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OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Joe Oliver will make a major announcement Thursday that is expected to include some of the fiscal measures for families promised in the last election campaign. Multiple sources tell The Canadian Press the package will resemble the income-splitting commitment that was a centrepiece of the Conservatives' platform in 2011, made contingent on a balanced budget. One government insider said to expect the prime minister to roll out "a significant package that will bring relief to families and fulfil previous commitments." The idea is that spouses would pool their incomes when they fill out their tax returns, reducing their taxable income depending on their financial situation. There is already income splitting for seniors. The promise was wildly popular among Conservatives in 2011, but has since faced much controversy. The late Jim Flaherty publicly raised doubts about the soundness of the policy during his final days as finance minister earlier this year. Numerous think tanks have studied the implications of the $2.5-billion-a-year promise and found that it would benefit a relatively small number of families that are already well-off. But others have suggested that tweaks could be made to the program's design so that it is more fair. And many Conservative MPs believe strongly that income splitting would right a wrong that has been entrenched in Canadian tax policy for far too long. Both the Liberals and the NDP have come out against it. Harper and Oliver will be making their announcement at a Jewish community centre in Vaughan, Ont., and sources say it will be a big announcement with campaign-style splash. The Conservative caucus was buzzing after Harper coyly referred to the event Wednesday morning. Political and business circles have been waiting to see what the government would unveil in their fall economic update, which could take on the heft of a mini-budget. Harper announced two weeks ago that the government would proceed with another campaign promise — a doubling of the child fitness tax credit. Oliver would only confirm that the event was taking place, and he would be present. Other ministers in the Greater Toronto Area had been told to clear their schedules for Thursday. "We're looking at a variety of policy issues," said Oliver. "We're consulting with Canadians. We're looking at the economic data and we'll be making our decision as appropriate and communicating with Canadians." Also on HuffPost |
Poafpybitty has been with Zachary's mom since they were notified about his death. "I hope no other family has to go through what we have to go through," Poafpybitty said. "I don't wish that on nobody because all he was trying to do was like his brother said was come home." The family said Zachary suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. His aunt believes the officers weren't properly trained to recognize his mental illness, and assumed something else was wrong. "I know that they were trying to say that he was under the influence of drugs but there is a difference between seeing somebody under the influence of drugs and mental illness if you're trained in those areas," Poafpybitty said. "If you have the training and expertise and being a police officer you're supposed to have that training." While the police chief has recommended for two officers to be fired, the family says two other officers who were involved should be punished as well. "Look, my brother's killers are out walking around like it's nothing," Davenport said. "Like my auntie said, we want justice, we do. My brother didn't deserve any of that. He was not a combative person I know that much." |
Khuzaa village in the occupied Gaza Strip. (Rana Baker) I was extremely irritated by the air strike because the next day, Silvia, an activist with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and I were supposed to go to Khuzaa, a small village to the south near the boundary with Israel. We are part of The Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel and the Israeli Apartheid Week organizing committee. Israeli Apartheid Week takes place in March each year to expose Israel’s apartheid system. We were set to record stories from the villagers of Khuzaa on video as a call for broad-based boycotts, divestment and sanctions against apartheid Israel. This call is to show how money which supports Israeli-made products builds the financial base from which Israel invests in military items to commit crimes against the Palestinians. People are working against this economic structure by boycotting Israeli products and corporations that profit from the occupation. We took a microbus to Khan Younis, a small city, then a taxi to Khuzaa where we met Yamen, our guide, and his sister. As the four of us entered Khuzaa, our eyes fell upon its wide green acres and its rural buildings. However, danger in Khuzaa does not lurk far away. Just 350 meters from the boundary with Israel are the Israeli military sniper watchtowers from which live fire is frequently directed at those who come near the boundary. And because I was aiming my camera at their towers, I was risking being exposed to live ammunition that could be fired at me at any moment. Yamen suggested that we visit the al-Najjar family, a family that has so many stories to tell and whose house lies really close to the boundary. The al-Najjars live in a small stone house next to a green field with a front door riddled with bullet-sized holes. From here too, one could see the Israeli watchtower. Umm Anas (Rana Baker) We explained that we were there to document the story of their village and convey their messages to the world. Wafaa, a member of the family, appeared a while later. She told us her story. She is 16 years old and was shot in her knee two years ago just after Israel’s 22-day attacks on Gaza in the winter of 2008-09. “I was going to school when they shot me. I was 14 years old. I know I can walk but I wish I could run like I used to before,” she said. Silvia videotaped. I asked Wafaa if she wanted to continue her studies after high school. She said yes, and that she wants to become an artist. The school Wafaa was walking to when she was shot is the only one in the village that remained standing after the attacks. Tea is a ritual in Khuzaa. Whenever you knock on a door they won’t let you out unless you drink a cup of tea. We had our tea with the family. It was very sweet, in contrast to the sour stories that infiltrated each sip. “They [the Israeli military] bulldozed 25 [square meters] that belong to us,” Umm Anas said, with pain in her eyes. “They turned our land into a road for their tanks.” We spent an hour in their house and thanked them for their generous hospitality, promising to visit again. It was a strong noon sun when we continued on our walk, and on the road we met a man who was picking tomatoes off the vine. “Come take pictures of me and give me money,” the man shouted. “I have only 20 shekels in my bag,” I replied. “Twenty shekels now but at the end of the month you’ll get $1,000,” the man said. “We are just volunteers; we don’t get paid,” I answered. The man laughed and so did we. But laughter is at a premium in this village. We were soon videotaping a man whose house had been completely destroyed during the attacks and who still lives with his wife among the rubble. Villagers make good use of rubble, however. Two cement walls made from the rubble of the Israeli settlements evacuated in 2005 are positioned strategically as a barrier to Israeli fire. When I asked to photograph an old woman talking on her cell phone, she laughed loudly as if I was telling a joke. “She wants to photograph me,” she said to the person on the other end of the line. That woman, with her traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, was the last person we met in the village of green fields. With her laughter still ringing in my ears, Wafaa’s hope to become an artist and the sense of humor of the man collecting tomatoes from the vines, I am reminded once again of Palestinian sumoud, steadfastness. We will continue to fight for our rights until victory is ours. Rana Baker is a business administration student who lives in Gaza City and has a weekly program. Baker is also an activist with the Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (PSCABI) and is a member of the Israeli Apartheid Week Organizing Committee. Her blog is at http://ranabaker.wordpress.com and she can be followed on Twitter: @ranagaza. |
ALTON - Incumbent Brant Walker will be the Alton mayor for the next four years. With 25 of 25 precincts reporting, Walker tallied 2,242 votes (61 percent) over challenger Scott Dixon’s 1,452 (39 percent). Walker, in his victory speech, thanked supporters for their hard work during the campaign. “Thank you for recognizing our aldermen and the job they have done,” Walker said. during a live gathering at Johnson's Corner in Alton. “I look forward to serving the next few years. I am humbled and thank all of the city employees for sticking together. "The progress we have made isn’t done. You will see much more accomplished the next four years.” Dixon said he was not disappointed in himself because he didn't win, but because the mayoral race was never about him. "It was about wanting the people who live here and visit our city, because so much more can be done," he said. "That is what motivated me to run for mayor. My hope is that the people did not vote for Walker because they think this is as good as it gets for Alton, because nothing can be further from the truth. We should support our mayor but also hold him accountable like we do any public servant. My hope is that the energy generated from the election can be redirected towards making our city a better place. Because that's what it's really all about." Reporter Cory Davenport can be reached via call or text at (618) 419-3046 or via email at cory@riverbender.com. Purchase photos from this article Print Version Submit a News Tip |
Some 116 alleged mobsters of the Italy's 'Ndrangheta were arrested on Tuesday, the Carabinieri police said, in the largest coordinated operation on Italy's most powerful mafia organization. More than 1,000 police backed by helicopters and sniffer dogs were involved in the raids, which led to the arrest of 23 clan heads of the Calabria-based criminal organization. "We have acted against the most important family heads, all of them ringleaders," said Federico Cafiero de Raho, the state prosecutor of Reggio Calabria, the capital of the Calabria region. Listen to audio 29:59 Share World in Progress: Safeguarding the children of the Mafia Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/2aFZb Listen to DW's special on protecting the children of the 'Ndrangheta Police chief Giuseppe Governale described the coordinated police operation as striking at the "beating heart" of the 'Ndrangheta at the national and international level. Investigations that led to Tuesday's arrest found the 'Ndrangheta had set up parallel courts to settle disputes and rigged public contracts, including even one to build a local court house in Calabria. The 'Ndrangheta is Italy's most powerful mafia organization, having overtaken Sicily's Cosa Nostra. The Carabinieri on Tuesday also conducted a large-scale raid against the Cosa Nostra, arresting 54 people accused of organized crime membership, drug trafficking, extortion and robbery. The 'Ndrangheta engages in extortion, murder, drugs and arms trafficking, money laundering and widespread corruption. The group is considered to have "absolute supremacy" over cocaine smuggling into Europe, Italy's national anti-mafia organization said in its annual report last month. The same report said 'Ndrangheta "is present in all key sectors of politics, public administration and the economy," often using corruption over violence to pursue its objectives. Active in over 30 countries, it has also gained a "stable presence" in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, as well as "by now complete" infiltration in Canada and the United States. "We are starting to make some countries understand that the 'Ndrangheta is an extremely dangerous phenomenon," Italy's anti-mafia czar Franco Roberti told the country's senate last month. Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office BKA has described the 'Ndrangheta as Germany's dominant crime syndicate. The group has suffered a number of recent blows. Tuesday's raids come less than a month after a fugitive Italian 'Ndrangheta mafia boss charged with international drug trafficking was arrested in Brazil. That arrest followed the capture of top 'Ndrangheta crime boss Giuseppe Giorgi in a bunker inside his home in San Luca, Calabria. He had been on the run for 26 years. In late May, police in Italy and Germany arrested 22 people running a cocaine trafficking racket linked to the 'Ndrangheta. cw/bw (AFP, dpa) |
The Nobel peace prize winner and president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has defended a law that criminalises homosexual acts, saying: "We like ourselves just the way we are." In a joint interview with Tony Blair, who was left looking visibly uncomfortable by her remarks, Sirleaf told the Guardian: "We've got certain traditional values in our society that we would like to preserve." Liberian legislation classes "voluntary sodomy" as a misdemeanour punishable by up to one year in prison, but two new bills have been proposed that would target homosexuality with much tougher sentences. The normally charismatic and eloquent Nobel laureate, when questioned, was brusque, "I won't sign any law that has to do with that area. None whatsoever," she said impatiently. Blair, on a visit to Liberia in his capacity as the founder of the Africa Governance Initiative (AGI), a charity that aims to strengthen African governments, refused to comment on Sirleaf's remarks. When asked whether good governance and human rights went hand in hand, the British former prime minister said: "I'm not giving you an answer on it." "One of the advantages of doing what I do now is I can choose the issues I get into and the issues I don't. For us, the priorities are around power, roads, jobs delivery," he said. Over his 10 years as prime minister, Blair became a champion for the legal equality of gay people, pushing through laws on civil partnerships, lifting a ban on gay people in the armed forces and lowering the age of consent for gay people to 16. A Catholic convert, he called on the pope to rethink his "entrenched" views and offer equal rights to gay people. But gay rights, he said, were not something he was prepared to get involved in as an adviser to African leaders. With Sirleaf sitting to his left, Blair refused to give any advice on gay rights reforms. He let out a stifled chuckle after Sirleaf interrupted him to make it clear that Blair and his staff were only allowed to do what she said they could. "AGI Liberia has specific terms of reference … that's all we require of them," she said, crossing her arms and leaning back. There have been no recent convictions under the sodomy law, according to the latest US state department human rights report. However, anti-gay activists have promoted two new bills which would take the legislation much further. One would amend the penal code to make a person guilty of a second-degree felony if he or she "seduces, encourages or promotes another person of the same gender to engage in sexual activities" or "purposefully engages in acts that arouse or tend to arouse another person of the same gender to have sexual intercourse", carrying a prison sentence of up to five years. The second bill – drafted by the ex-wife of the former president Charles Taylor – would make gay marriage a crime punishable by up to 10 years in jail. Jewel Howard Taylor told the Guardian: "[Homosexuality] is a criminal offence. It is un-African." She went on to say: "It is a problem in our society. We consider deviant sexual behaviour criminal behaviour. "We are just trying to strengthen our local laws. This is not an attempt to bash homosexuals." The gay rights debate erupted in Liberia after the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, announced in December that America's foreign aid budget would promote the protection of gay rights, prompting speculation that funds would be tied to rights records. The announcement brought unprecedented attention to homosexuality in a country where until recently gay people and lesbians lived in secret, but generally not in fear for their lives. Since Clinton's remarks, Liberian newspapers have published numerous articles and editorials describing homosexuality as "desecrating", "abusive" and an "abomination". "Over the last six months, we've seen a worrying increase in anti-gay rhetoric, intolerance and indeed attacks on individuals fighting for the rights of Liberians in same-sex relationships," said Corinne Dufka, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch in west Africa. In the past month alone there have been at least six homophobic attacks in the capital, Monrovia. One 21-year-old gay man, who recently left Monrovia to move to the countryside after some of his friends were threatened, said he now lived in fear of mob violence, a common occurrence on the streets of Monrovia. "You and your brother walking down the street, they may actually jump on you and beat you, kill you, and when they say: 'Oh they are gay, that's the reason we killed them,' nothing will come of it," he said. Homosexuality is already illegal in 37 African countries. In Uganda, a bill proposing custodial sentences for homosexuality is still being considered, although it no longer contains the provision for the death penalty. Ten women were recently arrested in Cameroon accused of being lesbians, while in Nigeria, homosexual activities are punishable by up to 14 years in prison. Sirleaf was awarded the Nobel peace prize last year for her work in campaigning for women's rights. The 73-year-old became Africa's first female president in 2006 and was elected for a second term last year. "If she tried to decriminalise the [current anti-gay] law it would be political suicide," said Tiawan S Gongloe, the country's former solicitor general. Without a majority government, Sirleaf desperately needs the support of other MPs to tackle other issues such as corruption, exploitation of the country's natural resources and mass youth unemployment, he said. After 14 years of civil war that ended in 2003, Liberia is still one of the poorest countries in the world. Gongloe also said the country was still not ready for a debate on gay rights. "Liberians need public education on the issue. Our society is not at that point yet to have a civil conversation on the issue," he said. While President Sirleaf said she would not sign any bill that changes the current sodomy law, she also won't sign the recently introduced, much tougher, bills. "If she vetoes the proposed laws, she will have done the right thing," said Corinne Dufka from Human Rights Watch, who has written to Sirleaf on the issue. 'If she moves to scrap the existing 'voluntary sodomy' law which criminalises consensual same-sex acts, she will have left a truly positive legacy on behalf of gay, lesbian bisexual and transgender Liberians.' At an African Union summit earlier this year Ban Ki-moon urged African leaders to respect gay rights and to stop treating gay people as second-class citizens and criminals. When pushed on the UN secretary general's comments, with Sirleaf at his side, Blair responded: "I'm not saying these issues aren't important, but the president has given her position and this is not one for me." • This article was updated on 21 March 2012 to restore material cut in the editing process. The restored material clarifies the stance that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is taking on laws concerning homosexuality in Liberia. That is: she refuses to dismantle the existing anti-sodomy law, while also refusing to sign two new bills that toughen the law. |
How would the average investor know that Bernie Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme? Here’s a supreme irony for you. About six months ago a colleague of mine named Stephen Greenspan, a psychiatry professor at the University of Colorado, sent me a book manuscript to review and blurb for him (a blurb is one of those back jacket endorsements from someone who hopefully knows something about the subject of the book). Greenspan’s book is called Annals of Gullibility (Praeger, 2009, due out in January), and it includes chapters on gullibility in literature and folktales (Pinocchio, Gulliver), in religion (end-of-the-world predictions), in war and politics (the Trojan Horse), in criminal justice (child witnesses), in science (cold fusion), and in finance (Ponzi schemes). It’s a great read and an excellent reference source that, as I wrote in my blurb, “belongs on the bookshelves of skeptics and scientists, not to mention politicians and policy analysts, especially before they go to war.” Well, last week Stephen emailed me a query letter about writing an article for Skeptic on Ponzi schemes, based on the chapter in his book, and — here’s the irony — it would recount how he lost a huge chunk of his retirement investments (to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars) not to the market collapse (like the rest of us) but by investing in none other than Bernard Madoff’s now-infamous Ponzi scheme. Yup, a psychiatrist who wrote the book on gullibility got taken. What I am skeptical about here, however, is not Madoff and his scam, but the media’s portrayal of his investors as suckers for falling for it. My question is this: how was anyone outside of the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) to know? What signs and signals were there for the average investor to see? Madoff was head of NASDAQ for three years and his investment company apparently consistently returned annual dividends to his investors in the range of 8% to 14% — healthy but not outrageous (apparently his golf scores were similarly rigged to make him appear good but not great, shooting 80–89 every round). One could make the case that the SEC should have known (indeed, they were warned in 2005 that Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme), or that investment experts who monitor the business should have been suspicious (and some of them were but their voices went unheard). But how would a college professor in Colorado, or Joe the Plumber in Puckerbrush, Pennsylvania, or you and me as Joe Sixpack investors know that Bernie Madoff was a latter-day Charles Ponzi? Madoff’s deal was especially effective because it was what is called an affinity scam, where you appeal to those in your social group, in this case Jewish investors. It makes you feel like you’re an insider, a member of an exclusive club, and as such you would surely not be scammed by one of your own. If, say, you were working in the entertainment industry and Stephen Spielberg or Jeffery Katzenberg (both clients of Madoff) phoned to tell you about this sound investment opportunity that was by invitation only and that they could get you in for a minimum of $100,000, and that they had been invested for years in this program and had reliably received annual dividend checks ranging from 8% to 14% on their money, what would you do? You’d most likely jump at the opportunity. In fact, in his article in the forthcoming issue of Skeptic (and in this week’s eSkeptic), Stephen Greenspan recalls that he felt like he would have been a fool not to capitalize on this opportunity. Was he a fool for so doing? Only in hindsight. But what foresight was there? By way of analogy, in 2000 I co-hosted a television series for the Fox Family Channel called Exploring the Unknown, in which we produced a segment on cons and scams, one of which was the infamous three-card monte. We employed the help of a professional magician named Dan Harlan who set up a cardboard box at a street mall in Santa Monica to show us how easy it is to sucker people into giving him their money (watch the segment on YouTube). It’s a relatively simple game. There are three cards on top of the box. One of them is, say, the Queen of Spades (the money card), while the other two are numbered cards. Your task is to follow the Queen as the magician/conman rapidly moves the cards around the boxtop. When he is finished with half a dozen moves, you place your bill ($5, $10, or $20) in front of the card that you think is the Queen. If you are right he matches your bill. If you are wrong he takes your bill. Unless you are a shill working for the magician/conman (who is signaled through an agree-upon sign where the Queen is located so that he can occasionally win), you will always lose. Why? Because the three-card monte involves one sleight-of-hand move whereby when he is rapidly moving the cards about and occasionally showing you the Queen on the bottom of two cards in his hand, he moves his ring (or pinky) finger down a card from holding the top card to holding the Queen, so that when he appears to be tossing the bottom card (Queen) onto the box top, he is actually tossing down the top card and thereby moving the queen to a different spot. You can’t see it. For the show we had to ask Dan to make the move in slow motion for us, and even then we had to slow down the tape in order to see the move. Would you be fool enough to fall for the three-card monte? Most of us would say no, because we have heard that it’s a con, or we’ve seen shows like the one I produced, or we’ve read about it in a magazine or a book. But if you had never heard of the game and saw one being played, by the information of your senses you would see some people winning (you wouldn’t know that these are shills) and you would not see the sleight-of-hand move. So it would not be unreasonable to believe that you stand a reasonable chance of winning. In other words, what signs would there be that a con was underway? The analogy holds for Madoff-level investment scams. Short of just being skeptical of all investment technologies (which, obviously, most of us are not and that’s what helps fuel the modern economy), how are any of us to know which investment companies are legit and which are not? The SEC? We’ve seen how well that works, so what’s an investor to do? My answer is … diversify. What’s your answer? |
