates publishing that Memorandum Opinion in a form that redacts any properly classified information. Last month, we noted that, while it was known that a tech company had fought back against a surveillance effort by the government and lost, it hadn't yet been revealed who that company was. The NY Times then revealed that it was Yahoo! , and it involved whether or not Yahoo! would be involved in PRISM. Yahoo tried to fight it, lost, and had to comply -- but the details (of course) remained entirely sealed. It appears that's changing. Yahoo! has been asking the government if it can reveal more info, and eventually the government (at the very least) allowed Yahoo to admit that it was the party in the case. After that, Yahoo asked FISC if the ruling could be declassified, and the court has now told the government to review the ruling to figure out what can be declassified Of course, given the government's history of over-redacting, I fully expect a document with a ridiculous amount of black ink applied (invest now in black ink!). However, I do wonder if this is part of the various FISC judges realizing that there's been a fairly strong outcry against their secret court with a big rubber stamp Filed Under: declassify, doj, fisa, fisc, nsa, nsa surveillance, prism, surveillance Companies: yahoo |
The ban on hunting foxes and deer with packs of hounds is in danger of being undermined, according to opponents of blood sports, after the government signalled its willingness to amend the 2004 Hunting Act. In a little noticed parliamentary exchange last month, the rural affairs minister, George Eustice, confirmed that his department was considering relaxing restrictions on the number of dogs permitted to flush foxes towards guns. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), the RSPCA and other organisations fear any increase on the current limit of two will make enforcement of the ban on hunting mammals with hounds impossible. Since the hunting ban came into force in 2005, there have been more than 400 prosecutions involving hunt officials and poachers using dogs. Despite initial reservations, animal welfare groups who monitor hunt activities believe the legislation is effective in enforcing the ban. The Hunting Act permits a maximum of two dogs to flush a fox or other quarry towards someone who will shoot it. Animal welfare groups fear that if a whole pack of hounds is permitted to take part in such an exercise, while one person stands nearby holding a shotgun, it will be difficult to prevent a fox being torn apart and to prove subsequently it was intentional. On 13 February, Bill Wiggin, the Conservative MP for North Herefordshire, asked whether "it will be very popular with farmers when we amend legislation to allow more than two hounds to flush foxes to guns". Eustice replied: "The government have had representations from ... Welsh farmers about the problems of predation, and there has been a proposal that the legislation be amended to increase the number of dogs that can be used for flushing out. We are looking carefully at the issue, and we will let [MPs] know when we reach any conclusions." Lifting the restriction on the number of dogs would not require new legislation but could be altered through a statutory instrument that would, according to government sources, require votes in both houses of parliament. Concentrating on such a narrow aspect of the legislation might be a way of finessing the prime minister's promise that MPs will be given a free vote on hunting before the end of this parliament. The Tories' failure to obtain a majority at the last election and the arrival of a small number of Conservative MPs opposed to hunting has resulted in the vote being repeatedly delayed. Opponents of hunting claim that amending the clause now would play well in the flood-devastated shires and bolster support for the party ahead of the European elections in May. Robbie Marsland, the UK director of IFAW, which has been monitoring attempts to repeal the hunting ban, said: "Any attempts by the Conservatives to bring back hunting with dogs via an obscure amendment are merely to please a minority of his pro-hunt supporters and ignore the views of the vast majority of the UK public who rightly demanded this cruel activity be consigned to the history books. "Ministers appear to be using underhand methods to make the Hunting Act unenforceable rather than calling for an honest vote on repeal that he surely knows he would lose. The majority of MPs across parties support keeping a ban on the chasing and killing of foxes, hare and deer with dogs for fun. "If the cruelty of chasing and ripping apart sentient British mammals with packs of dogs for enjoyment is what ministers really want to reintroduce, they should be up-front about it and call for a vote on repeal – we are confident the UK public and the majority of MPs will rightly reject this abhorrent idea." David Bowles, the RSPCA's head of public affairs, said: "This is the first indication that the government are finessing their position which was going to be to allow MPs a free vote. They want the situation as in Scotland where there's no limit on the number of dogs. "This would be a wholesale amendment of the Hunting Act. It would drive a coach and horses through the ban. It's a more subtle approach than saying they are going for repealing the legislation." A spokesperson for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), said: "A number of Welsh farmers have brought this issue to our attention and we are looking at it." |
Nick Cruz Member Profile: Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Anaheim CA Posts: 490 Re: Update: CrossFit Games 2008 July 5-6 ....Did you plan differently? What extras have you done in addition to the WOD's? How has recovery been? Nutrition? Any time off? Hmmm, strategy.. To be honest my strategy right now is to get to the point where I can do nearly all the CF WOD's with Rxd weight's (practically there!). Even if I take longer than anyone else, I want to be able to do the hopper WOD this year without scaling. Last year I had to scale the push jerk's down quite a bit, and my pullups sucked. In fact even with the scaling I was not able to complete the 5 rounds in the alotted time! As far as extra training goes, for me, since this is the Crossfit Games I want to see what doing Crossfit only does for me. I have been and will only be doing the CF WOD as training for the games. One thing that I will be doing differently, though, will be taping my hands this year for the pullups! My avatar was a common site amongst even the most hard core CF'ers. (side note: I still have the skin that ripped off my hand that day. Its pinned above my monitor as motivation!). Nutrition wise I was Zoneing back then and I am still Zoneing this year, so that hasnt changed much. I do tend to be a little more liberal now with my eating though. As recently as this past November I had my weight down to 178 (on a 6-2 frame)!!! I felt that that was too light for my size and most of my progress seemed stagnant, especially with the weighted WOD's, so I started upping my block intake, upped my fat blocks and started drinking alot more whole milk. Im now back up to about 190ish and Im hitting PR's more consistently, and I can handle most of the heavy WOD's. My times arent impressive but I can at least make it through them without scaling the weight. Recovery has been ok. I took a couple weeks off last month when I went on vacation. Are you part of an Affiliate team? (should I have known this?) If so, what is the strategy there? I am part of an Affiliate (Crossfit Road Warriors) , though Im not sure if we are going to be competing for the cup this year (there are only two of us so far). So, I cant really comment on that part. And to really open this up: What would you see as an improvement over last year? What would you keep the same? Improvements? First off, I want you to know that I thought CF Games 1.0 was freaking awesome! I understand fully that it was the first one and that growing pains are to be expected. I feel blessed and honored that I can say that I was at the first ever Crossfit Games!! That being said, I do have an opinion on the whole matter, whatever it is worth. 1. Im very excited to see that the Affiliates in addition to "friends of Crossfit" will be able to have banners set up this year. The games could end up being a great opportunity for solo crossfitters to meet their local affiliate and hook up with other CFer's in their area. 2. In addition to affiliates display's I would love to see a Vendor's row, pavillion, what have you. Crossfit had some vendors that sponsored the event last year, but there was no representation at the games. I would have thought that Abmat, C2, the restaurant (cant remember the name, sorry), Pendlay, Dynamax, etc would have had booths set up where us CFers would have been able to touch, feel and purchase all the neat goodies. In fact, had C2 been there, I guarantee you I would have walked away from there with a new rower in tow! Dont make it too commercial, but some true friends of CF would be greatly appreciated. 3. Affilitate shirts and products. Have you seen all the threads with new affiliate shirt designs? Within 5 minutes there are 20 reply's with "Im buying one now" in the first sentence! 4. I did enjoy how the Total event ended up being run. Originally we were ALL supposed to go in front of judges and do a proper lift meet. I remember feeling utterly SICK during the explanation of the rules with Coach Rip. There was so much to remember and I was pretty darn sure I was going to screw SOMETHING up and get flagged! Due to time constraints, though, the powers that be switched it up a bit. The top 5 (I believe) went inside for the "official" judged lifting session while the rest of us stayed outside and did our Total competition there. I really liked that format (I was outside) a bunch. We all got judged and scored but there was some coaching and tips and tricks were shared amongst all. The energy and sense of camaraderie seemed higher outside, and I hope that they keep that format again this year. 5. I do really wish that spectators did not have to pay to watch. My wife, and possibly two friends will be joining me at the events this year and its kind of a bummer that they have to pay to watch. If I wanted to get someone into Crossfitting, what better place to do it than having them see whats its really all about! Not only that, but last year, I did pay for my wife but really, there was nothing stopping me from NOT paying. There was no one checking for tickets or whatever. I don't know if there was anyone who took advantage of this "lapse in security" but I felt a bit jipped that I paid and chances were that there were some there that didn't. I was really nervous last year because I knew that I was not anywhere close to being a true competitor with the likes of some of those beasts there. I am VERY glad that I pushed through my own insecurities though. I met really cool people who share the same passion for fitness that I do, I got to push myself further and harder than I thought possible, and as s bonus I got to take my picture with Coach Glassman, Nicole, Eva, and Coach Rip! Sorry about the long post, but you asked! Nick |
Hollywood-backed anti-piracy outfit BREIN has won a landmark case against XS Networks, the former hosting provider of torrent site SumoTorrent. The Court of The Hague ruled that the provider is responsible for damages copyright holders suffered through the torrent site's activities. The Dutch verdict has far-reaching implications for the liability of hosting providers for the conduct of their clients. For years Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has tried to find out who is behind the SumoTorrent website. After being initially hosted in the Netherlands, the site moved to Canada to escape BREIN’s jurisdiction, but it later returned as a client of hosting provider XS Networks. Having won cases against other torrent site hosters in the past, the anti-piracy group was quick to ask XS Networks to shut SumoTorrent down and hand over the personal details of its owner. XS Networks refused, however, and said it would only respond to a court order. The provider and SumoTorrent eventually agreed to voluntarily hand over some personal details, but not before the torrent site had moved to a new host in the Ukraine. To make matters worse for BREIN, the personal details on record at the hosting provider turned out to be false. So SumoTorrent “escaped” again. According to BREIN the Dutch hosting provider was to blame for this outcome, and in response went on to sue the company earlier this year in pursuit of damages. BREIN argued that XS Networks acted negligently when it refused to take the site down when asked to do so. Today the Court of The Hague handed down its verdict in which it sides with BREIN. The Court ruled that SumoTorrent is clearly facilitating copyright infringement and states that XS Networks should have taken the site offline when BREIN asked them to. “The unlawful characteristics of the (activities on) SumoTorrent were evident. Moreover they were obvious to XS Networks, or should have been obvious to XS Networks,” the verdict reads. By keeping the site online, the Court adds, the provider acted unlawfully against the interests of copyright holders represented by BREIN. Aside from thousands of euros in legal costs, the provider must now pay damages for the infringing content that was shared via SumoTorrent. How much XS Networks will have to pay is yet to be determined. The Court also ordered XS Networks to hand over all personal information they have on the operator of SumoTorrent or pay a penalty of 10,000 euros a day. The ruling is a crucial one concerning the liability of hosting providers for websites that are operated by their customers. According to the verdict groups representing copyright holders can demand websites be taken offline, and it’s then up to the provider to determine whether this request is legitimate. In other words, providers themselves have to determine whether a site is facilitating copyright infringement, as opposed to the court. With this ruling in hand BREIN can ask for the shutdown of any site they deem to be infringing, as well asking for the personal details of the site owner. Providers who refuse to cooperate will make themselves liable for damages caused by the website in question. A dangerous precedent, both from privacy and censorship perspectives. |
Want to land *paid* brand partnerships & press trips? Click here now to grab my FREE list of 31 must-join influencer networks for travel bloggers. Like most of those who find themselves regularly on the road, I’m obsessed with finding deals, discovering travel hacks and earning points. Over the years I’ve discovered a number of travel booking tips, secrets and tools that allow you to find cheap flights and great deals on accommodation. Flights 1. Book With Hidden City Ticketing On Skiplagged. Okay, so this is a controversial one. This site focuses on “hidden city ticketing,” which is essentially taking advantage of the fact airline ticket prices are driven more by the market than the distance traveled. You essentially book further than where you really want to go, but disembark the plane early, to save money. Say I wanted to go from NYC to Denver. A hidden city ticket might be NYC -> Denver -> Phoenix, but I would get off in Denver and skip the section heading to Phoenix, because to book it this way was cheaper than booking the more precise NYC -> Denver flight. Keep in mind, if you miss a leg of your trip than the rest of the journey — aka your return flight — then typically gets canceled, so book each leg as its own trip. 2. Use Google Flights As A One-Stop-Shop. There are so many benefits to using Google Flights to book cheap flights over other booking engines. Along with browsing flights by outbound/inbound times and number of stops, I love that you can see a map view of a region to compare prices (ie “flights to South America”), with the ability to filter by airline, flight duration and budget. A fare calendar is another helpful tool allowing you to see exactly what days in a given time frame are cheapest to fly, as is a Tip bar that takes your search and shows less expensive but similar options. Once you find a flight you like, book it or save the itinerary to allow Google to monitor for price drops. Best of all, even though you’re on an aggregator platform it sends you to the airline’s website to book direct, meaning you won’t miss out on your frequent flyer miles and points. Psst! Don’t forget to pin this post for later! 3. Use The fare calendar on fly.com. Typically when I’m about to book a flight I head over to fly.com to check their fare calendars. Like Google Flights, you can enter your route and approximate date to see exactly which dates are the best to fly for the best price. As I don’t like booking through online travel agents (OTAs) — due to the fact you almost always lose out on miles and points, not to mention if there’s an issue with your itinerary the airline is a lot less likely to help you or give you free upgrades and perks — I will then check which airline is offering the fare I want and head directly to their site to see if it’s the same. Keep in mind, if an OTA is offering a cheaper fare, whether for airlines or hotels, the airline or hotel will often price match (and potentially give you additional perks on top of it). 4. Set Up Fare Alerts On Airfarewatchdog. Do yourself a favor and head to Airfarewatchdog right now to sign up for their newsletter and flight alerts. If there’s a route you fly frequently or are looking to fly in the future you can sign up for fare alerts for that specific route (instead of getting general fare deals and hoping yours will be in there). I love the personalization of their offerings, as well as the advice given on their blog. I also follow on Twitter (@airfarewatchdog) to get real-time flight deal notifications and have the free app to have access to the great features right on my phone. 5. Use AirHelp To Get Reimbursed For Flight Delays. Okay, so this hack is less focused on the actual booking, but is still part of the pre-trip experience. While rules vary by country, you can often be compensated for flight delays — a fact many fliers are unaware of. So how can you collect? My favorite tool is AirHelp, which does the work to get you compensated for your discomfort. If they get you money they keep 25% of the claim reimbursement; if they don’t get you money, you owe them nothing. 6. Know When To Book Using Hopper. What sets this website and app apart from other flight booking platforms is its attention to industry data and use of predictive pricing, telling you exactly when to book to get amazing deals. Search filters allow you to set a budget, number of stops and deals ranging from “Great–only the lowest fares” to “All–even overpriced.” Their “Ways to Save” tab gives insight into what a great deal for your route looks like, travel date comparisons and when to book. 7. Enjoy Price Alerts & Flexible Deals With Skyscanner. Along with fare alerts, the main reason I absolutely love Skyscanner is the option to enter your dates and location of origin and enter “Everywhere” as the destination. From there, you’ll be shown a list in descending order of where to fly on a budget and about how much it will cost. If you’re the adventurous traveler type it’s a great way to throw some spontaneity into your trip planning. 8. Explore & Save In A Quirky Way With Hitlist. Hitlist offers a fun way to plan a trip, as you can search fun rotating categories for inspiration like SantaCon San Francisco, Weekend Getaways, Holiday Ski Weekend and Best of the Rest (best deals to unexpected places). See a trip you like and save it to your “Hitlist” (aka wish list) to be notified of when “good,” “great” and “spectacular” deals for these places can be booked. 9. Know When To Book Your Flight. According to Vice President and General Manager of fly.com, Warren Chang, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are typically the best days to search for flights because this is when airlines often release their sale fares. Moreover, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays are normally the cheapest days to fly. Often flying on the actual holiday, rather than the day before or after, can lead to better prices and smaller crowds in the airport. Katelyn O’Shaughnessy, CEO and founder of TripScope, also added in a Yahoo! Travel article that specifically Tuesdays after 3pm six weeks out is the “magic hour” when you’ll score the best deals for both flights and hotels. Moreover, booking after midnight means a large inventory with great rates. Hotels 10. Switch Travel Dates To Avoid Cancellation Fees. Another great tip by O’Shaughnessy from the same article suggests that, if you’re past the penalty-free hotel cancellation booking window, change the date for the future. Then, call back to speak with a new person, and cancel. This tactic doesn’t always work, but it doesn’t hurt to try. 11. Get The Lowest Rate & Get Free Upgrades With Tingo. Tingo, owned by TripAdvisor, is one of a few tools that re-book a confirmed, non-refundable hotel reservation for you as prices drop. You’ll have to browse their inventory for hotels so there aren’t unlimited options; however, there is a more than decent selection. One awesome feature of Tingo is free room upgrades, where they let you know when a room in a higher category becomes available for the same-or-lower price point of your current lower category room. 12. Get The Lowest Rate & Earn Rewards With DreamCheaper. Similar to Tingo in that it re-books your room to get the lowest rate, I like this platform because you can book your hotel on any website — meaning you can book direct with a hotel for added benefits like rewards points and a better chance at free upgrades and perks — and simply forward your booking confirmation to [email protected] to have the process begin. According to the startup they save travelers up to 60% on their bookings. 13. Get The Lowest Rate On Numerous Hotels With TripRebel. Like the two platforms above TripRebel re-books your hotel room until you have the lowest possible price using their own set network of hotels (the same as Tingo as they use the Expedia Affiliate Network to curate; again, not unlimited but great selection). The cool thing here is the ability to favorite hotels of interest to get notified of price drops at an array of properties — not just the one you booked — to get re-booked at any of them for the cheapest rate. 14. Use Your Social Media Skills For Discounts With Hotelied. This platform lets travelers connect their social media profiles to receive personalized discounts — also based on how long you typically stay in hotels, your professional connections and hotel rewards programs — of up to 50% off. Note that the site tends to list more upscale properties, so even with a discount it may not be cheap. Hey, it never hurts to check, especially if you’re a luxury traveler. 15. Bid On Hotel Rooms With Priceline. If you’re okay not knowing exactly where you’ll be staying when you book, hotel bidding sites like Priceline can be great for scoring a really, really good deal. Don’t worry too much about the mystery side of things, as the important factors — the star rating and the location — are disclosed before you hand over your credit cards digits. 16. Download HotelTonight For Last-Minute Deals. Last-minute hotel booking apps like HotelTonight can save you a bundle if you’re flexible. They basically take unsold hotels up to a week out and offer them at a discounted rate. The closer to the stay date the better deals you’ll find. I love using HotelTonight while traveling and simply clicking my location and seeing a real-time map of what’s nearby with prices. Bonus Discount: Use my referral code “JFESTA4” when using HotelTonight and save $25! 17. Book With Aggregators With Loyalty Programs. Not everyone is loyal to one hotel brand, which is why aggregator sites like hotels.com and Expedia have huge inventories and give you points for booking with them. Hotels.com gives you a free night after booking 10 nights, while Expedia has Travel with Points, a free membership program where you earn points to potentially bring your booking down to $0. 