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ST. LOUIS — The Ottawa Senators are playing the waiting game with Clarke MacArthur. The winger was scheduled to make this three-game road trip but was left behind in Ottawa to undergo further testing to determine what’s next in his recovery from post-concussion syndrome. MacArthur hasn’t played all season and underwent a three-hour baseline test Friday to see if he’ll be able to get clearance to return. Coach Guy Boucher told reporters Tuesday morning during the club’s optional skate at the Scottrade Center that MacArthur requires more tests before a determination is made on whether he can continue his career. “There was tests and everything but now they need to move to the next steps,” said Boucher before facing the St. Louis Blues. “I’m a bit lost in it, to be honest. For me, it’s, ‘OK, is he with us? Is he not with us?’ I’m dealing with it when he’s here. You’ve got to deal with the guys who are here and the task at hand.” Boucher said he received an update after practice Monday from GM Pierre Dorion but no decisions have been made on when, or if, MacArthur will be able to come back. That’s what the Senators are trying to decide. MacArthur suffered his fourth concussion in 18 months in camp and hasn’t played since Oct. 14, 2015. The doctors are being cautious because of the risks involved if he does return and that’s why no decision has been made. Boucher isn’t willing to share a lot of information. “I’m not touching it right now because I’m really focused on the guys that are here. The (front office will) keep me up to date,” Boucher said. bgarrioch@postmedia.com Twitter: @sungarrioch |
Morale among officers at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, already low, has reached a new bottom as illegal immigrants expecting amnesty from President Obama taunt and ridicule the overworked officers, according to a new report. “Yes,” said one, “working for this agency is hell right now.” That was the latest message to immigration policy critic Jessica M. Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies. She has charted the woes of the officers who carry out the president’s orders. RELATED: Obama to GOP: Immigration action 'going to happen' in 2014 In a new paper, she wrote: "The president's gradual, calculated dismantling of our immigration system has caused morale to plummet in the agencies of the Department of Homeland Security. Career immigration officials have courageously objected in public, and sometimes resorted to lawsuits to draw attention to the administration's subversion of the law. In denial about their principled objections to his scheme, now the president is hoping to stifle their voices by offering them a pay increase as part of this outrageous plan. His assumption that they are motivated by money shows just how little respect he has for the men and women who have devoted their careers to public service in immigration." Vaughan told Secrets that she has been concerned about morale in ICE and raised the issue with Homeland Secretary Jeh Johnson. RELATED: Obama immigration plan keeps up to 5 million from deportation She said that officers are concerned that illegals with criminal records are being released under Obama’s policies, and that some immigrants taunt the officers, believing that the policies protect them. “Some have told me that illegal alien criminals they have arrested have even taunted them, saying they know the ICE officers can’t do anything to them because of Obama administration policies,” Vaughan told Secrets. The officers have raised the issues at “town hall” meetings with their superiors. RELATED: 42 percent of new Medicaid signups are immigrants, their children However, she said, top Homeland officials believe the issue is more about poor pay, not working conditions or the president's policies. As a result, the White House is considering a pay raise as part of the president’s amnesty plan to some 5 million illegals. “Clearly the administration is trying to triangulate at best, or more likely thinks that it can just dangle the prospects of a pay raise if they would stop objecting to administration non-enforcement policies,” said Vaughan. “I sincerely doubt anyone will fall for it, but it does reveal what he thinks of them,” she added. RELATED: Conservatives push short-term spending bill as way to defund 'amnesty' Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com. |
4 Kickstarter Projects You Should Back This Week - August 12th, 2015 It's Wednesday at BiteMyApple and you know what that means - we're giving you the latest, most exciting Kickstarter projects this week! Nebia Shower - Better experience, 70% less water A showerhead that is better in every way. A superior experience, iconic design, and 70% water savings. What Is Nebia? You've taken thousands of showers. You've never experienced Nebia. Nebia’s design and engineering provides a significantly superior shower experience in each and every sense. Nebia is a fully self-installed shower system with an adjustable bracket and a portable wand that showers you with water like you’ve never experienced before. Nebia atomizes water into millions of tiny droplets with 10 times more surface area than your regular shower. With