Unlike the 120 minutes of a feature film, we get to watch our most beloved TV characters develop over the course of several seasons. The best of them become dear to us, even if they—like many on this list—would make terrible friends. Limiting ourselves to two per show (sorry Jesse Pinkman), here are the best TV characters of 2011. 10. Tom Haverford – Parks and Recreation Actor: Aziz Ansari Network: NBC This has been Tom Haverford’s year to shine on Parks and Recreation. So far he and pal Jean-Ralphio have launched (and lost) their own super-dope entertainment company, Entertainment 720, and along the way Tom has developed a potential love interest in Lucy, reminded us all that sometimes it’s best to “Treat Yoself!” and inspired the Tom Haverfoods meme (“do-ri-ris,” anyone?).—Bonnie Stiernberg 9. Louie – Louie Actor: Louis C.K. Network: FX In the second season of Louie, comedian Louis C.K. continues his portrayal of a fictionalized version of himself, leading the viewer through a wide variety of tribulations: raising two little girls, dealing with crazy relatives, struggling in the comedy business, going home with a swinger and getting repeatedly rejected by Pamela (Pamela Adlon). Though obviously a comedic show, Louie often addresses more serious issues with a high degree of warmth and honesty (such as the hourlong episode where Louie goes to the Middle East to entertain the troops). It hinges on C.K.’s unflinchingly realistic portrayal of a divorced man in his mid 40s and the world he finds himself in. —John Barrett 8. Charlie Kelly – It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Actor: Charlie Day Network: FX In a cast full of douchebags, the childlike ball of energy played by Charlie Kelly comes off as more endearing than despicable. It’s easy to understand why some might not like most of the characters from It’s Always Sunny, but not Charlie. Even when he’s huffing spray paint or traversing the sewers, Charlie always brings the audience to his side. He’s the personification of what makes It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia such a great show: perverse, loud, crude and surprisingly likable.—Ross Bonaime 7. Walter White – Breaking Bad Actor: Bryan Cranston Network: AMC Walter White has come a shockingly long way from being an innocent chemistry teacher to a selfish, murderous meth dealer with little he won’t do to get ahead. In the fourth season, White goes further down the rabbit hole—transforming from the series’ protagonist to one of its villains. Yet Bryan Cranston walks the line brilliantly between calculated psychopath and sympathetic family man. In a show that always leaves the viewer guessing what will come next, Walter White always assures that whatever it is will surely make his character darker and more despicable. —Ross Bonaime 6. Dexter Morgan – Dexter Actor: Michael C. Hall Network: Showtime The character development of Dexter Morgan over six seasons has been fascinating to follow. If Season One saw us trying to come to terms with our empathy towards a serial killer, Season Six sees us cheering an old friend’s slow progression towards something akin to humanity. His moral code is still a world away from ours, but he often does a better job adhering to it than the rest of us.—Josh Jackson 5. Liz Lemon – 30 Rock Actor: Tina Fey Network: NBC Arguably the most consistently funny female character on TV, Liz Lemon spent season five of 30 Rock searching for a missing Tracy Jordan, leading a mutiny against her pilot boyfriend Carol (Matt Damon) after their plane gets stuck on a runway, waging war against a plastic bag stuck in a tree and stripping down for a fake pregnant photo shoot—all the while spitting out the hilarious witticisms that have earned Fey more than a handful of major awards. Our only complaint is that Fey’s real-life pregnancy means we’ve got to wait until January for Season Six to premiere. Aww, nerds!—Bonnie Stiernberg 4. Barney Stinson – How I Met Your Mother Actor: Neil Patrick Harris Network: CBS The word “awesome” was made to describe Barney Stinson. He suits up, proclaims the night will be legendary regardless of how disappointing it looks like it will be and he always, always accepts a challenge. He’s become more the main character than Ted, and we’re okay with that. He’s guided Ted through years of whining, provided Marshall with a job, Lily conceived her baby on his bathroom floor and we can’t forget his discovery of Robin’s pop-star past. Neil Patrick Harris has provided non-stop laughter as the ladies man that so many other shows have since tried, and failed, to replicate. NPH changed the archetype and set the bar high.—Adam Vitcavage 3. Gustavo Fring – Breaking Bad Actor: Giancarlo Esposito Network: AMC We couldn’t take our eyes off TV’s most compelling villain since Stringer Bell for the same reason we couldn’t take them off Stringer—we didn’t know whether or not to pull for him amidst all the other morally ambiguous characters on the show. It was hard not to cheer on his revenge against the Mexican cartel. His meticulous dress, his unassuming charm as a restaurateur and the masterful game of chess he played with Walter all season made him a fan favorite. And he finished the season with a bang. —Josh Jackson 2. Ron Swanson – Parks and Recreation Actor: Nick Offerman Network: NBC An idea that’s recently popped up on the Internet purports that Ernest Hemingway never actually died; he just became Ron Swanson. Swanson may not have written A Farewell to Arms but he did create the Ron Swanson Pyramid of Greatness. The mustachioed man’s man loves his meat, brunettes and breakfast, and his incredibly droll sensibility plays great off the always perky Leslie Knope. Swanson essentially plays father figure to the entire Pawnee Parks Department, giving words of wisdom to Leslie, being an unusual role model to April and a guiding force in Tom Haverford’s career. He likes eating turkey legs wrapped in bacon, playing saxophone under the code name Duke Silver and burying his gold around the town—or does he? In four seasons, Ron has become the standout in a cast of incredible characters, and already seems poised to join the elite list of TV’s greatest comedic characters. —Ross Bonaime 1. Abed Nadir – Community Actor: Danny Pudi Network: NBC I can’t think of another character like Abed in TV history. Emotionally detached and good-hearted, Abed’s undiagnosed Asperger’s looked like it would make him the butt of jokes in early episodes—like he would be playing the Woody or Coach role of the gang. It quickly became apparent, though, that he was actually the show’s emotional center—that everyone around him was a little disturbed, and he would be the one holding it all together. And when he reached that point of emotional overload in Season Two, the result was “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas,” Community‘s best episode that didn’t involve paintball. His pop-culture obsessions and antics with his buddy Troy have made for some of the show’s finest moments, particularly the closing segments like the absurdist Troy and Abed in the Morning.—Josh Jackson |
On one side of the fence there are tree houses. A sand box in the middle of the yard. Children laughing and running while friendly dogs bark and give chase. On the other side of the fence is a makeshift gun range. A wooden pallet backed by a small mound of sand and some other pallets. In between it all? Outrage. Residents in St. Petersburg's Lakewood Estates were horrified to discover one of their neighbors was planning to use a relatively small wooden target for shooting practice in his back yard. Their horror only grew when they discovered it appeared to be legal. "I'm a military veteran, I'm a gun owner, but I'm not insane,'' said Patrick Leary, whose children often play in a yard that would be in his neighbor's line of fire. "The Florida Legislature has turned Florida into a shooting gallery.'' Colorful imagery aside, Leary is correct. Florida lawmakers are responsible. Legislators passed a law in 1987 that declared state statutes superseded the laws of local municipalities when it comes to gun regulations. Upset that some cities were still toying with local ordinances, the Legislature passed another law in 2011 that authorized hefty penalties for violations. Local officials could be removed from office and face personal fines of up to $5,000 for passing gun regulations. So now that cities and counties effectively have their hands tied, what exactly does state law say about backyard gun ranges? Fire away. If an amateur gun range does not involve shooting across paved roads or over an occupied premises, it's perfectly legal as long as the shooter is not acting negligently or recklessly. Of course, the state doesn't bother to define reckless or negligent. And that's created a problem for law enforcement. Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri says "reckless'' and "negligent'' deal with a person's actions, and not the actual construction or location of the gun range. With vague wording in statutes and no case law as a guide, he said deputies would almost need to witness shots being fired to determine if a gun owner was behaving recklessly. Gualtieri says there are several backyard gun ranges in use in Clearwater and Palm Harbor and his agency has been powerless to stop them. "My first reaction to one of these cases was, 'Heck no, that can't be right. That has to be unlawful,' '' Gualtieri said. "After researching it, we realized, 'Sheesh, it really is legal.' "This is something that absolutely needs to be addressed on the state level. There has to be some way to differentiate between rural areas like Jefferson or Wakulla counties and the most densely populated cities in the most densely populated counties." In the Lakewood Estates case, neighbors say 21-year-old Joey Carannante has not yet tested out the backyard range at his father's house. Carannante, who could not be reached for comment, knocked on doors recently to let neighbors know he was planning to shoot targets on weekends. St. Petersburg police were called but said there was little they could do. St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman, however, isn't buying it. He talked to police Chief Tony Holloway on Monday and said he wants action. "It's a ridiculous situation, and we are going to put a stop to it,'' Kriseman said. "If it's not reckless and negligent to have a gun range in the middle of all these houses, then I don't know the definition of those words. "… If they want to sue us, then let them sue us. My No. 1 job is public safety … and those residents are not safe right now.'' St. Petersburg police spokeswoman Yolanda Fernandez said officers will respond if shots are fired and will forward a report to the State Attorney's Office for review. The whole idea is so nutty that even the National Rifle Association's own lobbyist Marion Hammer doesn't support it. She said the part of the statute dealing with reckless and negligent use of guns was added specifically to prohibit the discharge of weapons in neighborhoods. "I have to side with the mayor on this,'' Hammer wrote in an email. "Shooting ranges don't belong in dense residential neighborhoods and, in fact, nothing in the law allows them.'' Meanwhile, neighbors say they are fearful of allowing their children outside. And staying indoors isn't much more of a comfort. Last month in Hillsborough County, a glass door was shattered and eight other bullets struck a house from a neighbor shooting his AK-47 at a range in his back yard. In that case, there was supposedly 300 yards between the houses. At Lakewood Estates, the target is about 30 to 50 feet from two different houses. "It's beyond ludicrous,'' said Pinellas County Commissioner Ken Welch, who lives a few houses away. "It is not a gun range in any sense of the word. It's a couple of boxes with sand inside. Any error, any ricochet is going to get someone killed. "It's insanity.'' Times staff writer Kameel Stanley and researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this column. |
The Lusitania at end of the first leg of her maiden voyage, New York City, September 1907 (photo taken with a panoramic lens). May 7, 1915, a quiet day that became one of the most important for the US in World War I. The Lusitania, a passenger ship carrying nearly 1,200 people, 128 of whom were American citizens, was sailing along the coast of Ireland, when a German torpedo struck in the side. A second explosion from somewhere within the ship’s bowels rocked the giant ocean liner as passengers scrambled into lifeboats. In less then 20 minutes she had gone under, and with her, 1,119 of the people who had occupied her decks. It was the provocation that was needed for the US to join the British in their battle against Germany. The ferocity of what was perceived to be a senseless act propelled the nation into World War I. Recently, however, a group of amateur divers may have clarified a bit of the story. According to the group who have been diving the wreck site, the Germans may have been right to assume the Lusitania was holding more then just people. Nearly half of the cargo on board is said to have been of secret munitions that were being transported to the UK, in an attempt to aid the British in their war effort. So far, four million rounds of .303 rifle ammunition has been found on board. Gregg Bemis, the American businessman who owns the rights to the remains and is holding the excavation, thinks it’s unlikely that that will be all that’s found. Artist’s rendering of the sinking of the Lusitania. Gregg Bemis in a submarine preparing to dive to the Lusitania. Related Posts: |
In November of 2010, 26,000 scientists descended on the San Diego Convention Center to attend the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. They weren’t alone. On the first day of the conference, thirty protestors gathered outside to denounce the use of animals in research. Some were splattered with fake blood; others held pictures of kittens and monkeys with their brains exposed. The demonstration didn’t catch the meeting’s organizers by surprise: they had already prepared a counterattack. The recently-formed Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) used this ammunition to help pass the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act in 1966, the tightest regulations on animal research in U.S. history. The federal law cracked down on animal dealers and mandated the humane treatment of laboratory animals. The scientific community began fighting back with its own lobbying groups, most prominently the National Association for Biomedical Research (NABR), which since 1985 has advocated for the continued use of lab animals. Today, the number of cats and dogs in U.S. research labs has shrunk dramatically, thanks to changing social attitudes and the rise of cheaper animal models like mice and fruit flies. But the specter of pets still looms large over scientific research. Despite the RSPCA’s efforts, vivisection continued, and cats and dogs became ever more popular research subjects, especially with the rapid growth of the scientific enterprise that followed World War II. Long before companies began mass breeding mice, rats, and other creatures for research, dogs and cats were the guinea pigs of choice. At first, the public didn’t bat an eye—even when, beginning in 1948, the biomedical research lobby helped push through legislation in several states that required animal shelters to surrender their unclaimed cats and dogs to hospitals, universities, and pharmaceutical companies. But when thieves known as bunchers began stealing pets from people’s homes, and Americans began to get wind of animal dealers who chained up and caged dogs and cats in horrendous conditions as they waited to be sold for biomedical research (a 1966 Life magazine exposé about an especially notorious Maryland animal dealer was entitled “Concentration Camps for Dogs”), the public put its foot down. It flooded Congress with tens of thousands of letters, eclipsing the number received on Vietnam and civil rights issues combined. Descartes and his successors did have their detractors. In the 1870s, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA)—the world’s first animal welfare organization—pushed for an anti-vivisection law in England. Parliament appointed a royal commission to evaluate the legislation, and one of the commission’s members—a journalist named Richard Holt Hutton—argued vehemently that cats and dogs should be kept out of the laboratory. “No class of animals… contains so many creatures of high intelligence, and therefore probably of high sensibility, as dogs and cats,” he wrote. “The humble friends of man, which have been taught to obey and trust him, should not be selected as the victims.” The scientific community has always had an uneasy relationship with cats and dogs. Things didn’t get off to a good start in the seventeenth century, when famed French philosopher Rene Descartes declared that all animals were soulless machines, devoid of thought or feeling. His writings helped justify vivisection, which was gaining popularity as doctors strove to understand how the body worked. Descartes himself was no stranger to the practice. “If you cut off the end of the heart of a living dog,” he wrote, “and through the incision put your finger into one of the concavities, you will clearly feel that every time the heart shortens, it presses your finger, and it stops every time it lengthens.” Two days after the protest, the conference held a symposium, not-so-subtly titled “Conferring Legal Rights to Animals: Research in the Crosshairs”. The session’s panelists—two scientists, a professor of veterinary medicine, and a law professor—warned attendees about the growing movement to grant legal “personhood” to animals. Pets were a particular concern. Cats and dogs were becoming the subject of custody cases, they had begun to inherit money, and owners were starting to collect “noneconomic damages” when their animals were killed—awards sometimes in the tens of thousands of dollars typically reserved for the loss of a spouse or child. The growing legal status of dogs and cats, the panelists warned, could spill over to mice and lab rats, potentially dooming biomedical research. The San Diego symposium was the culmination of years of anxiety over the evolving legal status of cats and dogs. Research organizations had been keeping a wary eye on the proliferation of noneconomic damage awards, pet custody cases, felony anticruelty laws, and the success of the “Guardian Campaign”, an animal rights endeavor that had convinced more than a dozen U.S. cities and the state of Rhode Island to begin referring to owners as “guardians” in their pet-related ordinances. In 2004, NABR created an “Animal Law Section” on its website to track these issues. Though the organization’s primary concern is attacks against the use of rodents and nonhuman primates, it frets that enhanced rights for cats and dogs—especially a sort-of legal personhood that would allow them to be treated more like people in the eyes of the law—could bleed over to lab animals. “We’re worried about the slippery slope,” says NABR’s president, Frankie Trull. “Once you assign rights to animals, you can’t do animal research without it being challenged on every level. There’s not a single disease that’s studied that is not studied first in animals.” Important work on Alzheimer’s, birth defects, cancers—“all of it,” she says, “would come to a screeching halt.” As Americans have embraced pets as virtual children, they’ve soured on animal research. Trull’s concerns are well-founded. As Americans have embraced pets as virtual children (more than 90% consider their cats and dogs members of the family), they’ve soured on animal research. In 2001, only 29% of the public deemed animal testing “morally wrong”; by 2013, it was 41%, and 54% of those aged 18 to 29. It’s a trend that’s likely to continue. The generation growing up today is more likely than ever to view its cats and dogs not just as family members, but as virtual siblings. When these kids become adults, they’ll be even more prone than their predecessors to view the thoughts and feelings of other animals through the eyes of their pets. Meanwhile, organizations born out of a concern for the welfare of cats and dogs are now looking for ways to protect lab animals. Both HSUS and the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), a northern California group of lawyers that has advocated for more rights for animals in the courtroom, have pushed hard to end animal research. HSUS has carried out undercover investigations of scientific labs and lobbied to end invasive research on chimpanzees. ALDF has filed a landmark lawsuit against a California biotechnology company for failing to properly care for its animals, and it’s petitioning Congress for an Animal Bill of Rights, which includes “the right of laboratory animals not to be used in cruel or unnecessary experiments.” Researchers haven’t taken such campaigns lying down. Thanks to heavy lobbying, most state anticruelty laws exempt lab animals. And in 2006, NABR helped pass the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. The law, which imposes penalties of up to decades in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for individuals who interfere with biomedical research, is mainly aimed at animal rights protestors who destroy property and threaten lives. But opponents say it demonizes anyone who questions the use of animals in research. A few influential legal scholars have even joined the fray. Perhaps no criticism is more damning than that coming from Richard Cupp, a law professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. Cupp, a panelist on the “Research in the Crosshairs” session at the San Diego conference who has advised NABR, is a hugely influential force in the antipersonhood movement. He has written that equating animals with people devalues humanity. “When we allow animals into our inner circle, we erode the notion that humans are unique,” he says. “When animals are on the same plane as humans, we no longer have the moral responsibility to care for them. And when humans are on par with animals, what’s to stop us from euthanizing humans?” Legal rights, he says, are a serious business. They don’t just give us the ability to live our lives relatively unencumbered. They enter us into a contract with every other member of society, a world built on the give-and-take between human rights and human responsibilities. As he wrote in a landmark 2007 law review article, “A powerful argument may be made that granting rights to animals that do not possess moral responsibility represents a rejection of the foundation of human civilization.” NABR’s Trull laments the battles over animal research. “It’s much more combative than it used to be,” she says. And things are only likely to get worse, especially if the legal status of pets continues to rise. “I’m a crazy cat person,” she says. “I adore my animals.” But personhood is off the table. Any attempts to assign more rights to animals, even dogs and cats, will be met with fierce opposition. “We’re going to fight this with every bit of resource we have.” David Grimm is the online news editor of Science_, and the author of the new book,_ Citizen Canine: Our Evolving Relationship with Cats and Dogs_, from which this article is adapted. Excerpted with permission from PublicAffairs, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright 2014._ |
READER COMMENTS ON "BREAKING: California's Republican-Led Supreme Court Lifts Ban on Same-Sex Marriage!" (12 Responses so far...) COMMENT #1 [Permalink] ... CambridgeKnitter said on 5/15/2008 @ 12:29 pm PT... Wahoo! The state of my birth joins my adopted home state in recognizing the obvious. Celebrate now, but keep your eyes on the ball; there are too many people investing their self-worth in putting others down. COMMENT #2 [Permalink] ... GWN said on 5/15/2008 @ 12:43 pm PT... Love, a temporary insanity, curable by marriage. I don't recall who said that...probably too many to mention. COMMENT #3 [Permalink] ... Linda said on 5/15/2008 @ 1:51 pm PT... OMG! I can feel my own marriage being threatened by this ruling already!! I feel an uncontrollable urge to go down to city hall and file divorce papers ... right now! Please undo this ruling to protect my marriage!!! COMMENT #4 [Permalink] ... Agent 99 said on 5/15/2008 @ 3:37 pm PT... It's always seemed inescapable to me that a conservative reading of the Constitution of the United States, let alone California, would be forced to concede the complete legality, the inalienable right, of gays to marry. And I'm so darn happy thinking of Republicans actually making real American decisions that don't exactly serve their party. What a damn relief! Here's hoping it'll cease being so rare.... COMMENT #5 [Permalink] ... larue said on 5/15/2008 @ 7:15 pm PT... It's a good day for all freedom lovin folks, regardless of sexual preferences or orientations. And THIS Laure offers a hat tip and a big and hearty toast to the LGBT's for whom this IS such a big occasion. A win for you, is a win for us all. Rights are rights. They take yours, then they take mine. As said above, eyes wide open, the next attack is soonly forthcoming, no doubt. In the meantime, joke 'em if they can't take a fuck! *G* COMMENT #6 [Permalink] ... Bamboo Harvester said on 5/15/2008 @ 7:31 pm PT... Remarkable, absolutely remarkable ... am I awake ... Congrats! COMMENT #7 [Permalink] ... goatchowder said on 5/15/2008 @ 10:38 pm PT... I have to paraphrase the great, late Bill Hicks here. I dunno how y'all feel about this, but gay people want to get married. Here's how I feel about it: Anyone.... DUMB ENOUGH.... To want to get married.... Should be allowed. :-) COMMENT #8 [Permalink] ... Jeannie Dean (not in) FL-13 said on 5/16/2008 @ 1:20 am PT... Thanks for the HICKS, Goatchowder! What a great line... And way to go CA~! Feelin' a bit better about the species, today. COMMENT #9 [Permalink] ... OMSmedia said on 5/16/2008 @ 8:37 am PT... In 6 months...it changes back. Better hurry and file. COMMENT #10 [Permalink] ... Dredd said on 5/16/2008 @ 7:40 pm PT... Oh yeah, the truth finally comes out, it was the conservatives all this time who backed the gays ... so can blacks now marry blacks too ... 99 bottles of bullsit on the wall 99 bottles of bulshit ... take one down and pass it around ... 99 bottles of bullshit on the wall ... 99 bottles of bullsit on the wall 99 bottles of bulshit ... take one down and pass it around ... 99 bottles of bullshit on the wall ...99 bottles of bullsit on the wall 99 bottles of bulshit ... take one down and pass it around ... 99 bottles of bullshit on the wall ...99 bottles of bullsit on the wall 99 bottles of bulshit ... take one down and pass it around ... 99 bottles of bullshit on the wall ... can blacks now marry blacks too??? "I could not vote for a blacksexual" .... ??? Ah the "progressives" ... got a new motto for you "progress is moving, the direction mattereth not" ... So just come out of the closet and call yourselves the undulating party ... backers and forthers ... we got your number. COMMENT #11 [Permalink] ... Dredd said on 5/16/2008 @ 8:05 pm PT... Bard Brad, why do you think 'equal purtekshun' is so imporant in Amurak, one of the three provinces of Bullshitistan (denial, Amurak, and what house)? Why isn't it important in the other provinces of Bullshitistan, such as the what house? I mean ... picking on lil denial for heaven's sake??? I feel like "taking a piss with lil craig" is the next bumper sticker. COMMENT #12 [Permalink] ... Dredd said on 5/16/2008 @ 8:12 pm PT... |