18. Review Your Hotel On HotelConfidential.com. If you have a few minutes to spare, HotelConfidential.com gives $25 to travelers who create four 45-second videos showing the property in its true state. You can search here for hotel inventory or confirm the property is eligible by emailing [email protected] 19. Leave A Note On Your Reservation Form. You know that box on your reservation form asking if you have additional notes that you typically skip over to click book? Next time, write something. If you’re looking for a room with a view or something special, ask for it. Often you’ll get these perks at no extra charge, or you can say something like “If it’s available when we check in I’d love a room with a beach view” or, if you feel awkward about outright asking for free perks, “Is there a way to get free Wi-Fi if I share something about the hotel on Twitter?” This is also another instance where it pays to book direct. If a hotel sees you’ve booked directly with them rather than through an OTA/third party they’ll be much more likely to offer a free upgrade or amenity, whether you ask in the reservation form or at check in. 20. Become An Instagram Elite. In 2016 we’ll see a lot more hotels offering free Wi-Fi, if for nothing else than the free publicity it garners with selfie-obsessed, hashtag-loving Millennials who will likely take photos around the property and then share them on social media. Many hotels even offer rewards points, perks and free stays to Instagram sharers, especially those with a big following. For instance, you can earn Kimpton Karma points for sharing, while the 1888 Hotel in Sydney offers free stays to those with over 10,000 followers. These are just a few of numerous hotels taking part in this sort of initiative. 21. Score Airline Miles With Hotel Reservations Via Rocketmiles. Who doesn’t love earning free airline points on top of their hotel stay. Travelers can browse Rocketmiles’ selection of properties and see in the listing not only the hotel ratings, photos and information, but up to 5,000 miles per night (or more if there’s a special promotion; I’ve even seen enough for a free one-way domestic flight) through frequent flyer programs (and OpenTable) like JetBlue True Blue, HawaiianMiles, Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, Southwest Rapid Rewards, Virgin America Elevate and more. Bonus Discount: Use this link and receive 1,000 bonus miles on your next booking. 22. Become A Jetsetter Member. Jetsetter is free to join, and once you’re a member you’ll have access to hand-curated properties, often on the luxurious side, and daily deals averaging 20-30% off, though some are lower and higher, too. If you allow Jetsetter to connect with Facebook it will also personalize recommendations for you, although when you sign up it also asks you your travel preferences for this, as well. 23. Tell The Hotel About Special Occasions. Having a birthday? An anniversary? A honeymoon? Let the hotel know beforehand, as they’ll often throw in some free perks to help you celebrate and up their customer satisfaction rating. Both 24. Get In A Business Travel Mindset On Weekends. While business travel is often thought of as being more expensive than those of us slumming it in economy and staying in hostels, weekends often mean cheaper rates on business class flight tickets and business hotels, or hotels in a city’s financial district. Do some research. I’ve actually used flight aggregators to compare air tickets (I like fly.com for this) and have seen business class tickets on one airline cheaper than economy tickets for the same route and weekend dates on another. 25. Get Re-Booked For Budget Deals With Yapta. Like Tingo, DreamCheaper and TripRebel this platform re-books your hotel room as the price dips…as well as your flights, and you’ll get an alert and a voucher for the difference. The other difference is it’s an actual travel agent doing the re-booking. It’s aimed at the everyday traveler as well as corporate travelers, with a tab for companies to make use of the site through. Keep in mind, airlines particularly have their own rules for issuing refunds. For example, while JetBlue offers travel credits that expire within one year, Hawaiian Airlines offers actual refunds. 26. Have Fun & Save Money With Hipmunk. Let me tell you a sad tale that will make it clear why I will now always check this app. During the holiday season, I wanted to visit a friend in Denver. I did a ton of research and used all of my usual hacks, but to no avail could I find anything under $460, on Delta, for the dates I needed. So I booked the overpriced ticket and silently vowed not to eat for the next month to make the money back. Then, a few days later, I was reviewing Hipmunk and saw almost the same flight on United for $260. (*@#($*@#()*$!!!!!!!! :***( That’s the keyboard version of how I felt, especially since Delta wouldn’t refund my ticket without a $200 change fee (which I feel they should have waived as I’m a frequent flyer with them and have their credit card, but that’s another story entirely). Not only does Hipmunk have a great inventory, but it’s a really fun app that picks destinations for you based on interest (like Beach, Ski or Romantic), intuitively guesses your starting location, and allows you book hotels and flights based on filters like “Ecstasy” and “Agony” for the least pain-in-the-butt experiences. They also offer fare alerts, allow you to lock in airfares without booking for up to a week (for a small fee) and let you know what dates near to the ones you search are cheapest. 27. Join The Loyalty Program (And Actually Become Loyal). This is probably the easiest thing you can start doing today if you haven’t already. Do you have an airline you frequently fly or a go-to hotel brand? Join their free rewards program. There is literally not a single reason not to do this. It’s like not taking free money, as you earn extra points for hotels you’re already staying in and flights you’re already taking. Before I even had the Delta credit card I was a SkyMiles member, and have flown first class for free based on frequent flier status and have enjoyed numerous free flights. Moreover, I joined Kimpton Karma and even on the bottom tier — aka just for joining before you spend any money — you get free Wi-Fi, a $10 minibar credit, a birthday offer, dining deals and the chance to earn free nights. You also earn points for taking part in fun on-property initiatives like their free wine hour and bike rentals. A bit unrelated, but for food I’m a fan of booking through OpenTable. Even if it’s a restaurant I know I don’t need a reservation for I’ll make one on OpenTable for the points. These are just a few examples of thousands, maybe millions, of free programs that help you travel for free. Better yet… 28. …Get A Co-Branded Credit Card. If you want to really maximize those points get the co-branded card for the brands you frequent. While there’s typically an annual fee it’s often waived the first year, and the perks and points outweigh the cost of the fee (though do the math to make sure it’s worth it for you). There’s also often sign up bonuses, which can be worth up to a week in accommodation or even a free flight if it’s big enough. Shop around and see where your awards will be maximized. 29. Get A Credit Card That Lets You Transfer Points. A universal travel credit card that lets you transfer points to hotels and flights is great for flexibility. A few to check out: Chase Sapphire Reserve Card (here’s the credit card review; this is my personal favorite), Citi ThankYou® Premier and Amex EveryDaySM. There are also co-branded cards that do this well, like the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express, which allows travelers to use points at hotels in 100+ countries and with 30+ partner airlines. Moreover, transferring 20,000 Starpoints to parter airlines gives you a 25% bonus. 30. Download Flash Sale Apps Like Groupon And LivingSocial. When a business hosts a deal on Groupon and LivingSocial they’re typically coaxed to offer a discount of 50%+. If you check under their getaway tabs you’ll find hotel deals and often uber discounted package travel deals that include flights. Just make sure to read the fine print before booking for blackout dates and other stipulations. 31. Know About Best Rate Guarantee. If you’re like me and like to book direct, but sometimes see cheaper prices listed on OTAs, it’s helpful to know about airline and hotel Best Rate Guarantee policies. Especially with hotels, they’ll often not only match the price listed on the OTA to get you to book direct, but may provide further discounts and perks. For example, while Best Western matches the lower rate and provides a $100 Best Western gift card, Hyatt discounts the rate by 20% extra off. 32. Browse Like A Foreigner. While I’ve never tried this trick myself, I have plenty of travel friends who have, and have scored great deals. Try browsing under a different country page and currency and compare to what pops up when you search under your own home and currency, taking conversion rates into consideration. Also make sure if you do end up booking in another currency you use a credit card that doesn’t charge fees for this (for instance, I use the Capital One Venture Card). 33. Avoid Traveling During The Tourist Season. This may be obvious, but it’s worth reminding everyone of the benefits of booking flights and hotels during shoulder or off season to save money. Just because a place isn’t crawling with tourists during certain months doesn’t mean it isn’t worth going to. Do some research into what makes it off-season (and make sure the attractions and experiences of interest are open) and see if it’s worth it. You’ll likely end up loving the fact you’ve escaped the crowds and can have a more individual, personal trip. 34. Become A AAA Member. Not only is AAA amazing for car owners — run into any issue on the road and that paid membership will be well worth every penny — but you’ll notice when you book a flight or hotel there’s often a box to enter your AAA membership ID. Travelers typically save 5-10% on travel with this. 35. Delete Your Browser Cookies Or Switch Browsers. There’s a big debate in the travel community over whether doing this can actually save you money by showing you better prices. Why this is thought to work is that the cookies see how much you search a route — aka how in demand it is and how badly you want it — therefore increasing the price. Whether you believe it or not, it doesn’t hurt to try. Just ask Johnny Jet, who saved almost $200 by switching from Safari to Internet Explorer. And to really reap the benefits of the above tips, check out this guide by Wanderinglustingk on maximizing your vacation days off! Enjoyed this post? Pin it for later! Recommended: 6 Must-Have Apps For Planning Your Next Trip [Blog Inspiration] Stylish Give Meets Voyage Travel Wallet [Travel Fashion] The Best American Travel Writing 2015 by Andrew McCarthy [Travel Reads] |
Soon after George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin more than two years ago, George's loyal family learned that sharing his name meant sharing the blame. It also meant a surreal new life filled with constant paranoia, get- rich-quick schemes, and lots and lots of guns. Amanda Robb meets the Zimmerman family and finds out what it's like being related to the most hated free man in America Until his little brother, George, shot and killed an unarmed black teenager on the sidewalk of a Florida gated community more than two years ago, Robert Zimmerman Jr. was "the family fuckup." He used the phrase with me a lot, but the first time was in October 2012, at a dark back table at the Algonquin Hotel’s Blue Bar in Manhattan, six months after what all the Zimmermans call "the incident." He was downing a double gin and soda, and he was wearing a Hugo Boss suit, "diamond" earrings from Kohl’s, and the remnants of airbrush concealer from a quick appearance on Fox News’s Geraldo at Large. He went on to name all the ways he was a lousy namesake for his father, Bob, a former Army sergeant, and a disappointing son for his mother, Gladys, a fierce, devoutly Catholic first-generation immigrant from Peru. "Unemployed. College dropout. With a DWI and a boyfriend," he said, listing his sins. (The boyfriend was a big problem for Gladys, somewhat less so for Bob.) But then, overnight, George had become "the Wreck-It Ralph of America," and Robert—articulate, sweet-natured, maybe in over his head—was thrust into the role of family savior. "You know what that means?" he said, ordering a second gin and soda. "Zimmerman in charge of rebranding." So Robert got to work, defending his brother in the media dozens of times over the next year. The circumstances may have been grim, but the small doses of celebrity could be fun. He had both Greta Van Susteren and Sean Hannity in his phone contacts. He braved HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, appearing on the show shortly before the first anniversary of the night that George shot Trayvon Martin. Unlike with the news channels, he got paid this time: $800. It was the only income Robert earned that whole year. He had a great time doing the show and an even better one afterward over drinks with fellow guest Donna Brazile, an African-American political operative who managed Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign. "I miss black people!" he told her. After George was found not guilty of second-degree murder in July 2013, Robert began thinking about how to accelerate the Zimmerman rebranding project. There had to be a way to capitalize on George’s notoriety. A family business, maybe. He and his mother had an idea: George could be the frontman for a home-security company called Z Security Products. "They all start with Z," Robert explained, walking me through an imagined product line. "There’s the Z Bar, the Z Rock, and the Z Beam. They’re all targeted to women. One is to secure sliding doors. One is to put in the front door. The light is to carry and is designed by George. It has a little alarm—you know, Help me, help me!" Robert’s ultimate goal was to turn George into a reality-TV star. His models were John Walsh, who began hosting America’s Most Wanted after his 6-year-old son was abducted and killed, and the Kardashians, whose fame was launched by Kim’s leaked sex tape. "I learn a lot from watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians," Robert told me. "Like, use the shit you’ve got." One idea was for George to be the focus of a Candid Camera-style program. One episode, for example, might feature a professor teaching a class about self-defense, and at the end of the episode it would be revealed—surprise!—that George was one of the students. Robert knew none of it could happen, though, until George fid his image, which meant going on TV —"and talking to George about media is like talking to the Pope about gay sex." George hated journalists. He blamed them for turning him into a national villain. There was only one media figure he liked: Hannity. Fortunately, Hannity—and especially Hannity’s viewers on Fox News—liked him back. George, whose legal debt was in the seven figures, briefly had a website that accepted PayPal donations, and it lit up every time Hannity mentioned the incident on-air. Still, George had said no to Hannity before. No media, no matter who it was—that was his rule. But by early 2014, George was nearing the end of his rope. Ever since he and his wife, Shellie, had an ugly split the previous summer, he’d been effectively homeless, couch surfing around the country. TV networks were offering to put him up in four-star hotels, and he was desperate to use the bathroom in peace. Robert was pushing him hard to reconsider Hannity. This time, George said yes. Immediately, though, there were problems. First, Fox News expected the brothers to fly to New York. That would require George to show his ID at the airport, possibly to a black person. No way, Robert said. Even worse, the network wanted them to fly on February 26, the second anniversary of the incident. Robert tried explaining to a Hannity producer why that couldn’t work: "It is like 9/11 for my family! We can’t travel together that day—it’s like having the whole royal family travel together!" Robert had a better, safer plan: He wanted Fox News to pay for the brothers, plus a full security detail, to drive the 1,100 miles from central Florida. About halfway, they’d need three hotel rooms—one for Robert, one for George, one for the security team—at a place with room service so that George wouldn’t have to be out in public. Fox News said no. Rebranding the Zimmermans would have to wait. It was Grace, the little sister, who first grasped how all their lives were about to change. "We need to get guns!" she screamed when she saw the first news report pop up on her phone. The brief story didn’t even have George’s name—the shooter was still publicly unidentified—but that was no comfort. It was only a matter of time. The Zimmermans already owned a lot of guns—at least ten altogether, between Grace and her fiancé, her two brothers, and her parents. Still, Grace bought herself a new Taurus pistol. The Zimmerman Family Tree More than two years have passed since George shot and killed Trayvon Martin, but his immediate family members (plus the brief girlfriend) still live like it was yesterday. They had good reason to believe they might be in danger. Soon after Reuters published George’s name on March 7, 2012, the New Black Panthers put out a $10,000 bounty for his "citizen’s arrest." #Justice4Trayvon became a popular hashtag, and violent threats came in a flood. "All I can and will say I pray to God that your son geroge [sic] and Robert both choke on a sick dick and the mother and father both choke off a dick," someone posted on Bob and Gladys’s website. "[I]t’s not over we will have the last lol." The family decided they could no longer stay put. George and Shellie holed up with a friend who was a federal air marshal, so they were reasonably safe. But for years, George’s name had been on the deed to the house where his parents lived. Someone would find them. Bob worried about the large window that faced the street at the front of the house. "That’s my mother-in-law’s room," he said. Gladys’s mother: 87 years old, Alzheimer’s-afflicted. "I could just see somebody shooting into the bedroom or throwing a Molotov cocktail or something." Robert, who bears a strong resemblance to George, was seen as particularly vulnerable. At the time of the shooting, he was living in suburban Washington, D.C., and in March, shortly after his thirty-first birthday, he got a call from a special agent at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, who told him, Robert recalls, that "credible yet nonspecific" intelligence had identified him as a "target": "Anyone who wants to harm him will make no distinction between you because of the physical similarity. You need to go, and you need to go now." He left, joining the family on the run in Florida. At one point, the Zimmermans booked a room at a cheap hotel in Maitland, Florida. But just forty-eight hours later, while her parents were out, Grace heard on the radio that the New Black Panthers were searching for George in that exact suburb. She panicked, waiting in the hotel parking lot for her parents to return, and as soon as they pulled up, she screamed the news: "Don’t even go in!" They drove to a Chick-fil-A to figure out their next move. George still hadn’t been charged with a crime, and he was sick of waiting until it was dark outside to walk his dogs. So in early April, the couple snuck out of Florida to a scrubland trailer on a remote island off the coast of Maryland. The rest of the family, meanwhile, hid out in one Orlando-area hotel after another, moving every few days to avoid being seen by the same people. Money was getting tight—their only income was Bob’s and Gladys’s modest public-service pensions—so they often booked just one room for five adults. They paid in cash to avoid using credit cards. They used false names. They tore up their garbage and threw it into random Dumpsters. They usually declined housekeeping; maids, they told me, could be spies or thieves. But even then, at the height of the public frenzy, there were peculiar lapses in their vigilance. For a while, the Zimmermans stayed at a Marriott in Sanford, Florida, that was filled with reporters, yet they rarely passed up the complimentary breakfast. "We were probably the only people there that were not media people," Bob says. "There were three CNN trucks in the parking lot and this big satellite. I’d have coffee and drink some orange juice with Gladys, and everybody’s talking about us." Amazingly, they were never recognized. The hotel-hopping went on for nearly two months, until Bob found a 1,200-square-foot two-bedroom house for rent on Craigslist in a nearby subdivision where most of the homes had been lost to foreclosure. In other words: cheap and very few neighbors. There, the family formalized new security protocols. They watched the movie Argo to learn how to live like CIA. Code names for everyone. No mail delivered to the house. No visitors. No talking to the few neighbors they had. No long phone conversations—keep it short and vague to outwit surveillance. Never discuss your whereabouts via phone or text. Keep a weapon close by at all times. Robert slept with his gun. Still does. And in case someone—or multiple someones—decided to mount an attack on the house, the Zimmermans pre-packed their own "go-bags" filled with everything they would need to flee in a rush, as well as what they called "footballs"—like the one President Obama has with the nuclear codes—that contained laptops, cell phones, and other essential electronics. They also memorized a color-coded threat-ID system. Code blue: Law enforcement at the door. Code brown: Draw your weapons. Code black: Come out guns blazing. Two years later, #Justice4Trayvon is down to about three tweets a day, but the Zimmermans nonetheless say they expect to be in fear for the rest of their lives. They’re still in that house Bob found on Craigslist, but no one outside the immediate family knows where it is, not even close relatives. Two of Gladys’s brothers, an insurance salesman and a retired deputy sheriff, live in the Orlando area. "We certainly trust both of these individuals," Bob wrote to me in an e-mail this spring. "However, we have never informed either where we live. The potential risks are simply too great." At the time of that e-mail exchange, the family were considering letting me visit their safe house to witness how they live now. They were eager for the world to see them as they see themselves: ignored, unmourned victims. Collateral damage of an incident for which—to be clear—they still do not consider George responsible. We even got so far as to negotiate terms of my visit in order to preserve their security. I would have to wear a hood while they drove me from my hotel to their house, and I would have to leave my cell phone behind. Grace, in particular, was alarmed about my phone’s GPS capabilities, which I could use to pinpoint their location. I agreed to all of their conditions—I did tell them that I thought the hood seemed a little Abu Ghraib-y, so we compromised on a blindfold. Ultimately, though, none of it mattered. Robert, who is always the one pushing the family to step out of the shadows for the right promotional opportunity, wanted me to come. He worked hard to persuade his parents. But after a few days of deliberating, they gave me their answer. "I understand you may consider us uncooperative or somewhat paranoid," Bob wrote. "However, we live with a situation that can not easily be imagined. We have known the results when various individuals have realized one of us is a Zimmerman." "We have known the results." It’s not clear to me what he’s referring to. The New Black Panthers? They never came knocking. The Internet threats? Just empty words, lobbed from a distance. That time a Publix employee recognized George and refused to make him a sandwich? The time Robert was almost beaten up in a Starbucks? Nothing actually happened, so it’s hard to know if the threat was real or imagined. This much is certain: The Zimmermans rarely venture out of that small house in central Florida. They are isolated and bored. They pass the time caring for Gladys’s mom and watching Spanish-language telenovelas and Duck Dynasty and Real Housewives and Fox News. George, unbelievably, seems to be back in neighborhood-watchman mode; this summer the police found him sitting in his truck outside a friend’s motorcycle shop in the middle of the night. For a few concentrated months, the Zimmermans were a twenty-four-seven cable-news fascination, which can be intoxicating and terrifying all at once. But that’s over now. The country has mostly moved on, to Ferguson, to Michael Brown, to the next shooting death of a teenage kid, the next Trayvon Martin, the next George Zimmerman. Maybe George’s relatives are right about the risk to their lives—maybe it still exists as much as it ever did. Or maybe it’s just a way for the Zimmermans to feel as if they still matter. Maybe their paranoia, and all the rules and routines that it requires, just gives them something to do. Eventually, Bob and Gladys agree to meet me in person at the Westin in Lake Mary, Florida, which I’m told is not too far from their secret home. We meet for dinner, and before they scoot into the booth, they both check over the seatbacks to make sure no one is eavesdropping. Gladys is darker-skinned than she appeared on TV during the trial, beautiful and indigenously featured. She wears a little white cardigan over her shoulders, like a country-club matron, but in conversation she is fierce and brassy and speaks heavily accented English. It infuriates her that George is often described as a white man, which she considers an affront to her Peruvian heritage. She can be startlingly callous about Trayvon Martin’s family, about the help they’ve received, financial and otherwise, which she feels her family has been unfairly denied. It often seems as if she believes the Zimmermans have suffered equally, as if they have lost a son as well. Bob is more sorrowful, more measured, but just as tin-eared regarding the Martins, albeit more benevolently. Shortly after the incident, he heard that Trayvon was chronically truant in high school. "So I thought, well, maybe at some point we can get with his parents," he told me, "and have some kind of thing where we reward kids that improve their attendance." One of Bob’s sayings is an old military line: "Stop bleeding, keep marching." It’s the story of his life. His singular goal was not to be like his own father, a vicious drunk who used to beat him ruthlessly. By age 14, Bob was a ward of the state of California; he spent the next decade incarcerated or homeless. He turned his life around by joining the Army. He got his college degree at 50 and had a long military career that ended at the Pentagon. Because of his job, he always owned a gun, but he taught all his kids to stay away from firearms. "If we ever touched or handled a gun," Robert told me at one point, "Dad was gonna beat the shit out of us. Period. He made it absolutely clear, like bare bottoms, you’re gonna get the shit beaten out of you. He was always saying, ’Guns will get you into more trouble than they will ever get you out of.’ " But now, sitting across from me, picking at a burger and sipping iced tea, Bob talks as if the cycle of violence has become an inescapable fact of life. His face is a ringer for Bryan Cranston’s on Breaking Bad—the early seasons, when Walter White has the defeated look of a man kicked in the teeth by life. "I am sure there are people, you know, some young kid that has nothing going for him, but he’s able to get a pistol, wants to make a name for himself. ’Maybe I’ll kill one of the Zimmermans. Maybe George, maybe one of his family members. I’ll be famous.’ You know? That happens," he says. "And that’s what worries me." George has arranged for Gladys and Robert to take a concealed-weapons-certification class the next evening. (George already has a permit; Bob refuses to say if he has one.) It’s a three-hour course, required in order to carry a weapon in Florida. The class is held at an Orlando gun store called the Arms Room, where George did a meet-and-greet back in March. Gladys invites me to come along with her and Robert. Almost immediately, things get weird. The class’s instructor, a police officer in Belle Isle, repeatedly recommends "accessorizing your gun," which he illustrates by lisping and wagging his wrist like a stereotypical "queen." The instructor keeps up the act until he finds out I live in New York City. Then he veers into Colonel Klink from the 1960s TV series Hogan’s Heroes. "Welcome to Germany," he says. "Everyone on the train!" We don’t actually learn to fire our weapons in this concealed-weapons class, so eventually I tell the instructor, "I have no idea how to load, aim, or shoot a gun." He recommends I get a .38. "It’s a good baby gun," he says. "Yes!" Gladys exclaims. "Personally, I love my .45!" Then she does this kind of Angie Dickinson draw-and-aim move from the TV show Police Woman. Ever since the shooting, George has been like a bogeyman in the lives of the other Zimmermans—always in their thoughts, but mostly a spectral presence, rarely seen. The unraveling of his six-year marriage to Shellie, just weeks after the verdict, took them all by surprise. They found out from the media. After Shellie asked for a divorce, she and George got into such a huge fight that she called 911 to report that George had punched her father in the nose, smashed her iPad, and threatened them both with a gun. Eight police units, some with tactical gear and ballistic shields, took George into custody. (Shellie never pressed charges.) Another surprise: George almost immediately took up with a new girl, a busty blonde former neighbor named Samantha Scheibe. But just ten weeks after Shellie called 911 on George, another domestic spat led Samantha to do the same. (The charges were eventually dropped.) Robert told me often that he believes George is suffering from PTSD. On the rare occasions when they talk, George often loses the thread of the conversation. He has also developed a very short fuse, especially when he thinks someone is trying to tell him what to do. "What is your point?" he’ll say. "Tell me the point! In two words: What is the point?" When you try to answer, he cuts you off and yells it again. Money woes are only adding to the strain on the family. The Zimmermans are broke and deeply in debt. George owes his attorneys $2.5 million. Bob and Gladys spent $6,900 on hotel rooms, $7,700 on living expenses, and more than $20,000 so far to rent their secret-location house. They are still paying the mortgage, even a lawn guy, on the home they’ve left empty. A pair of lawsuits—one against NBC for selectively editing the tape of George’s 911 call after the shooting, one against actress Roseanne Barr for tweeting the address of Bob’s house—have gone nowhere. For most of the past two years, all three of the family’s adult children were unemployed. George still is. Bob understands George’s reluctance to look for a job. "When your name, Social Security number, and everything is out on the Internet, it’s hard to do anything," he says. "So he may never be able to work. He may never be able to get Social Security. He may never get Medicare. If he buys a house, then people can go on the Internet and find out exactly where he lives." He was tougher on Robert, who he thought should just get a job as a busboy. After all, he would remind Robert, he spoke Spanish. Robert was trying to find work; it just wasn’t going very well. He applied for jobs as a prep chef, an emergency dispatcher, and a disability-benefits evaluator, but he didn’t get any of them. Late this past summer, he finally found work as a deliveryman. George has had some chances to cash in on his notoriety, but they’ve all fallen through somehow. A couple of "get beaten up for money" opportunities, in which George would get pummeled by some famous black guy for a pay-per-view audience—the first time, it was supposed to be DMX—never got off the ground. On a lark, he gave painting a try, and the first canvas he ever put up for sale, a blue-toned American flag, scored $100,099.99 on eBay. His second painting, though—a portrait of the prosecutor in the Martin case, Angela Corey, that he might have copied from an Associated Press photograph—earned him a cease-and-desist letter. That seems to have soured him on his budding art career. He and Robert have talked about possible subjects for his next painting—Robert proposed killer whales; George suggested Anne Frank, because, according to Robert, he identifies with her—but he hasn’t gotten around to it yet. Ever since Robert appeared on Bill Maher’s show, George has had an open invitation to take a turn himself. But he was afraid of Maher. An adviser suggested Univision instead. The boys had grown up watching the Spanish-language network with their mother and grandmother. It wouldn’t pay, but George could seem multicultural by doing a TV appearance in Spanish. Maybe it would open some doors. George said okay. It was his first interview since his trial. Univision put up George, Gladys, and Robert in Miami and provided constant security. Still, Robert prepped for the trip by studying videos of the assassination attempt on President Reagan."[George] is the liability," he said, walking me through what he’d gleaned. "[I am] the eyes, you know, the Secret Service guy to see if someone is on a balcony taking a picture. Where are these people’s hands? Why are they coming here? What’s wrapped up in that towel? Can I see your hands?" Throughout their stay in Miami, Robert carried a backpack filled with handguns, which he called "the babies." "You never say, ’Get a gun,’ " he said, explaining the nomenclature. "That alerts bad guys. You say, ’Get the baby!’ " The Univision appearance went smoothly enough—no gotcha questions, no need for a baby—so, emboldened, George agreed to another media stop, this time on CNN. It would tape at the Ritz-Carlton in Miami. The network agreed to pay for two hotel rooms for three nights and, according to Robert, "everything" they wanted during their stay. (For this article, George refused to speak with me on the record unless GQ provided a similar hotel room—he asked for a week’s stay—but the magazine declined.) The Zimmermans seized on their brief stint of subsidized luxury. They ran up a big room-service bill, cleaned out the minibars, got their clothes laundered, made several trips to the spa, treated a party of ten to dinner at the hotel restaurant, and bought swag—from bracelets to bath fizzies—at the gift shop. Toward the end of their stay, according to Robert, a manager presented him with a bill for $3,600. He says he called CNN, outraged, only to have the producer accuse them of splurging shamelessly on CNN’s dime. "You and your brother are evil!" he remembers her screaming. The hotel manager threatened to call the police. Alone in his room, Robert started shaking. He wrapped all the blankets around him, ordered shrimp, chain-smoked cigarettes, got roaring drunk. Nothing helped. He called his mother in a panic. "I can’t get warm," he sobbed. "I just can’t get warm." Unconsoled, Robert called the only person he could think of: Dr. Drew, who’d been kind to him when he went on Drew’s TV show shortly before George’s trial. He reached a producer, who told him Dr. Drew wasn’t available. But the guy was nice, at least. He stayed on the phone awhile and talked Robert down. Eventually CNN agreed to pay the bill, and the next morning Robert returned the only purchases he could: a bottle of Mercedes-Benz cologne and a Ritz-Carlton wallet that George had bought him to say thanks. Over the summer, I visit Robert in the apartment his parents are currently renting for him in suburban Washington, D.C. His family-spokesman gig has been making him feel especially torn lately. On the one hand, he enjoys the attention. (At one point he tells me a long, hilarious story about a surreal night of drinking recently in New York City with a female cable-news talking head and the Navy Seal who allegedly shot Osama bin Laden. Robert says he wound up in bed with the cable-news commentator and, even though his sexuality seems to be pointed in the wrong direction, they began hooking up, until his bracelet got caught in her hair.) On the other hand, Robert keeps discovering that life in semi-public isn’t easy for a Zimmerman. He and a date recently watched the movie Diana, about the late British princess. "It made him get who I am now," Robert says. "And he couldn’t take it." It dawned on Robert that he’ll "never be able to fuck somebody without thinking, What’s going to happen? Are they recording me? Did they leave their laptop open? Is this being broadcast live? Is this person two weeks later going to find out who my brother is and then sell something? Are they going to say you raped them?" Robert has his "go-bag" with him, and he offers to show it to me. He zips open a gray messenger bag sitting on a musty comforter in the bedroom. Inside are tax forms, pay stubs, and a car registration, plus some documents that seem useless. There are several birthday cards, a neat stack of receipts from Disney’s Wilderness Lodge, a thank-you note for singing at a funeral, and his ninth-grade standardized test scores, as well as DVDs of his media appearances and a video of George’s birthday party two years before the incident. Robert wants to watch that one. A grinning George sits on a chair and opens gifts. Polo shirts, kitchen appliances, a laptop computer. Kids wander around. Guests chat and laugh—a few African-Americans among them. Occasionally, Bob steps into frame. He rubs his son’s close-shaved head, hugs and kisses him. He looks youthful, vibrant. Not at all like Walter White on Breaking Bad. Before I leave, we Skype with the rest of the family, minus George, who are all at home in Florida. The connection is choppy. Bob, Gladys, and Grace are in the kitchen, and all three of them look tired. Both of the family’s lawsuits—their best hope at financial salvation—are going nowhere fast. A federal magistrate bounced the case against Roseanne Barr back to a state court. And a circuit-court judge just tossed out George’s case against NBC. But that’s not what they want to talk about today. They want me to understand that the world is aligned against them and that what sustains them is their closeness as a family. George texts all the time. He even called recently. He wanted to know the name of a recent pop song, one with a chorus that goes la la la. Bob tells me that George’s big fear right now is that he’ll be charged with federal civil rights violations for the Martin shooting. "He’s worried," Bob says, "that if FBI agents come and kick in his door, he’s probably gonna shoot a few of them." |
To go for a group jog in Bujumbura, Burundi’s capital, you must first join a jogging club and register with the government. Then you must choose one of nine approved venues. After that the police may have some questions. How many people will be there? When? Give us their names. When I first heard about President Pierre Nkurunziza’s ban on jogging, it seemed like the work of a crackpot dictator, much like North Korea’s ban on blue jeans, China’s ban on unlicensed reincarnation, or any of a number of decrees out of Turkmenistan, where the former president once outlawed lip-syncing, gold teeth, and beards. Except that this one felt even more fundamental. From the springy arch in our feet to the heat-dissipating veins in our heads, our bodies evolved to run. A whole suite of brain chemicals even reward the effort. A 2,000-year-old cave painting in Matobo National Park, in Zimbabwe, depicts a hunter lifting his arms in exultation at the end of a run. Perhaps nowhere is jogging more integral than in Burundi. To understand why, you have to go back to the early 1990s, when tensions were rising between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups. In 1993, Melchior Ndadaye, the first Hutu president in the nation’s history, was killed by the Tutsi-controlled military just three months after taking office, an event that sparked a 12-year ethnic civil war that left 300,000 dead. During the conflict, soldiers would run through the streets in formation, boots clomping the ground, singing about their military prowess. The songs comforted supporters and intimidated the opposition. The soldiers sometimes stopped to administer random beatings. At the same time, young Burundians were becoming more politically active and formed their own jogging clubs. For the most part, Hutus joined other Hutus and Tutsis joined other Tutsis in a show of solidarity. As fighting ebbed after a coup d’etat in 1996, the groups endured, eventually shedding their political origins. Dozens of clubs, some with hundreds of members, would meet to run and sing together on weekend mornings, then spend the rest of the day drinking Primus, the local lager. In time the clubs integrated and helped stitch the country back together, creating an apolitical, almost post-ethnic space. If someone in a jogging group had a death in the family or needed an extra set of hands on a project, the club helped. It was like all the best parts of a church, except the religion was running and the after-service snacks were copious amounts of beer. For more than a decade, jogging was to Bujumbura what music is to New Orleans. “It was a time to meet and deal with the trauma, the fear, the loneliness,” political reformist Jean Claude Nkundwa told me. “Running became a culture.” At first, President Nkurunziza supported that culture. The son of a Tutsi mother and a Hutu father, Nkurunziza taught physical education before joining a group of Hutu rebels in 1995. In 2005, he took power from a transitional government, building his reputation around fitness and public health. But in March 2014, with protests brewing over a rumored third term, he restricted clubs to approved locations and forced them to register. The political opposition responded with calls for his ouster, which turned into riots and assassinations targeting top generals. The tortured bodies of opposition members began showing up on the outskirts of town. Hundreds of thousands of people fled the country. To an outsider, it looked like the president had banned group jogging and Burundi had crumbled. Surely this was not the whole story, but at a glance it seemed to fit. For me—and for many runners—a really hard run has the power to transform anxiety and depression into calm and confidence. We use the sport like a drug. A couple of days without a run and everything goes to hell. Could the same thing happen to an entire nation? When I arrived in Bujumbura in late September, a haze blanketed the city. The air on the tarmac felt like a blast of wet heat. Outside baggage claim, I scanned the crowd for Jean Baptiste Mubaribari, a local journalist who I’d enlisted as my driver and translator. I’d contacted him two days before arriving, when I learned that the government had blacklisted my previous translator, part of a campaign against journalists both foreign and domestic. I had permission to be there, but my documents authorized me only to work on stories about jogging. Last summer, a French journalist who’d been permitted to cover elections had his credentials revoked for filming protests. “Welcome,” said Jean Baptiste when we found each other. “You came at a good time.” “How so?” I asked. “Lots of shooting last night,” he said. “Huge battle. Really big.” A tiny country of ten million sandwiched between Rwanda, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi rates near the bottom in several unfortunate categories: hunger, poverty, corruption. Like in Rwanda, half a century of violence between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups lies squarely at the heart of its woes. But while Rwanda’s genocide, which claimed nearly a million lives in 1994, captured the kind of international attention that brought peacekeeping troops, NGOs, and enforced stability, Burundi has largely been left to figure things out on its own. “Burundi is a country totally devoid of any importance,” wrote Peter Uvin in Life After Violence, the definitive but prematurely titled book on modern Burundi. “It has no economic or geo-strategic value to speak of.” The country’s population is roughly 85 percent Hutu and 14 percent Tutsi, and its lasting conflict began in the early 20th century, when, in order to reduce the influence of the majority Hutus, colonial powers favored the much smaller Tutsi population, giving them access to education and wealth and control of the military. Though the definitions were somewhat fluid, Hutus were typically farmers and Tutsis raised livestock. It wasn’t until the early 1930s that Belgian colonialists formalized the distinction by issuing a Tutsi ID card to anyone owning more than ten cattle and a Hutu ID to everyone else. When Burundi abolished its monarchy in 1966, animosities between the ethnic groups erupted. In 1972, a Hutu uprising and swift Tutsi military backlash left between 100,000 and 300,000 people dead (including Nkurunziza’s father); a coup in 1988 led to fighting that killed 25,000. Then came the civil war in 1993, which dragged into the mid-2000s. The lone piece of good news regarding the latest round of turmoil is that it is nominally a political dispute, not an ethnic one—though the ruling party is largely Hutu and the opposition more or less Tutsi, and the so-called politics play out each night to the hammering of automatic weapons, particularly in the opposition-heavy Cibitoke neighborhood. As we headed into the city center from the airport, there were checkpoints fretting the main roads, and police officers in blue jumpsuits waved cars over at random; at night they would string barbed wire to block passage so they could inspect every car. Burundi’s military is constitutionally barred from engaging in internal conflicts, so the police are like the government’s poorly disciplined muscle. Some of the nightly gunfire is from police accidentally shooting AK-47’s at each other. These days police are also responsible for enforcing the jogging ban, dispersing any large groups found running through the streets—though, given the risk, such groups almost never gather. Individuals are sometimes hassled but are generally permitted to run. Most groups stick to the nine government-sanctioned locations, many of them playgrounds, doing a kind of large-scale aerobics instead of logging miles. Despite the limitations, the workouts are still popular. On Fridays, the city government shuts down at 2 p.m. so that workers can attend. Most head toward Kiriri Hill—a nearly two-mile stretch of acute thigh torture rising toward Burundi University— and spend a few more hours exercising. I happened to arrive on a Friday, and Jean Baptiste perked up when he realized the coincidence. “We will drive to the hill,” he said. “We will talk to the joggers about why they make sport.” As we got closer to Kiriri, a group of runners began to coalesce, until a stream of people were flowing to the hilltop campus. Outside the gate, a stern-eyed man sat on a folding chair; if it looked like someone was about to start shooting, he’d scatter everyone with a whistle blast. “No photos, no videos,” he said when Jean Baptiste introduced me as a journalist. The campus was the size of five or six soccer fields, and included an actual soccer field. While there were a variety of activities—basketball, some team handball, and two guys hitting a ball back and forth over a string, like tennis without the net—no one actually jogged. Most formed a big circle and followed a leader at the center doing exercises that the word calisthenics falls short of describing. They Hacky-Sacked with no Hacky Sack; they duck-walked rapidly; they squatted to do quick feet. Then they ran in place and punched the air in front of them, as if sweating it out on militaristic NordicTracks. Jean Baptiste tried to land me interviews with some of the onlookers, but there were no takers. It’s not a partisan group, but most everyone worked for the city, and political sympathies reflect government jobs. Also, Burundi is not a place that takes press freedom very seriously. At the moment, in fact, there’s hardly any press at all. The international media left during a lull in the rioting, and most local journalists have long since fled to Rwanda for fear of being arrested or tortured. Jean Baptiste, a newspaper reporter, stuck around because hardly anyone reads, so the government wasn’t worried about him. “He’s writing about jogging,” Jean Baptiste said to the crowd, speaking Kirundi, the local language. He smiled big, put his