Nebia, more water comes into contact with your body, leaving your skin clean and hydrated all while using less water than a typical household showerhead. In fact, Nebia uses 70% less water than a typical household showerhead. For the average U.S. home, Nebia pays for itself in less than two years. According to the creators: "We have been working on Nebia for nearly 5 years and we have developed numerous iterations and prototypes. Along the way, we adopted technologies from aerospace engineering to optimize every aspect of our shower nozzles and to create our H2MICRO™ technology. The result is a patent-pending breakthrough in an industry that has fostered remarkably little innovation in over a century. At Nebia, we set out to create a shower that leaves you feeling clean, refreshed, and ready to meet what’s next. Hundreds of people have showered under Nebia and the feedback we have received has been phenomenal. Now we are ready to share Nebia with the world." Reduced Water Consumption With Nebia Nebia establishes an entirely new standard in water use, reducing shower water consumption by up to 70%. With Nebia, we will enable millions of people to take ownership over their daily shower, save thousands of gallons of water per year, and substantially reduce their overall environmental impact. A regular shower vs Nebia. Nebia wins with 70% less water. Nebia also helps you conserve energy. Traditional household showers consume markedly more energy than a Nebia just to heat the water and the majority of that hot water goes straight down the drain. Nebia is 13 times more efficient at delivering the heat you pay for to your body, making your daily shower in a Nebia 13 times more thermally efficient. The combination of Nebia’s water and energy savings translates to lower monthly utility bills. You’ll not only feel good about using Nebia on a daily basis; your pocket book will also thank you. With rumored investors such as Tim Cook (from Apple), the Nebia has raised a massive $833,711 compared to their original $100,000 goal and there are still 30 days to go! Most early bird deals are gone but you can still get yours for $269! Estimated delivery date: May 2016 Nebia MiStand+ Aluminium Tablet Stand iPad, Galaxy, Kindle & more! The MiStand has evolved...introducing MiStand+, precision crafted aluminium stand designed and manufactured in Great Britain. About The MiStand+ "We didn't want to change things just for the sake of it. Every design decision has a functional purpose so that we could make a better product. We read through every comment on Kickstarter and every e-mail we have received since launching the MiStand, and got to work on improving it." The base of MiStand+ has been carefully tapered to improve ergonomics and to reduce the weight of the new design. A cable slot has been milled in to the back face of MiStand+ to allow any standard USB cable to pass through. This is great for backers who like to place their MiStand+ on a desk or bedside cabinet and charge their tablet. Goodbye MicroSuction... "MicroSuction is a facinating material. We loved using it during our first two projects, so we know its benefits and limitations. We wanted the original MiStand to be compatible with or without a case so included some sticky pads to increase the effectiveness when using it with tablet cases. They worked, but it was not ideal having separate pads; we wanted the MiStand+ to "just work" so when we started work on MiStand+ we said goodbye MicroSuction and after a lot of testing and tweaking we said..." Hello Polyurethane! MiStand+ comes with all new polyurethane pads which work whether you use a tablet case or not! The material is non-adhesive yet sticky. It doesn't leave any residue on your fingers or device. Fluid 3D Rotation...With More Power "When the original MiStand was launched the magnetic joint was designed to work with the majority of tablets. As time has passed, tablets have increased in size and weight so we needed to improve the magnetic joint. MiStand+ comes with an all new neodymium rare-earth magnet, which is 33% more powerful. This means that even the heaviest tablets work great with MiStand+." With 29 days to go, the MiStand+ has raised £30,659, 6 times the original goal of £5,000! You can still get a not quite early bird special for £28! Estimated delivery date: December 2015 MiStand+ Intrvl Band: The Wearable Personal Trainer A personal trainer on your wrist, that utilizes High Intensity Intervals to optimize any and all of your exercise routines. Meet The INTRVLBAND The personal training band with programmed interval timing functions to optimize any and all of your exercise routines. This isn't another $300 health tracker - this is the best tool available to bring your workouts to the next level. Add intervals to any workout using the interval band, and start burning more fat & calories today. The Beauty Of The INTRVL BAND It can be used with ANY existing workout. Keep your regular workout routine, but add intervals - periods of high intensity work, followed by shorter periods of rest. This technique is scientifically proven to optimize your workouts, making them not only more effective, but also significantly shorter. Simply select your function, then tap the "GO" button, go