Mike Stone/Associated Press CHICAGO — Barb Courtney remembers the exact time—12:34 a.m.—that her phone rang on that night back at the end of July. So many fearful thoughts run through a parent's mind when a call comes in at that hour, and she had every reason to have them all. Her son, Nicky Delmonico, has been through so much over the past few years: addiction, suspension from baseball, thoughts of quitting the game, rehab. What now? The few seconds it took her to get to the phone and answer seemed like an eternity. But once she heard his voice, her fears were replaced with elation. "Mama," Delmonico said over the phone. "Your baby is going to the big leagues." Since that night—"That moment in time is just frozen for me," Courtney said—and his August 1 debut, Delmonico has become one of the great stories of the 2017 MLB season, a story of desperation and perseverance and now redemption. Through Wednesday, Delmonico is slashing .295/.415/.551 with the White Sox. This just three years after he was suspended from baseball for using Adderall without MLB's permission and two years after going to rehab for his dependency on that drug. Like any other player, Delmonico's arrival was a culmination. Sure, he paid his dues, rising through every level of the minor league system. But for Delmonico, who spoke with Bleacher Report in the White Sox dugout just days before coming off a stint on the 10-day disabled list, it is also the byproduct of overwhelming personal transformation. Delmonico was first diagnosed with attention deficit disorder in high school. He wasn't a wild kid, and though sports were always more a part of his life than academics, that had a lot to do with baseball simply being in his DNA. His dad, Rod, was head baseball coach at Tennessee for 18 years and managed the Netherlands in the 2009 World Baseball Classic. Nicky wasn't the type of kid to ignore his parents, or his doctors, so when he was prescribed Adderall, he did what almost any would do. He filled the prescription. "When I was first prescribed, the doctor said at one point I'm going to have to get off it," Delmonico remembered. "That should have been a red flag from the get-go. "I didn't know, at a young age, what this drug was about or what it was going to do." The drug did help him, for the most part, become more focused in school. After graduating from Farragut High in Knoxville, Tennessee, he was drafted by the Orioles in the sixth round of the 2011 MLB draft. He was perceived to be a first-round talent that year but fell with teams fearing he would play college baseball at Georgia. Baltimore was able to lure him away from his scholarship by offering him a $1.525 million signing bonus. Adderall is an amphetamine. In its drug protocol, baseball tests players for amphetamines. But it is an accepted substance as long as players make the league office aware they are taking it and provide the specific dosage. Delmonico was approved by MLB to take the drug and remained on it for nearly three years. He was traded to the Brewers in 2013, and soon after that season concluded, he decided to stop taking Adderall. He had come to realize over time he had a problem with it. He had built up such a tolerance that no amount could satisfy his cravings. The details of how often when he was taking pills remain private, but he says he spent nights without getting any sleep and the medicine caused noticeable weight loss. "It was hard for me to sleep, it was hard for me to keep my weight up—and I think it was just a slow process," Delmonico said of becoming addicted. "But it was day by day, and finally I tried to get off of it, and I didn't understand how or how to get away from it." Prior to the start of the 2014 season, he informed MLB he would no longer be taking Adderall, but what he didn't anticipate were the brutal withdrawal symptoms. Both mentally and physically, Delmonico felt as if he needed the drug. He eventually went back on it that same season—this time without informing MLB. "In that situation, it's not like you're dealing with your normal state of mind," Courtney said. "So I never thought I was talking to real Nicky. But with somebody—whether it's Adderall or it's something else—you're dealing with the substance at that point, not the person." Mentally, Delmonico had checked out of baseball. It brought him no joy, and he dreaded going to the ballpark. He remembers taking a pill the night before he got tested. So he didn't need to wait for any results. Thirty-seven games into the 2014 season, while playing with Brewers High-A affiliate Brevard County, he was given a 50-game suspension. From the outside, the optics were bad: Delmonico was caught for taking what could be perceived as a performance-enhancing drug. But the circumstances were far different than those of most who have violated MLB's drug policy. "I felt like I let everybody down," Delmonico said. "More importantly, I felt like I let myself down. For me it was hard to handle all that stuff. I didn't know what to do, and I think, maybe, it kind of made everything worse." Still battling his addiction, Delmonico didn't play for the remainder of the 2014 season and, in the spring of 2015, asked for and was granted his release by the Brewers so that he could seek treatment. He spent about 45 days undergoing counseling and therapy for an addiction he says is both physical and mental, and he "got emotional with a bunch of things" while also learning about Adderall and addiction. "It's a scary, scary drug for kids to be on," Delmonico said of Adderall. "I have been through too much with that drug," Courtney said. "Just don't do it. It is overly prescribed. I think parents and physicians alike need to wake up." The Center for Disease Control and Prevention advises "preferably both medication and behavior therapy should be used together" for children ages six to 18 diagnosed with ADD. Delmonico acknowledged he still has to manage his disease, but he wants to serve as an example that it is possible to live with it without chemical intervention. And to be successful. After getting out of rehab, Delmonico signed with the White Sox as a free agent and took less than a year to advance from Single-A to Triple-A, where he played the entirety of the 2017 season before being called up on August 1. Tommy Thompson, a player development assistant with the White Sox and himself an alcoholic, became a confidant and source of support for Delmonico after he signed with the team. Thompson has been blown away with Delmonico's transformation. "What he has accomplished is a tribute to him—the work—and I think he had [that] drive from being a little kid," he said. Said Delmonico, "I've learned how to train my mind better. I read more things, I do stuff to help my ADD. I'm still all over the place if you ask anybody. I'm a free spirit guy, and I still have my ADD, and I take that in. I'm happy to have it to be honest." Ron Vesely/Getty Images Delmonico wants to be as much a cautionary tale as an inspiration. He's confident there are others who struggle with the same addiction. "There were so many times where I knew I needed to stop, but it was an ongoing struggle," Delmonico said. "And then finally, I was able to get away from it and find out who I used to be and who I am and get back to that person." |
From women in the workplace to youth football and recycling, country is more East German than it likes to admit When the East German region of Thuringia confirms its next state premier in the next few weeks, it is likely to be a landmark in postwar history. Contender Bodo Ramelow, 58, is a former trade unionist and a member of Die Linke (the Left party), successors to East Germany’s communist rulers, the Socialist Unity party (SED). If the Social Democrats and Green party back him, he will become Germany’s first socialist state premier. Inevitably, some opposition politicians have sounded the alarm. Before the elections, chancellor Angela Merkel warned voters not to “let Karl Marx back into the state premier’s office”. The tabloid Bild lamented that putting Ramelow in charge was tantamount to mocking the victims of the old German Democratic Republic (GDR) regime. Yet for the most part, reaction in Germany has been surprisingly relaxed. “Since 1989, we have slowly come to realise that not all members of SED were bent on world revolution,” said political scientist Werner Patzelt, a member of Merkel’s Christian Democrats. “Some of them are just level-headed and hard-working politicians,” he added. Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Left party’s ascendancy in Thuringia is the clearest sign yet that German views on the GDR legacy are becoming more pragmatic and less ideological. The common view of post-wall Germany is that what had been presented as a reunification became a de facto annexation. West Germany was only prepared to incorporate the five eastern regions on its own terms: East German social models and structures were considered dysfunctional or outmoded – the west had all the answers. But a closer look at the fabric of Germany in 2014 reveals a country that is more East German than it likes to admit. Football provides the most obvious example. In Real Madrid midfielder Toni Kroos, Germany’s World Cup-winning squad may have only had one player born in the GDR. Yet the team’s success was largely built on the kind of 10-year plan more common in GDR-style planned economies. Heinz Werner, a former coach at Hansa Rostock and Union Berlin, said he was dismayed when, after the fall of the wall, he discovered just how little West Germans invested in their players. When Werner raised the issue at the German FA’s annual conference in 1992, he was jeered. “They told me that training up young players took too much time. ‘We can just buy players when we need them,’ they said.” But after poor performances at tournaments in 1998 and 2000, the westerners came around to Werner’s thinking. In 2002, elite football schools were established nationwide, and Bundesliga clubs were forced to set up their own academies. Twelve years later one of the products of the new system, midfielder Mario Götze, scored the winner against Argentina. Germany is also becoming more East German in its attitudes towards women in the workplace. From a contemporary perspective, GDR state policy looks surprisingly progressive in this regard, even if the reality rarely matched the projected image: East German women got the right to choose their workplace without their husband’s consent in 1950, 27 years before those in the west. In the early 1980s, more than 90% of East German mothers were recorded as working mothers. The state provided special university courses for women, generous maternity leave and a comprehensive network of nurseries, even if social attitudes often remained behind the times: housework was still considered a female domain, a state-decreed monthly “household day” off work only available to women. Today the percentage of working mothers remains higher in the east than in the west. The wage gap between males and females in eastern regions is only 8%, compared with 23% in the west. Every second child below the age of three is looked after in daycare nurseries rather than at home, compared with only every fourth in the old west. But Germany as a whole is slowly catching up with the east: daycare nurseries have expanded considerably under Merkel. In March 2014, 662,000 German children under the age of three were looked after in the nurseries. Hildegard Nickel, a sociologist at Berlin’s Humboldt university, recalled how some policymakers were genuinely trying to combat Germany’s high unemployment after reunification by driving East German women out of the workplace. “People were making that case in serious academic debates,” she said. “If you suggested increasing the number of nursery places, you’d be criticised for evoking the spectre of communism. Nowadays everyone can legally claim their nursery place. There’s not even a discussion about it.” Yet openly acknowledging a debt to East German ideas often remains a taboo: in press material, the German FA cites youth training structures in small countries like Holland as an inspiration. When Germany introduced a bottle deposit system to encourage recycling in 2002, it pointed towards Scandinavia, even though East Germany had a sophisticated recycling infrastructure since the 1960s. Sometimes, it can verge on denial: when poor results in OECD school rankings led to call for reforms of Germany’s education system at the turn of the millennium, a delegation was sent to Helsinki to study Finland’s top-ranking system. The Finns told them that they, in turn, had taken their inspiration from East Germany. Developments in Germany’s healthcare system demonstrate that learning from the east does not automatically amount to a revival of its ideological values. In East Germany, a large part of healthcare was provided by polikliniken (polyclinics): state-funded outpatients centres in which GPs shared a roof with specialists. In the west’s private healthcare system, on the other hand, doctors were self-employed and ran their own practices. After the Wall’s fall, polyclinics were phased out and East German doctors were made to go freelance. Only in Brandenburg and East Berlin were a few specialists allowed to continue working in the old centres. But a reform of the healthcare system in 2003 has spawned a revival of the old polyclinic structures: increasingly practitioners are once again housed together in so-called Medical Supply Centres (MVZs). Centres such as the one in Bad Belzig, Brandenburg, were once considered old-fashioned – now they might point the way to the future. In a rural area with low population density, this MVZ conveniently groups together a GP, a surgeon, a radiologist, a gynaecologist, an oncologist and an optician – doctors share office space, medical equipment and expertise. “What we are seeing now is that there were some structural advantages to the East German model,” said Hans-Joachim Helming, head of the Brandenburg doctors’ association. “If a GP had a problem, they could just walk to the end of the corridor and ask a specialist. Always fighting for yourself can wear you out – working as a team is useful.” At any rate, mere Ostalgie – or nostalgia for the east – does not explain the polyclinic revival: out of 2,000 MVZs in Germany today, most are based in the old west, with 393 in Bavaria alone. Doctors are keen to stress the difference to the East German model: unlike the old polyclinics, MVZs are run on market-led principles, and many doctors start their own centres because it allows them to be more competitive. West v East: First division football teams: 18 v 0 Ministers in the current cabinet: 16 v 3 Executives on board of German stock index companies: 130 v 4 |
Lance Bass & Michael Turchin | Photo: Erin Poole for Average Socialite Affair: The Human Rights Campaign Los Angeles 2015 Annual Gala Dinner and Auction When: Saturday, March 14, 2015, 5:00PM Hot Spot: JW Marriott Ritz Carlton downtown at LA Live Deets: The Human Rights Campaign Los Angeles Annual Gala Dinner and Auction typically brings together 1,000 or more HRC members, friends, family and allies for an evening of celebration and inspiration in the greater Los Angeles area. Featuring a cocktail reception, an extensive silent auction, an elegant dinner, live entertainment and thought-provoking speakers and guests, the event attracts some of the nation’s top figures in politics and entertainment. Shonda Rhimes was honored at the gala. Shonda Rhimes is the biggest name in television today. A Golden Globe award winner, she was named as one of TIME magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. With everything she touches turning to gold, Rhimes is the creative force behind hugely successful shows such as Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, and How To Get Away With Murder. HRC is proud to recognize Shonda Rhimes as this year's recipient of the “Ally for Equality Award” for her incredible contributions to our movement. Mariah Carey performed at the 2015 Los Angeles Gala Dinner! Spotted: Shonda Rhimes (Honoree, Screenwriter / Director and Producer), Michael Lombardo (Honoree, President of HBO Programming), Lena Dunham (Presenter, Actress/Screenwriter, Girls), Guillermo Diaz (Presenter, Actor, Scandal), Chad Griffin (HRC President), and Dana Goldberg (Live Auctioneer, Comedian), Mariah Carey (Singer) Additional Guests: Matt Bomer (Actor, White Collar), Lance Bass (Singer, N*Sync), Cheyenne Jackson (Actor, 30 Rock), Wentworth Miller (Actor, Prison Break), Sara Ramirez (Actress, Grey’s Anatomy), Jonathan Del Arco (Actor, Major Crimes), Ross Matthews (TV Personality, Live From E!) Dan Bucatinsky (Actor, Scandal), Katia Winter (Actress, Sleepy Hollow) and George Takei (Actor, Star Trek) |
(Charley Gallay/Getty Images) When Wisconsin TV anchor Jennifer Livingston was bullied by a viewer who called her overweight, people across the country rallied around her. Her famous brother, actor Ron Livingston, is also speaking up for his younger sister. "My sister Jennifer … brings an exceptional dedication to her job, her family, and her community, and has been a role model of mine for many, many years," Ron Livingston, 45, said in a statement to People magazine. The "Office Space" star added that he is "extremely proud" of his sister. "I got a text from him first thing this morning saying, 'Way to go sissy. I'm so proud of you,'" Jennifer Livingston told "Good Morning America" Thursday. Livingston, 37, addressed the man who sent her a letter chiding her for being overweight. In an on-air editorial Tuesday morning that lasted more than four minutes, she also acknowledged being overweight - even obese - then added, "To the person who wrote me that letter, do you think I don't know that?" VIDEO: Man Who Sent News Anchor 'Bully' Email Not Apologizing Livingston's bold statements made headlines around the world and she told " Good Morning America" Wednesday why she decided to speak out. "This was a personal attack," Livingston said. "Calling me obese is one thing. Calling me a bad role model for our community that I've worked at for 15 years and especially for young girls when I have three girls was a low blow and I thought it was uncalled for and I wanted to call him out on it." |
Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) fighters used “poisonous substances” during the shelling of a village in northern Iraq on Tuesday, a local governor said, according to Reuters. "There were poisonous substances in these shells. We don't know what," Kirkuk province governor Najmuddin Kareem told reporters, referring to a Tuesday attack on the village of Taza. More than 40 people suffered from partial chocking and skin irritation after mortar shells and Katyusha rockets filled with the "poisonous substances" exploded in the mainly Shia Turkmen village, which is located south of the oil city of Kirkuk, in a region under Kurdish control. Read more None of the 40 people died as a result of the attack, though five remain in hospital, health officials told Reuters. A total of 24 shells and rockets were fired into the village from IS positions in the nearby Bashir area, Kurdish peshmerga forces commander Wasta Rasul said. It comes just one day after the Kurdish militia group YPG stated that Islamist opposition fighters used yellow phosphorous in a chemical attack on the Sheikh Maqsood neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria, on Tuesday. Meanwhile, US aircraft have begun targeting IS' chemical weapons sites near Mosul, Iraq. It comes after an initial round of airstrikes aimed at diminishing the group's ability to use mustard agent, according to CNN. It is unclear whether the strikes conducted over the past several days have been successful. The strikes were aided by an IS detainee who provided vital information to the US military, according to the news network. Last month, a source from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said that IS militants attacked Kurdish forces with mustard gas in 2015, citing lab tests that came back positive for the substance after Kurdish soldiers fell ill on the battlefield. It represented the first known instance of chemical weapons use in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein, the source said. The revelation came just three days after Central Intelligence (CIA) Director John Brennan stated that IS had used chemical weapons on the battlefield, stressing that the militant group may have more in its possession. In October, the OPCW also concluded that mustard gas was used in neighboring Syria in 2015. Experts believe the mustard gas used in Syria originated from an undeclared chemical stockpile, or that militants have gained the basic knowledge to develop and conduct a crude chemical attack with rockets or mortars. |
Growing up in the Middle East during Operation Desert Storm, I could only dream and imagine about how different life in the United States would be. Yet, 20 years later in Oakland, it feels almost as violent as the warzone my family and I tried to escape. It has been about one year since seven students were killed in a deadly massacre at Oikos University in Oakland and the shooting involving 26 innocent lives at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. that both shook our nation to its very core. Thirty-three lives were stripped from this Earth because of senseless, twisted acts of violence. Every year, more than 30,000 people are killed in the U.S. from firearms, and it comes at a cost of billions of dollars in health expenditures. The issues surrounding gun violence, a leading cause of preventable death, are complex and deeply rooted, which is why we must take a comprehensive public health approach to reducing its menace on society. Despite the clear horror of these events and demand for action from the public, Congress has still failed to move forward on comprehensive gun violence legislation. Each passing day that Congress delays action, more communities bear witness to the endless episodes of gun violence. This ugly reality will continue to intrude upon our communities across the country, including our very own Alameda County, unless meaningful action is taken by our lawmakers. There are several critical pieces to any legislation that Congress must pass in order to reduce the staggering toll of gun violence and ensure the safety of our community. First, our legislators must ensure that federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have adequate and unrestricted funding to conduct research on the causes of injury and deaths from firearms, as well as how to prevent these tragedies. They must also ensure there is adequate data available to design targeted gun violence prevention strategies. We can achieve this through a nationwide expansion of the CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System, a state-based violent-death-prevention tool that links data from public health, law enforcement, medical examiners and social service agencies to create a more complete picture of the circumstances surrounding violent death. Second, our safety also depends on the passage of life-saving measures that would ban the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines and mandate background checks for all gun purchases. These measures enjoy broad appeal among Americans. According to a recent Gallup poll, 91 percent of Americans favor background checks. Additionally, state, local and community-based behavioral health systems must also have the resources they need to provide much-needed mental health treatment to those in need. About 82 percent of Americans support increased funding for mental health services for youth, according to a recent Gallup poll. Unfortunately, funding at the federal and state levels for mental health continues to be threatened by cuts. The Affordable Care Act provides comprehensive coverage for mental health and substance use disorder services as part of its Essential Health Benefits, but we must still ensure funding at the federal and state levels are not jeopardized. Our school policies must also promote a positive school climate to support the social, emotional and learning needs of all students to maintain a safe environment. To achieve this, schools and communities need resources and support for comprehensive measures in school-based prevention, early intervention strategies and preparedness initiatives to prevent gun violence and prepare our communities and schools in the event of an emergency. As an advocate for public health in Alameda County, I am pleased to see that President Obama has included many of these provisions in his plan to reduce gun violence. Now it is time for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and other representatives to push Congress to act now. I cannot afford to wait. Nor can we all afford to rely on the status quo and still assume that our nation’s children are safe in school, on our city streets or in our homes. It is time we place public health before political interests and recognize that this effort will require the great resolve and political will on behalf of our nation’s leaders. The violence that takes place in Oakland every single day batters our communities and has everything to do with public health. Just recently, Gloria Crowell, District 4 commissioner representing Supervisor Nate Miley on the Alameda County Public Health Commission, highlighted the need for renewing our county’s level of commitment and effort to address the issue. Not too long ago, Supervisor Miley brought together police and safety officers, along with other community organizations in order to collaborate on how to most effectively solve our community’s gun violence and public health crisis. Such efforts should be applauded and expanded upon. Now is the time to work together to ensure evidence-based public health principles are at the heart of all our efforts to reduce gun violence-related injury and death, as it is both an imperative and a national priority to ensure the safety of our nations’ rich and valued diversity. Ken Russell Coelho and Michael D. Campbell are commissioners on the Alameda County Public Health Commission |
Close Researchers say they've bombarded ordinary metals with lasers to create new self-cleaning surfaces that are super-hydrophobic -- water-repelling -- without the need of temporary coatings. The new surfaces, which can also absorb light, could be used for durable, low maintenance solar collectors and other applications, scientists at the University of Rochester in New York say. While most present hydrophobic materials rely on the use of chemical coatings, the Rochester researchers used laser pulses to create intricate patterns of micro- and nanoscale structures to endow the metals with the new properties. "This is the first time that a multifunctional metal surface is created by lasers that is super-hydrophobic (water repelling), self-cleaning, and highly absorptive," says physicist Chunlei Guo. The improved light absorption will be useful in technologies that require light collection, such as sensors and solar power devices, while the water-repellant capability will make a surface rust-resistant, anti-icing and anti-biofouling, Guo and fellow researcher Anatoliy Vorobov report in the Journal of Applied Physics. Devices built with such materials would be more robust and easier to maintain, Guo says, and because "the structures created by our laser on the metals are intrinsically part of the material surface" they won't rub off like coatings can. As water runs off the metals' newly super-hydrophobic surfaces it collects dust and takes it along, giving the materials their self-cleaning quality. That suggests a potential application in developing countries, Guo says, which has led to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supporting his and Vorobov's work. "In these regions, collecting rain water is vital and using super-hydrophobic materials could increase the efficiency without the need to use large funnels with high-pitched angles to prevent water from sticking to the surface," says Guo. "A second application could be creating latrines that are cleaner and healthier to use." The researchers created the surfaces by zapping platinum, titanium and brass samples with extremely short laser pulses lasting just a millionth of a billionth of a second. The pulses created microgrooves, on top of which bumpy nanostructures were formed that altered the optical and wetting properties of the surfaces of the three metals. The water-repellent abilities surpass even those of a famous non-stick coating, Guo points out. "Many people think of Teflon as a hydrophobic surface, but if you want to get rid of water from a Teflon surface, you will have to tilt the surface to nearly 70 degrees before the water can slide off," Guo explains. "Our surface has a much stronger hydrophobicity and requires only a couple of degrees of tilt for water to slide off." Commercial use of the technique will require further work to scale up the process, the researchers acknowledge, since it presently takes an hour to create the patterns on a 1-inch square sample of metal. ⓒ 2018 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. |