arms around people, and pointed excitedly in my direction. Everyone ignored him. A passerby might have mistaken him for an exercise circle’s wildly ineffective leader. “No video! No photo!” he pleaded. No talking. The sun dropped toward Lake Tanganyika, which forms a portion of the country’s western border, and we headed back to the hotel. Another journalist had recommended that I stay there for the thick concrete walls around its perimeter, the better to catch stray bullets. The precaution seemed like overkill until exactly 8:37, when the sound of distant gunfire rebounded off the hills and came lilting back through the city. Jean Baptiste called it “the music from Cibitoke.” The next morning we headed for Tempete Playground, another sanctioned space for former jogging clubs, where half-buried truck tires separated a soccer field from basketball courts. By 7 a.m., there were already 100 or so people there. These weren’t government employees, and Jean Baptiste knew the club’s leader, so I slid into one of the concentric circles to exercise with the crowd. We chanted, we counted reps in French, we stomped our feet, and we paused periodically to stretch. When my flexibility was found wanting, an older man physically moved my limbs into the right position, putting his body weight into the stretch and repeating the French command as though the problem was my hearing. The club was not particularly athletic. Many members stopped partway through, finding my struggle entertaining. But one guy was really into it, screaming with almost religious delight as the moves got harder, the holds longer, and the sun hotter. “Yes, Coach! Thank you!” he yelled when our leader stalled the count during a long string of sit-ups. “A thousand times, Coach. Please! Yeah!” When we finished, he called out to me as I prepared to leave. “You are welcome!” he said. “Join us anytime!” His name was Ferdinand Nitunga, and he told me that the group, called the Family Jogging Club, had changed his life. Ferdinand joined five or six years ago when a friend invited him. He said he liked it so much that every Saturday he jogged six miles from Gatumba, the suburb where he once lived, and ran the six miles back home. Then he did it again on Sunday. A few days later, I met Ferdinand to run that route with him, to see what it had been like. Folks were just heading to work. Motorcycles skirted around us on the right; we sprinted past commuter buses on the left. We were technically breaking the law, but the police didn’t bother us. Born in a rural part of the country, Ferdinand suffered debilitating headaches in school, and his father spent much of Ferdinand’s childhood in the hospital. Most kids in his situation would have stopped going, opting out of the substantial tuition fees to take up subsistence farming instead, but Ferdinand couldn’t stand to quit. He was smart and had a knack for languages. He excelled at French and spoke proficient if grammatically quirky English. He often out-performed his teachers. He was also, he discovered, one of those natural-born runners who only find out later in life that the sport is hard for the rest of us. “Let us slow the pace, really,” Ferdinand said to me as traffic dispersed slightly outside the city. “I can listen to your breathing and hear the fatigue.” At 14, looking for a way to continue his education and training, he moved in with an uncle in Gatumba and worked as a domestique in exchange for medicine and school fees—a common arrangement in Burundi. But then his uncle said that if Ferdinand wanted to continue living in his house, he should be prepared to drop out of school and join a group of Hutu rebels. On the road to Gatumba, the sun had burned off the clouds outside the city as we ran along Lake Tanganyika in the ceaseless humidity. “We can slow the pace again, if I am not mistaken,” Ferdinand said, in response to continued heavy breathing on my part. “OK,” I said, relieved. I run four miles a day and almost never a step farther. “Are you tired?” “I am not hardly.” When the club’s leader heard the story of Ferdinand’s long runs from Gatumba to Bujumbura, he took a special interest, giving him tips on how to train and recover from injuries. Ferdinand told him that what he really needed was a job and a place to live. (He left out the rebels.) The next weekend, the leader gathered the men from the club: Could anyone help? A man named Jean Népomucène Hatungimana raised his hand. He was opening a bar, and Ferdinand could work and sleep there. He’d have an income. He could pay for school. Some years later, Jean Népomucène invited Ferdinand to live in his house. “My dream really came true,” Ferdinand told me. We arrived in Gatumba at a walk, my head spinning and calves twitching from running just one leg of Ferdinand’s commute. Then Jean Baptiste pulled up in the car with some water bottles and informed us that, by his odometer, the distance we just ran was almost nine miles, not six. Ferdinand shrugged. He was estimating. Ferdinand’s talent may be uncommon, but his reliance on his club was not. Amid social and political turmoil and unpredictable violence, Burundians looked to jogging groups for stability. Even nonathletes would show up in crowds large enough to stop traffic. To ban such a popular activity seemed foolish for a politician seeking reelection and particularly strange for President Nkurunziza, who is perhaps the world’s most fitness-minded head of state. According to his press officer, the president swims for an hour each morning and then plays basketball or soccer for two hours in the afternoon. Some say that Nkurunziza owes everything he has accomplished to his athletic prowess: he studied phys ed at university at a time when most other Hutus were denied an education. In 2003, after a ceasefire finally ended the fighting, Nkurunziza walked and rode his bike from the border of Tanzania to the city of Gitega—roughly 100 miles away and smack in the center of Burundi. Along the way, he gave speeches about moving past ethnic divisions. He was very popular. Two years later, the parliament appointed him president for a five-year term. In 2007, he launched an effort to encourage even more of the country to exercise, making fitness a cornerstone of his administration. By that point, however, cracks were forming in his leadership. Radio journalists were breaking stories about the president’s corruption, and Burundians were just as hungry as they had been during the war, maybe hungrier. One of Nkurunziza’s most outspoken critics was radio journalist Alexis Sinduhije. A Tutsi who briefly studied at Harvard, Sinduhije was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2008 for his efforts at reconciling the country’s ethnic divide. He had famously adopted a Hutu child orphaned by the war, and after founding Radio Publique Africaine in 2001, he’d hired both Hutu and Tutsi ex-combatants as reporters. But in 2007, Sinduhije quit journalism to launch his political career. He founded the Movement for Solidarity and Democracy (MSD) party, building on the idea that the government was corrupt, a notion that played well with young men in both ethnic groups. Eventually, he announced plans to run for president. Police arrested Sinduhije at MSD headquarters in 2008 and charged him with “insulting the president.” Supporters rallied outside the prison, however, and he was released. Though Nkurunziza was elected to a second term in 2010, the main opposition parties, including MSD, boycotted the process. They claimed that the government’s youth wing—the Imbonerakure, roughly translated as “visionaries”—used violence to intimidate voters. Human Rights Watch agreed, but the election stood. Looking back, it’s easy to see the ingredients of large-scale violence stewing together. At the time, however, it just looked like more jogging. By the summer of 2013, Bujumbura’s neighborhoods, which had previously been grouped by ethnicity, had reorganized along political lines, and a pro-government jogging club called Inkona (Eagle) started running through opposition neighborhoods in packs, much like the soldiers of previous conflicts. There were no beatings, and according to its founder, Jean Paul Niyihweze, the club was not political. But it had over 3,000 members across the city, and some factions radicalized and became militant. People living in opposition neighborhoods reported that when Inkona came through, they rewrote the lyrics to songs so that the words recalled the rape and violence of the civil war: Impregnate the rivals / So they can give birth to Imbonerakure. MSD responded by forming its own jogging groups. It was thin cover for politics, but Nkurunziza’s athleticism created a kind of political shelter. “The president is a sportif,” said MSD member Richard Ndihokubwayo. “He cannot criticize jogging.” Richard is fierce looking, with two nearly symmetrical scars on his forehead, one from a broken bottle, the other from the butt of an AK-47. “These things happen in Burundi,” he said when I asked about them. I could use his name, he said, because the government was already hunting him. An article wouldn’t make things worse. We met to talk several times, usually at my hotel, but sometimes he got spooked and insisted we go somewhere else—too many government license plates in the parking lot. During our first meeting, the hotel kitchen staff rushed over like they were seeing a ghost. “Richard! We thought you were dead,” they said. “We thought they got you!” Richard became a member of MSD in 2011, after the government insisted that he join their political party or lose his job as a sound tech in the parliament building. He’d grown up in the same neighborhood as Alexis Sinduhije and would sometimes sneak him recordings of closed-door meetings. Richard chose MSD. Throughout the fall of 2013, MSD and Inkona clashed every weekend, slinging insults as they ran. MSD didn’t set out to jog through Inkona neighborhoods, Richard says, but they repeatedly did. And they didn’t shy away from taunting Inkona with their own songs. “Inkona started to think that they were strong,” he said. “We started thinking that we are also strong.” Sometimes minor aggressions turned into street fights. Sinduhije fueled the violence via radio broadcast. “The only thing that does not respond to a beating is a drum,” he said. “If someone hits you, hit them back twice.” The conflict escalated on both sides. In the Kinama neighborhood, the Inkona club became something like a pro-government militia, with a mandate to protect the neighborhood and a promise of immunity for any crimes committed while doing so. When I asked Jean Baptiste if he knew a member of Inkona, he spent half a day frantically trying to track one down. He turned up Moussa Nzeyimana, who’d joined in 2013 and was part of an outfit that ran through opposition neighborhoods looking to fight. He worked as a mechanic and had that hardened air of someone who uses his hands every day. When we picked him up, he was nervous and fidgety, hunkering down in the backseat until we reached a bar that was not technically open yet. A relatively expensive spot with the cheery, overbright color scheme of a tropical bird, it was the kind of place unlikely to be frequented by underground militias. There, Moussa finally felt safe enough to talk. Because he went by a nickname in the group, he made the strange request that I use his real name to protect his identity. The club was treated well, Moussa said. They got extra food to help with their workouts and received weapons training on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. First he learned how to break down a gun and reassemble it. Then he learned how to shoot. Instructions came in an envelope when they met to train. Moussa told me he didn’t know who wrote them. He quit the group after they were directed to attack the Cibitoke neighborhood and he realized that he knew most of the guys they were shooting at. They were his friends. He decided to disappear. “I need to go,” he said to me. The first customer had just walked in the door. “Someone is going to see me talking.” OK, but how did you disappear? “I joined a different jogging club. They’ve been hiding me in their houses ever since,” he said. “Inkona hasn’t found me, yet.” In February 2014, rumors began to spread that Nkurunziza would run for a third term. Doing so would bulldoze the 2000 Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement for Burundi, which had laid the groundwork for a new government and constitution. The Arusha treaty limited presidents to two terms and integrated the military and the government, requiring a 60/40 split between Hutus and Tutsis in all government positions. Nkurunziza’s party had never been satisfied with that split, however, saying that giving 40 percent of lucrative government jobs to 14 percent of the population was unfair. In March 2014, he put forth a constitutional amendment that would make it easier for Hutus to consolidate power in part by abolishing term limits. It failed in parliament by one vote. But while the treaty restricted the country’s leader to two terms, the constitution had a loophole. It said that presidents could only be elected by the people twice, and Nkurunziza had been appointed to his first term. By declaring himself eligible for a third term, he was signaling his willingness to circumvent the Arusha treaty altogether. In response, MSD planned a protest, gathering together every party member in every quarter of Bujumbura on March 8. Instead of demonstrating, however, they would go for a jog. But someone tipped off the police, who responded by blocking the roads. Anyone in jogging clothes was turned back. Some tried to run past the blockades; those who were caught were beaten. “That Saturday was the longest day I can remember,” Richard told me. At 11 a.m., word went out to abandon the jog and meet at MSD headquarters. One hundred and twenty people made it to the compound, including Alexis Sinduhije. Hundreds of police showed up outside the house around 1 p.m. Two officers snuck around the side, but MSD grabbed them and dragged them inside the compound. “We made them our prisoners,” Richard said. Pierre Claver Mbonimpa, a prominent human rights activist and former police officer, showed up to negotiate. Just send out the hostages, he said, and the police will let everyone go home. MSD sent out the hostages. No one was allowed to go home. The stalemate continued for hours. At 6 p.m., the MSD members inside the compound told Sinduhije that there was no use fighting. The police would storm the house when it got dark and probably kill him. Sinduhije climbed a ladder over the compound’s concrete walls. Then the police came in. Ten people were shot; none died. “If you didn’t escape, you were shot or you were captured,” Richard said. At least 70 people were arrested that day, 22 of them on jogging-related charges. Forty-eight were ultimately given jail time, 21 of them life sentences. Richard got out by pretending to be a journalist, flashing a photo ID from his old job in parliament and telling an officer it was a press pass. The officer couldn’t read, so he let Richard go. Sinduhije hid in the attic of a nearby house. Two cops showed up looking for him, and the owner invited them in, remarking that they looked thirsty. Sinduhije managed to escape after the officers drank an entire case of beer. Over the next year, Nkurunziza’s bid for a third term became official. On April 25, 2015, he accepted his party’s nomination, and opposition groups organized protests, putting up barricades to keep security forces out of their neighborhoods. Police shot tear gas, protesters threw rocks, police responded with bullets. Seven people died that day. The protests continued for weeks. Occasionally, impromptu groups formed to jog and sing together, running in tight circles up and down the blockaded streets. Ferdinand could see them from his house. “It was treated like a game,” he said. Except people were being shot. Sometimes one or two in a neighborhood, sometimes a half-dozen. Fifty-six in May. On weekends the protestors halted to bury the dead. On May 13, major general Godefroid Niyombare declared a coup on the radio while Nkurunziza was in Tanzania. There was celebratory gunfire all afternoon from opposition soldiers, then combative gunfire all night as forces battled for control of RTNB, the state radio station. “It was the first case where we heard explosions,” said Orion Donovan-Smith, an American NGO worker who lived near the station. “I couldn’t go back to my house.” During the fighting, private radio stations were raided and burned, and on the evening of May 14, general Prime Niyongabo made a counter-announcement that the coup had failed. Then, on May 23, opposition leader Zedi Feruzi was shot and killed, launching a summer of tit-for-tat violence that was still in full swing when I arrived that fall: drive-by assassination attempts, abductions, sounds of torture overheard at night in government neighborhoods, and disfigured corpses turning up on the streets. One night, Ferdinand, Jean Baptiste, and I were driving across the city after dark. Opposition forces had attacked a checkpoint a few hours before, so the police were taking a long time, and traffic was backing up. “This is dangerous,” Ferdinand said. “If there is an attack, we are also a target.” “Mmhmm,” Jean Baptiste agreed. “The last general who was shot…,” Ferdinand said, trying to remember the name. “Adolphe?” Jean Baptiste said. “No…” “Bikomagu?” “No, not him.” “Misigaro?” “No, the last one,” Ferdinand said, the name on the tip of his tongue. “Prime?” “Yes! Prime. There were a lot of extra victims when he was shot.” In the months that followed, the violence reached a new high—reports of gang rapes, grenade attacks, dozens of bodies discovered in mass graves outside the capital. The U.S. sanctioned both sides, the military began fracturing by political party, and the government and rebel groups gathered in Uganda for peace talks that went nowhere. Soon after I left, Jean Baptiste was arrested for working with journalists. They threatened him with torture, but he bribed his way out of jail and fled the country. On one of my last full days in Burundi, I showed up for another workout at Tempete Playground. I was supposed to meet Ferdinand, but he was nowhere to be found. There were a thousand harmless reasons he might not show up, but Ferdinand was a guy whose life choices had largely been about figuring out a way to keep training. As I scanned the crowd for him, I became worried. The nightly shooting had ramped up in the past few days; it was so frequent and close that I could now hear the difference between handheld weapons and the belt-fed machine guns mounted on trucks as they moved through the city. A few days before, Ferdinand explained to me that his living situation was less stable than he’d let on. He was not allowed to sit at the dinner table during meals; he slept on the floor, even though there was an open bedroom. Who could say when the family might ask him to leave? And where would he go? I crossed the playground and joined in with another club. We stomped around in unison; we Hacky-Sacked with no Hacky Sack; we pushed against our partners using the tops of our heads. Eventually, I worked hard enough that a familiar rush of endorphins flooded me with calm. This was a religious club, and at the end folks gathered in the center to pray for safety. During a moment of silence, I heard a voice and saw a flash of wild bouncing near the back of another group. “Trois! Quatre! Cinq! Coach! Yeah! Woo!” Someone was yelling in a distinct concoction of French, English, and Ferdinand-ese. I craned my neck and saw him, jogging in place, touching knee to opposite elbow. He started hopping and twisting at the waist in time with the chant, little sentries of sweat gathering on the peak of his forehead. Of course he’d made it. There was nowhere else to run. Peter Frick-Wright (@frickwright) is the host and producer of the Outside podcast. |
"Garden Party" is a 1972 hit song written by Rick Nelson and recorded by him and the Stone Canyon Band on the album Garden Party. The song tells the story of Nelson being booed off the stage at a concert at Madison Square Garden. The concert [ edit ] On October 15, 1971, Richard Nader's Rock 'n Roll Revival concert was given at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The playbill included many greats of the early rock era, including Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Bobby Rydell. Nelson came on stage dressed in the then-current fashion, wearing bell-bottoms and a purple velvet shirt, with his hair hanging down to his shoulders. He started playing his older songs like "Hello Mary Lou", but then he played the Rolling Stones' "Country Honk" (a country version of their hit song "Honky Tonk Women") and the crowd began to boo. While some reports say that the booing was caused by police action in the back of the audience, Nelson took it personally and left the stage. He watched the rest of the concert backstage and did not reappear on stage for the finale. The song [ edit ] "Garden Party" tells of various people who were present, frequently in an oblique manner ("Yoko brought her Walrus", referring to Yoko Ono and John Lennon), with a chorus: But it's all right now, I've learned my lesson well You see, you can't please everyone, so you've got to please yourself One more reference in the lyrics pertains to a particularly mysterious and legendary audience member: "Mr. Hughes hid in Dylan's shoes, wearing his disguise". The Mr. Hughes in question was ex-Beatle George Harrison, who was a next-door neighbor and good friend of Nelson's. Harrison used "Hughes" as his traveling alias, and "hid in Dylan's shoes" most likely refers to an album of Bob Dylan covers that Harrison was planning but never recorded. "Wearing his disguise" also suggests that Harrison traveled incognito. The phrases "Out stepped Johnny B. Goode / Playing guitar, like a-ringing a bell" refer to Chuck Berry and his song, "Johnny B. Goode". Lyric references [ edit ] Charts [ edit ] "Garden Party" reached number six on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the fall of 1972; it was Nelson's last top 40 hit on the US pop charts. The song also topped the Billboard easy listening chart for two weeks[2] and reached number 44 on Billboard's Country Singles chart. The song likewise reached number six in both Australia and South Africa[3] and number one in Canada.[4] Covers [ edit ] Ricky Nelson re-recorded "Garden Party" with The Jordanaires and studio musicians for his 1985 album All My Best. Country singer Johnny Lee recorded a cover version of the song in the late 1970s, entitled "Country Party", with slightly altered lyrics. Dwight Yoakam has also performed it live in concert. In 2000 Tarsha Vega sampled "Garden Party" in her song "Be Ya Self" for the soundtrack for The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. The UK band, Smokie, recorded a cover of the song.[5] In 2009, John Fogerty recorded the song with the Eagles' Don Henley and Timothy B. Schmit, for his The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again album. In 2012, Adam Young of Owl City covered the song and released it to his SoundCloud and personal blog followers. The song was pulled off of SoundCloud in late 2015, but can still be found on YouTube. On December 31, 2012, Phish opened their New Year's Eve concert with the song at Madison Square Garden.[6] Phish bassist and singer Mike Gordon, who sang lead on the tune, wore a shirt very reminiscent of the one George Harrison wore on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Gary Pig Gold recorded his own personal take on the song, which reflected an encounter with Rick himself and appeared, in 2013, on Pop Garden Radio's Legacy: A Tribute to Rick Nelson Volume 1 CD. Tesla guitarist Frank Hannon covered the song, assisted by Matthew and Gunnar Nelson, on his 2018 solo album From One Place to Another Vol. 1. Filmography [ edit ] See also [ edit ] |