flat out till the first vibration, then REST till the next, and go again! It's that simple. INTRVL Workout Packet Each INTRVL BAND will also come with an instructional packet containing common interval exercises for you to add into your normal routine! We know you probably have a routine you love, and your timing is all you might need to change; these are just some suggestions for you if you feel like mixing things up. With 38 days to go, the Intrvl Band has hit about half of their funding goal, with $9,100 pledged out of the original $21,000 goal You can still get yours at an early bird price of $35. Estimated delivery date: December 2015 Intrvl Band Gauss - Redefining Eye Protection for the Digital Age Gauss glasses protect your eyes in front of screens and outside with self-tinting lenses and a new, proprietary coating technology. What Is The Gauss? Your eyes are your gateway to the world and it makes sense for you to protect them. Sunglasses protect your eyes from the sun’s harmful UV/A and UV/B radiation, but in our digital lives our eyes are increasingly exposed to other sources of harmful radiation that can cause eye strain and permanent damage. Do your eyes ache when you look at a screen for hours? With Gauss Eyewear, we have developed a solution that gives your eyes optimal protection throughout the whole day, regardless of whether you are outside in the sun or inside looking at the screen of a digital device. Our proprietary Blueguard coating reduces eye strain and protects your eyes from the harmful blue light radiation emitted by digital device screens that interferes with your melatonin production and can diminish your sleep quality. UV-blocking, high index lenses self-tint to give you the best of both worlds. Self-tinting lenses automatically adjust their brightness to your environment, while coatings and lenses ensure your eyes always stay protected. Ultra-lightweight titanium frames make Gauss glasses among the lightest glasses ever made, and therefore the most comfortable to wear. Gauss glasses come in 6 minimal, timeless designs and 4 different titanium color options: black, silver, brown and gun. With only 7 days to go, the Gauss has eclipsed its original €20,000 goal by raising €222,087! The majority of the early bird specials are gone but you can get your pair for €119 Estimated delivery date: October 2015 Gauss BiteMyApple is a platform that brings together innovators and consumers. In addition to being a one-stop shop for the latest Apple tech accessories on the market, we want to keep you informed on innovative Kickstarter projects. Helping these projects come to fruition benefits us all as consumers and the site was built as a platform to facilitate creativity, innovation, and the entrepreneurial spirit. Leave a comment Comments will be approved before showing up. |
Milton Mesirow (November 9, 1899 – August 5, 1972), better known as Mezz Mezzrow, was an American jazz clarinetist and saxophonist from Chicago, Illinois.[1] He is well known for organizing and financing historic recording sessions with Tommy Ladnier and Sidney Bechet. He also recorded a number of times with Bechet and briefly acted as manager for Louis Armstrong. Mezzrow is equally well remembered as a colorful character, as portrayed in his autobiography, Really the Blues (which takes its title from a Bechet composition), co-written with Bernard Wolfe and published in 1946. Music career [ edit ] Mezzrow organized and took part in recording sessions involving black musicians in the 1930s and 1940s, including Benny Carter, Teddy Wilson, Frankie Newton, Tommy Ladnier and Sidney Bechet. Mezzrow's 1938 sessions for the French jazz critic Hugues Panassie involved Bechet and Ladnier and helped spark the "New Orleans revival". In the mid-1940s Mezzrow started his own record label, King Jazz Records, featuring himself with groups, usually including Sidney Bechet and often including the trumpeter Oran "Hot Lips" Page. He also played on six recordings by Fats Waller. He appeared at the 1948 Nice Jazz Festival, following which he made his home in France and organized many bands that included French musicians like Claude Luter and visiting Americans, such as Buck Clayton, Peanuts Holland, Jimmy Archey, Kansas Fields and Lionel Hampton. With ex-Basie trumpeter Buck Clayton, he made a recording of the Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues" in Paris in 1953. Personal life [ edit ] Mezzrow became better known for his drug dealing than his music. In his time, he was so well known in the jazz community for selling marijuana that Mezz became slang for marijuana, a reference used in the Stuff Smith song, "If You're a Viper".[2] He was also known as the Muggles King, the word muggles being slang for marijuana at that time; the title of the 1928 Louis Armstrong recording "Muggles" refers to this. Armstrong was one of his biggest customers.[3] Record producer Al Rose was critical of Mezzrow's musicianship, saying that in his opinion "he wasn't a very good clarinetist," but praised him for his willingness to help other musicians in need, citing "his generosity and his total devotion to the music we call jazz."