An Arizona lawmaker who believes the earth is only 6,000 years old and that the U.S. government regularly sprays its citizens with mind-controlling chemtrails has been selected to lead an Arizona legislative committee overseeing education. Sen. Sylvia Allen (R-Snowflake), was selected by fellow Republican and Senate president Andy Biggs to chair of the Arizona Senate Education Committee, according to 12News. The committee acts as a gatekeeper for education-related laws, including Common Core and spending. “She understands what Arizona students and parents need in our education system,” Biggs told reporters in a prepared statement. “She is a very experienced legislator and I know she will do a wonderful job.” According to AZCentral, Allen attended high school but did not go to college. She helped found a charter school in her home town of Snowflake. In March, Allen made national news when she derailed a discussion about gun legislation to suggest a law that forces Americans to go to church on Sundays. In March 2013, she wrote an addled Facebook post about her belief the government was purposely poisoning its citizens with chemicals sprayed by airplanes, confusing white contrails left by aircraft with chemical trails. “Ok, I do not want to get into a debate about weather. However, I know what I see weekly up here on the flat where I live outside of Snowflake. The planes usely (sic), three or four, fly a grid across the sky and leave long white trails streaming behind them. I have watched the chem-trails move out until the entire sky is covered with flimsy, thin cloud cover,” she wrote. “Things are happening all around us that we see everyday and just don’t get what it is. I think we throw the ‘conspiracy theory’ at people when we don’t understand or have the information they have so we try and explain it that way.” Allen will replace state Sen. Kelli Ward, who resigned the position to run against Sen. John McCain for a seat in the U.S. Senate. “I want to highlight the incredible teachers who are the reason for our children’s success,” Allen said in a prepared statement to reporters. “I also want to focus on parents’ responsibility in their children’s education. They are a critical part of their children’s success. We need to encourage that involvement.” |
Captain Marvel is now in the process of putting together its cast and a new report claims to shed some light on three of the villainous Skrull characters we'll see in the highly anticipated release... It was recently reported that Ben Mendelsohn might be playing the villainous Yon-Ragg in Captain Marvel but a new report now claims to shed some light on three more Skrulls we'll see in the movie. A casting call has gone out for three different characters and they're (vaguely) described as follows: [Alpha] Female, 20-49. Fight experience. Dance or gymnastics preferred. [Delta] Male, 20-49. Must be over 6′ tall, broad shouldered and muscular. [Supporting Male #2] Male, 35-45, a chiseled , cocky guy who is large in stature, but not as big as Delta. The site believes that Supporting Male #2 is Titannus, a Skrull born without the ability to shape-shift who ultimately ended up being grated super strength and a healing factor. He turned on his people and battled The Avengers on Earth and the character would make for a good Super-Skrull substitute. |
Gorilla glass is the kind of product that defines American innovation. Two to three times stronger than other glass and resistant to dents and scratches, it's beginning to find its way onto screens for smartphones, tablet computers, and soon flat-screen high-definition TVs. Sales are expected to nearly quadruple from last year. Its inventor, New York-based Corning, expects sales to quadruple again next year into a $1 billion business as the flat-screen TV business takes off. But don't expect a huge surge of American jobs as a result. Although production will be expanding in the United States, the big market potential lies with TVs, which are all made in Asia. That's why Corning is planning to locate there to remain price competitive. At the moment, all Gorilla glass is produced in Corning's Harrodsburg, Ky., plant. On Tuesday, Corning is expected to announce a $200 million expansion in the facility that will add about 80 workers over time to the 300-odd work force already there. Although many of the smartphones and other portable devices using it are made in Asia, the size of the screens and the amounts needed are small enough that it's possible to export from the United States. In July, however, Corning announced it had an agreement with an Asian manufacturer to supply Gorilla glass for flat-screen TVs that should appear in the marketplace early next year. So it is retrofitting a liquid-crystal display (LCD) plant in Shizuoka, Japan, to start manufacturing the special glass later this quarter. The company is spending several hundred million dollars in the Japanese plant, which will employ several hundred workers. It's a signal that the company expects to ink similar deals with other TV manufacturers. That's what happens when a country or region dominates an industry. Suppliers, even the most innovative ones, tend to locate near the manufacturers. Although it played a big role in creating the first LCDs, Corning never did any large-scale US manufacturing because the manufacturers in the 1980s were located in Japan. Over the decades, the company has followed the manufacturers to South Korea, Taiwan, and now China. "If we hadn't been in Japan, we wouldn't be in the business," says company spokesman Dan Collins. The TV manufacturers are interested in using the properties of the strong glass to create new styles of flat-screen sets. "You will begin to see it around you these borderless design TVs and other devices that I'm not at liberty to talk about at this time," Wendell Weeks, Corning's chairman and chief executive officer. If consumers flock to the new designs, the market for Gorilla glass could take off, even though it's more expensive than other glass. RELATED: |
Yale University scientists have chosen the most fleeting of mediums for their groundbreaking work on biomimicry: They've changed the color of butterfly wings. In so doing, they produced the first structural color change in an animal by influencing evolution. The discovery may have implications for physicists and engineers trying to use evolutionary principles in the design of new materials and devices. The research appears this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "What we did was to imagine a new target color for the wings of a butterfly, without any knowledge of whether this color was achievable, and selected for it gradually using populations of live butterflies," said Antónia Monteiro, a former professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale, now at the National University of Singapore. In this case, Monteiro and her team changed the wing color of the butterfly Bicyclus anynana from brown to violet. They needed only six generations of selection. Little is known about how structural colors in nature evolved, although researchers have studied such mechanisms extensively in recent years. Most attempts at biomimicry involve finding a desirable outcome in nature and simply trying to copy it in the laboratory. "Today, materials engineers are making complex materials to perform multiple functions. The parameter space for the design of such materials is huge, so it is not easy to search for the optimal design," said Hui Cao, chair of Yale's Department of Applied Physics, who also worked on the study. "This is why we can learn from nature, which has obtained the optimal solutions in many cases via natural evolution over millions of years." Indeed, the scientists explained, natural selection algorithms can select for multiple characteristics simultaneously -- which is standard operating procedure in the natural world. The desired color for the butterfly wings was achieved by changing the relative thickness of the wing scales -- specifically, those of the lower lamina. It took less than a year of selective breeding to produce the color change from brown to violet. One reason Bicyclus anynana was chosen for the experiment, Monteiro said, was because it has cousin species that have evolved violet colors on their wings twice independently. By reproducing such a change in the lab, the Yale team showed that butterfly populations harbor high levels of genetic variation regulating scale thickness that lets them react quickly to new selective conditions. "We just thought if natural selection has been able to modify wing colors in members of this genus of butterfly, perhaps so can we," Monteiro said. |
A local man said an off-duty police officer working security for Walmart severely beat him after he was falsely accused of stealing a tomato. After he was handcuffed to his hospital bed with a broken leg and severed artery, Tyrone Carnegay told Channel 2’s Craig Lucie he spent three days in jail and the charges were dropped. © 2019 Cox Media Group. In security video the officer is seen confronting Carnegay as he is walking out of the store. The officer is then seen suddenly pulling out his baton and then beating Carnegay for stealing a tomato, which he said he paid for. “He’s giving me a verbal command. As he’s grabbing me, he’s beating me at the same time. ‘Get on ground.’ Beating me at the same time,” Carnegay said as he watched the surveillance video. Lucie counted the officer striking Carnegay with his baton at least seven times. “My leg started giving out,” Carnegay said. He said the officer never asked for a receipt or told him why he was questioning him. Doctors said the repeated blows cracked two bones in Carnegay’s right leg and ruptured an artery. “I was chained to my bed in Grady. They said I assaulted him and obstructed him from doing his job,” Carnegay told Lucie. According to a lawsuit Lucie obtained, the Walmart manager told the officer that Carnegay stole a tomato in the October 2014 incident. Carnegay said after he was on the ground in handcuffs, the officer reached into his pocket found his receipt, which he said showed he paid for the tomato. His attorney said this could have been avoided with one question. “Somebody could have come up to him and said, ‘Excuse me sir, do you have (a) receipt for that tomato?’ and he would've shown him the receipt,” said attorney Craig Jones. “The officer went into Robocop mode and beat the crap out of him.” Lucie contacted Walmart about the video and lawsuit. A representative from Walmart said they had not been served the lawsuit but said, "We take the matter seriously. We will review the allegations and respond appropriately with the court." “He found the receipt and money, and stood there like he hadn't done nothing,” Carnegay said. Carnegay has a titanium rod in his leg now and walks with a limp. Named in the lawsuit are Walmart, the manager on duty and the officer. If the case goes to trial, it could take up to three years before it comes to an end. |
Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email There were heated scenes as protesters staged a demonstration outside a newly-opened UK Independence Party shop and cafe. Around 30 people gathered outside the shop on Glebe Street in Penarth in the Vale of Glamorgan. The Cardiff South and Penarth constituency, which has been held by Labour for decades, is said to be one of Ukip’s target seats. Members of Ukip and protesters exchanged frank views in the doorway to the shop. One protester said: “I was walking home the other day and I saw this UKIP shop opening up and I was horrified. This my town which I love. “We’re surrounded by people who are all absolutely appalled that they will be opening. We don’t want this happening in our town. It’s a disgrace.” Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now Another protester commented: “I just came here today because I want to say to UKIP that this planet was created without borders. Borders are a man made construction.” John Rees-Evans, the Ukip Parliamentary candidate for Cardiff South and Penarth said: “As regards what is happening outside here I think it is fabulous that people from all sorts of different political persuasions can express their views and that’s the reason we have opened a cafe here in Penarth because we don’t just want to chat to people who already agree with us. “If I get elected, I’m not only going to be representing the views and interests of people who have voted for me, I’m going to be representing everybody. So I’m really keen that people come along irrespective of their political leanings and share their ideas with us about who they believe Britain should be better governed.” Posting on Twitter, one of the organisers of the protest, deputy leader of the Green Party in Wales, Anthony Slaughter said: “Good turnout for @standuptoUKIP picket of UKIP Penarth shop. Strong support from passing public.” |
TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada’s Unifor union has ratified a deal with General Motors Co that will see C$554 million ($420.84 million) invested in local plants, the labor group said on Sunday as it prepares for related talks with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV. The GM logo is seen at the General Motors Lansing Grand River Assembly Plant in Lansing, Michigan October 26, 2015. Photo taken October 26. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook The deal was ratified after 64.7 percent of workers voted approve it, Unifor said in an evening statement. Unifor, which represents some 4,000 GM workers, reached the deal on Monday. The four-year deal granted job security and wage increases, but less favorable pensions than before. GM’s Canadian arm also pledged to eliminate the C$2.3-billion deficit in the pension plans for unionized workers and retirees, the union said. The ratification is expected to affect some 16,000 Unifor workers with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV and Ford Motor Co, whose contracts also are up for negotiation. Under a process called patterned bargaining, Unifor’s agreement with GM will be used as a template for talks with the other companies, which are expected to agree to similar terms. Unifor has said it will negotiate next with Fiat Chrysler, and has set a tentative strike deadline of midnight Oct. 10. Fiat Chrysler did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Unifor President Jerry Dias said the union will be in talks with Fiat Chrysler on Monday, and that a significant issue will be the future of the company’s plant in Brampton, west of Toronto. “We need some clarification,” he told Reuters by telephone late on Sunday afternoon, before the ratification results were released. “We need some answers. We ultimately need some commitment.” Unifor has said it will ask Fiat Chrysler to upgrade an outdated paint shop at the plant, which makes the Chrysler 300 and Dodge Challenger and Charger sedans. Dias said he does not expect talks with Fiat Chrysler to be easy, but it will be hard for the company to ignore the GM precedent. GM spokesman Tom Wickham said in a statement the company is “pleased,” and that it is working toward “potential support agreements” with federal and provincial governments to “optimize the competitiveness” of its Canadian operations. In the GM deal, the union gave up defined-benefit pensions for new hires. Dias has said concessions were necessary. Canada’s once-thriving auto industry has been losing investment to the Southern United States and lower-cost Mexico. |
singletons 2.5.1 This is the README file for the singletons library. This file contains all the documentation for the definitions and functions in the library. The singletons library was written by Richard Eisenberg, rae@cs.brynmawr.edu, and with significant contributions by Jan Stolarek, jan.stolarek@p.lodz.pl. There are two papers that describe the library. Original one, Dependently typed programming with singletons, is available here and will be referenced in this documentation as the "singletons paper". A follow-up paper, Promoting Functions to Type Families in Haskell, is available here and will be referenced in this documentation as the "promotion paper". Ryan Scott, ryan.gl.scott@gmail.com, is an active maintainer. Purpose of the singletons library The library contains a definition of singleton types, which allow programmers to use dependently typed techniques to enforce rich constraints among the types in their programs. See the singletons paper for a more thorough introduction. The package also allows promotion of term-level functions to type-level equivalents. Accordingly, it exports a Prelude of promoted and singletonized functions, mirroring functions and datatypes found in Prelude, Data.Bool , Data.Maybe , Data.Either , Data.Tuple and Data.List . See the promotion paper for a more thorough introduction. This blog series, authored by Justin Le, offers a tutorial for this library that assumes no knowledge of dependent types. Compatibility The singletons library requires GHC 8.6.1 or greater. Any code that uses the singleton generation primitives needs to enable a long list of GHC extensions. This list includes, but is not necessarily limited to, the following: DataKinds DefaultSignatures EmptyCase ExistentialQuantification FlexibleContexts FlexibleInstances GADTs InstanceSigs KindSignatures NoStarIsType PolyKinds RankNTypes ScopedTypeVariables StandaloneDeriving TemplateHaskell TypeFamilies TypeOperators UndecidableInstances In particular, NoStarIsType is needed to use the * type family from the PNum class because with StarIsType enabled, GHC thinks * is a synonym for Type . You may also want -Wno-redundant-constraints as the code that singletons generates uses redundant constraints, and there seems to be no way, without a large library redesign, to avoid this. Modules for singleton types Data.Singletons exports all the basic singletons definitions. Import this module if you are not using Template Haskell and wish only to define your own singletons. Data.Singletons.TH exports all the definitions needed to use the Template Haskell code to generate new singletons. Data.Singletons.Prelude re-exports Data.Singletons along with singleton definitions for various Prelude types. This module provides a singletonized equivalent of the real Prelude . Note that not all functions from original Prelude could be turned into singletons. Data.Singletons.Prelude.* modules provide singletonized equivalents of definitions found in the following base library modules: Data.Bool , Data.Maybe , Data.Either , Data.List , Data.Tuple , Data.Void and GHC.Base . We also provide singletonized Eq , Ord , Show , Enum , and Bounded typeclasses. Data.Singletons.Decide exports type classes for propositional equality. Data.Singletons.TypeLits exports definitions for working with GHC.TypeLits . Modules for function promotion Modules in Data.Promotion namespace provide functionality required for function promotion. They mostly re-export a subset of definitions from respective Data.Singletons modules. Data.Promotion.TH exports all the definitions needed to use the Template Haskell code to generate promoted definitions. Data.Promotion.Prelude and Data.Promotion.Prelude.* modules re-export all promoted definitions from respective Data.Singletons.Prelude modules. Data.Promotion.Prelude.List adds a significant amount of functions that couldn't be singletonized but can be promoted. Some functions still don't promote - these are documented in the source code of the module. There is also Data.Promotion.Prelude.Bounded module that provides promoted PBounded typeclass. Functions to generate singletons The top-level functions used to generate singletons are documented in the Data.Singletons.TH module. The most common case is just calling singletons , which I'll describe here: singletons :: Q [Dec] -> Q [Dec] Generates singletons from the definitions given. Because singleton generation requires promotion, this also promotes all of the definitions given to the type level. Usage example: $(singletons [d| data Nat = Zero | Succ Nat pred :: Nat -> Nat pred Zero = Zero pred (Succ n) = n |]) Definitions used to support singletons Please refer to the singletons paper for a more in-depth explanation of these definitions. Many of the definitions were developed in tandem with Iavor Diatchki. data family Sing (a :: k) The data family of singleton types. A new instance of this data family is generated for every new singleton type. class SingI (a :: k) where sing :: Sing a A class used to pass singleton values implicitly. The sing method produces an explicit singleton value. data SomeSing k where SomeSing :: Sing (a :: k) -> SomeSing k The SomeSing type wraps up an existentially-quantified singleton. Note that the type parameter a does not appear in the SomeSing type. Thus, this type can be used when you have a singleton, but you don't know at compile time what it will be. SomeSing Thing is isomorphic to Thing . class SingKind k where type Demote k :: * fromSing :: Sing (a :: k) -> Demote k toSing :: Demote k -> SomeSing k This class is used to convert a singleton value back to a value in the original, unrefined ADT. The fromSing method converts, say, a singleton Nat back to an ordinary Nat . The toSing method produces an existentially-quantified singleton, wrapped up in a SomeSing . The Demote associated kind-indexed type family maps the kind Nat back to the type Nat . data SingInstance (a :: k) where SingInstance :: SingI a => SingInstance a singInstance :: Sing a -> SingInstance a Sometimes you have an explicit singleton (a Sing ) where you need an implicit one (a dictionary for SingI ). The SingInstance type simply wraps a SingI dictionary, and the singInstance function produces this dictionary from an explicit singleton. The singInstance function runs in constant time, using a little magic. Equality classes There are two different notions of equality applicable to singletons: Boolean equality and propositional equality. Boolean equality is implemented in the type family (:==) (which is actually a synonym for the type family (==) from Data.Type.Equality ) and the class SEq . See the Data.Singletons.Prelude.Eq module for more information. Propositional equality is implemented through the constraint (~) , the type (:~:) , and the class SDecide . See modules Data.Type.Equality and Data.Singletons.Decide for more information. Which one do you need? That depends on your application. Boolean equality has the advantage that your program can take action when two types do not equal, while propositional equality has the advantage that GHC can use the equality of types during type inference. Instances of both SEq and SDecide are generated when singletons is called on a datatype that has deriving Eq . You can also generate these instances directly through functions exported from Data.Singletons.TH . Show classes Promoted and singled versions of the Show class ( PShow and SShow , respectively) are provided in the Data.Singletons.Prelude.Show module. In addition, there is a ShowSing constraint synonym provided in the Data.Singletons.ShowSing module: type ShowSing k = (forall z. Show (Sing (z :: k)) This facilitates the ability to write Show instances for Sing instances. What distinguishes all of these Show s? Let's use the False constructor as an example. If you used the PShow Bool instance, then the output of calling Show_ on False is "False" , much like the value-level Show Bool instance (similarly for the SShow Bool instance). However, the Show (Sing (z :: Bool)) instance (i.e., ShowSing Bool ) is intended for printing the value of the singleton constructor SFalse , so calling show SFalse yields "SFalse" . Instance of PShow , SShow , and Show (for the singleton type) are generated when singletons is called on a datatype that has deriving Show . You can also generate these instances directly through functions exported from Data.Singletons.TH . A promoted and singled Show instance is provided for Symbol , but it is only a crude approximation of the value-level Show instance for String . On the value level, showing String s escapes special characters (such as double quotes), but implementing this requires pattern-matching on character literals, something which is currently impossible at the type level. As a consequence, the type-level Show instance for Symbol s does not do any character escaping. Errors The singletons library provides two different ways to handle errors: The Error type family, from Data.Singletons.TypeLits : type family Error (str :: a) :: k where {} This is simply an empty, closed type family, which means that it will fail to reduce regardless of its input. The typical use case is giving it a Symbol as an argument, so that something akin to Error "This is an error message" appears in error messages. The TypeError type family, from Data.Singletons.TypeError . This is a drop-in replacement for TypeError from GHC.TypeLits which can be used at both the type level and the value level (via the typeError function). Unlike Error , TypeError will result in an actual compile-time error message, which may be more desirable depending on the use case. Pre-defined singletons The singletons library defines a number of singleton types and functions by default: Bool Maybe Either Ordering () tuples up to length 7 lists These are all available through Data.Singletons.Prelude . Functions that operate on these singletons are available from modules such as Data.Singletons.Bool and Data.Singletons.Maybe . Promoting functions Function promotion allows to generate type-level equivalents of term-level definitions. Almost all Haskell source constructs are supported -- see last section of this README for a full list. Promoted definitions are usually generated by calling promote function: $(promote [d| data Nat = Zero | Succ Nat pred :: Nat -> Nat pred Zero = Zero pred (Succ n) = n |]) Every promoted function and data constructor definition comes with a set of so-called "symbols". These are required to represent partial application at the type level. Each function gets N+1 symbols, where N is the arity. Symbols represent application of between 0 to N arguments. When calling any of the promoted definitions it is important refer to it using their symbol name. Moreover, there is new function application at the type level represented by Apply type family. Symbol representing arity X can have X arguments passed in using normal function application. All other parameters must be passed by calling Apply . Users also have access to Data.Promotion.Prelude and its submodules ( Base , Bool , Either , List , Maybe and Tuple ). These provide promoted versions of function found in GHC's base library. Note that GHC resolves variable names in Template Haskell quotes. You cannot then use an undefined identifier in a quote, making idioms like this not work: type family Foo a where ... $(promote [d| ... foo x ... |]) In this example, foo would be out of scope. Refer to the promotion paper for more details on function promotion. Classes and instances This is best understood by example. Let's look at a stripped down Ord : class Eq a => Ord a where compare :: a -> a -> Ordering (<) :: a -> a -> Bool x < y = case x `compare` y of LT -> True EQ -> False GT -> False This class gets promoted to a "kind class" thus: class PEq a => POrd a where type Compare (x :: a) (y :: a) :: Ordering type (:<) (x :: a) (y :: a) :: Bool type x :< y = ... -- promoting `case` is yucky. Note that default method definitions become default associated type family instances. This works out quite nicely. We also get this singleton class: class SEq a => SOrd a where sCompare :: forall (x :: a) (y :: a). Sing x -> Sing y -> Sing (Compare x y) (%:<) :: forall (x :: a) (y :: a). Sing x -> Sing y -> Sing (x :< y) default (%:<) :: forall (x :: a) (y :: a). ((x :< y) ~ {- RHS from (:<) above -}) => Sing x -> Sing y -> Sing (x :< y) x %:< y = ... -- this is a bit yucky too Note that a singletonized class needs to use default signatures, because type-checking the default body requires that the default associated type family instance was used in the promoted class. The extra equality constraint on the default signature asserts this fact to the type checker. Instances work roughly similarly. instance Ord Bool where compare False False = EQ compare False True = LT compare True False = GT compare True True = EQ instance POrd Bool where type Compare 'False 'False = 'EQ type Compare 'False 'True = 'LT type Compare 'True 'False = 'GT type Compare 'True 'True = 'EQ instance SOrd Bool where sCompare :: forall (x :: a) (y :: a). Sing x -> Sing y -> Sing (Compare x y) sCompare SFalse SFalse = SEQ sCompare SFalse STrue = SLT sCompare STrue SFalse = SGT sCompare STrue STrue = SEQ The only interesting bit here is the instance signature. It's not necessary in such a simple scenario, but more complicated functions need to refer to scoped type variables, which the instance signature can bring into scope. The defaults all just work. On names The singletons library has to produce new names for the new constructs it generates. Here are some examples showing how this is done: original datatype: Nat promoted kind: Nat singleton type: SNat (which is really a synonym for Sing ) original datatype: /\ promoted kind: /\ singleton type: %/\ original constructor: Succ promoted type: 'Succ (you can use Succ when unambiguous) singleton constructor: SSucc symbols: SuccSym0 , SuccSym1 original constructor: :+: promoted type: ':+: singleton constructor: :%+: symbols: :+:@#@$ , :+:@#@$$ , :+:@#@$$$ original value: pred promoted type: Pred singleton value: sPred symbols: PredSym0 , PredSym1 original value: + promoted type: + singleton value: %+ symbols: +@#@$ , +@#@$$ , +@#@$$$ original class: Num promoted class: PNum singleton class: SNum original class: ~> promoted class: #~> singleton class: %~> Special names There are some special cases, listed below (with asterisks* denoting special treatment): original datatype: [] promoted kind: [] singleton type*: SList original constructor: [] promoted type: '[] singleton constructor*: SNil symbols*: NilSym0 original constructor: : promoted type: ': singleton constructor*: SCons symbols: :@#@$ , :@#@$$ , :@#@$$$ original datatype: (,) promoted kind: (,) singleton type*: STuple2 original constructor: (,) promoted type: '(,) singleton constructor*: STuple2 symbols*: Tuple2Sym0 , Tuple2Sym1 , Tuple2Sym2 All tuples (including the 0-tuple, unit) are treated similarly. original value: (.) promoted type*: (:.) singleton value: (%.) symbols: (.