More than almost any other genre, comedy is subject to the changing social mores and attitudes of its time. This is something that Seth Rogen is realizing as his career has gone into its second decade. While promoting his new film Neighbors 2, Rogen has taken to reflecting on the bro comedy that has been his hallmark. And it hasn’t all been great. This week, he told The Guardian that he can look back on the films he’s made and acknowledge that “under the lens of new eras, new social consciousness” don’t age that well. “There are probably some jokes in Superbad that are bordering on blatantly homophobic at times.” “They’re all in the voice of high school kids, who do speak like that,” Rogen continued, “but I think we’d also be silly not to acknowledge that we also were, to some degree, glamorizing that type of language in a lot of ways.” As an audience member and critic, finding ways to acknowledge the homophobia in modern comedy and either make your peace with it or raise a fuss about it is a depressing fact of moviegoing life. There’s such an area of plausible deniability in comedy now. Gay people don’t get actively mocked in comedies anymore; the homophobia comes from different angles instead, usually in the form of straight characters being put in “gay” situations. To some degree or another, it’s in every comedy that’s come out of the Apatow/Ferrell/McKay/Rogen/Franco genre for the last decade and a half at least. The fact that Rogen is acknowledging this isn’t so much atonement or even epiphany on his part. It’s just a simple realization that comedy should be moving past this kind of thing, if for no other reason than it’s become cliché. To its great credit, Neighbors 2 is quite aware of this need to modernize its approach to humor, and the results are encouraging, but more importantly they’re incredibly funny. There’s a definite progressive streak in the film, which in a salty-and-sweet kind of way manages to only make the juvenile comedy that much funnier. Still, the bro comedy legacy of homophobia won’t be easy to shake. Neighbors 2 features a heretofore closeted gay character whose revelation to the audience and subsequent story beats aren’t played for ridicule. But watching it with a general audience, they still laughed at the characters. Not with them, but at them. The audiences for Seth Rogen’s movies have been effectively trained to find the fact of homosexuality to be funny. It will probably take more than just one quote to roll that back. |
Health professionals have spent years trying to pinpoint the sources of America’s rising obesity levels, but research by University of Virginia Professor Christopher Ruhm suggests it might be time to look beyond the usual suspects. Ruhm, a professor of public policy and economics in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, recently completed a joint research project examining the economic factors that can lead to obesity. It revealed that collectively, economic variables explain 37 percent of the rise in body mass index or BMI, 43 percent of the rise in obesity and 59 percent of the rise in Class II and III obesity – extreme obesity defined by a BMI of 35 or higher. The full study was done in collaboration with economics professors Charles Courtemanche, Joshua Pinkston and George Wehby of Georgia State University and the findings were published in the spring edition of the Southern Economic Journal. “There’s been a very rapid rise in obesity in last three decades but we don’t fully understand what the causes are,” said Ruhm. “Here, we were attempting to do a more integrated study that looked at a larger variety of potential causes.” The Centers for Disease Control estimate that approximately one-third of all American adults are obese today, a massive jump from the mere 13 percent in 1960. “Our research looks at 27 different factors, basically measuring anything that’s been in economic literature as a potential cause,” said Ruhm. Using survey data from around the country, he and his fellow researchers examined the impact of variables like big box grocery stores and restaurants per capita, the proportion of the work force in blue collar jobs and the prices of alcohol, food and cigarettes. Among all these factors, the number of restaurants per capita and the number of supercenters and warehouse clubs per capita had the most statistically significant impact on rates of obesity. Populations with access to more restaurants and big box stores tended to have higher rates of obesity. Ruhm said it’s unclear exactly why these factors have the biggest impact, but he has some theories. “My own view is that restaurants and supercenters are essentially lowering the prices and making all kinds of food more available, but particularly calorie dense food,” he said. “If you go into a supercenter, you could buy healthy food but there’s also a lot of unhealthy food that you can buy cheaply and in large quantities.” He went on to explain that while having lots of restaurants available may not lower the monetary cost of eating out, it can still incentivize people towards making poor eating choices by lowering the time cost. Having access to faster, more efficient meal options means less time invested in meal preparation. In addition to studying economic factors that directly contributed to weight gain, the researchers also looked at weight loss attempts as a way to measure the population’s own cost-benefit assessment of weight gain. “There are some economic models that argue that when we see higher weight, typically what we’re seeing is just a rational or optimal decision because it’s become cheaper or more enjoyable to eat more,” said Ruhm. “But we view the weight loss attempts as an indication that people are overeating from their own perspective. They’re feeling like they’ve made an error.” Looking back at the economic factors that are the biggest contributors to poor dietary decisions, the researchers agree that limiting the number of superstores and restaurants per capita is both an unrealistic and undesirable solution. Instead, Ruhm suggests that policymakers implement small incentives for people to select healthy foods. Specifically he proposes higher subsidies for fresh fruits and vegetables that will be sold as such over subsidies for the various components of processed foods. “There’s also a whole other set of interventions that people refer to as ‘nudges.’ That’s when you try to create small costs to making bad decisions for your health,” he said. For example, placing healthier dessert choices like fruit closer to the front and high calorie choices like cake towards the back in cafeterias and buffets creates a small “nudge” for people to choose the low calorie option. When there’s a line waiting behind you, the time cost is lower for the closest foods. Ruhm and his fellow researchers will soon have a better idea of the kind of policy nudges that are most effective in promoting healthy choices. Now that they’ve studied outside economic factors that impact weight gain, they plan to take a closer look at decision-making on an individual level. “We’re doing a little bit of work trying to understand the extent to which these eating decisions are rational, that people are balancing costs and benefits versus the extent to which they’re impulsive decisions,” he said. |
In Java, you can define one class B inside another class A. Class B is called an inner class, and class A is called an outer class. It looks like the following: Class A has a private field “secret”. This private field can be accessed by both A and B classes. But in some cases, this private field can be accessed by other classes in the same package even if neither A or B provide any accessors. It actually depends on what we have in go() method. How does Java compiler compile inner classes? Let’s take a look at the following example: There are a couple of interesting things about this code. First, Java compiler compiles these two classes above to two separate classes in the same package. If you ask Java compiler to compile this code, it will create two class files “Outer.class” and “Outer$Inner.class”. At runtime, those classes will be considered as separate classes in the same package. But we know that a private field can be only accessed by a class which owns this field. In our case, Outer class has a private field “secret” which is accessed by Outer$Inner class. When JRE runs this code, Outer$Inner class is going to be considered as a separate class which means that Outer$Inner class is not allowed to access “secret” anymore. But this code works. So the question is how Outer$Inner class can access “secret” field. This is second interesting thing about this code. Java compiler creates a synthetic method which can be called by Outer$Inner class to modify “secret” field. You can see this synthetic method if you run “javap”. You can find full example on GitHub: https://github.com/artem-smotrakov/javahell Here is an example how you can run javac and javap: $ git clone https://github.com/artem-smotrakov/javahell $ cd javahell $ mkdir -p classes $ javac -d classes src/com/gypsyengineer/innerclass/field/*.java $ javap -c -p classes/com/gypsyengineer/innerclass/field/Outer.class It’s going to print something like this: Compiled from "Outer.java" public class com.gypsyengineer.innerclass.field.Outer { private int secret; public com.gypsyengineer.innerclass.field.Outer(); Code: 0: aload_0 1: invokespecial #2 // Method java/lang/Object."<init>":()V 4: aload_0 5: bipush 10 7: putfield #1 // Field secret:I 10: return public void check(); Code: 0: aload_0 1: getfield #1 // Field secret:I 4: ifge 18 7: getstatic #3 // Field java/lang/System.out:Ljava/io/PrintStream; 10: ldc #4 // String Oops 12: invokevirtual #5 // Method java/io/PrintStream.println:(Ljava/lang/String;)V 15: goto 26 18: getstatic #3 // Field java/lang/System.out:Ljava/io/PrintStream; 21: ldc #6 // String Okay 23: invokevirtual #5 // Method java/io/PrintStream.println:(Ljava/lang/String;)V 26: return static int access$002(com.gypsyengineer.innerclass.field.Outer, int); Code: 0: aload_0 1: iload_1 2: dup_x1 3: putfield #1 // Field secret:I 6: ireturn } You can see that Java compiler added a new “access$002” method to Outer.class. This is a synthetic method which assigns a value to integer “secret” field. Here is what “javap” says about Outer$Inner class: Compiled from "Outer.java" public class com.gypsyengineer.innerclass.field.Outer$Inner { final com.gypsyengineer.innerclass.field.Outer this$0; public com.gypsyengineer.innerclass.field.Outer$Inner(com.gypsyengineer.innerclass.field.Outer); Code: 0: aload_0 1: aload_1 2: putfield #1 // Field this$0:Lcom/gypsyengineer/innerclass/field/Outer; 5: aload_0 6: invokespecial #2 // Method java/lang/Object."<init>":()V 9: return public void go(); Code: 0: aload_0 1: getfield #1 // Field this$0:Lcom/gypsyengineer/innerclass/field/Outer; 4: bipush 42 6: invokestatic #3 // Method com/gypsyengineer/innerclass/field/Outer.access$002:(Lcom/gypsyengineer/innerclass/field/Outer;I)I 9: pop 10: return } You can see that go() method calls “access$002” in order to modify “secret”. Third interesting thing about this code is that static “access$002” method is accessible by any class in the same package. This means that adding an inner class sometimes may implicitly make a private field accessible by other classes in the same package. But the key word here is “may”. Just adding an inner class doesn’t make Java compiler create a synthetic method to access a private field. But if an inner class needs to access private fields, then Java compiler will add synthetic methods. Java compiler may add different synthetic methods which actually depends on what an inner class does with private fields. For example, try to replace “secret = 42;” with “secret++;” and run “javap” on compiled classes. How can we call synthetic methods? Java compiler fails if you try to call a synthetic method in your Java code: Outer.access$002(outer, 0); But a synthetic method can be called with Reflection API: Outer o = new Outer(); Method m = o.getClass().getDeclaredMethod("access$002", o.getClass(), int.class); m.invoke(null, o, -1); If you feel comfortable with writing bytecode manually (or, using some tools), then you can just create bytecode which calls synthetic methods. But success of invocation of a synthetic method also depends on a class loader. Accessing synthetic methods with the same class loader The following code works fine if all classes were loaded with the same class loader: At runtime, both AccessPrivateField and Outer classes are in the same package because they were loaded by the same class loader. As a result, AccessPrivateField can call access$002() method of Outer class. But it behaves differently if we use different classloaders. Accessing synthetic methods with different classloaders The following code throws an exception if we load another AccessPrivateField class again with different classloader: Let’s assume that Outer class was loaded by classloader #1. First, the code above loads AccessPrivateField (*) class with different classloader #2. Next, it creates an instance of Outer class which was loaded by classloader #1. Then, it invokes go() method on class AccessPrivateField (*) which was loaded by classloader #2. Method go() gets a handle of access$002() method of class Outer with Reflection API, and tries to call it. This call fails because at runtime classes AccessPrivateField (*) and Outer are not in the same package since they were loaded by different classloaders. As a result, IllegalAccessException exception occurs while invoking m.invoke(null, t, -1) Test #2: try to modify a private field with different classloader (an exception is expected) Exception in thread "main" java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:498) at com.gypsyengineer.innerclass.field.AccessPrivateField.test02(AccessPrivateField.java:83) at com.gypsyengineer.innerclass.field.AccessPrivateField.main(AccessPrivateField.java:54) Caused by: java.lang.IllegalAccessException: Class com.gypsyengineer.innerclass.field.AccessPrivateField can not access a member of class com.gypsyengineer.innerclass.field.Outer with modifiers "static" at sun.reflect.Reflection.ensureMemberAccess(Reflection.java:102) at java.lang.reflect.AccessibleObject.slowCheckMemberAccess(AccessibleObject.java:296) at java.lang.reflect.AccessibleObject.checkAccess(AccessibleObject.java:288) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:491) at com.gypsyengineer.innerclass.field.AccessPrivateField.go(AccessPrivateField.java:90) ... 6 more Conclusion It may be better to keep in mind this little “feature” of Java compiler which may allow other classes to access private fields. It also may be better to avoid usage of inner classes. I cannot say that I write lots of Java code everyday, but I cannot remember when I needed an inner class last time. Inner static classes sometimes may be helpful, but they don’t cause creating synthetic methods since they are not suppose to have access to members of outer class. |
Consoles gamers have missed out on the joys of farming simulators for too long now. Thankfully, the kind-hearted folks at Focus Home Interactive and Giant Software are here to save the day with the announcement that Farming Simulator 2013 will be a multiplatform affair. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions are scheduled for Q1 2013, while the PC version is hitting a bit earlier in October of this year. Farming Sim 2013 is more of an evolution than revolution, with "many new machines, vehicles, crops, animals, and (sic) environment." The big news here is a "complete online mode" (screw your unfinished netcode, other developers) which allows players to create and download mods, vehicles, equipment, and custom-made tools. Check out the sexy gallery below that has screenshots of machines from Case IH. You are logged out. Login | Sign up Click to open photo gallery: |
The U.S. Postal Service also chose Oshkosh Corp., the Oshkosh-based manufacturer of military vehicles, as one of the finalists in the vehicle competition. Tim Sullivan, president and CEO of REV Group (Photo: Journal Sentinel files) The U.S. Postal Service has chosen an overseas firm that's partnered with a Milwaukee manufacturer to build prototypes of the next generation of postal service vehicles – a step toward a contract that, if won, could bring a new factory and about 1,000 jobs to the old Tower Automotive site on Milwaukee’s north side. REV Group, led by former Bucyrus International CEO Tim Sullivan, will build the prototype vehicles in Milwaukee’s Century City business park in partnership with Karsan Otomotive, of Istanbul. Karsan designs and manufactures gas and electric automobiles and specialty vehicles and has built vehicles for European automaker Peugeot. The joint venture of Karsan and REV Group is competing with five other vehicle manufacturers, also awarded contracts to build postal service prototypes, for a $6.3 billion contract that would replace thousands of aging mail-delivery vehicles over about a seven-year period. Oshkosh Corp, the Oshkosh-based manufacturer of military trucks, is one of those five, along with vehicle makers AM General, Utilimaster, VT Hackney and Mahindra, an automotive manufacturer based in India. In the REV Group and Karsan partnership, Karsan will provide the hybrid-vehicle technology for the postal service prototype trucks, and REV Group will assemble them in Milwaukee over about the next nine months. Sullivan said the Karsan/REV Group vehicles will use new technologies that Karsan has been developing in Europe. “I think we have a pretty good story to tell. If our technology really works, I like our chances of getting at least part of the contract,” Sullivan said. REV Group, Oshkosh and the other vehicle builders have until September 2017 to submit their prototypes to the Postal Service. Then the government will embark on six months of testing the vehicles. Half of the prototypes will use hybrid technologies, including alternative fuel capabilities, the Postal Service said in a statement. The winner of the vehicle contract could be announced in early 2018. NEWSLETTERS Get the Business Watch Delivered newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Get todays business headlines delivered to your inbox. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-844-900-7103. Delivery: Mon - Fri Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Business Watch Delivered Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters Southeast Wisconsin has decades of experience making specialty vehicles. There's an infrastructure, supply chain and labor force here to support it, much like the Fox Valley has established for Oshkosh Corp. If Karsan and REV Group win the contract, REV Group says it would build up to a 500,000-square-foot facility at the former Tower Automotive site and employ approximately 1,000 people — a potential game-changer for one of the most impoverished areas of the city. In 2000, Tower Automotive moved a Ford Ranger truck frame line to Minnesota and a heavy truck frame line to Mexico, resulting in the loss of about 750 jobs in Milwaukee. Troubles with major automotive companies led to hundreds more layoffs at the company not long afterward. The company went bankrupt in 2005 and closed its operations at the site in March 2006. Century City is the redevelopment of a large portion of the former A.O. Smith/Tower Automotive Inc. complex into a business park and other new uses — with the first building located just south of W. Capitol Drive near N. 31st. St. REV Group will only need about a dozen people to build the prototype vehicles. If Karsan and REV Group win the final vehicle contract, however, it could have a huge impact on employment in the central city. “To have the opportunity to do this in Milwaukee, at Century City, would be a double bottom-line win for the city,” said Tim Sheehy, president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. Sullivan, who headed South Milwaukee-based Bucyrus International until shortly after it became the mining equipment division of Caterpillar Inc. in 2011, is president and CEO of REV Group, a $2.2 billion company that employs more than 6,000 people at 16 U.S. plants making ambulances, fire trucks, buses, vans and other vehicles. This would be the company's first plant in Wisconsin, and it could ultimately be used to build vehicles other than mail delivery trucks, Sullivan said. Read or Share this story: http://on.jsonl.in/2dqytXP |
Even the most dedicated healthy eater can find it challenging at times to come up with something tasty and easy to make at the end of a long day. You know, something a bit more exciting than your everyday bowl of beans and greens. Enter these fiesta worthy vegan tamales! They are (fortunately) extremely easy to make, and this low fat version is healthy to boot! Low Fat Vegan Tamales Ingredients for Filling: Red Pepper Portabella Mushroom Can of Black Beans, drained Zucchini Lime Juice Cumin (start with 1 tsp and work your way up slooowly, cumin is a powerful spice) Salt and Pepper Cilantro 2 Ears of Corn 1-3 Serrano Peppers Small amount of Vegetable Stock Garlic Shallots (or 1 Red Onion) 1. Finely chop all the vegetables, and place into a pan. Using some vegetable stock to sautee all the ingredients (except the lime juice and cilantro), cook on medium high heat for 6-7 minutes or until the vegetables are soft. 2. Add the lime juice and cilantro. Take off heat. Ingredients for the Masa Dough: 4 Cups Instant Masa 1/4 Cup Olive Oil 2 tsp Baking Powder 1 Teaspoon Salt Combine all ingredients and form into balls with your hands. I bought corn husks at my local grocery store and rinsed them under hot water until they became pliable. Lay the husk down on a flat surface and place a masa dough ball in the middle of the husk. Flatten the ball with your palm, spreading the dough and making sure to leave some space at the top and bottom of the husk to make it easier to fold. Fill the tamale and fold the husk over itself and make sure the filling is completely covered. Roll one side of the husk into itself (kind of like sushi or burrito making). Fold the ends under and use strips of cut corn husk to tie it together. Steam the tamales for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Let cool. Top with your favorite salsa, and devour! Also by Jessica: Why Calorie-Restrictive Diets Don’t Work Low-Fat Gluten-Free Vegan Pizza The Amazing Sweet Potato – Plus Ethiopian Wat Recipe! Benefits of Carob – plus Raw Cherry Carob Brownie Recipe! Love this article? Keep up-to-date on the latest from Peaceful Dumpling: Subscribe to our Newsletter! __ Photo: Jessica Ferguson |
Carlos Bacca was part of the Colombia side that finished third at this summer's Copa America Centenario. West Ham are in advanced talks over the signing of AC Milan striker Carlos Bacca, sources close to the Premier League club have told ESPN FC. However, Bacca's agent, Sergio Barila, has confirmed to Fantagazzetta that Atletico Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain are also interested in the 29-year-old. The Colombia international, who joined Milan from Sevilla last year, scored 18 Serie A goals as the Rossoneri finished seventh but Barila said last month that he was open to an exit due to the club's failure to qualify for Europe. Barila added that West Ham, who qualified for the Europa League at the third qualifying round after finishing seventh last season, had seen an offer rejected. Sources have told ESPN FC that West Ham are now in advanced negotiations to sign Bacca and are confident of completing a deal. Barila has told Fantagazzetta that Atletico and PSG -- now managed by former Sevilla boss Unai Emery -- have expressed an interest in the striker but said there was interest from elsewhere, without naming West Ham. "All I can say is that these clubs are not the only ones who have made a move for him," he said. "Other big clubs have enquired about him." He added: "There was firm interest from China in January with substantial offers, but Carlos wants to be a protagonist at the highest levels in Europe still and he has no intention taking [China] into consideration. There will be time for this kind of choice later, certainly not now." Bacca is on holiday following the Copa America Centenario, where he helped Colombia to a third-place finish, and Barila said: "When he gets back, we'll talk to Milan and evaluate the situation." West Ham, whose efforts to sign Lyon striker Alexandre Lacazette now look to have failed, have already brought in Havard Nordtveit and Sofiane Feghouli as they prepare for their first season at the Olympic Stadium. ESPN FC's Italy correspondent, Ben Gladwell, contributed to this report. |