[4] Mezzrow praised and admired the African-American style. In his autobiography, Really the Blues, he wrote that from the moment he heard jazz he "was going to be a Negro musician, hipping [teaching] the world about the blues the way only Negroes can." Mezzrow married a black woman, Mae (also known as Johnnie Mae), moved to Harlem, New York, and declared himself a "voluntary Negro". He believed that "he had definitely 'crossed the line' that divided white and black identities".[5] In 1940 he was arrested in possession of sixty joints while trying to enter a jazz club at the 1939 New York World's Fair, with intent to distribute. When he was sent to jail, he insisted to the guards that he was black and was transferred to the segregated prison's black section. In Really the Blues, he wrote: Just as we were having our pictures taken for the rogues' gallery, along came Mr. Slattery the deputy and I nailed him and began to talk fast. 'Mr. Slattery,' I said, 'I'm colored, even if I don't look it, and I don't think I'd get along in the white blocks, and besides, there might be some friends of mine in Block Six and they'd keep me out of trouble'. Mr. Slattery jumped back, astounded, and studied my features real hard. He seemed a little relieved when he saw my nappy head. 'I guess we can arrange that,' he said. 'Well, well, so you're Mezzrow. I read about you in the papers long ago and I've been wondering when you'd get here. We need a good leader for our band and I think you're just the man for the job'. He slipped me a card with 'Block Six' written on it. I felt like I'd got a reprieve. Mezzrow was lifelong friends with the French jazz critic Hugues Panassié and spent the last 20 years of his life in Paris. Eddie Condon said of him (We Called It Music, London; Peter Davis 1948), "When he fell through the Mason-Dixie line he just kept going". Mezz Mezzrow was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Selected discography [ edit ] 1947: Really the Blues , Jazz Archives (France) , Jazz Archives (France) 1951: Mezz Mezzrow & His Band Featuring Collins & Singleton, Blue Note 1954: Mezz Mezzrow 1954: Mezz Mezzrow with Frankie Newton , Victor Records , Victor Records 1954: Mezz Mezzrow's Swing Session , X Records , X Records 1954: Mezzin' Around , RCA , RCA 1955: Mezz Mezzrow , Disques Swing , Disques Swing 1955: Paris 1955, Vol. 1 , Disques Swing , Disques Swing 1955: Mezz Mezzrow in Paris, 1955 , Jazz Time Records , Jazz Time Records 1956: Mezz Mezzrow a La Schola Cantorum , Ducretet-Thomson Records , Ducretet-Thomson Records 1995: Makin' Friends , EPM , EPM 2007: Tells the King Jazz Story , Crisler , Crisler 2012: Mezzrow and Bechet Remastered, Gralin Music |
“How do you like us now?” ran the headline on the Tico Times, the English language newspaper based in Costa Rica, after the little Central American nation with a population of just 4.5m stunned Italy with a 1-0 victory to qualify for the knockout stages, eliminate England and leave observers aghast. It was an apt question, given that the nation given scant chance of even winning a game in Brazil, with pre-tournament odds of 2,500-1, had just beaten the fancied Italians to qualify with a game to spare, a match against England in which they can afford to spark up their cigars. Yes, fancy that? La Nación proclaimed Costa Rica as “The Giant of the Group of Death” whose qualification “caused madness” on the streets after schools closed down to allow children to join in the celebrations in the capital, San José, where the president, Luis Guillermo Solís – who had predicted a 1-0 win before the game – bounded out on foot to La Hispanidad roundabout, to join the party with the celebrating Ticos. Luis Guilermos Solís heads out to celebrate with fans at La Hispanidad roundabout. “History,” said La Republica. “The Sele are flying! Costa Rica surprises the world!” The introduction read: “With hearts in hands, tears springing from deep and pride at its finest, the national team, with this header, not only beat Italy but qualified for the knockout stages. The great Italy, this champion full of medals and wins.” The streets of downtown San José were blocked by crowds of fans wearing the team’s red jersey and who were jumping and shouting: “Yes, we did it! Yes, we did it.” Some fans were already anticipating a long run in the competition. Jorge Loria, 35, a chef who headed to Fuente de la Hispanidad to join fellow revelers, said the happiness from seeing his team defeat Uruguay and now Italy felt so big that he thought Costa Rica could go all the way. “We will be world champions!” Loria said. “That’s how happy I feel.” It was an optimistic view, but one national newspaper, Al Día, echoed in its headline, calling La Sele’s heroes “Unlimited” after the huge victory: “Now look to sneak into the last eight,” ran a subhead. This buoyant nation, recently voted the world’s happiest, hardly needs a lift. But after qualifying for the World Cup knockout stages for only the second time in its history – and against all odds – it has one. And who knows where this tidal wave of goodwill might take them. |