@#@$) , (.@#@$$) , (.@#@$$$) The promoted type is special because GHC can't parse a type named (.) . original value: (!) promoted type*: (:!) singleton value: (%!) symbols: (!@#@$) , (!@#@$$) , (!@#@$$$) The promoted type is special because GHC can't parse a type named (!) . original value: ___foo promoted type*: US___foo (" US " stands for "underscore") singleton value*: ___sfoo symbols*: US___fooSym0 All functions that begin with leading underscores are treated similarly. Supported Haskell constructs The following constructs are fully supported: variables tuples constructors if statements infix expressions and types _ patterns patterns aliased patterns lists (including list comprehensions) do -notation -notation sections undefined error deriving Eq , Ord , Show , Bounded , Enum , Functor , Foldable , and Traversable , as well as the stock and anyclass deriving strategies , , , , , , , and , as well as the and deriving strategies class constraints (though these sometimes fail with let , lambda , and case ) , , and ) literals (for Nat and Symbol ), including overloaded number literals and ), including overloaded number literals unboxed tuples (which are treated as normal tuples) records pattern guards case let lambda expressions ! and ~ patterns (silently but successfully ignored during promotion) and patterns (silently but successfully ignored during promotion) class and instance declarations scoped type variables signatures (e.g., (x :: Maybe a) ) in expressions and patterns ) in expressions and patterns InstanceSigs higher-kinded type variables (see below) finite arithmetic sequences (see below) functional dependencies (with limitations -- see below) type families (with limitations -- see below) Higher-kinded type variables in class / data declarations must be annotated explicitly. This is due to GHC's handling of complete user-specified kind signatures, or CUSKs. Briefly, singletons has a hard time conforming to the precise rules that GHC imposes around CUSKs and so needs a little help around kind inference here. See this pull request for more background. singletons is slightly more conservative with respect to deriving than GHC is. The stock classes listed above ( Eq , Ord , Show , Bounded , Enum , Functor , Foldable , and Traversable ) are the only ones that singletons will derive without an explicit deriving strategy. To do anything more exotic, one must explicitly indicate one's intentions by using the DerivingStrategies extension. singletons fully supports the anyclass strategy as well as the stock strategy (at least, for the classes listed above). singletons does not support the newtype strategy, as there is not an equivalent of coerce at the type level. singletons has partial support for arithmetic sequences (which desugar to methods from the Enum class under the hood). Finite sequences (e.g., [0..42]) are fully supported. However, infinite sequences (e.g., [0..]), which desugar to calls to enumFromTo or enumFromThenTo , are not supported, as these would require using infinite lists at the type level. The following constructs are supported for promotion but not singleton generation: datatypes with constructors which have contexts. For example, the following datatype does not singletonize: data T a where MkT :: Show a => a -> T a Constructors like these do not interact well with the current design of the SingKind class. But see this bug report, which proposes a redesign for SingKind (in a future version of GHC with certain bugfixes) which could permit constructors with equality constraints. overlapping patterns. Note that overlapping patterns are sometimes not obvious. For example, the filter function does not singletonize due to overlapping patterns: filter :: (a -> Bool) -> [a] -> [a] filter _pred [] = [] filter pred (x:xs) | pred x = x : filter pred xs | otherwise = filter pred xs Overlap is caused by otherwise catch-all guard, which is always true and thus overlaps with pred x guard. Another non-obvious source of overlapping patterns comes from partial pattern matches in do -notation. For example: f :: [()] f = do Just () <- [Nothing] return () This has overlap because the partial pattern match desugars to the following: f :: [()] f = case [Nothing] of Just () -> return () _ -> fail "Partial pattern match in do notation" Here, it is more evident that the catch-all pattern _ overlaps with the one above it. The following constructs are not supported: datatypes that store arrows, Nat , or Symbol , or literals (limited support) Why are these out of reach? As described in the promotion paper, promotion of datatypes that store arrows is currently impossible. So if you have a declaration such as data Foo = Bar (Bool -> Maybe Bool) you will quickly run into errors. Literals are problematic because we rely on GHC's built-in support, which currently is limited. Functions that operate on strings will not work because type level strings are no longer considered lists of characters. Function working on integer literals can be promoted by rewriting them to use Nat . Since Nat does not exist at the term level it will only be possible to use the promoted definition, but not the original, term-level one. This is the same line of reasoning that forbids the use of Nat or Symbol in datatype definitions. But, see this bug report for a workaround. Support for * The built-in Haskell promotion mechanism does not yet have a full story around the kind * (the kind of types that have values). Ideally, promoting some form of TypeRep would yield * , but the implementation of TypeRep would have to be updated for this to really work out. In the meantime, users who wish to experiment with this feature have two options: The module Data.Singletons.TypeRepTYPE has all the definitions possible for making * the promoted version of TypeRep , as TypeRep is currently implemented. The singleton associated with TypeRep has one constructor: newtype instance Sing :: forall (rep :: RuntimeRep). TYPE rep -> Type where STypeRep :: forall (rep :: RuntimeRep) (a :: TYPE rep). TypeRep a -> Sing a (Recall that type * = TYPE LiftedRep .) Thus, a TypeRep is stored in the singleton constructor. However, any datatypes that store TypeRep s will not generally work as expected; the built-in promotion mechanism will not promote TypeRep to * . The module Data.Singletons.CustomStar allows the programmer to define a subset of types with which to work. See the Haddock documentation for the function singletonStar for more info. Known bugs |
2555 shares On December 3, 2010, the 738-foot long MV Golden Seas, carrying a cargo of Canola seed and with an estimated 450,000 gallons of intermediate fuel oil, 11,700 gallons of diesel, and 10,000 gallons of lube oil on board, became disabled in the Bering Sea while underway from Vancouver, Canada to the United Arab Emirates. With seas upwards to 20-feet, the AHTS Tor Viking II was sent to rescue the bulk carrier and tow it to safety back in Dutch Harbor. To get to the carrier in time, the crew of the 18,000 horsepower Tor Viking II, equipped with four Mak M32 6 cylinder engines, had to push limits the ship’s equipment (and themselves) to the max. Above is the story of the rescue as told by the then-Chief Officer of Tor Viking II, Captain Daniel Arnesson.. INCIDENT PHOTOS: |
Apple doesn't plan to offer the Apple Watch for sale in its retail stores on Friday, having opted to restrict orders to online purchases only, but some retail stores around the world will have Apple Watches in stock for customers to purchase on April 24.Several high-end fashion boutiques will be offering the watch for sale beginning Friday, according to a new report from The New York Times . Stores with stock will include Dover Street Market in Tokyo and London, Maxfield in Los Angeles, Colette in Paris, the Corner in Berlin, and 10 Corso Como in Milan.All of these stores were previously unveiled as retail locations that would carry the Apple Watch , but it was not known that the stores would have stock for customers to purchase on launch day, given the Apple Watch supply constraints that Apple has highlighted. In a press release sent out on April 9 , Apple retail chief Angela Ahrendts said "strong customer demand" would exceed supply at launch.Many of the stores have the Apple Watch displayed prominently on their websites, along with wording that says the device will be available in store as of Friday. As noted by The New York Times, all of the places that will have the Apple Watch in stock on Friday are high-end fashion-oriented boutiques known as "retail trendsetters."It's not known exactly how much stock each of the stores will be given or of what type, but Dover Street Market did share some detail on its numbers. The store in Ginza, Tokyo will have 350 watches to sell, while the store in London will have 570. Neither store will offer the Apple Watch Edition, as it is backordered.Apple initially declined to comment on its partner stores offering in-store Apple Watch stock while its own retail stores will not, but later reiterated its earlier comment on getting online orders out to customers earlier than expected . The first Apple Watch shipments will be arriving on the doorsteps of customers beginning on April 24, and as of today, many Apple Watch orders that had shipping estimates ranging into several weeks have seen their shipments advance into the "Preparing for Shipment" stage. |
Biking on the margins of a beautiful canal between the Kreuzberg and Treptow areas of Berlin, we stumbled upon a magical place called Wagendorf Lohmühle (Caravan Village). This artistic community transformed an area that was once a wasteland into a self-sufficient community that produces all of its own energy and food! Wagendorf Lohmühle’s recycled and hand-made mobile shelters use solar panels to transform the sun’s energy into free electricity. Some wagons, like this geometrical wooden one, were built on-site from a wide variety of found materials. Some other wagons have been restored, but all of them have one thing in common: an outdoors area for enjoying nature while chatting over a cup of bio-coffee. These cute wagons, caravans, and self-made experimental living shelters aim to promote cultural and artistic self-initiated projects all-year-round. Cats, dogs, rabbits, birds and a couple of tortoises with their own home share their lives with kids and adults seeking a more natural way of living. The residents enjoy participating in open monthly events like concerts, workshops, readings, performances, cinema and exhibitions – all powered by wind and solar energy. There is also a shared vermicompost — or worm compost — system enhanced by ‘Effective Microorganisms’ (EM) – a Japanese composting technique that uses 80 species of ‘friendly microorganisms” to balance the soil. There is no running water in the community, but they reuse rainwater through simple mechanism and treat all their grey water using beds of reeds. A ‘Free Box’ with clothes, shoes and toys is the community’s recycling stop for outgrown stuff. Living anonymous and away from apartment blocks inside not-so-well insulated trailers and wagons can be great in summer, but is very tough during snowy winters. Whether you see it as a political statement, an experimental architectural village, a hippie settlement, or just a group of people living an environmentally conscious life under their own ethics, Berlin’s Wagendorf Lohmühle makes us reconsider the way we live. + Wagendorf Lohmühle Photo © Ana Lisa Alperovich for Inhabitat |
A scandal involving French peacekeepers, accused of sexually exploiting children in Central African Republic, harms the image of the West, Sylvie Baipo-Temon, a spokesperson for the ad hoc committee of the diaspora for Peace in Central African Republic, told Sputnik. The very soldiers who were supposed to end a conflict and bring peace to the country were doing exactly the opposite, bringing more suffering to the most vulnerable segment of the population — children, said another person familiar with the issue, Jean-Barack Ouambeti, the head of the non-governmental organization (NGO) Gender Based Violence. The UN published a report on December 17, which found that children as young as nine-years-old were forced to perform oral sex in exchange for food or money. The perpetrators were mainly French peacekeepers from the unit known as the Sangaris force, which works under the authorization of the UN Security Council. "The military is engaged in trade: they serve as bodyguards, but contribute to more violence [by sexually exploiting locals]," Baipo-Temon told Sputnik. "One must have at least a drop of compassion for the victims of families [affected by the war], but they [French peacekeepers] abused the weakness of local people. They had a mandate to provide security and the population trusted them, instead they dug graves for these people," the spokesperson of the committee said. The situation is horrible. During an investigation into the case, other instances of sexual exploitation by UN peacekeepers were reported. "The investigation revealed other facts of children abuse in the center of the capital and especially in remote areas," Jean-Barack Ouambeti, the head of the non-governmental organization (NGO) Gender Based Violence, told Sputnik. Right now investigators are working on getting more information from victims. The government of Central African Republic tries to pursue the truth, but UN bodies haven't been willing to cooperate and reveal information, Ouambeti said. The Sangaris force weren't the only unit involved in these kinds of horrible abuses. Peacekeepers serving in Morocco and the Republic of Congo also sexually abused local populations, according to the head of Gender Based Violence. There are even rumors about the cases of bestiality taking place in some remote regions; but more evidence must be gathered to validate the claims and publish reports on the subject, Ouambeti said. |
Before and after the season, the players also underwent elaborate brain imaging. Diffusion tensor imaging is a type of MRI that’s used to identify tiny changes in the structure of white matter (the neurons in the brain that are coated in myelin). The image measures fractional anisotropy (FA) of the movement of water molecules along axons. In healthy white matter, the direction of water movement tends to be uniform, but FA values decrease as movement becomes less ordered, and that process has been associated with head trauma. And in this case, the images of the boys’ brains at the end of the season showed a significant relationship between head impact and decreased FA in white-matter tracts. Boys who experienced more head impact had more changes. “These decreases in FA caught our attention,” Whitlow said in a press statement, “because similar changes in FA have been reported in the setting of mild traumatic brain injury.” “It’s difficult to say what the changes mean,” co-researcher Joel Stitzel told me, “but they do seem to be directly correlated with the impact that kids are sustaining.” This was, again, among boys who had no signs or symptoms of concussions. “The numbers here are pretty staggering. You have fewer than 2,000 people playing in the NFL, which gets all the media attention,” Stitzel told me. “But there's actually about 2,000 kids playing for every NFL player—3.5 million kids playing youth football in the U.S. About whom there is very, very little information.” Last year researchers at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital found that NFL players who had begun playing football before age 12 had a higher risk of altered brain development, as compared to players who started later. And this August, Ann McKee, director of the Boston University Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center, said that kids under 14 shouldn’t play football, reminding The Washington Post that kids’ heads are “a larger part of their body, and their necks are not as strong as adults’ necks. So kids may be at a greater risk of head and brain injuries than adults.” “Other studies have looked at people involved in contact sports and compared them to people not involved in contact sports, and found similar changes to what we found,” said Stitzel. “But this is one of the first that’s quantifying what the actual exposure is. And it’s one of the first to look at the youth population.” I asked him if this means people should stop letting kids play football, and he said no, which was surprising. I would never let my kid play football, and I don’t even have a kid. Stitzel’s argument is that there’s not definitive proof that youth football is bad for most kids. “We aren't out to destroy football, by any means,” he said. “This is the type of work that's going to save and help football going forward.” |
Flag ratio: 1:2 The Red Ensign of Singapore is a civil ensign used by privately owned, non-military ships that are registered in Singapore. The overall design of the ensign is a modification of the national flag, with the ratio of the width to the length extended to 1:2. The ensign was created by law in 1966. The use of this ensign is regulated by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA). According to the MPA, the Red Ensign is the only ensign to be used on Singaporean civilian ships, and the national flag is not an acceptable substitute. The ensign must be hoisted on all Singaporean ships on entering or leaving port. History [ edit ] In 1966, a year after Singapore's independence from Malaysia, a document entitled Singapore Merchant Marine Ensign and numbered Misc. 5 of 1966, was laid before Parliament on 6 September 1966 by the Deputy Prime Minister. The document created a civil ensign that was to be used on ships registered in Singapore. The Red Ensign has been in use since then.[1] Design [ edit ] According to the Parliamentary paper Misc. 5 of 1966, the background of the ensign is red with the ratio of its width to its length being one by two. In contrast, the ratio of the national flag of Singapore is two by three.[2] In the centre of the ensign is a white ring, which surrounds a crescent and five stars also coloured white. The five stars are arranged such that they form a pentagon in the middle. The crescent and stars are taken from the national flag, although in the ensign the crescent appears underneath rather than to the left of the stars. According to a 1999 circular National Colours for Singapore Ships issued by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA), the red colour of the civil ensign is the same as that of the national flag.[3] The shade of red has been defined by the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts as Pantone 032.[2] Construction sheet [ edit ] The MPA's 1999 circular includes a construction sheet with detailed dimensions for the manufacture of the flag.[3] The sheet is in inches and centimetres. The overall dimensions of the flag are 36 inches (91.44 cm) by 72 inches (182.88 cm). The space between the top of the ensign to the top of the ring, and the bottom of the ring to the bottom of the ensign, is 9.7 inches (24.64 cm). The outer diameter of the ring is 16.6 inches (42.16 cm), and the ring itself is 0.95 inches (2.41 cm) in thickness. The outer curve of the crescent has a radius of 5.45 inches (13.84 cm). Each star fits within a circle with a diameter of 3.2 inches (8.13 cm), and the centres of the five stars are positioned 72° from each other along the circumference of an imaginary circle with a radius of 3.25 inches (8.26 cm). The centre of the imaginary circle is 6.4 inches (16.26 cm) from the lowest point of the inner curve of the crescent.[4] Regulations [ edit ] Members of a boat's crew standing in front of a Red Ensign Section 36(1) of the Merchant Shipping Act of 1995 empowers the relevant Minister to prescribe an ensign for Singaporean ships, which shall then be the "proper colours for a Singapore ship."[5] Section 36(2) goes on to state that the master of a ship, the ship's owner if he is on board, and any other person hoisting colours may be fined up to S$1,000 if, instead of the Red Ensign, any other "distinctive national colours" are hoisted on board any Singapore ship without the Minister's consent. Under section 37 of the Act, if a Singapore ship fails to hoist the Red Ensign on entering or leaving any port, the ship master may be fined up to $1,000.[5] The MPA's 1999 circular calls the attention of owners, masters and officers of Singapore ships to sections 36 and 37 of the Merchant Shipping Act. In particular, paragraph 3 of the circular points out that "the Singapore national flag does not [substitute] the Red Ensign".[3] |
storywriter Profile Joined February 2011 Australia 527 Posts Last Edited: 2012-05-29 12:11:00 #1 ZeNEXLife You became the first all kill hero of this season. Tell us your thoughts Seeing Hero come out after taking down Zenio, I thought one kill was the best I could do today but steeling myself and playing some gutsy macro games made the all kill possible. You were the second player from Zenex, was this planned? Yes. Regardless of who the opponent was I was to be sent out after Avenge lost. The most difficult game of the day? The game against Hero. My record on Entombed Valley isn’t so great so it was relief to win that game. It was such a difficult game. When did you become sure of your all kill? Once I had Hero down, I knew that I could all kill. I was confident in my ZvZ and ZvT. Against Jinro, you showcased a very quick mutalisk rush. Lately, Terrans have been going 1 rax expo and not expecting mutas. That’s why I tried it out. You are famous as the online juggernaut but your performance in GSL hasn’t been the best I became too nervous at every qualifier. So, I wasn’t able to play at my best. I focused on practice to regain my skill. Rather than reinforcing certain aspects, I just focused on practice. You are now the third all killer of a best of 9 match so are you confident you can use this momentum to go far in the individual league? As long as I don’t run into a Protoss, I think I can get into Code S. Forcefields are so OP to deal with. Any SlayerS player you want to take on? MMA. I believe that he is the best SlayerS Terran. Even if they send out a Protoss, I think I can win as long as it’s not on Entombed Valley. Zenex is regarded as the worst team in Group A. I think it’s understandable seeing very few players from our team making it into GSL recently. However, by the end of the season, we will have shed that image completely. Your goal for this season? The goal is always the championship. It’s true that our team is weaker compared to some others but we will make a miracle happen this season. Anything to add? My teacher Kim, Byung Chul from Chul Sung Middle School in Ko Sung, Kyung Nam let me have the day off in consideration of the match. I am really grateful. Also, I want to thank my friends and my brother who cheered me on. Source: Seeing Hero come out after taking down Zenio, I thought one kill was the best I could do today but steeling myself and playing some gutsy macro games made the all kill possible.Yes. Regardless of who the opponent was I was to be sent out after Avenge lost.The game against Hero. My record on Entombed Valley isn’t so great so it was relief to win that game. It was such a difficult game.Once I had Hero down, I knew that I could all kill. I was confident in my ZvZ and ZvT.Lately, Terrans have been going 1 rax expo and not expecting mutas. That’s why I tried it out.I became too nervous at every qualifier. So, I wasn’t able to play at my best. I focused on practice to regain my skill. Rather than reinforcing certain aspects, I just focused on practice.As long as I don’t run into a Protoss, I think I can get into Code S. Forcefields are so OP to deal with.MMA. I believe that he is the best SlayerS Terran. Even if they send out a Protoss, I think I can win as long as it’s not on Entombed Valley.I think it’s understandable seeing very few players from our team making it into GSL recently. However, by the end of the season, we will have shed that image completely.The goal is always the championship. It’s true that our team is weaker compared to some others but we will make a miracle happen this season.My teacher Kim, Byung Chul from Chul Sung Middle School in Ko Sung, Kyung Nam let me have the day off in consideration of the match. I am really grateful. Also, I want to thank my friends and my brother who cheered me on.Source: ThisisGame Translator |