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos vowed Thursday to replace what she branded the “failed system” of campus sexual assault enforcement, to ensure fairness for victims and the accused. “Instead of working with schools … ,” DeVos said, “the prior administration weaponized the Office for Civil Rights.” “We must do better because the current approach isn’t working,” she said. [Read the full transcript here: Betsy DeVos remarks on campus sexual assault] In an interview with CBS after the speech, she was asked if she was rescinding the Obama-era guidelines. “Well, that’s the intention, and we’ve begun the process to do so,” DeVos answered. “… The process is an extended one. But it is the intention to revoke or rescind the previous guidance around this.” DeVos spoke to about 100 invited guests at George Mason University, where protesters had gathered outside, worried that she would announce changes to the way sexual violence cases are handled on campuses across the country. “One rape is one too many,” DeVos said firmly, and “not one more survivor will be silenced. We will not abandon anyone.” As a mother, she said she has sympathy for parents whose children are victims of sexual misconduct. “I cannot imagine receiving that call.” But she also repeatedly emphasized the rights of students who are accused, saying one person denied due process is one too many, and was harshly critical of the system established by the Obama administration, saying it had failed too many schools. “School administrators tell me it has run amok.” She said the department would go through a formal process seeking public input in order to replace the current system with a more effective and just system. “Every survivor of sexual misconduct must be taken seriously,” she said. “Every student accused of sexual misconduct must know that guilt is not predetermined. “These are non-negotiable principles.” DeVos criticized a key element of Obama’s policy: that schools use a standard known as “preponderance of the evidence” when weighing sexual misconduct cases. “Washington dictated that schools must use the lowest standard of proof … it’s no wonder so many call these proceedings ‘kangaroo courts.’ ” DeVos said those flawed approaches to sexual misconduct cases are bad for all involved, especially if they lead to litigation. “Survivors aren’t well served when they are re-traumatized by appeal after appeal.” Outside, protesters shouted, “Stop supporting rapists!” and “Shame on you! Not on us!” Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center called the speech “a blunt attack on survivors of sexual assault. . . . It sends a frightening message to all students: your government does not have your back if your rights are violated.” Catherine Lhamon, who headed Education’s civil rights office under Obama, said, “The speech pretty clearly sent a message that sexual assault will not be taken seriously by this administration. That could not be more damaging.” But Andrew Miltenberg, a lawyer who has represented dozens of male students accused of sexual assault, welcomed the change. “On campuses throughout the country, I’ve seen firsthand how colleges and universities are wrongfully implementing their own kangaroo courts to adjudicate accusations of sexual misconduct and destroying the lives of wrongfully accused male students,” Miltenberg said. “Title IX was meant to be a tool for fairness, not a means for colleges and universities to micromanage students’ sex lives.” Robert Shibley of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said, “I thought it was a strong signal from the department that they understand the current approach is unworkable. They need to change it …” He said he is optimistic that the department will now work to change the campus culture “that falsely pits due process against the needs of victims and survivors.” DeVos, one of the most visible and controversial members of President Trump’s Cabinet, has been telegraphing for months that she would take action on sexual assault, one of the most visible and controversial issues under the Education Department’s purview. And she made clear that she believed the system was broken for all students — not just students who survived assault, but those wrongly accused of assault, whose voices she said had too often been silenced in the national debate over campus rape. Survivors’ advocates decried DeVos’s emphasis on wrongly accused students as out of step with reality, saying only a fraction of rape reports are found to be false. The criticism only intensified after Candice Jackson, acting head of Education’s civil rights office, told the New York Times in July that “90 percent” of campus sexual assaults were really drunken, regretted sex. Jackson later apologized for her statement, saying she had been “flippant,” but the remark spurred a torrent of calls for her resignation or removal. [DeVos considers whether to roll back Obama-era approach to campus sexual assault] For years, victims and advocates complained that university officials would prefer to ignore allegations of rape and sexual assault to avoid either bad publicity for the institution or getting mired in complicated, difficult-to-prove cases. The Obama administration pushed colleges to do better — to respond more quickly and more comprehensively, resolve the complaints and protect students who reported sexual assaults. And it did so with real force: the threat of withholding federal funding to schools that did not comply. Advocates were relieved that traumatized victims had recourse without having to go through a criminal trial; they could press to have their attackers expelled from campus, and file a Title IX complaint if administrators weren’t responsive enough. But critics warned that the push went too far, creating makeshift courts on campuses ill-equipped to judge such cases, adding rules that make it difficult to ensure a fair hearing for both sides. [‘I woke up. He was in the room. I didn’t know who he was.’] The 2011 directive changed the way colleges respond to allegations of sexual assault, ensuring that the cases were treated as priorities and changing the way they were evaluated. Both students in a case are allowed to appeal the findings. And colleges are required to use a different standard of evidence than is used in criminal trials. Rather than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard used in criminal cases, or the “clear and convincing” standard some universities had previously used for sexual assault investigations, schools now must use a “preponderance of the evidence” standard, often described as “50 percent plus one,” when determining responsibility in such cases. Supporters said the standard had been used by many institutions already, and made sense because college officials weren’t determining whether someone should be sent to jail, just whether they had violated school policies. Laura Dunn, the founder and executive director of the advocacy group SurvJustice, said that “beyond a reasonable doubt” is really only appropriate for criminal law — it’s intentionally skewed to protect those who are accused. “That’s not really appropriate on the campus level. We’re not locking people up, executing them, putting them away for years denying their liberty.” Critics said that the lower evidence standard was unfair, with expulsion and other serious consequences at stake, and that the hearings were often deeply flawed. “These sexual misconduct hearings on campus lack a huge number of the due-process protections that Americans expect” when determining the truth or falsity of an accusation, said Robert Shibley of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Those include the right to have an attorney, to have proper notice of the charges, and to know exactly what the accusation is, he said. Shibley said he was troubled by the model some schools use, of having a single investigator paid by the university determining whom to talk to, what happened and what the punishment should be. [Expelled for sexual assault, young men are filing more lawsuits to clear their names] “If you have a single investigator who’s terrible or who’s ideologically aligned one way or the other, you’re going to have a problem,” said Scott Schneider, a lawyer specializing in higher education. But overall, he said, having a trained professional with experience in such cases is a good model. Earlier this week, FIRE announced its analysis of how top universities investigate accusations of misconduct on campus. Susan Kruth, senior program officer for legal and public advocacy, said she was shocked by the lack of due process protections; nearly three-quarters of the schools didn’t guarantee students they would be presumed innocent until proven guilty, for example. “The majority of institutions were lacking the majority of these safeguards that we consider pretty basic and fundamental,” she said. “These schools aren’t providing fair hearings.” The Obama administration’s actions effected real social change, said SurvJustice’s Dunn. “We not only saw student survivors know more about their rights, share their name, share their story, file those complaints, but campuses really stepped it up.” Universities realized they couldn’t just let these issues slide, she said, and needed to have dedicated Title IX coordinators on campus. Still, she said, “I’ve definitely seen schools violate due process,” something that she said is deeply frustrating and not in anyone’s best interest. “There is a learning curve,” Dunn said. “But gutting things, changing things from scratch, going back to what it was before, when schools didn’t fear enforcement unless there was a lawsuit,” would be a giant step backward, she said. There was considerable confusion about the 2011 guidance, said Terry Hartle of the American Council on Education. The department didn’t go through the normal public notice and comment process, and questions asked by the council in 2012 went unanswered by the department. With the Obama administration so focused on enforcement, he said, individual institutions were hesitant to ask OCR for clarification out of fear that it might trigger an audit. “What we have now is set of requirements, some of which are mandatory, others of which may or may not be mandatory, but the schools cannot be certain. Typically the schools take every requirement and treat it as mandatory,” Hartle said. “Institutions, in responding to claims of sexual assault, have a responsibility to support the victim and to be fair to both parties,” Hartle said. “Figuring out exactly how to do that, when there are different stories about what happened, and no witnesses, and almost no evidence, and substance abuse may have been involved, can be extraordinarily difficult.” [DeVos: Too many college students treated unfairly under Obama-era sexual assault policy] Catherine Lhamon agreed that some schools have taken approaches that are not called for in the guidance and that are not fair to students. But she rejected the notion that the agency’s civil rights enforcement efforts had pushed schools to err on the side of punishing students accused of assault. “Over and over again, OCR found schools that were doing things that were not right. We called it when it harmed student survivors, and we called it when it harmed students who were accused,” Lhamon said. The federal government also increased scrutiny on schools to ensure compliance, and when officials investigated colleges for their handling of reports of sexual violence and harassment, they let the public know. The number of cases grew quickly: When the Education Department first made public the list of institutions under investigation in the spring of 2014, there were 55 schools on the list. Now there are 257, with 360 open cases. Sexual assault survivors and their allies saw the rising numbers of investigations as a sign that the Obama administration was taking their concerns seriously. Lhamon fears there is a strong sign from the Trump administration, as well. “The clearest and most consistent signal from this administration has been that it is uninterested in civil rights at best, and opposed to civil rights at worst.” Some critics of the Obama approach argued that publicizing the names of institutions under investigation amounted to a public shaming of schools that hadn’t been found guilty of wrongdoing. Shibley said he appreciates the attempt at transparency, but thinks it would be more helpful if the Education Department took it a step further, providing more information about the nature of the complaints. The list certainly puts pressure on universities to respond to such complaints, he said. “The concern is, while universities should be responding to cases, is the pressure helpful to the cause of reducing the incidence of sexual misconduct on campus and giving everybody a fair shake? When you have a situation where a university gets a black mark against its name, the incentive is to get it over with,” he said. But that’s not necessarily the most fair or compassionate thing to do in a given case, he said. “Even when you handle these cases really, really well, with great policies and great people, 100 percent of the time, 50 percent of the people are upset with the result,” Schneider said. “The institution has to make a finding. Someone is going to be disappointed with the finding.” A complaint then sparks an investigation. “The fact that an institution is under investigation is not necessarily an indictment of its policies or practices,” Schneider said. And with not enough staff to investigate the cases quickly, the backlog of open cases is not particularly fair to either complainants or universities, he said. Activists delivered petitions in support of Obama’s policy Wednesday afternoon at a rally outside the agency headquarters. “The Department of Education should never turn its back on sexual assault survivors. Never,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said at the rally. From left, Alexander, Chessy and Susan Prout at George Mason University on Thursday. (Nick Anderson/The Washington Post) And on Thursday, before DeVos spoke at George Mason, about two dozen people gathered outside Founders Hall to urge the government to maintain protections for survivors of sexual assault. “No survivor groups were invited to today’s decision,” said Jess Davidson, managing director of End Rape on Campus, one of several groups united for a small protest outside. “The fact that they’re not in the room is not reflective of who’s actually going to be impacted by the policy. We’re gathering outside the speech to show how important survivor voices are.” Susan and Alexander Prout of Washington came to speak out as parents of a survivor. Their daughter Chessy Prout, 18, also at the gathering, said she was sexually assaulted in high school. She is headed to Barnard College in 2018 after taking a gap year. “We need more protections for our kids,” said Alexander Prout. “We don’t need any rollback.” Several experts predicted that many of the changes the Obama administration pushed through are likely to stick. “In recent years, every college in the country has increased the resources they devote to responding to sexual assault,” Hartle said. “This increased expenditure of time and money will not diminish regardless of the action the department takes.” Staff writers Emma Brown and Sarah Larimer contributed to this report. |
The phrase “to do it in a cat’s paw”, meaning to do something in such a way that no one knows that it is you doing it, is an apt description of the “cat killer” who has reportedly mutilated and decapitated around 50 animals, mostly felines, in south London over the past two years. But what sort of person abuses animals in this way and might they be preparing themselves for acts of violence against people? In our often labelled “nation of animal lovers”, animal abuse is a major issue. In 2014, nearly 160,000 incidents of animal cruelty were investigated in England and Wales alone. These included some of the most sadistic acts of abuse, such as a rabbit that was microwaved in Gloucestershire and a puppy that was battered and had his head trapped in a door in Cumbria. Shockingly, one in eight complaints about animal mistreatment involves alleged deliberate and violent cruelty. And these are just the incidents we know about. Clearly, there must be a huge amount of animal abuse that goes unreported. Not so, the activities of the “Croydon Cat Ripper”. This individual is very keen to make sure that their acts of cruelty are made public. In fact, after reportedly luring their victims with raw chicken, strangling them, and taking their bodies to a secret location to mutilate them with a knife or machete, they return them for local residents to find. Their work is cold and calculated. Much planning and preparation has gone into where and when to commit the acts so as to avoid witnesses. The killer appears to use gloves and protective clothing to avoid leaving DNA evidence behind. A dangerous method Research demonstrates that extreme acts of animal abuse, which appear to reward their perpetrators with feelings of enjoyment, even elation, usually are the work of individuals with severe psychiatric disorders. Their motivations may include a desire to demonstrate power over not only the animal but the pet’s human owner, too. They may even experience some form of sexual pleasure (known as zoosadism) from the acts they perform. Alternatively, some acts of animal abuse are symptomatic of an individual’s anger concerning an issue that is completely unrelated to their victims. Whatever their motivation, over time, sadists often have to step up their behaviour in order to derive the same level of arousal from it. This is known as the “graduation hypothesis” and has been discussed in relation to the backgrounds of serial killers such as Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer who had childhood histories of abusing animals and who went on to torture and murder humans. Ian Huntley, the killer of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman is also said to have had a similar history, strangling his dog in front of his friends because it disobeyed him. In relation to the cat killer, this has led to fears that s/he may “graduate” to killing people. Though possible, such a scenario seems unlikely as these killings have been going on for at least two years now, suggesting that this particular killer cannot move beyond harming animals. Indeed, it appears that the only way in which his or her behaviour has stepped up, is in terms of the development of more sophisticated butchery skills – according to vets, the cuts are getting cleaner. Reason for concern So, should south Londoners be worried about their own safety as well as that of their pets? Possibly. The “deviance generalisation hypothesis” suggests that rather than preceding other offences, animal abuse may be just one part or element of a unified phenomenon of anti-social and violent behaviour. In other words, the extreme acts of animal cruelty undertaken by the cat killer may be just one of many illegal behaviours that they are already involved in. The “Croydon Cat Killer” may be someone with an existing criminal record of violent crime or, at the very least, may be involved in property or drug offences. This claim is further supported if we look at those who are prosecuted for harming wild animals (wildlife offenders), whose lifestyles almost always reveal involvement in other violent offending or acquisitive crime. The links between “animal abuse” and “person abuse”, whether through violence or other types of offending, are strong. However, whether or not south London’s cat killer is likely one day to turn into a serial killer, it is probable that they already are abusing other animals and people in all sorts of ways. It is for this reason that the authorities must devote resources to apprehending this individual as quickly as possible. Animal abusers are, regardless of the identity of their victims, very dangerous people indeed. |
SHARE Billy Patton By Daniel Connolly of The Commercial Appeal As a Collierville alderman, Billy Patton has often shown a willingness to challenge prevailing views. Now he's proposing a measure that could alter how power changes hands by suggesting term limits for the mayor and the town's five aldermen. At the moment, Collierville elected officials face no term limits, other than the blessing of voters every four years and the natural limits imposed by the human life span. Patton proposes that starting Jan. 1, 2017, candidates would face a limit of three four-year terms as alderman, then three four-year terms as mayor. That's 24 years of government in all. And the clock would start fresh for Patton and the other current members of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen, the six-member board that runs Collierville government. Patton said he didn't want to make the term limits retroactive because the new rules might force out some current members. Politically, that's just too high a hurdle, he said. "Term limits is tough enough to get passed by a local body. And by grandfathering it in, it will prepare us for the future of Collierville, to where no families, no professions could control or could populate a board." The measure would force vacancies in some offices from time to time, and that's a good thing, Patton said. "When a position is an open seat, no one has the right to that seat, which would allow three, four or five individuals to run for that seat and all shake hands and say 'May the best man or woman win,'" Patton said. "Whereas whenever you have an incumbent sitting on a seat for 25, 30 years, the odds of him being unseated is very slim." He said incumbents benefit from name recognition and the ability to raise money. "Not only that, I think after a while you need fresh ideas," he said. Perhaps the best example of a long-running politician in Collierville was Herman W. Cox, who was first elected to the town board in 1959, elected as mayor in 1975, re-elected again and again, and finally decided to stop running in 1999, after 40 years in local government. The question of who runs Collierville matters more now than it used to. When Cox took office, Collierville was a sleepy country town — the 1960 Census estimated its population at 2,020. But by 2014, its population had grown to an estimated 49,000 and today's Board of Mayor and Aldermen controls a budget of more than $50 million. Patton owns a big computer store close to Town Hall. He was first elected to the Board of Mayor and Aldermen in 2010 and won re-election in 2014. Members are on staggered terms, and though some of his colleagues are up for re-election this fall, Patton wouldn't be up for re-election until 2018. He and Alderman Tom Allen sometimes find themselves on the short end of a 4-2 split on the board. The pattern held true this year when the pair voted against tax breaks for FedEx and manufacturer CCL Label. Patton says he sometimes votes against Allen, too, and tries to make decisions that serve the common taxpayer. When Patton pitched his term limits proposal at an April 21 budget work session, some members of the board expressed skepticism. "I don't see why it's necessary," said Maureen Fraser, first elected to the board in 2003. The board members agreed to take it up later. "I think there's gonna be some more discussion," town attorney Nathan Bicks said. After a vote by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen, the measure would have to go to the state Legislature for approval, he said. Patton predicts that if the board passes term limits law, other local municipalities would do the same. Some local suburbs, such as Bartlett and Germantown, do not have term limits. In September, the Lakeland Board of Commissioners approved an ordinance that would create a limit of two four-year terms for local officials. The measure is scheduled to go to voters in a November referendum. Memphis voters in 2008 approved limiting the mayor and City Council members to two-four year terms. |