Click Bernard ChazelleClick here for a high resolution photograph. At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Bernard Chazelle, professor of computer science at Princeton University, plans to issue a call to arms for his profession, challenging his colleagues to grab society by the lapels and evangelize the importance of studying computer science. According to the most recent data available, the top 36 computer science departments in the United States saw enrollments drop nearly 20 percent between 2000 and 2004. "The big paradox is that the computer science revolution is just unfolding," Chazelle said. "Why, then, are students are running away from it; why is there this decline when the field has never been more exciting?" Chazelle will be on the "Computer Science Behind Your Science" panel at AAAS on February 17. His presentation is titled "Why CS Theory Matters." In the following Q & A, Chazelle discusses the promise and potential of computer science. What is computer science? Most people think of computer science, if they think of it all, as being something useful -- the way that, say, people think of plumbing as being useful. And it is useful, obviously. But it is much more than that. Such as? Computer science is not just about gaming, not just about the Internet. Computer science theory offers a profound window through which to view the world. Computing promises to be the most disruptive scientific paradigm since quantum mechanics. It will transform society in profound way. Isn't computer science really just a stepchild of mathematics? As the recent breakthroughs on Fermat's Last Theorem indicate, the field of mathematics has never been more fertile with new ideas. Mathematics is original and deep, but it does not force you to think differently. If a math giant from the past -- someone like Gauss - were to come back to Earth, he would have a lot of catching up to do but he would find that math is done much the same way that it was done during his life. Computer science, by contrast, is a new way of thinking, a new way of looking at things. For example, mathematics can't come near to describing the complexity of human endeavors in the way that computer science can. To make a literary analogy, mathematics produces the equivalent of one-liners - equations that are pithy, insightful, brilliant. Computer science is more like a novel by Tolstoy: it is messy and infuriatingly complex. But that is exactly what makes it unique and appealing -- computer algorithms are infinitely more capable of capturing nuances of complex reality in a way that pure mathematics cannot. What exactly is an algorithm? An algorithm is not a simple mathematical formula. It is a set of rules that govern a complex operation. You can look at Google as a giant algorithm. Or you can think of an economy or an ecological system as an algorithm in action. Physics, astronomy, and chemistry are all sciences of mathematical formulae. The quantitative sciences of the 21st century such as proteomics and neurobiology, I predict, will place algorithms rather than formulas at their core. In a few decades we will have algorithms that will be considered as fundamental as, say, calculus is today. If you are right, then why aren't students clamoring to major in computer science? With the dot.com bust, kids got scared and went to law school. Computer science departments have lost students all across the country. That's why we saw Bill Gates in recent months galavanting across North American campuses, trying to turn kids on to the field. But mainly I think that computer science lacks a great popularizer - someone who can describe to a wide audience how exciting it is. More than 25 years ago the book Godel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter, got a whole generation of people excited about the future of computer science. Computer science as a field doesn't have anyone the way that, for example, physics has Stephen Hawking - someone who in a sustained way explains to the broader public the beauty and wonder and potential of the field. If you study computer science, doesn't that mean you will simply be a programmer when you grow up? And aren't all the programming jobs being shipped overseas? As a practical matter, what kind of job can you get if you study computer science? First, computer science is integral to all of the sciences. Biology, for example, is very quantitatively driven, so a computer science background is imperative. At Princeton I am part of a pioneering course developed by the eminent geneticist David Botstein and others. The course simultaneously incorporates physics, molecular biology, chemistry, mathematics, and computer science. Mathematics has long been the lingua franca, the Esperanto, of science. But I would argue that science now has two Esperantos: math and computer science. Science magazine recently ran an article listing all of the interesting scientific problems of the 21st century. Not once did the article use the term "computer science"; yet many of the problems listed were fundamentally about computer science. Second, for those of an entrepreneurial bent, the Internet is paramount; if you don't understand computer science you are lost. I don't think it is just coincidence that two of the biggest Internet visionaries -- Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Eric Schmidt of Google -- are products of the computer science and electrical engineering departments at Princeton. Third, and (since I am a theorist) most important, are careers in the field of theoretical computer science. Theoretical computer science would exist even if there were no computers. Computer science is not bound by the laws of physics; it is inspired by them but, like mathematics, it is something that is completely invented by man. A few short years before Einstein turned our world upside down with his theory of relativity, the great Lord Kelvin declared that "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now." Not his lordship's finest hour. I think that computer science bears an uncanny resemblance to pre-Einstein physics. Moore's Law - Gordon Moore's prediction that computing power would increase exponentially because the number of transistors on microchip would double every 18 months or so - put computing on the map. But algorithms are going to unleash computing's true potential. I predict that there will be an Einstein of computer scientists. The revolution is yet to come. ### For a more detailed article by Bernard Chazelle on the future of computing, please see "Could Your iPod Be Holding the Greatest Mystery in Modern Science?" http://www. cs. princeton. edu/ ~chazelle/ iPod For more detailed analysis on enrollment trends in computer science, please see http://www. cra. org/ info/ taulbee/ bachelors For more information on the field of theoretical computer science, please see |
One of the more thought provoking talks at this year's DigiPro conference was by Eugene d'Eon, Chief Scientist at 8i (and formerly a senior researcher at Weta Digital). d'Eon is a world leader in graphics research, and while 8i is a leading VR startup, his talk was on a much wider topic - the parallels and lessons from research done in nuclear physics, among other areas, and how that connects and mirrors - perhaps even informs - CG rendering. Central to many rendering algorithms is computing the light transport equations, and it turns out that linear light transport theory actually overlaps with neutral particle transport, some of which was published years ago by the world's pioneers in atomic research. As multiple Sci-tech winner Doug Roble (Digital Domain) joked after hearing d'Eon explain his work, "How many people understand this stuff? Like, (pointing jokingly at d'Eon in the audience) - I think it's just that guy!" Thus, it was a rare chance to get an insight into some of the most advanced research areas and how they can provide a real context to CG rendering research. To even access this material required d'Eon to travel to key libraries around the world and to hand read the old paper journals since much of this high level research is not even online, dating from the 40s and 50s. So what is the common thread that links a new path traced CG teapot with an atomic researcher at Los Alamos decades ago? Linear transport theory is the study of equations describing the migration of particles or energy within a host medium when such migration involves random absorption, emission and scattering. It is a useful framework for describing the scattering of light (eg. CG - radiative transfer) or neutrons (eg. nuclear physics - neutron transport). Linear transport theory is the study of multiple scattering - bulk scattering - within a random media. d'Eon is a world renowned researcher in sub surface scattering (SSS) skin algorithms and this is directly related to the same multiple scattering density equations and mathematical linear transport theory that nuclear scientist's face. When dealing with atomic particles or photons, the problem is one of statistical behavior to approximate the results or your wave or particles (light is both of course - that is the essence of the duality of light). At the linear transport level, the specifics of one particle is no longer relevant, everything is statistical behavior. Of course it is not just skin, fog, god rays or smoke. Atmospheric scenes featuring many different volumes are required every day. While a naive Monte Carlo brute force option is available - on the scale of a film - it is not practical and so we all use complex variance reduction algorithms or deterministic solutions to get the job done. Unsurprisingly, when you think about it, researchers in nuclear reactors or weapon design, optics, remote sensing plasma or even earthquake research hit many of the same issues in estimating multiple scattering. It is easy to think our problems are exclusively the domain of our own R&D gurus but astronomy to animal migration researchers have done similar work - in a sense: different particles, same maths! Regardless of particles or waves you can solve a bunch of cool problems with this one equation - our much beloved centrally important "volume rendering equation". In fact, we have been researching the render equation for 30 years and researchers from Jim Blinn to Henrik Wann Jensen have been publishing about it at various SIGGRAPHs in one form or another. It is also d'Eon's observation that many of these papers have referenced or actually referred to books on light from outside CG, such as Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar's 1960 book Radiative Transfer or Akira Ishimaru's Wave propagation and scattering in Random Media from the 70s. These books are the foundation for analysis of stellar atmospheres, planetary illumination, sky radiation and much more. But d'Eon thinks we should look further than just other research areas that have looked at light, he feels we should look to areas like neutron transport - literally nuclear physics of a pre-computer era. "The neutron group often looks at finite heterogeneous configurations, they are Monte Carlo legends and had powerful approximations from times where computers were slow (if they existed at all). A lot of the ‘transport purists’ also seem to come from this camp," commented d'Eon. For the nuclear guys, the SIGGRAPH of Transport Theory conferences is ICTT (the International Conference on Transport Theory), held every two years, with the last one being in New Mexico. To slightly paraphrase the 23rd ICTT conference, it brought together researchers from the international mathematics, science, and engineering communities to present recent developments in theoretical models and methods, discrete and continuous mathematical analysis, and numerical algorithms for the solution of the linear and nonlinear Boltzmann equation. The goal of the ICTT is to facilitate the exchange of ideas in classical and emerging areas of radiation transport research through a biennial series of conferences, affectionately known as the “Blacksburg Meetings.” Topics covered included: • Kinetic Theory of Gases • Neutron and Photon Transport • Charged Particle Transport • Radiative Transfer • Plasma Physics • Quantum Kinetic Theory • Visual Effects Modeling • Inverse Transport Problems Jerry Tessendorf comes from the physics world, and has done some very interesting path-integral formulation linear transport work. In 2011 he presented some new ideas in the area. d'Eon had only attended the 2011 conference to hear other talks, but was invited last minute to present something and gave a brief highlight of his QT (quantized diffusion) approach he had just presented at SIGGRAPH the month before. ... so in other words some seriously, serious research! And on Day One in 2013, at 9.30am on the Monday, d'Eon was invited to present. The ICTT is 46 years old, and to our knowledge this was only the second time a 'Hollywood type' presented(!). The first was 2 years earlier when both d'Eon and Jerry Tessendorf presented in Portland! Of course, d'Eon was heavily supported in his work by Weta Digital at the time, and their reputation along with d'Eon's is very strong outside just the CG community. Still it was a great honor. "The group was very friendly, open to discuss and thinking about the problems particular to us, and blown away by what we do with the same equation they use for very different science. They invited me to organize a special graphics themed issue of their journal TTSP and also recently appointed me their librarian," explained d'Eon. The last point may seem very curious, why would a graphics researcher, even one as important as d'Eon be made their librarian (even if it is a bit of an honorary invented title) ?!? It turns out d'Eon has been on a quest, one that has lead him to be uniquely qualified to serve in this role, as odd as that might seem. While at Weta Digital he was doing extensive research on SSS for, amongst other things, the Engineers in Prometheus which were rendered with Weta's then breakthrough QD (Quantized Diffusion) model of SSS developed by d'Eon and Geoffrey Irving (SIGGRAPH 2011). As part of his quest to solve SSS in 2010, d'Eon wanted to answer three key questions: Why does dipole work? (dipole being the landmark first approach to SSS) Could it be improved for curved regions - like ears? Could it be modified to better match Monte Carlo techniques of rendering? In researching these questions he discovered neutron transport theory from the 1940s. "Ultimately interest in these 3 questions led me to discovered works in neutron transport theory that contained some answers," he says. It was actually a couple of almost throw-away lines in two books that made d'Eon take note - Ishimanu's book mentioned above and a medical book on trying to find irregularities that might flag skin cancer called Tissue Optics: Light Scattering Methods and Instruments for Medical Diagnosis by Valery Tuchin. "The dipole paper referenced Ishimaru regarding diffusion theory," he recalls, "and one day in 2010 I noticed a comment in section 12-6. It made reference to solving any finite volume problem in terms of infinite medium problems by creating a special surface source and treating the whole medium like an infinite scattering one. And Ishimaru simply cited this book on nuclear reactor theory and moves on with another approach and I was like, wait what was that !??" The second equally minor reference was a brief comment about "Grosjean’s papers for improving the accuracy of diffusion results - again I was like what? where? ..." d'Eon hunted it down - literally it was in an obscure journal, with weird notation, and barely cited in the 60 years since it was written, but it fed into that Engineer skin required for Prometheus right before the character disintegrates on the edge of the waterfall. Having now discovered this world of old yet incredible relevant research, "I wanted more," says d'Eon, "lots more - I wanted it all. And it was a struggle. I had to dig through so many papers on the scattering cross sections, time resolved methods, multi-group multi-energy simulations with single scattering albedos > 1 and plenty of reactor physics. Notation and terminology also took a while to get used to. Most of the text books are old and out of date and expensive." But he did, finding for example a book Grosjean published in 1951 with complete and exact solutions for all iostropic point source problems in infinite media and, ignoring d'Eon's own citations of it, it had only been cited six times in over 60 years. Literally it is a gold mine and no one knew it even existed. By August this year d'Eon had collected over 4,000 papers on transport theory! And thus the role of librarian is an easy position to now see. As most of these articles are only online if published after 1997, d'Eon has had to travel to four separate academic libraries, none of which are of course anywhere near his adopted home of New Zealand or Weta where he worked. Caseology comes from the work of Ken Case - a young researcher who worked with Robert Oppenheimer. He calculated the first atomic bomb test yield as 15 equivalent kilotons of TNT. It was actually 20 but “exact as far as I am concerned," he recalled saying. d'Eon has spent three years collecting over 9700 photos which lead to papers such as the 2014 paper on zero-variance based sample scheme for Monte Carlo SSS that was published this year at SIGGRAPH in Vancouver. This work can be directly mapped back to both current research in nuclear physics and work published in the 1950s - and completely unused in CG until now. It references Caseology, "which I wouldn’t have known without haven’t studied the classic texts from the neutron camp," says d'Eon. Dr Paul Zweifel, who literally wrote the book on transport theory with Ken Case in 1967, joked about Caseology during the 50th anniversary talk at ICTT following d'Eon's presentation. He joked that 'there have been hundreds of PHD theses written about Caseology across a large number of scientific fields such as medical physics, but maybe now Caseology can be used for something important like making movies !' The work does not stop there. A second paper at this year's SIGGRAPH called Refractive Radiative Transfer Equation was similarly informed by prior work way outside computer graphics. And the paper fxguide highlighted just prior to SIGGRAPH - Unifying Points, Beam and Paths in Volumetric Light Transport Simulation - there was similar or rather relevant work in this area broadly speaking in the mid 1960s. But it is not all a one way street, in our world of CG there is little work that would equate to bi-directional path tracing and the CG concept of multiple importance sampling - so important since the work of Eric Veach (he won a Sci-tech for his 1997 thesis this year). During his talk, d'Eon went on to discuss new possible areas of research such as non-classic transport (from a very high temperature so called the pebble-bed nuclear reactor which uses a non-exponential free path transport), and compressing complexity (a new statistical way of dealing with millions of collisions of say clusters of glass objects) and even fractal fog - which appeared at first glance to be extremely promising (see below). At least four different groups or fields of science are independently are looking at the same generalization of transport theory that includes the classical exponential form as a special case: Graphics (Moon et al. 2007), Optics, Remote sensing (Davis and Marshak), Pebble bed reactors (Larsen and Vasques). The good news is that it is relatively easy for a serious programmer to include this work in a physically-based renderer. This image above for example is of "fractal fog" and was done with a modification of the Mitsuba physically based renderer to include non-exponential transport as a first-class citizen of the renderer by computing next-event estimation with a non-beer-lambert attenuation and sampling free path steps using the generalized FPD (free path distribution) functions. To the best of d'Eon's knowledge, it is the first image to include this new form of generalized transport theory in a path tracer. d'Eon noted that like all researchers he follows in the "footsteps of giants". He recalled a paper from 1990 where Russian Roulette and splitting were introduced by James Arvo and David Kirk, "which was one of the first strong messages about looking at the particle side of transport literature. Arvo and Kirk were the first proponents of the particle transport message for graphics". He also flagged that Eric Veach has a section in this 1997 thesis that describes the relation of rendering to neutron transport "very clearly". But this is not a widely referenced part of Veach's landmark thesis and d'Eon has taken the area farther than anyone else fxguide is aware of, and along the way delighted a whole community of nuclear physicists and mathematicians - as well as helped advance skin rendering and much much more. His closing remarks were to point out that these complex issues and maths we face are not ours alone to solve and radiative transfer is just one of several possible paths of research. Furthermore, based on the comments of the, let's face it, card carrying geniuses that d'Eon spoke to at ICTT, we are doing great work even by nuclear rocket science standards here with our entertainment use of the rendering equation! - so that's good to know. |
The blistering heat experienced by the United States during August, as well as the June through August months, marks the second warmest summer on record, according to scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, N.C. The persistent heat, combined with below-average precipitation across the southern U.S. during August and the three summer months, continued a record-breaking drought across the region. The average U.S. temperature in August was 75.7 degrees F, which is 3.0 degrees above the long-term (1901-2000) average, while the summertime temperature was 74.5 degrees F, which is 2.4 degrees above average. The warmest August on record for the contiguous United States was 75.8 degrees F in 1983, while its warmest summer on record at 74.6 degrees F occurred in 1936. Precipitation across the nation during August averaged 2.31 inches, 0.29 inches below the long-term average. The nationwide summer precipitation was 1.0 inch below average. This monthly analysis, based on records dating back to 1895, is part of the suite of climate services NOAA provides. U.S. climate highlights -- August Excessive heat in six states -- Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana -- resulted in their warmest August on record. This year ranked in the top ten warmest August for five other states: Florida (3rd), Georgia (4th), Utah (5th), Wyoming (8th), and South Carolina (9th).The Southwest and South also had their warmest August on record. Only nine of the lower 48 states experienced August temperatures near average, and no state had August average temperatures below average. Wetter-than-normal conditions were widespread across the Northeastern United States, which had its second wettest August, as well as parts of the Northern Plains and California. Drier-than-normal conditions reigned across the interior West, the Midwest, and the South. Hurricane Irene made landfall near Cape Lookout, N.C. as a Category 1 storm on August 27, marking the first hurricane landfall in the U.S. since Hurricane Ike in September 2008. Irene made a second landfall in New Jersey as a hurricane on August 28, marking only the second recorded hurricane landfall in that state. Irene contributed to New Jersey, New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire having their wettest August on record. Meanwhile, Massachusetts (2nd), Connecticut (2nd), Delaware (3rd), Maine (3rd), Maryland (5th), Pennsylvania (5th), and Rhode Island (9th) had a top 10 wet August. Several major U.S. cities broke all-time monthly rainfall amounts during August. New York City (Central Park) measured 18.95 inches of rain, exceeding the previous record of 16.85 inches in 1882. In Philadelphia, 19.31 inches of rain was observed, besting the previous monthly record of 13.07 inches in September 1999. Louisiana (3rd), Tennessee (4th), Texas (5th), Mississippi (6th), Georgia, (6th), Illinois (8th), Washington (9th), and Alabama (9th) had precipitation totals among their top ten driest on record. Despite record rainfall in parts of the country, drought covered about one-third of the contiguous United States, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The Palmer Hydrologic Drought Index indicated that parts of Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas are experiencing drought of greater intensity, but not yet duration, than those of the 1930s and 1950s. Drought intensity refers to the rate at which surface and ground water is lost, due to a combination of several factors, including evaporation and lack of precipitation. An analysis of Texas statewide tree-ring records dating back to 1550 indicates that the summer 2011 drought in Texas is matched by only one summer (1789), indicating that the summer 2011 drought appears to be unusual even in the context of the multi-century tree-ring record. U.S. climate highlights -- Summer Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Louisiana had their warmest (June-August) summers on record. Average summer temperatures in Texas and Oklahoma, at 86.8 degrees F and 86.5 degrees F, respectively, exceeded the previous seasonal statewide average temperature record for any state during any season. The previous warmest summer statewide average temperature was in Oklahoma, during 1934 at 85.2 degrees F. Fifteen states had a summer average temperature ranking among their top ten warmest. West of the Rockies, a persistent trough brought below-average temperatures to the Pacific Northwest, where Washington and Oregon were the only states across the lower 48 to have below-average summer temperatures. Texas had its driest summer on record, with a statewide average of 2.44 inches of rain. This is 5.29 inches below the long-term average, and 1.04 inches less than the previous driest summer in 1956. New Mexico had its second driest summer and Oklahoma its third driest summer. New Jersey and California had their wettest summers on record with 22.50 inches and 1.93 inches, respectively. The U.S. Climate Extremes Index, a measure of the percent area of the country experiencing extreme climate conditions, was nearly four times the average value was during summer 2011. This is the third largest summer value of the record, which dates to 1910. The major drivers were extremes in warm minimum and maximum temperatures and in the wet and dry tails of the Palmer Drought Severity Index. Based on NOAA's Residential Energy Demand Temperature Index, the contiguous U.S. temperature-related energy demand was 22.3 percent above average during summer. This is the largest such value during the index's period of record, which dates to 1895. Other U.S. climate highlights During the six-month period (March-August), much-above-average temperatures dominated the southern and eastern United States. New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida, all experienced their warmest March-August on record. Cooler-than-average temperatures dominated the West and Northwest. For the year-to-date period, the average statewide temperature for Texas was 69.9 degrees F, the warmest such period on record for the state. This bests the previous record for the year-to-date period of 69.8 degrees F in 2000. |
It was meant to be a practical plan for a local church to get out of debt. But when St. James Missionary Baptist Church requested that part of its property be rezoned in order to build new condominiums, it tapped a nerve in rapidly gentrifying East Austin. Members of a historically African-American neighborhood near the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and E.M. Franklin Avenue aired their concerns about the new condominiums at last week’s City Council meeting. Although they had to wait until past 10 p.m. to speak, almost a dozen members of the community said they feared the condos would irreversibly damage the community where they had lived for decades. Council deferred making a final zoning decision until late September. “I do want to wish St. James Baptist church the very best, and the best of prosperity and success in all their endeavors, but not at the expense of my neighborhood,” said community member Josephine Williams. Like many of the speakers, Williams said she was a long-term resident of the neighborhood. She has lived on Loretta Drive for almost 50 years. “I have a lot of emotional attachment for my neighborhood,” she said. “We’ve tried very hard to keep this a very pleasant and safe neighborhood because we’ve raised a lot of children on that street.” St. James has also been in the neighborhood for decades. The church was founded in 1927, and the first building in its current location was built in 1969, according to Laura Toups of Urban Design Group. The church is looking to rezone part of its property in order to allow Urban Design Group to redevelop the site. Selling part of the property would allow the church to pay off its debt, which would help the church continue its mission, Toups said. Although residents of the neighborhood said they fully supported the church and its efforts to be financially responsible, they also said they believe the redevelopment will cause traffic jams on their narrow residential streets, lead to increased flooding and, most importantly, change the character of the neighborhood. “This is one of Austin’s few and lasting historic African-American neighborhoods,” said Andrew Bucknall, a representative of the Martin Luther King Neighborhood Organization. “The people who move into condos are not the same people that move into single-family houses. What we often see in condos, whether it’s allowed or not, is short-term rentals. And those aren’t people who live in the neighborhood, not people that participate in the neighborhood association. They aren’t people who carry on the tradition of that neighborhood.” The residents were also concerned that the development could disrupt an old slave graveyard that is on the land as well as lead to the demolition of a number of heritage oak trees. But church leaders said they have no intention of damaging the neighborhood. “We have been at this location since 1969,” said Billy McClendon, senior pastor at St. James. “So we are still committed to being good neighbors. Whatever we can do to minimize the impact of this development on this community, we are committed to doing just that.” He said the church knows that there is “nothing that (they) can etch in stone to make any developer do anything” but that they are committed to protecting the area and to minimizing traffic problems and any environmental concerns. After hearing more than an hour of testimony, Council Member Ora Houston asked for a postponement, which Council unanimously approved with Council Member Ellen Troxclair absent. “I know everybody’s heart is in the right place,” said Houston, in whose District 1 the church is located. “And I know everybody in the neighborhood knows that (the church has) a right to sell (its) property. What we want to do is make as little impact on the surrounding neighborhood as we can.” The Austin Monitor’s work is made possible by donations from the community. Though our reporting covers donors from time to time, we are careful to keep business and editorial efforts separate while maintaining transparency. A complete list of donors is available here, and our code of ethics is explained here. ‹ Return to Today's Headlines Read latest Whispers › |
The death of a toddler who choked on his food at a Gatineau, Que., daycare on Wednesday was an accident, police say. The 13-month-old boy has been identified by his family as Caleb Charbonneau. The incident happened at about 11:45 a.m. Wednesday at Centre de la petite enfance La Ribambelle d'Aylmer, at 272 Thuyas St., in the city's Aylmer sector. Charbonneau was one of five children eating a meal that included pita-bread pizza, cooked vegetables and fruit when the incident occurred, according to Isabelle Laporte, the vice-president of the daycare's board of directors, whose young daughter also attends the daycare. Caleb Charbonneau, 13 months old, choked on food at a daycare on Wednesday and was pronounced dead at hospital. (Courtesy of the Charbonneau family) One staff member was in the room at the time with the five children, Laporte said. Daycare staff tried to revive Charbonneau until paramedics arrived, police said. He was then taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Autopsy expected in the coming days Gatineau police are investigating — a standard procedure in deaths of any children under the age of six — and an autopsy is expected in the coming days. But police said Thursday that the death was accidental. "... We can confirm at this point that it's nothing criminal, it's a tragic accident," said Gatineau police spokesperson Pierre Lanthier. "I can tell it's not easy for anybody today." Isabelle Laporte, the vice-president of the board of directors for la Centre de la petite enfance La Ribambelle d'Aylmer, says all emergency procedures were followed. (CBC News) Laporte said grief counsellors were meeting with staff Thursday afternoon and parents in the evening to talk about how to discuss the boy's death with the children. Charbonneau also had an older brother who attended the daycare. "Our thoughts are with the child's parents and their family," said Laporte. "It's a lot of emotion and I don't have the words to say and I saw this child every day. It's a tragic accident and I think everyone is shocked about this." All daycare staff have up-to-date training in both CPR and first aid, Laporte said. The daycare is expected to re-open Friday. |
Robots might be invading workplaces in the future, but for now, tech-related jobs are still among the best to pursue in Canada, an Indeed report reveals. According to the job-searching website’s new list of the 10 Best Jobs of 2017, technology dominates the list, filling seven of the top jobs and even rounding out the top-three. The list – the first from Indeed – is based on jobs with a salary of at least $70,000, combined with consistent growth in share of postings from 2013 to 2016. READ MORE: Survey: How many Canadians would choose a different career path if they had the chance? “The first thing that surprised us was how dominant tech-related roles were,” says Paul D’Arcy, senior vice-president of Indeed. “We expected it to be a more diverse list that better represented the diversity of the Canadian economy, but it turns out that there’s been a lot of growth in the tech sector in Canada.” There are two reasons for this, D’Arcy says. “First, every company is really in the process of transforming and becoming the digital version of itself,” he explains. “It used to be maybe that software engineers and other technology-related roles were in technology companies, but now, every organization is trying to fill these positions.” And because there is such a high demand for these roles, there’s a major shortage of candidates to fill them. In other words, the supply has yet to catch up with the demand and it’s leaving these roles open for a lot longer. “These jobs are really good jobs that drive innovation,” D’Arcy says. “The presence of these jobs is a very positive thing for an economy, and seeing a list that is so incredibly dominated by these jobs is reflective of the Canadian economy being driven by valued knowledge work.” He adds, “Getting as many people into these sorts of positions as possible is increasingly important for continued growth in the economy.” READ MORE: The top eight careers of the future in Canada What’s interesting about these opportunities, D’Arcy says, is the fact that there’s no one way to acquire the skills or degree you need to obtain a job in this field. “Being able to have fluency with software, with data and analysis is something that’s incredibly valuable and can create career opportunities across all of the economy, and not just in the tech sector,” he says. “So people who have these really hard-to-define technical skills – by teaching themselves or go through training for these skills – have what feels like limitless opportunities right now.” And the growth is here to stay. According to the Brookfield Institute, Canada’s tech sector is a $117-billion industry and accounts for over seven per cent of the country’s total GDP. As of 2016, there are 71,000 tech sector firms and about 864,000 tech sector employees across the country – this sector alone accounts for 5.6 per cent of Canada’s total employment. So, what specific jobs made Indeed’s list? Check them out below. Graphics by Ben Simpson |
A Florida man will serve 20 days in jail for computer hacking after he exploited a security flaw on the Lee County Elections Office website as “a silly political stunt” for a local candidate. David Michael Levin of Estero, Fla. pleaded guilty in a Fort Myers courtroom Tuesday to a single misdemeanor count in connection with hacking the Lee County elections website. He’ll serve 20 days in jail followed by two years of probation, a local CBS affiliate reported. Levin, 31, was initially charged with three counts of felony hacking related to intrusions suffered by the Lee County website as well as the state’s Division of Election upon being arrested in May. Authorities began investigating Levin after he explained how he breached the Lee County website in a YouTube video uploaded in late January by Dan Sinclair, a candidate at the time in the local election’s supervisor race. In one of the clips, Levin showed how he used a technique known as a SQL injection to gain access to a database containing log-in credentials for the elections website, then used those details to sign-on to the site as incumbent Sharon Harrington. Levin outlined the hack in a Jan. 27 report that was issued by his company, Vanguard Cybersecurity, and emailed to an elections official by Mr. Sinclair. The email was then forwarded to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, who in turn interviewed Levin at his house in early February. Authorities confiscated his computer and iPhone while executing a search warrant a few days later and eventually filed the felony hacking charges after securing digital proof of the intrusions against both websites in addition to Levin’s admission. In the plea deal entered Tuesday, Levin took responsibility for his actions and formally apologized to Ms. Harrington. “When I found information that could be used to damage you and your office, I presented it to Dan Sinclair, who I had worked with,” Levin admitted. “I then took part in a publicity stunt to advance Mr. Sinclair’s campaign.” “I’m sorry about what I did, your Honor. It was a silly political stunt,” Levin said in court, according to the CBS affiliate. “I didn’t think I was going to get in and I did. I’ve never done anything like it before and I’m not going to do anything like it again.” Christopher Crowley, a defense lawyer for Levin, stood by his client’s conduct while speaking to a local NBC affiliate following Tuesday’s hearing. “After [Levin] did it, he reported it to the agencies themselves and actually did a report to show them how vulnerable it was,” the attorney said. “So yes, he did commit a crime, but he also did a service to the agencies he hacked into.” Levin will serve his jail sentence during the weekends so he can attend law school during the week, the CBS affiliate reported. Investigators previously determined that Mr. Sinclair played no part in orchestrating the hack and declined to charge him in the matter. The election’s supervisor hopeful ultimately lost his bid for office after garnering only 10 percent of the vote during the state’s primary last month. Ms. Harrington told NBC2 that the SQL injection used by Levin allowed him to access an old database that was no longer being used but was still connected to the internet. “You could be in Siberia and perform the attack I performed on the Lee elections website,” Levin said in one of the YouTube videos. “There’s more sensitive information I could have had access to.” The FBI last month issued a warning to election officials across the country after offices in Arizona and Illinois were both targeted in recent cyberattacks. Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. |
“We are not our bodies, our possessions, or our career. Who we are is Divine Love and that is Infinite.” Dr. Wayne W. Dyer (1940-2015) 1. Cooperation is healthier than competition Work on improving your own person and be so busy doing so that you don’t have time to compare and compete with others. We are all in this together and this sense of separation will only weaken us, creating more pain and suffering. “If you’re always in a hurry, always trying to get ahead of the other guy, or someone else’s performance is what motivates you, then that person is in control of you.” ~ Wayne Dyer When you love somebody you love them for what they are not for what you want them to be, without imposing your will and without constantly trying to change them. “Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.” ~ Wayne Dyer 3. Ignorance is not bliss Allow yourself to expand your mind a little more day by day, give up labels and you will be happier. If you constantly say NO to “strange” ideas, things, events, people, how can you expect to progress through life? Try new things, if it makes your life better, stick to it and if it doesn’t, let it go. It’s that simple. “The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.” ~ Wayne Dyer 4. You are not a victim of the world When you affirm things like, You make me mad, this situation is upsetting me, I can’t believe you are treating me this way, etc., you start playing the victim game. Take responsibility for your own thoughts, your own feelings and actions and by doing so you will no longer give your power away to forces outside yourself. When something negative comes your way, you will pause and instead of reacting, you will RESPOND, to everything and everyone. You will no longer be a victim, but rather a person who is aware of his/her inner strength and power. “How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.” ~ Wayne Dyer If you are comfortable in your own skin and really love your own person, you will not be afraid to spend time alone. You will enjoy the time you spend alone as much as you do when you are surrounded by people you dearly love. “You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.” ~ Wayne Dyer 6. Rejection makes you stronger If you trust and listen to your own heart and intuition, you will always know where to go and what to do with your life. No matter how many doors close in your face, you will not give up and you will allow rejection to make you stronger and better, not bitter. “Be grateful to all those people who told you no. It’s because of them that you managed to do it all yourself.” ~Wayne Dyer 7. Self worth cannot be verified by others If you constantly seek outside yourself for approval and validation, you will never be happy. We are all different and we all perceive things in different ways but your reputation is not something you can really control. Your reputation is not really in your hands, so stop trying to please everyone around you and start pleasing your SELF. You are the person who matters the most and if you yourself are not happy with who you are, chances are others will not be happy with you either! “Self-worth cannot be verified by others. You are worthy because you say it is so. If you depend on others for your value it is other-worth.” ~ Wayne Dyer 8. You don’t attract what you want in your life, you attract what you are People often think if they focus long enough on something they want, with the Law of Attraction and everything, they will get whatever they want in life, but that’s not how things work. If you purify your mind and heart, you will attract many beautiful things into your life, and abundance will not be something you will have to chase because it will chase you. On the other hand, if your mind and heart is full of negativity, negativity in all forms will show up in your life. ”If you’re obsessed with defeating the other guy and winning at all costs, then you’re guaranteed to attract the vibrational equivalent of this thinking into your life- even if you do yoga and stand on your head chanting mantras everyday.” ~ Wayne Dyer There are no limits to what you can achieve, only those you choose to impose on yourself. “When you argue for your limitations, all you get are your limitations.” ~ Wayne Dyer 10. “Heaven on earth” is a choice you must make, not a place you must find Focus on the BAD and that’s all you will see and attract into your life; focus on the GOOD and that’s all you will see and attract into your life. “Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.”~ Wayne Dyer Believe it or not, there is an invisible force who created the whole world, the whole Universe and this force becomes available to us the moment we stop trying to do it all by ourselves, the moment we decide to allow events to take their natural course and just go with the FLOW. “Good morning, this is God. I will be handling all of your problems today. I will not need your help. So have a miraculous day.” ~ Wayne Dyer 12. All that you need is already within you In this moment you have it all, right NOW and right here, there is nothing lacking. Take time to be quiet at least 5 minutes per day and in time you will discover that you do have access to HAPPINESS, PEACE, ABUNDANCE and all that is good at all times. “You have everything you need for complete peace and total happiness right now.” ~ Wayne Dyer 13. There is no end to personal growth Personal growth doesn’t end when you finish school. The moment you’ve stopped growing you can say that you’ve stopped living. Individuals who use self-labels are stating, “I’m a finished product in this area, and I’m never going to be any different.” If you’re a finished product all tied up and put away, you’ve stopped growing. ~ Wayne Dyer 14. Be realistic, expect miracles There is a great power in the Universe, the Source of it all, and this power makes itself available to you the moment you align with who you really are deep down inside, creating miracles for you and those you love. “Once you believe in yourself and see your soul as divine and precious, you’ll automatically be converted to a being who can create miracles.” ~ Wayne Dyer 15. Follow your heart and you will be successful This is such a powerful truth that only a few of us get to live and discover. When you get your life on purpose, when you focus on giving the best of yourself to the world, abundance will flow freely into your life and you will discover happiness you never thought could be yours. “Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life.” ~ Wayne Dyer Source: http://www.purposefairy.com/6777/15-life-changing-lessons-to-learn-from-wayne-dyer/ |
The latest apparent casualty is Wang Tianpu, the president and vice-chair of the state-owned oil behemoth Sinopec, who authorities said on Monday had been detained while under investigation. Wang was once tipped as a rising star of Chinese politics, but his support had already been hollowed out at Sinopec. So many employees had disappeared by the end of last year that the personnel department began calling each morning to check that critical staff were still there. Low-ranking officials are in a state of continual fear as their colleagues vanish around them. "There are so many rumors that I will be taken away, spread by my enemies," one county-level official told me. Xi's promise to eliminate both "tigers and flies" — the high-ranking officials who have stolen billions and the petty corruption that plagues everyday life — is genuinely popular among ordinary Chinese who saw graft worsen over the past decade. The president and his allies fear that corruption could lead to the overthrow of the Party itself if left unchecked. But while cleaning up, Xi also seems to be cleaning house, eliminating the power networks of former or potential rivals while preserving his own power bases . "China's anti-graft campaign has moved beyond setting warning examples to deter others," said a 2014 year-end report from state press agency Xinhua. "The scale of the investigations, as well as new initiatives and legal reform, indicate that the country intends to fight a protracted war." China is being purged. An aggressive anti-corruption campaign that began after Xi Jinping became chief of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012 and the nation's president the following year has shaken institutions from the army to the state television broadcaster. Hundreds of thousands of officials have already been detained. Unlike similar crackdowns of the past, the effort shows no signs of slowing. Read more China is being purged. An aggressive anti-corruption campaign that began after Xi Jinping became chief of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012 and the nation's president the following year has shaken institutions from the army to the state television broadcaster. Hundreds of thousands of officials have already been detained. Unlike similar crackdowns of the past, the effort shows no signs of slowing. "China's anti-graft campaign has moved beyond setting warning examples to deter others," said a 2014 year-end report from state press agency Xinhua. "The scale of the investigations, as well as new initiatives and legal reform, indicate that the country intends to fight a protracted war." Xi's promise to eliminate both "tigers and flies" — the high-ranking officials who have stolen billions and the petty corruption that plagues everyday life — is genuinely popular among ordinary Chinese who saw graft worsen over the past decade. The president and his allies fear that corruption could lead to the overthrow of the Party itself if left unchecked. But while cleaning up, Xi also seems to be cleaning house, eliminating the power networks of former or potential rivals while preserving his own power bases. Low-ranking officials are in a state of continual fear as their colleagues vanish around them. "There are so many rumors that I will be taken away, spread by my enemies," one county-level official told me. The latest apparent casualty is Wang Tianpu, the president and vice-chair of the state-owned oil behemoth Sinopec, who authorities said on Monday had been detained while under investigation. Wang was once tipped as a rising star of Chinese politics, but his support had already been hollowed out at Sinopec. So many employees had disappeared by the end of last year that the personnel department began calling each morning to check that critical staff were still there. China's legal system has recently been reformed to limit the power of police, restrict the use of torture, and keep the families of detainees informed. But the police have little to do with the anti-corruption crackdown. Instead, the sweep is being carried out by investigators with the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Chinese Communist Party's top internal watchdog. The detainees vanish not into jails, but into the maw of shuanggui — a practice used by the CCDI to vanish and interrogate Party members who are under suspicion of "violations of discipline." Interrogators who forced feces and urine into suspects' mouths referred to the mixture as 'Eight Treasures Porridge,' a popular Chinese breakfast. On paper, shuanggui is a process of internal discipline and regulation within the Party; in practice it's a vast, brutal, extra-legal interrogative system into which people disappear, without recourse, for weeks or months at a time. The term, which means "double designation," refers to the government notice that informs Party members to appear for questioning at a "designated time and a designated place." But the earliest that officials are aware of their misfortune is typically when the CCDI interrogators arrive at their home or office to seize their mobile phones and disappear them into a shadow world. Chinese legal scholars have privately compared shuanggui to the CIA's use of extraordinary rendition, in which a terror suspect is kidnapped and covertly interrogated outside of legal bounds. The CCDI's toolbox is similar. Officials under investigation are whisked away to isolated hotels, appropriated government buildings, or other secret locations. Interrogators work in teams, rotating so that the same questions are asked again and again from different faces, keeping 24-hour schedules so that the suspects can be woken and questioned at anytime of day or night. Stress positioning and sleep deprivation are used to break suspects. In some cases, so is physical torture. "It's very difficult to know the extent of physical or psychological torture," Flora Sapio, a China law scholar specializing in criminal justice and administrative detention, told me. As with all of the Party's inner workings, there is almost no external oversight of the detention process or the methods used. High-ranking officials are far less likely to be tortured, because of the embarrassment their death would cause and the risk that they might find a way to reverse their situation and take revenge. Related: Talking Heads: China Strikes Back. Watch here. Chinese President Xi Jinping (r) speaks with Wang Qishan, Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, who is tasked with implementing the anti-corruption campaign. (Photo via Reuters) This disciplinary custom is technically illegal, or extra-legal. The Party regulates its application, but it has no existence or established role within China's legal system. While the government has been restraining or abolishing other forms of quasi-legal detention, such as the "rehabilitation through labor" system, the use and reach of shuanggui has only increased. "Shuanggui is the first step of any interrogation because the political architecture of the Party system is Leninist, and Party discipline is a core concept in Leninism," Sapio told me. Under Leninist theory, the Party remains outside and above the state, an eternal guardian of the revolution. Though the government could legalize shuanggui at any time with minimum effort, it is kept above the law as a reminder of the Party's supremacy — an intimidating tactic that reinforces the practice's ominous reputation. But few in China question shuanggui's legitimacy, and not just out of fear of causing trouble for themselves. Officials are widely seen as so powerful that ordinary methods are not enough to tackle them, especially after the rampant corruption of the 2000s. The internal process allows Party elites to regulate themselves. China's police are politically toothless, and highly reluctant to touch officials. The public has no trust in them, whereas CCDI investigators are increasingly painted as corruption-busting heroes. What we know of shuanggui comes from accounts posted online or given to journalists by former provincial officials who have described it as a "a living hell," or from the rare cases of abuse that reach the courts. The Chinese press is rarely able to report on it, but survivors of detention have testified to a range of horrors. Beatings are a universal constant of such accounts, though more elaborate torture methods are also used, including waterboarding. Yu Qiyi, the chief engineer of a state-owned enterprise, drowned while in custody in 2013 after his head was