The Challenges of Depression Depression affects almost 15 million Americans and is the leading cause of disability among U.S adults, yet many people with depression continue to go undiagnosed and untreated. Depression remains a condition that is identified through a clinical assessment focused on signs and symptoms, and there is currently no available diagnostic blood test or scan for depression. Additionally, choosing the right depression treatment can be tricky, as it remains difficult to predict how a person will respond to a particular medication, or to cognitive behavioral therapy (talk therapy). Furthermore, a national shortage of psychiatrists means patients may not be able to access timely medical care. From my own perspective, I think of "depression", or more specifically "major depressive disorder", as an umbrella term that encompasses many biologically different, although somewhat overlapping conditions. These different types of "depression" have sometimes been referred to as subtypes and categorized differently, a longstanding point of discussion within psychiatry over the last 100 years. Many different risk factors have been identified for depression (see picture below). The heterogeneity of depression is likely to have led to the failures to find the "genes for depression". Given this background, can data science, and in particular machine learning, help revolutionize how we diagnose, treat, and monitor depression? A growing line of evidence gives us hope... What is Machine Learning? Machine learning was originally developed through the study of artificial intelligence. It has been defined as giving computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. Well, what does that mean? Machine learning recognizes patterns in data that humans cannot detect either visually or by traditional analytic techniques. Machine learning requires machines to do just that, to learn. While it can take some time for machines to be "trained" on data and for useful algorithms to arise, once this has happened, machines excel at data analysis. Machine learning tools have the ability to speedily process huge amounts of data, with none of the fatigue that humans would rapidly face. The combination of machine learning and big data is a perfect match and has huge potential in healthcare. Sounds a little bit like science fiction? Well not really - machine learning is already all around us. From voice recognition, to fraud detection, to the emails that end up in your spam box, people are using machine learning to make processes more efficient and effective. Importantly, machine learning will have a dramatic impact on medicine, and in particular mental health. In our own research at Brain Power, we are already witnessing how big data and machine learning can help us to bridge the gaps between educational, health, and social services for child and adults with autism. The Data Deciphers Depression Can machine learning predict the extent and length of someone's depression, right from the outset? In a study published in Molecular Psychiatry, baseline data from over a thousand people with major depressive disorder was analyzed. The aim was to predict the severity and chronicity of their depression. The authors compared the use of traditional analytics and machine learning approach. They not only found that machine learning could help predict the characteristics of a person's depression, but also that it could do this more effectively, and with less information, than traditional approaches. The authors concluded that machine learning could be a clinically useful way to stratify depression. How about using machine learning to link clinical depression with biomarkers? In one depression study, machine learning tools were used in addition to traditional statistics to analyze the relationship between 67 biomarkers in 5,227 research subjects. This hybrid technique was able to identify 3 biomarkers for depression, namely red cell distribution of width, serum glucose, and total bilirubin. Red cell distribution of width has been linked to inflammation in the body, and a line of research has linked together depression and inflammation. Serum glucose tests are used to screen for diabetes, a condition that has a complex relationship with depression, often occurring concurrently. Lastly it has been suggested that bilirubin is an antioxidant, and depression has been linked to oxidative stress. While some of these associations are tenuous, or speculative at best, this study does do something very useful, it identifies potential biomarkers that can be taken forward into the next round of research. Machine Learning and Suicide Suicide and depression are strongly linked, with suicide being the second leading cause of death for young people ages 15 to 34. Suicide rates in the United States have remained largely unchanged for the last 50 years. One of the most difficult jobs for psychiatrists is to assess suicide risk in our patients. A particular challenge is incorporating all of the clinical data that we obtain, such as patient's history of depression, their use of drugs, and their past suicide attempts, into producing a suicide risk assessment. What if we had a tool that would help us to do that in a more quantitative way, helping us to more accurately identify high risk patients, and give them preventative care? I was particularly intrigued by a pilot study that used data from 144 patients with mood disorders. By using machine learning to evaluate clinical data, the researchers were able to produce three different machine learning algorithms that could distinguish between people that had attempted suicide, and those that had not, based on the patient's prior clinical data. The prediction accuracy varied between 65-72%. These machine learning algorithms could be potential tools to help target suicide prevention interventions. Predicting Treatment Response One central challenge is being able to predict how patients will respond to psychiatric treatments. For example, in depression we have a wide range of antidepressant medications and cognitive behavioral therapy based approaches. At the present time there is no way of predicting how an individual is going to respond to a particular medication, although some companies have suggested that genetic testing could help with prediction. One study looking at 4041 patients with depression, found that by using a machine learning approach, they could predict response to the antidepressant citalopram with a highly statistically significant accuracy of 64.6%. The Future of Psychiatry I recently gave a talk at Singularity University about the Future of Psychiatry, you can watch the video here. There are many unmet mental health needs, and in the near-term the majority of mental health diagnosis and treatment will continue to be provided by humans. Technological approaches, such as machine learning, but also including telemedicine, smartphone apps, and wearable devices, have the potential to expand access and augment the work of clinicians. At the moment the quoted research is still quite preliminary, and I would not expect your family physician or psychiatrist to be using it just yet. However, this research does give us hope, and illustrates the promise of data science, and more specifically machine learning, in mental health. |
This week a huge shift in the U.S. Soccer landscape took place. With the Tampa Bay Rowdies and Ottawa Fury leaving the North American Soccer League for the United Soccer League for the 2017 season, many are predicting the end is near for the second-tier NASL just six years after its rebirth in 2010. [ MORE: Latest USL news ] Although it may be too early to write of the NASL, it is clear that the third-tier USL is growing aggressively and has found a model for success along with the support of Major League Soccer. Following a landmark deal in 2013, 10 MLS teams have chosen to have their own standalone reserve teams playing in USL and another 10 for the 2017 season will have affiliate teams which sees them inextricably linked with a USL franchise to provide minutes to young players among many other things. The steady progress of USL in recent years has been clear for all to see. Now, things are kicking on. At the helm during the USL’s rapid period of growth (they’ve increased from having just 13 teams in 2013 to 31 for the upcoming 2017 season) is president Jake Edwards, a native of Manchester, England who played throughout the English league system for teams such as Burton Albion, Yeovil Town, Exeter City and others after spending his school days in the USA in New Jersey and then briefly playing for the Charleston Battery in 2002-03. In an exclusive phone interview with ProSoccerTalk from the USL’s headquarters in Tampa, Florida, Edwards revealed that USL has applied for Division 2 status for the upcoming 2017 season, something they’re hopeful of acquiring, and that the league is currently in discussions with eight cities about joining the league as they’ve placed particular emphasis on adding clubs in both the South East and South West of the USA. For a league who proudly brands itself as “Fastest Growing League in the World” the USL is true to its word. “Without disclosing specifics, we are in conversations with markets in all time zones at the moment. I would say there are upwards of eight very active discussions right now across the country. There remains a strong interest in USL but we are of a size now where we only want to bring in markets that we think are really good strategic fit in terms of building those regional rivalries and having derby games that we think will help sustain professional soccer and have a good support base,” Edwards said. “It’s all about: do we have that quality ownership group that is well capitalized, local and committed to building a long-term club for the community? Is there a stadium plan in place? No team is allowed to come into the league now without a road map to build a soccer specific stadium of 8-10,000 seats. “We now have very active conversations for teams to come into the league in 2019 and 2020 and we are pushing them back because they have to build stadiums and they are committed to doing that. We are working with those local governments and those private investors to get those stadiums up and running and off the ground. Expansion will continue for a little longer. We are in discussions with eight really good markets now. In terms of where we are looking to expand, we have a lot of good clubs on the East Coast but we are looking in the South East and certainly the South West as the two areas we need to prioritize to start connecting some of those cities together. We are in a number of advanced conversations so there will be some more announcements on expansion coming probably in the early part of next year.” With Tampa and Ottawa joining the league this week, Edwards spoke at length about how both franchises will be huge additions to the USL with their strong ownership groups and fanbases. In turn, their departure was a blow for NASL, the current second tier on the soccer pyramid in the U.S. and Canada. The USL believes it can challenge NASL for second-tier status but Edwards described that aim as a “long, rigorous process” as they seek second-tier status for the upcoming 2017 season. “We are in that process and we’ve in that process for the best part of 18 months now, since January 2015. We put our application into the federation and since then we’ve had to go through a number of stages with that process and the federation and that task force. That’s ongoing,” Edwards revealed. “We’ve had unanimous support from our ownership in our winter meetings in 2014,. They felt that is exactly what they wanted to do and felt we met or exceeded those Division 2 standards. Since then we’ve moved the league forward and the teams that have joined the league have raised the bar and all meet or exceed those standards that are at Division 2 level. There are benefits to that designation and we feel strongly that the league and our individual clubs are meeting and exceeding those standards. So why not apply and try to reach that level?” With USL reaching over 30 teams for 2017, would having promotion and relegation within USL be feasible for the future? “It’s a question we get a lot now, especially as we are getting bigger,” Edwards revealed. “I played in that system in England. I am very familiar and used to it and culturally it is not alien to me. It is a great thing, in many respects. Promotion and relegation, it works. Especially in the UK. It is a horrible thing when you go down, I’ve been on that side of it as well. I’ve been in promotion chases and relegation battles. Wen teams go down it is the worst thing. Many people lose their jobs and the revenue models completely change. It is not something that would categorically add to the value of the game over here.” If the USL was to gain second-tier status, would promotion and relegation between their league and MLS be something to consider? “You have a structure in place with separate business organizations between us and MLS, so there are a lot of challenges there how you would integrate that into a system,” Edwards said. “Ultimately if people are dropping hundreds of millions of dollars on franchise fees and stadiums, to then come out of the league the following year… I’m not sure that’s ever going to be approved by ownership at the top. As we grow we are going to have to look at what our structure might look like down the road. We are at two conferences right now. We are looking to expand to three conferences, hopefully by 2018. East, West and Central. That is a good place for us to be with a national footprint with a regional structure. Beyond that, if there continues to be growth beyond that we will have to look at different models that make sense. Maybe that is something, within our league, which makes sense down the road but probably not anytime soon.” When it comes to the USL’s affiliate system with MLS, there have been varying degrees of success in terms of crowd numbers with certain MLS reserve teams and some affiliate clubs not making the most of the partnership on offer with the loaning of young MLS players. Is the affiliate deal with MLS working? Edwards pointing towards the new hybrid affiliate franchise between Rio Grande Valley FC Toros (RGV) and Houston Dynamo which is the first of its kind and sees the RGV ownership group take care of the financial side of things and the Houston Dynamo franchise take care of all of the soccer aspects of the club. “You can’t make a decision after a short space of time so we’ve been looking at this now for three years and evaluating how it has going and the impact it is having on both leagues, how our teams and MLS teams are managing with this integration and where the value is. We do believe there is a lot of value and I believe in many ways it has helped the competition get stronger,” Edwards said. “There are some really quality teams in the league now. As it relates to the future of these models, we have to look at what’s the best thing from the technical side and the business side as it relates to the club’s decision to do a full affiliation or a standalone team. “We look at it from our leagues point of view: where do want this partnership to go? What do we want to see? We have been evaluating that over the past few years and the model has changed. This year we had a new integrated model with RGV in Houston which is the first time we’ve done that and I think that’s a model which might attract more teams and MLS teams to look at that model. That is a model which makes sense. “For us it is about how you balance the competitive side and you have a good strong club who are playing good soccer at the level we want it to be at, or better. How to balance that with the business performance for the club. Where we are going as a league, it is about what we want these venues and crowds to look like at our games. We are in an evaluation period right now and if something is working we are certainly going to carry on like that. Models that are not working that well or aren’t achieving those goals, we are going to start looking at some other options perhaps. I think you will start to see in the next few years a few options we create between the two leagues for the teams to explore. Or some of the MLS teams looking at a different affiliation model, if that makes more sense from a technical or business point of view. Where we are now, it is not going to look exactly the same over the next two or three seasons. You will see some changes.” Asked if recent events will see the end of NASL — Tampa Bay and Ottawa joined USL plus Minnesota United joined MLS — Edwards didn’t want to speculate and insisted the USL is fully focused on building sustainable clubs for itself rather than trying to attract big names. “No league will celebrate failure in any way in any other league of any team. Ultimately, we all want the game to move forward. As it relates to Tampa and Ottawa, they felt their long-term future and the success of their business and the goals they had did not align with the league they were in and were perhaps at risk in the league they were in. They approached us about looking at another option,” Edwards said. “We as a league, we have to absolutely focus on our competition and focus on what we are doing. Focusing on how we can impact soccer communities across America and try and do so in a really responsible, ethical and sustainable way. That is a huge responsibility and certainly not one we take lightly. We’ve got to go into a market, bring professional soccer there and do it in the right way with the right local ownership and the right stadium and the right people behind it. Otherwise, we won’t do it. “We are focused on trying to get that right and that isn’t easy and it takes time. We just have a very different philosophy and approach to doing that. I don’t want to speculate on the success or failure of another league. We just have to focus on what we’re doing and I think what we are doing is working well and certainly that is part and parcel of why those two clubs have decided that is a better fit for them.” Asked if there is a specific number of clubs USL will reach and then close the doors, Edwards didn’t want to put a hard number or a cap on how many teams the USL will have. He also believes some of his teams will move on to MLS as they continue their own rapid growth. “There is a logical number where just going beyond would operationally be challenging but we are trying to move towards a three conference structure and if you imagine 12 to 14 clubs per conference in East, Central and West, those are manageable numbers with a solid playoff structure and some crossover games. That is probably where you want to get to. Somewhere in the mid 30s,” Edwards said. “Now, that said, there might be some movement over time. “In the next 5-10 years I do anticipate one or two of our clubs moving up to MLS. There may be some changes with some of the MLS second teams for example, with MLS teams in terms of what they do. The number might fluctuate a little bit. We won’t put a number on it because there may be a market out there where it comes a time you just find this fantastic ownership group, a really strong market, there is funding to build a really quality stadium and you think it’s going to be a really good addition to the league. For us, it wouldn’t make sense then to not allow professional soccer to go into that market and have this great environment just because you’ve reached an arbitrary number. There’s a point where it probably won’t go beyond but there’s not a hard number right now. I would imagine it makes sense to be around the mid 30s. That is probably where we will hover.” Current USL teams Sacramento Republic and FC Cincinnati are huge success stories (Sacramento averaged 11,514 for home games and Cincinnati an incredible 17,296) and both have been tabbed to become MLS’ next expansion franchises, with Sacramento already making a major push with their new downtown stadium site. With so many USL teams going on to join MLS after building strong bases in the third-tier, is that something Edwards would continue to welcome moving forward? “Five of the last seven have done so when you’re talking about Orlando, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver and Montreal. Clubs like that have had time in the USL whether it be a couple of years or 10-15 years, and what they’ve been able to do is build their brand and build a solid club and build a soccer culture in that community which may or may not have been on the radar of Major League Soccer,” Edwards explained. “When you look at markets like Orlando and Cincinnati, who probably weren’t on MLS’ radar, then through the USL they are able to start building professional soccer fandom in that city. If they do that at a high enough level for long enough then it may be something that they may entertain down the road. Sacramento are going through that process right now. I fully anticipate it. “We are in some significant markets. We are in some mid-major and some major league markets and we have a very strong, ambitious ownership collective in our league. Many of our owners, they own MLS teams, the own NBA teams, they own MLB teams. They certainly have the wherewithal to own a major league franchise but it’s not everyone’s goal and mostly it is not. It is a serious commitment now to move into MLS with the franchise fee and stadium costs. It is not something everyone wants to do. We challenge all of our teams to ultimately operate at that level and if they can operate at that level long enough and build a club, maybe that becomes an option they want to consider.” Follow @JPW_NBCSports |
On Thursday, New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler filed what's called a "resolution of inquiry" in an attempt to get information from the Justice Department about any investigations the department may or may not have launched into Donald Trump, his business holdings, and his team's alleged connections with the Russian government. (Trump has denied doing business with Russia.) As soon as Nadler announced this, many people who aren't members of Congress wondered: Exactly what is a resolution of inquiry? A resolution of inquiry is a tool that members of the House of Representatives can use to obtain information from the executive branch. It operates differently than most orders of business in the House, and is an especially powerful tool for the minority party. In this instance, Nadler is asking for "copies of any document, record, memo, correspondence, or other communication of the Department of Justice" that relate to two general areas of worry regarding Trump's administration. The first is his business holdings. Nadler wants all Justice Department documents related to the question of whether Trump, by continuing to operate his hotels while president, is in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. He's also requesting all information the DOJ has about foreign governments' investments into Trump-owned property, should such information exist. The second area targeted by Nadler's resolution of inquiry is Trump's alleged connections with Russia. Trump has denied having any investments in Russia. Specifically, Nadler is asking for documentation on "any criminal or counterintelligence investigation" that targets Trump, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, former Trump adviser Carter Page, longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone, "or any employee of the Executive Office of the President." That's the substance of Nadler's resolution. But how exactly does it work? This requires us to get a bit into the weeds. In most situations, the full House isn't required to vote on a resolution until the relevant committee reports it out — if the committee tables it, it's dead in the water. Because the majority party has control of all committees (by definition), this usually means that members of the minority party can't force the full House to vote on, well, anything. But a resolution of inquiry has something called "special status," which means that if the relevant House committee rejects or ignores it, the member who introduced it can force the House to vote on it regardless after 14 business days. Note that this doesn't mean the executive branch is forced to give up the information in question. The House could still vote the resolution down. If it does, however, every House member is on the record opposing the request for that information — in this case, information about Trump and his team that is very much in the public's interest. You can read the text of Nadler's resolution here. |