repeatedly held under ice-cold water; his body was covered with numerous welts from other abuses. In one of the rare cases of interrogators being held liable by the courts, his six torturers were convicted. Chinese justice has been obsessed with the primacy of confession since imperial times — an ideology only reinforced by Maoism and its 'self-criticism' sessions. Zhou Wangyan, a Hunan official accused of bribery, told the AP that he was chained, had his left leg broken, and was forced to eat and drink excrement. Others report being whipped with wire, having their face pressed into coals, and being administered hallucinatory drugs to compel confession. Reflecting the cold humor commonly used by torturers to disassociate themselves from their prisoners, Zhou said that interrogators who forced feces and urine into suspects' mouths referred to the mixture as "Eight Treasures Porridge," a popular Chinese breakfast. But the principal leverage comes from feelings of isolation, inevitability, and the knowledge that you have no way out and that your family is vulnerable. Under Partyregulations published in 2001, confinement under shuanggui can last up to six months. The process is often combined with house arrest for family members of officials under interrogation, which keeps relatives from calling in political connections on their behalf. Because shuanggui has no legal framework, there is no clear route to appeal for release, or even to know where someone is being held or for how long. For these Chinese powerbrokers, isolation is a form of terror. The setup in some shuanggui facilities, rarely exposed to the public but described by a blogger in 2011, looks like a distorted version of the offices and conference rooms where officials usually spend their time. But here their every movement, down to going to the toilet, is monitored and accompanied. The dynamic of power they're used to is utterly reversed, and the outside world is shut off. The power of confinement has grown under CCDI chief Wang Qishan, who appears to be Xi Jinping's closest political ally; the Bobby Kennedy to his Jack. Before 2012, CCDI inspectors faced severe constraints on their actions, as Australian journalist Richard McGregor documented in his 2011 book The Party. Party scholars told McGregor that top officials "flew above or beyond the system," and noted that CCDI personnel within ministries and state firms "either do not dare [to refer cases] or are not willing to." The use of shuanggui required higher-level officials within the CCDI to sign-off on the process, who were often pressured or enticed to scuttle investigations. Officials feared investigation by the CCDI four years ago, but friends of mine who worked in government told me that they were more fearful of the Ministry of State Security, the Chinese equivalent of the KGB. "If you offend [the MSS], then they'll destroy you," a young official in the Ministry of Religious Affairs once told me, describing the fear that swept over her colleagues when MSS operatives came by. Her position was particularly ideologically sensitive, but the MSS was widely perceived as powerful, vindictive, and deeply corrupt. Yet today it's undoubtedly the CCDI that keeps officials awake at night. Related: Booze, Sex, and the Dark Art of Dealmaking in China The Mausoleum of Mao Zedong. (Photo via Flickr) The MSS's power appears to have suffered with the drawn-out fall of Zhou Yongkang, China's former domestic security czar and oil chief, whom Xi and Wang waged a long campaign to bring down. After he had been missing for months, Reuters disclosed in March 2014 that the government had detained or questioned more than 300 of his relatives and associates and seized assets worth at least $14.5 billion. Zhou was officially arrested and expelled from the Party the following December, making him the highest-ranking government official charged with corruption since the Cultural Revolution. The CCDI was strengthened in part to circumvent Zhou's control of the security apparatus, which he reportedly attempted to turn against Xi. Earlier this month, Bloomberg revealed that sources close to the investigation said that Zhou had spied on top officials (including Xi), collecting personal and financial information and leaking unspecified details to Chinese-language websites located overseas. Zhou's network in the oil sector also helps explain Xi's tiger hunt at Sinopec and the equally massive Petrochina, where numerous senior executives have also been detained. Tracing the course of this power shift is difficult, and runs up against the near-total opaqueness of the Party's inner workings. Battles within the Party resemble the struggles of medieval barons more than they do anything we would recognize as party politics, complete with kidnappings, changes of alliance, dynastic regionalism, and factions that are generally more dependent on personal influence than ideological affinity. At the same time, they interweave with a powerful and heavily bureaucratic system. Like many practices in the People's Republic, shuanggui draws equally from Chinese history and Soviet practice. Supra-legal inquisitions for officials were a common tool of emperors, but the practice of seizing officials and confining them to a "room of regret" was copied from the Soviets. Originally practiced by the Red Army as a form of military discipline, it became a tool of both punishment and intrigue, used by various Party groups against political rivals and corrupt officials. Over time it was standardized; by the late 1990s, it had become entirely the domain of the CCDI. Related: It's Open Season on Corrupt Officials in China Chinese justice has been obsessed with the primacy of confession since imperial times — an ideology only reinforced by Maoism and its "self-criticism" sessions — and the aim of shuanggui is essentially to get the suspect to talk, not only about their own crimes but about those of their political allies. Once investigators have what they want, suspects are turned over to rubber-stamp criminal courts, where they face almost certain conviction. In some cases, whether because of a lack of evidence or a political reversal, shuanggui suspects are spared indictment, but being detained still sullies their careers. The confessions made in detention are theoretically inadmissible, and the prosecution is supposed to re-gather the evidence — but this is widely ignored in practice. When disgraced Party chief (and close Zhou associate) Bo Xilai was tried for corruption, bribery, and abuse of power in 2013, his shuanggui confession was submitted in court because he would not repeat it. Deaths while in detention, whether from torture or suicide, are considered failures, and in rare cases can result in prosecution. But detainee suicides appear to have diminished. Some 120 suspects were said to have killed themselves in the first two months of 2003 alone — a figure that might include the cover-up of deaths from torture — but a close watch on detainees today, and the restriction of interrogations to first-floor rooms to avoid sudden defenestration, seems to have reduced fatalities. Xi's war against corruption remains massively popular, and there's little doubt that the "tigers" he has brought down were corrupt — perhaps even more so than the average. But his own family's wealth rivals that of any of the bloated plutocrats whose ruin he and Wang have engineered, and he appears to have used the corruption fight to weaken political opposition, so much so that it was only last month that the first senior officials from his regional bases were named in graft investigations. Cleansing the Party is only partially the point. The increased use of covert discipline reinforces a message being instilled by other campaigns, such as China's wide-ranging crackdown on journalists, civil society, non-governmental organizations, foreign culture, feminists, and anyone else that might provide an alternative to Communist centralization: The Party is everything — and the only organization with the right to control it is itself. Follow James Palmer on Twitter: @BeijingPalmerPhoto via Wikimedia Commons |
Have you see those gorgeous pendant light photos with $100 origami paper lampshades in design magazines? Here’s the secret: you can make one just as beautiful, for almost free. In this tutorial, I will share how to make a stylish DIY pendant light in 3 easy steps: 1. How to make a perfect size origami DIY lampshade from two paper grocery bags ( or any paper )! 2. How to choose a pendant light kit and customize a pendant light cord. 3. How to make a hanging pendant light easily with you origami lampshade and pendant light kit. This pendant lamp with DIY lampshade is made with one and a half paper bag. I love these retro style Trader Joe’s grocery bags and the idea of up-cycling. You can use any paper of similar size and thickness. All you need is a little folding! MY LATEST VIDEOS MY LATEST VIDEOS No worries if you are not familiar with origami, I have an easy-to-understand folding template and diagram for you to download and practice so you can make your own origami paper pendant lamp shade! Print it out on a piece of letter size paper and practice a little. The key here is to get comfortable with the “mountain” and “valley” folds. Mountain folds are towards you, and valley folds away from you! You can download pattern and diagram for the origami DIY lampshade at the end of this article. Step 1. How to make a perfect size origami DIY lampshade from two paper grocery bags ( or any paper )! Materials and tools: Pendant cord: here are a few of my favorite, in case one of them sells out- a super cute black and white cord , a white pendant cord, Ikea Hemma cord in black or white, and a two pack white pendant cord with on-off switch! Important: when choosing bulbs, it’s important to choose those that does not generate too much heat, such as these LED Light Bulbs: they are 7.5 watt but light up like 40 watts. If you want something brighter for a larger room, these 10.5-watt LED Light Bulbs will light up like 60 watts! We prefer the 7.5 watt LED bulbs for over a desk area. NO incandescent bulbs should be used near paper! Hope you had fun practicing folding a mini origami paper pendant lamp shade! =) To make the big origami DIY lampshade, let’s begin with 2 paper grocery bags you like. Remove the handles carefully, cut off bottom of the bag and open up the one side that is glued so it’s ONE continuous piece and ready for folding. Use the dimensions in the download diagram as a guide. It does not have to be so exact since your grocery bag might be different in size. Start with the long ( one full bag opened up) piece. Fold it lengthwise in half, then fold each of the half piece in half, repeat till you dived the whole length into 16 equal parts with these accordion folds. See photo above. Tip: be as precise as possible in this first step! Next, fold the first row of diagonal folds, don’t worry about mountain or valley yet, just make some good creases. You can mark the next folding points with light pencil marks if that helps. After all the creases are made, fold them according to the diagram, the photos below might be helpful as well. This is what it will look like after all the folds. Next, cut the second bag to half the length of this piece, and start with the accordion folds, this time into 8 equal parts since it’s half the length. Repeat with all the folds. Pay attention that the accordion folds start and end differently than the first piece, this is not required but will make the gluing a bit easier. Next step is to join the 2 sections together using either glue or double sided tape. Just find the parts that matches, overlap them, and glue them together. The final step of creating the origami paper pendant lamp shade is to poke holes at the top tip, and thread a string or yarn through the holes. As you tighten the string, gently form a swirl by pushing the tabs on the inside, like in this photo above. Tie a knot that can be loosened so you can insert a pendant cord easily. Step 2. How to choose a pendant light kit and customize it to look even more beautiful. Pendant cord: here are a few of my favorite, in case one of them sells out- a super cute black and white cord , a white pendant cord, Ikea Hemma cord in black or white, and a two pack white pendant cord with on-off switch! A plain pendant cord can easily be transformed into a charming one by wrapping Sisal Twine, yarn, or Hemp Twine like these around it and hot gluing the ends. Step 3. How to make a hanging pendant light easily with you origami lampshade and pendant light kit. There are many ways to support the pendant light and cord, such as wall mount wood brackets, stands, or a tree branch, like this one from the lovely tree trimming people I happened to walk by in our neighborhood! This tree branch is securely sandwiched between our desk and the wall behind it. You can also make a wood or concrete base for it like in these outdoor lighting DIY below! Important: when choosing bulbs, it’s important to choose those that does not generate too much heat, such as these LED Light Bulbs: they are 7.5 watt but light up like 40 watts. If you want something brighter for a larger room, these 10.5-watt LED Light Bulbs will light up like 60 watts! We prefer the 7.5 watt LED bulbs for over a desk area. NO incandescent bulbs should be used near paper! This origami paper pendant lampshade can “shrink” to a tiny size for storage – magic or origami! Hope you are in love with paper bags as much as I do by now! Again, Important: when choosing bulbs, it’s important to choose those that does not generate too much heat, such as these LED Light Bulbs: they are 7.5 watt but light up like 40 watts. If you want something brighter for a larger room, these 10.5-watt LED Light Bulbs will light up like 60 watts! We prefer the 7.5 watt LED bulbs for over a desk area. NO incandescent bulbs should be used near paper! If you love paper lighting projects, you will also love these dimensional paper lanterns and mini tea-light houses! How about painting a plain lamp shade into chic chevron? Happy Creating! See you next week! |
A clerk just missed shooting an armed masked man who was allegedly trying to rob the Lucky 7 Food Mart in Fort Pierce early Saturday morning.MOBILE/TABLET USERS: Watch the ReportA man walked into the 13th Street store, pointed a gun at the clerk and demanded money. The clerk was secretly aiming a gun at the would-be robber from underneath the counter.The clerk fired and a bullet tore through the wooden counter. Surveillance video obtained shows the bullet came just inches from hitting the man.The man slipped, fell, got up and tried to aim at the clerk but decided to run when the clerk opened fire again.No arrest has been made in the case.A different person was arrested earlier this year after allegedly trying to rob the same store. The same clerk opened fire on the robber and his getaway car, leaving bullet holes that led to an arrest. A clerk just missed shooting an armed masked man who was allegedly trying to rob the Lucky 7 Food Mart in Fort Pierce early Saturday morning. MOBILE/TABLET USERS: Watch the Report Advertisement A man walked into the 13th Street store, pointed a gun at the clerk and demanded money. The clerk was secretly aiming a gun at the would-be robber from underneath the counter. The clerk fired and a bullet tore through the wooden counter. Surveillance video obtained shows the bullet came just inches from hitting the man. The man slipped, fell, got up and tried to aim at the clerk but decided to run when the clerk opened fire again. No arrest has been made in the case. A different person was arrested earlier this year after allegedly trying to rob the same store. The same clerk opened fire on the robber and his getaway car, leaving bullet holes that led to an arrest. AlertMe |
You are super tensed because you want the girl to actually start liking you on the first date itself. Do not worry; at LTC we help you to take the right steps to impress a girl. What should you be doing? Do not expect the first date to be mushy and romantic. You want to make it interesting and fun. So for that, you need to decide on an activity that both of you could enjoy. Maybe cook a dinner together or buy tickets to the local band, it can be anything. Just make sure that you go for something that is interesting and you think that she would enjoy. Also, make sure that you have time in hand that will allow you to speak to get to know each other. Many would vouch for a dinner date or a drink at the bar. That is great but when you plan something for her you are sure to stand out. She will be impressed by the fact that you at least spend some time thinking and planning and not just picking up the phone and reserving a table at the restaurant. When it is an activity date it makes it easy for the both of you to start a conversation. Also, you get a chance to filter the girl too. I mean you would definitely not want to have a relationship with a girl who is not fun at all. So you also get to choose which girl is right for you. Act properly Be carefree and have lots of fun. It is all about developing a positive attitude and if you both are able to have some connection between you then you can be assured that the date has definitely made an impression. So go ahead and invite her and try to be yourself. Girls do not like boys who pretend to be what they are not. … |
Physicists gathered in Copenhagen today to settle a high-profile wager on a leading theory of nature. The bet, made in 2000 just as construction began on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — the world’s biggest atom smasher — forced several renowned physicists to put their money where their theories were. Each participant staked a position on whether at least one of the particles predicted by an elegant theory called supersymmetry would be experimentally detected within 10 years. In light of construction delays and a breakdown at the LHC, everyone agreed to extend the deadline. The five-year extension signed in June 2011 came due this summer, and no supersymmetry particles have shown up. At today’s meeting, hosted by the Niels Bohr International Academy, the 20 physicists who signed “Yes” on the 2011 addendum were declared the losers, each owing a bottle of “good cognac at a price not less than $100” to be shared among the 24 winners, who bet against supersymmetry’s discovery. The adjudicator, Nima Arkani-Hamed of the Institute for Advanced Study, who signed “Yes,” bestowed his bottle on a victorious Poul Damgaard of the Niels Bohr Institute. Stephen Hawking, who did not sign the supersymmetry wager, was on hand to see the outcome. “If I had signed up to the bet,” he told the room, “I would have voted ‘No.’” (Hindsight, it should be noted, is 20-20.) During a panel discussion, the Nobel-Prize-winning physicist David Gross, who did not sign the Copenhagen document but lost a separate bet over the absence of supersymmetry, said that he will continue to believe in the theory, even though it apparently does not take its simplest or most accessible form. “In the absence of any positive experimental evidence for supersymmetry,” Gross said, “it’s a good time to scare the hell out of the young people in the audience and tell them: ‘Don’t follow your elders. … Go out and look for something new and crazy and powerful and different. Different, especially.’ That’s definitely a good lesson. But I’m too old for that.” Update: Video from today’s meeting in Copenhagen is now available. Save Save Save Save Save Save Save Save Save Save Save Save Save |
Stephen Byrne Lisa Naylor writes: This isn’t my first time contacting you about the mental health services in our country, but sadly today I am not writing on my own behalf. On Friday, the 15th of January, Stephen Byrne attended Beaumont A&E to seek medical assistance. He was 20, a devoted father and suicidal. A few days prior, he had attempted to hang himself multiple times while in police custody; at that time he was brought to the Mater but was released. Despite informing staff at Beaumont of his intent to commit suicide, he was discharged. The only help he was offered was that his file would be sent to his clinic in Ballymun. On Tuesday, the 19th of January, Stephen went missing; his body was discovered two days later, on his daughter’s second birthday. To date, nobody from the Ballymun clinic has made contact with Stephen’s family. As anyone with mental health difficulties knows, asking for help when you are at your lowest is incredibly difficult. It takes unbelievable strength to fight your own mind and reach out. This is especially true for young men, as historically our country has stigmatised those with mental illnesses as weak or failing in some way. Men are statistically less likely to seek treatment for mental health issues, but they are four times more likely to die by suicide then women. Yet, when a young man found the courage to walk into an A&E department he was turned away, with devastating consequences. I know all too well the pain and desolation of reaching out when all you want to do is die, only to be dismissed and invalidated by the very people who are supposed to offer aid. It might sound histrionic to some, but they might as well help you to step onto the ledge. After my last suicide attempt, as soon as I regained consciousness I was discharged from Beaumont A&E without ever speaking to a doctor, let alone a member of the psychiatric team. I know a young woman who just last week attempted suicide inside the hospital grounds, and was simply patched up and sent on her way. I know that there are many people with similar accounts, especially those with a history of self-harm or suicide attempts. This is because certain hospitals, as a result of overcrowding and staff shortages, have a policy whereby patients who present more than a handful of times with self-inflicted injuries, including suicide attempts, are no longer referred to the psychiatric team for assessment. We are seen as a waste of resources. This is not just a local issue, across the nation there are thousands of people waiting for referrals, many of whom will have to travel for hours for an appointment as a result of hospital closures. In some areas the wait for a psychology referral is two years. In 2014 nearly 3,000 children and adolescents were on waiting lists for psychiatric referrals and children are routinely admitted to adult psychiatric units. As a country we are finally starting to break the draconian cycle of shame and secrecy that surrounds mental illness, but our mental health service remains inadequate, underdeveloped and underfunded. The Government and politicians are quick to promise change and reforms, but while we wait for them to turn words into actions more and more lives will be lost. Sadly any improvements will be too late for Stephen, his family and his little girl, Ava. Stephen asked for help and he was rejected; someone decided he was not important enough for their time, their care or their compassion. At what point does someone’s life become dispensable? Who are we supposed to turn to if our own healthcare system deems us unworthy? They tell people suffering from mental health difficulties to ‘speak up’; to talk to a professional; to not suffer in silence. They ask for our trust, and then break it. Ask yourself, if you were living in hell; if you were in so much pain that you would take your own life to escape it, would you put your survival in the hands of an institution that will likely make your life even more unbearable? |
Posted Tuesday, June 13, 2017 12:03 am An explosion at Carl Cannon Chevrolet Cadillac Buick GMC in Jasper Monday afternoon injured five workers. The explosion happened in the oil change area of the service department at the dealership located just off Interstate 22. Jasper police and firefighters responded to the dealership at 5:19 p.m. Officials from the Walker County Emergency Management Agency and state fire marshals, along with multiple ambulances from Regional Paramedical Services, were also on the scene. Five employees in the service department were injured. Four were taken by ambulance to UAB Hospital in Birmingham with severe burns; a fifth worker was taken to Walker Baptist Medical Center after experiencing difficulty breathing. The four taken to UAB were reportedly in critical condition. Those injured were not identified. Jasper Fire Chief David Clark said his department was working with officials from the state fire marshal’s office to try to determine an exact cause of the explosion. A post on the dealership’s Facebook page asked for prayers for those injured. “Thank you for the outpouring of love and support. Please pray for the individuals that were injured and their families,” the post said. |
Jury Room to Be Replaced with Balls Photo via Columbus Food League. Nearly three weeks ago it was announced that The Jury Room would be closing and sold to a new owner, but no details were provided at that time as to who the new owner would be. Today we’re able to report that Joe Milano, former owner of Caffe Daniela and Villa Milano, has purchased the business and plans to open a new meatball-centric concept called “Balls” within the next few weeks. “We’ve been looking for a new place since we sold Caffe Daniela last year,” explained Milano. “The Downtown area is a little tough right now because there’s fewer places for sale than there used to be. But this space came available, so we’re giving it a go.” Milano, along with his wife MaryJo, are hoping to make Balls appealing to a wide range of people with a menu that includes traditional meatballs, chicken balls, vegetarian balls, and other seasonal flavors that can be incorporated into sandwiches, entrees, pastas and other styles of ever-evolving cuisines. “I’m Italian and proud of it, but I steer people away from thinking that meatballs only translate to Italian food,” said Milano. “During St. Paddy’s Day we’ll be making balls with corned beef for example, so I think we can really make that fun and exciting.” In addition to the food menu, Balls will feature a full bar with a variety of craft beers and will be host two trivia nights and other regular events targeted at Downtown dwellers. Milano says that the residents of the new apartments coming soon to Rich and High are a big part of his target demographic, and he wants to create a space with a neighborhood-centric feel. The restaurant is expected to see minor renovations to the dining room and some more significant upgrades to the kitchen. The biggest thing disappearing from the old Jury Room is the name itself, which Milano was not interested in preserving. “I think the building has more history and value than the namesake — I have to rebrand it,” he stated. “I’m sure some people will be upset about that, but some people will welcome the change.” As for the rebrand itself, Milano is not tone-deaf to the double entendre. “We want to be tongue-in-cheek with it, and push the line without going overboard,” he laughed. “At the end of the day, we want to create a place that’s affordable, fun and welcoming to everyone.” Milano hopes to have Balls ready before Christmas. Balls will be open for lunch, dinner and late-night munching, seven days a week. The website for Balls is coming soon. Related Articles: No related articles. About the Author Walker is the co-founder of ColumbusUnderground.com and TheMetropreneur.com along with his wife and business partner Anne Evans. Walker has turned local media into a full time career over the past decade and serves on multiple boards and committees throughout the community. Tags: |
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