A file photo of Kangana Ranaut and Hrithik Roshan. (Image courtesy: Rangoli Chandel) Highlights Hrithik said his picture with Kangana was photoshopped Rangoli Chandel asks him to 'prove it' Rangoli said that Hrithik used an iPad for communicating with Kangana Postin d mail frm Hrithik 2Kangna here nt fr petty gosip bt 2 shw dat he usd I pad fr comunicatin wid hr Nt d laptop pic.twitter.com/hl9vZB8MKm — Rangoli Chandel (@Rangoli_A) October 5, 2017 Is dat not u, who has grabbed Kangana's waist like a creep and smelling her neck, who seems disinterested? @iHrithikpic.twitter.com/I7YrLrEg6C — Rangoli Chandel (@Rangoli_A) October 5, 2017 Could your wife stop you from having multiple affairs under her nose? Why you always hide behind her? @iHrithik — Rangoli Chandel (@Rangoli_A) October 5, 2017 In 2016 Hrithik said there is an imposter who is fooling Kangana and my target is the imposter not Kangana. — Rangoli Chandel (@Rangoli_A) October 5, 2017 ...Hrithik changed 3 lawyers and his stance also, now Kangana is mentally ill and his new target , not the imposter. — Rangoli Chandel (@Rangoli_A) October 5, 2017 My question 2 Hrithik is u hv 2decide one thing if Kangna ws foold by ur impostr den she didn't imagine.... — Rangoli Chandel (@Rangoli_A) October 5, 2017 ...and if she imagined then there was no imposter. #chooseone — Rangoli Chandel (@Rangoli_A) October 5, 2017 If you choose imposter then show the imposter to the world if you choose Kangana's imagination then show us Kangana's medical reports. — Rangoli Chandel (@Rangoli_A) October 5, 2017 Kangana was in school when your first film came if not in the industry she would have called you her uncle... @iHrithik — Rangoli Chandel (@Rangoli_A) October 2, 2017 Young beautiful talented rich girl like Kangana doesn't need to stalk an uncle like you, u were after her she was never after you @iHrithik — Rangoli Chandel (@Rangoli_A) October 2, 2017 Evryone cn tell who is the stalker here forgt about Kangana she hs movd on n stalker uncle pls focus on ur children and wife Tnx @iHrithik — Rangoli Chandel (@Rangoli_A) October 2, 2017 |
If the enemy of your enemy is your friend then Rosie O’Donnell just found her new BFF. During an appearance Thursday on Late Night, O’Donnell, a longtime vocal Trump critic, told host Seth Meyers about her love for special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Last week, Mueller filed the first charges in the probe, against former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates. Get push notifications with news, features and more. “Today after your show I’m going to get a Bob Mueller tattoo,” O’Donnell told Meyers. “Because I LOVE him!” O’Donnell added that she plans to get inked “right over my heart. I’m so in love with Bob Mueller. I want to get posters. I want to meet him. I just think he is it. He looks to me like Superman. Like Captain America. Like justice has finally arrived back on our shores and we are going to right ourselves again!” RELATED VIDEO: Paul Manafort and Another Former Trump Aide Have Been Charged in Mueller’s Russia Probe “I will say that if Trump gets indicted, it would be really great if Mueller let you serve the papers,” Meyers said. “I have put in that request by tweet and I’m waiting to hear,” O’Donnell replied. “I love you, Bob,” she added. “Keep doing what you do.” |
Forget London, Paris and Milan. It was natural splendor versus inbred beauty in southeast China this past weekend, as things got wet and wild at the first-ever world goldfish beauty pageant. It may sound fishy, but it's true. Goldfish from 14 different countries from around the world competed for the title of "World Goldfish Queen" Saturday, at the inaugural International Goldfish Championship. Three thousand fish participated in the event, which was held in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China. Unlike the top catwalks of the world (cats are a no-no at this event) there were no supermodels striking poses in outrageous fashions. At this event, goldfish strut their stuff in big white bowls of water. There is no need for gimmicky lighting or fancy runways either. These glamorous specimens were put on display in a large warehouse, much like the packaging plants where the lesser of their species often find themselves. How exactly does a goldfish fish for compliments? "We judge goldfish mainly by five criteria: breed, body shape, swimming gesture [and] color, which is very important and overall impression," Ye Qichang, a member of the judge panel, explained to ITN News. Unlike your typical supermodel, BMIs are of little consequence. Here a beefier contestant is likely to attract more attention, as was the case with a 3.9-pound goldfish that caught Quichang's eye. "I have been raising goldfish for some 40 or 50 years, and this one is the biggest I have ever seen ... Many factors such as breed and breeding method may affect their size. A goldfish cannot grow into that size if it suffers any hardship or major illness during the breeding. So it is a very rare one," the judge told ITN News. |
TOLEDO, Ohio ― Farooq Mitha has racked up a lot of miles in his job as Muslim outreach director for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. He’s met with Muslim communities in Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Ohio to convince them to vote for Clinton in November. Mitha’s job is unique: He is the first sustained Muslim outreach director employed by a major party’s general election campaign. In a year when Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has demonized Muslims and stoked Islamophobic fears of an internal threat, Clinton’s campaign is investing energy and resources into organizing Muslim voters to help her win key swing states. “Reaching out to Muslim-Americans is not a numbers-driven game for the campaign,” Mitha said. “Muslim-Americans have been part of this country for centuries and have a long history here, and have been contributors to the United States across many fields ― entrepreneurs, job creators, teachers, firemen, police officers. It’s a community that’s very important.” Muslims make up approximately 1 percent of the U.S. population, or about 3.3 million people. According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which is undertaking a large voter registration drive, there were 824,000 Muslims registered to vote in June 2016. In states like Florida, Michigan and Virginia, Muslims are a large enough group that they can sway a close election. The Clinton campaign also hopes that organizing in Muslim communities will help them in states like Ohio. In July, the campaign opened an office in Toledo, where Mohamed Gula leads organizing efforts for the Muslim community. The Huffington Post Mohammed Gula, left, leads the Clinton campaign's Muslim outreach in Toledo, Ohio. “I’ve made it my personal objective to ensure that this election is not going to be about Muslims without Muslims. It’s no longer going to be without us, or about us without us,” Gula said. “That’s one of the main reasons I felt the need to really be a part of the campaign.” The outreach conducted by Gula, a native of Dayton, Ohio, whose parents immigrated from Libya, includes the traditional door-knocking, phone-banking and canvassing. It also includes more targeted efforts at mosques and Muslim community centers. Gula and the campaign hosted an iftar dinner during this year’s Ramadan. They registered voters during the holiday of Eid and held registration drives after Friday night prayers. As Gula explains, much of his work involves listening to members of the diverse Muslim community to understand their concerns. “Being able to be present, and really listen to what concerns the community has had, has been extremely important, I think, to anybody,” he said. Zara Rahim, the communications lead for Clinton’s Muslim outreach team, also emphasizes the importance of listening to build bonds and trust that can lead to a more politically engaged community. “This campaign understands that the community isn’t monolithic, and part of that is just identifying that and making sure that we’re talking to people about the issues they care about,” Rahim said. “A lot of that means listening sessions. It means figuring out... what issues are most important to them, and how do we apply that to our ground game.” The Huffington Post Zara Rahim, second from left, and Farooq Mitha, second from right, discuss Muslim outreach strategy in Hillary Clinton's Brooklyn headquarters. In recent elections Muslims have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats. That hasn’t always been the case. In 2000, Muslims voted in large majorities for George W. Bush. His call for an end to racial profiling of Arab-Americans in a debate helped bring Muslims to his side. Bush heavily courted the Muslim vote in Florida, and their turnout helped tip the state and the election in his favor. But Muslim support for Republicans receded after Sept. 11, the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the advent of controversial torture, spying and profiling programs. The rise of Islamophobic politicians in the Republican Party during the past decade has accelerated the trend of Muslims moving toward the Democrats. In 2008, Barack Obama hired Mazen Asbahi, a lawyer at the firm Schiff Hardin, as his Muslim outreach director. However, Asbahi stepped down after a few weeks when conservative news sites attacked him for serving on the board of the Dow Jones Islamic Index Fund with an imam who was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a racketeering trial against individuals accused of sending money to Hamas. Unsurprisingly, the open Islamophobia of the Trump campaign is the biggest issue Clinton’s Muslim outreach team has heard about in their listening sessions. “The number one thing people are really saying to me right now is that they’re scared for the future of the community in this country,” Mitha said. “They’re scared for their kids to go to school. The rhetoric they hear in our political and civic space is at a level that they’ve never experienced before.” “What the Trump campaign has done is, it has created a platform for hate rhetoric,” Gula said. “It has given people the confidence to be able to speak out openly about how they feel about Muslims. And that’s why I say that it has actually gotten worse. I’ve had more hate rhetoric now than I did post-9/11.” Gula described incidents where he has encountered such hate. “I have direct encounters with Islamophobia on a weekly basis,” he said. “I’ve had individuals approach me at gas stations telling me ― well, cussing at me and telling me to go back home. I’ve had people cussing at me and telling me, saying that they’re supportive of Trump and going on and going forth. I’ve had individuals cuss the religion itself.” Spencer Platt/Getty Images Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has made Islamophobia a centerpiece of his campaign, at one point calling for a total ban on Muslims entering the U.S. Hate crimes against Muslims jumped by 78 percent during Trump’s rise in 2015, according to a report from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. There were 260 anti-Muslim hate crimes last year, the greatest number of any year since 2001. For Rahim, Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States inspired her to leave her job at a technology company and go to work for the Clinton campaign to organize Muslim voters. “Under the proposed ban that Donald Trump is calling for, the total, complete shutdown of Muslims entering the country, I wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Rahim said. “I wouldn’t be in this job, I wouldn’t be talking to the people that I talk to every day about why this campaign is so important. My parents came to this country in 1980 believing in the American dream.” At the second presidential debate, Gorbah Hamed, an undecided Muslim voter, asked Trump about Islamophobia and what he would do to help combat its rise. Trump initially responded by calling Islamophobia “a shame,” but quickly shifted the blame to Muslims. “There is a problem,” he said. “We have to be sure that Muslims come in and report when they see something going on. When they see hatred going on, they have to report it.” Trump wasn’t talking about reporting instances of Islamophobia. Rather, he was arguing, the problem is that Muslims don’t monitor each other for criminal or extremist behavior. “If they don’t do that, it’s a very difficult situation for our country,” he said. The Huffington Post attempted multiple times to contact the Trump campaign about its outreach to Muslims, but did not receive a response. Of course, fear of Trump and his supporters isn’t the only issue animating Muslim voters this year. The country’s immigration system, for example, is in need of revision, since it can keep some recent immigrants or asylum seekers from traveling for years. And like all Americans, Muslim voters are concerned about jobs, health care and college affordability. In the Democratic primary, Muslims strongly supported Clinton’s principal challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Their support likely helped propel Sanders to an upset victory over Clinton in Michigan. Clinton’s campaign has since deployed Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a former Sanders backer who is one of two Muslims in Congress. “Reaching out and being engaged from the get-go was really important, and we’ve been building on that,” Mitha said. The Huffington Post Gula hopes that getting Muslims involved in political organizing will help to create connections with non-Muslim communities. The campaign’s outreach is not only focused on getting Muslims to help organize other Muslims. It’s also about Muslims engaging in the election like every other group ― calling voters and knocking on doors. Gula hopes that this simple engagement, this act of being present, will empower Muslim voters and help them build connections with communities that may be distrustful of them. “I want... an everyday Joe to be able to hear ‘Hello, this is Mohamed, how are you doing today?’” Gula said. “I think that’s more powerful than anything. I think that’s more powerful than Mohamed calling Mohamed ... For [Muslims] to be able to hear some of what people have to say is key.” Oumeima Djema, a Toledo high school sophomore, is one of Gula’s volunteers doing just this. “I think, Muslim or not, it’s very important to, like, know what’s going on in the community and what’s going on in the country. Because if you take away that Muslim title, I’m still a member of the community and I’m a citizen of the United States,” she said. “I want someone good to lead our country and bring it to greatness.” Sharaf Mowjood contributed reporting. Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S. |
Photo “Every four years, the summer Olympics get people excited to exercise,” says Glenn Gaesser, a professor and director of the Healthy Lifestyles Research Center at Arizona State University, who oversaw a new study about exercise and high blood pressure that was inspired in part by the coming games in London. Phys Ed Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness. The streets and gyms fill with people who, fueled by stories of Olympic success, “run or work out for an hour or more,” Dr. Gaesser says. But “within a few weeks, most people have quit” and resumed their sedentary lives. “We wanted to see if there were approaches to exercise that would fit more easily into people’s lifestyles, but still be effective” in terms of improving health, he says. Specifically, he and his colleagues hoped to determine whether breaking up exercise into small, manageable segments performed throughout the day would work as well as one longer, continuous bout. So he and his colleagues gathered a group of adult volunteers. Each was generally healthy, except for some early symptoms of high blood pressure, a condition called prehypertension. High blood pressure is, of course, one of the primary risk factors for heart disease and stroke, and prehypertension is one of the primary risk factors for full-blown high blood pressure. Almost 70 million Americans have prehypertension, Dr. Gaesser’s study reports, with symptoms like an average daily blood pressure approaching an unhealthy 140/90 and a tendency for blood pressure to spike to unequivocally dangerous levels throughout the day. Encouragingly, prehypertension is known to respond well to exercise. But many studies of exercise and blood pressure have employed moderate exercise sessions lasting for an uninterrupted 30 minutes or so per day, which is the commonly recommended standard for improving health. Dr. Gaesser, however, asked his volunteers to walk briskly at an intensity equaling about 75 percent of each volunteer’s maximum heart rate for 10 minutes three times during the day. The sessions took place at 9:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. On a separate day, the volunteers completed one 30-minute supervised session of brisk walking in midafternoon, while on a final day, they did not exercise at all. All of them wore cuffs that monitored blood pressure continuously for 24 hours at a time. As it turned out, exercise was helpful in controlling blood pressure, but breaking up the workout into three short sessions was significantly more effective than the single half-hour session. “The fractionized exercise led to lower average 24-hour blood pressure readings,” Dr. Gaesser says. It also resulted in lower blood pressure “load,” or the number of incidences during the day when a volunteer’s blood pressure spiked above 140/90. Lowering blood pressure load is important, he points out, because a relatively high load “seems to be an indicator that someone with prehypertension is likely to progress” to full-blown, clinically high blood pressure. Over all, the results “are really encouraging,” he says. “For people who think that 30 minutes of exercise is too hard or takes up too much time, we can say, just do 10 minutes” three times during the day. And, conversely, if someone is tempted to dismiss a mere 10 minutes of walking as too meager to be meaningful, “it seems clear that, at least for blood pressure control, fractionized exercise is actually more effective” than a single 30-minute bout. His work joins a small but compelling body of science suggesting that, for many purposes, short, cumulative exercise sessions are remarkably beneficial. A study published last year in PLoS One, for instance, found that in children and teenagers, repeated bouts of running or other physical activity lasting as little as five minutes at a time reduced the youngsters’ risks of poor cholesterol profiles, wide waistlines and above-average blood pressure readings as much as longer exercise sessions did. Other studies have found that exercising sporadically throughout the day aids in weight control, particularly for older women. It also, in a few small studies, improved aerobic fitness among previously sedentary people as much as a single, longer workout did and, as a regimen, was more likely to be maintained over the long term. But so-called fractionized exercise has its limits. “You’re not going to make it to the Olympics” based on three 10-minute walks a day, Dr. Gaesser says. “You’ll be healthier. You won’t be an athlete.” Given, however, that far more people eschew exercise than complete decathlons, Dr. Gaesser and his colleagues are studying whether ever more minuscule bouts of exertion can aid in blood pressure control and other measures of health. “We’re trying to find out if, say, two minutes of walking done 15 times during the day” is effective, he says, an endeavor that, subtextually, reveals more about American attitudes toward physical activity than we might wish. Still, he says, early results are promising. |
CLOSE Sixty troops have been fired as sexual assault counselors, recruiters or drill instructors after military investigators found they had committed a wide range of violations. VPC Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called for a Pentagon-wide review. (Photo11: Monica A. King, AFP/Getty Images) Story Highlights Review started after military sexual assault and harassment report Report shows 35% in increase in cases from 2010 to 2012 Army has suspended the most of all the services WASHINGTON — Sixty troops have been fired as sexual assault counselors, recruiters or drill instructors after the military investigators found they had committed violations ranging from alcohol-related offenses to child abuse and sexual assault, USA TODAY has learned. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered that the records of recruiters and sexual assault counselors be examined on May 17. That action came in light of the Pentagon's report in May that estimated 26,000 troops had been sexually assaulted in 2012, a 35% increase since 2010, with offenses ranging from groping to rape. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called sexual assault in the military a crisis. The records of at least 35,000 troops have been screened or are under review, according to the services. Each of the services appears to have interpreted Hagel's directive differently. The Marines screened recruiters, for example, against a public database, while the Army considered criminal records for sexual assault, child abuse and alcohol-related offenses. The Army has suspended 55 soldiers, according to figures compiled through mid-July, said George Wright, an Army spokesman. In all, it is looking at 20,000 recruiters, sexual-assault counselors and drill instructors and expects to have completed its screening by Oct. 1. More suspensions could occur as the review continues. It is unclear whether the suspended soldiers have been discharged, Wright said, or if they can be reassigned to other units. "We only want the very best to be in these positions of special trust," Wright said. "The steps we are taking are in keeping with our commitment to maintaining the special bonds of trust and confidence between the leader and his or her soldiers." The Navy disqualified three of 5,125 recruiters it reviewed, and two of 4,739 counselors. It reviewed records of 869 recruit instructors; none of them was disqualified. "We are committed to this process and routinely screen personnel for any conduct that could warrant decertification," said Tammy O'Rourke, the Navy's sexual assault prevention and response program manager. The Air Force reported no airmen were disqualified but did not report an overall number. The Marines screened its recruiters against the National Sex Offenders Public website, according to a memo, and found no matches. About 6,000 Marine recruiters were screened. Several high-profile sexual-assault scandals have rocked the military this year. The Air Force relieved the lieutenant colonel in charge of its Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office following his arrest in May after police said he drunkenly groped a woman outside a bar not far from the Pentagon. Also in May: The Army announced that it was investigating a sergeant in charge of a battalion's sexual assault prevention program at Fort Hood for suspicion of sexual assault. He is suspected of running a small-scale prostitution ring there, according to sources briefed on the case. Congress summoned the service chiefs to Capitol Hill to explain their response to sexual assault, and a number of measures to address the issue could become law. Among them is a proposal to enhance oversight of commanders who make decisions about prosecution and discipline in sex crimes. Follow @tvandenbrook on Twitter. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1eh2eiL |
Viz Media announced on Tuesday that its dubbed anime streaming service Neon Alley, which was previously available for PlayStation 3 and XBox 360 with a monthly subscription fee, will transition to a free, ad-supported service affiliated with Hulu and Hulu Plus starting on April 1. In addition, the service will transition from a linear live stream schedule to video-on-demand, and will add subtitled anime from Viz's catalog, including simulcasts. The service will be available on all devices that support Hulu Plus. Neon Alley launched in Fall of 2012, offering uncut dubbed anime, including Tiger & Bunny, InuYasha: The Final Act, Zetman, Lagrange - The Flower of Rin-ne, and new episodes of Naruto Shippūden. Update: Viz Media already has a VizAnime.com service that streams videos, including subtitled videos, served by Hulu. There will no longer be a linear streaming service that distinguished Neon Alley from VizAnime.com. |
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