Cover of the Marshall and Sons edition, ca. 1877 "The Song of Australia" was written by English-born poet Caroline Carleton in 1859 for a competition sponsored by the Gawler Institute. The music for the song was composed by the German-born Carl Linger (1810-1862),[1] a prominent member of the Australian Forty-Eighters. Contest [ edit ] On 1 October 1859, the South Australian Register announced:[2] A PRIZE of TEN GUINEAS open to South Australia is offered by the Gawler Institute for the WORDS of a PATRIOTIC SONG, to be entitled "The Song of Australia". Copyright of words to which the Prize may be awarded to become the property of the Gawler Institute. Judges: John H. Barrow, Esq., M.P.; John Brown, Esq.; John Howard Clark, Esq.; Hon. A. Forster, M.L.C.; W. C. Wearing, Esq.; E. J. Peake, Esq., M.P. Competitors are free to adopt any treatment of subject or rhythmical measure, so long as the composition is in accordance with the title and suitable for musical expression. Each competitor to write on the outside of the envelope covering the composition (which must not bear the name of the author, but a motto) the words "Poem for Prize"; and in a second envelope to enclose his name, written outside the motto corresponding with that attached to the composition. Of those letters containing the names of the competitors, that alone will be opened which bears the motto of the successful composition. All communications must be made by October 14, and addressed to George Isaacs, Gawler. Announcing the winner and the second stage of the competition:[3] THE GAWLER PRIZE SONG.- AWARD OF THE JUDGES. Gawler Institute, October 20, 1859. The Prize of Ten Guineas for the best words for a Patriotic Song has been awarded by the Judges to Mrs. C. J. Carleton. Adelaide. The Committee regret that their funds will not permit their distributing other prizes to various meritorious productions contributed, but in order to encourage native talent they intend publishing a careful selection from amongst them. Any of the competitors objecting to their contribution being so published will please to signify the same, by letter, to Mr. George Isaacs, Gawler (subscribed with the motto previously used), on or before the 31st inst., otherwise their sanction will be inferred. Any competitors desiring their names to be attached to their contributions will please give permission to the Committee to open the envelopes inscribed with their mottoes. PRIZE FOR MUSIC GAWLER INSTITUTE. A TEN GUINEA PRIZE is offered by the Gawler Institute for the MUSIC to "The Song of Australia", by Mrs. C. J. Carleton, published in this day's paper, subject to the following conditions, viz.:- That the air be written in the G clef, and in any key the composer may select ; but not to range below lower C or above upper G. The chorus (if any) to be written for three or four voices. A pianoforte part to be added as an ad libitum accompaniment. Each competitor to send in two copies. The music to bear a motto, but no name. The cover to be inscribed " Music for Prize"; and in a second envelope the competitor will enclose his name, writing outside the envelope the motto corresponding with that attached to the composition. Judges. G. W. Chinner, Esq.; F. S. Dutton, Esq., M.P.; A. Ewing, Esq., Com. Staff. W. Holden, Esq. All communications to be addressed to Mr. George Isaacs, Gawler, and forwarded not later than the 30th October, 1850. And the announcement of the winner:[4] GAWLER PRIZE MUSIC — The Judges who had undertaken to decide upon the music set to the 'Song of Australia' met yesterday, and, after due examination, agreed to the following report: — "The Judges appointed to award the prize for the best musical composition set to the words of the prize song, entitled 'The Song of Australia,' met on Friday, the 4th November— present, Messrs. Dutton, Ewing, Chinner, and Holden. Twenty-three compositions were examined, and the prize was unanimously awarded to the composition bearing the motto 'One of the Quantity.' Those bearing the mottoes 'Long Live our Gracious Queen,' 'Garibaldi,' and 'Con Amore' so nearly equalled the prize composition in merit that the Judges had great difficulty in coming to a decision. Francis S. Dutton; A. Ewing; Geo. W.Chinner; Wm. Holden" Immediately upon receiving this report we telegraphed to the Secretary of the Gawler Institute to ascertain the name of the successful competitor, and we find from his reply that the composer who has thus distinguished himself is Mr. Carl Linger. Lyrics [ edit ] This is the poem as published in The South Australian Register on 21 October 1859:[5] THE SONG OF AUSTRALIA by Mrs. C. J. CARLETON, West-terrace. There is a land where summer skies Are gleaming with a thousand eyes, Blending in witching harmonies ; And grassy knoll and forest height, Are flushing in the rosy light, And all above is azure bright — Australia! There is a land where honey flows, Where laughing corn luxuriant grows, Land of the myrtle and the rose; On hill and plain the clust'ring vine Is gushing out with purple wine, And cups are quaffed to thee and thine — Australia! There is a land where treasures shine Deep in the dark unfathom'd mine For worshippers at Mammon's shrine; Where gold lies hid, and rubies gleam, And fabled wealth no more doth seem The idle fancy of a dream — Australia! There is a land where homesteads peep From sunny plain and woodland steep, And love and joy bright vigils keep; Where the glad voice of childish glee Is mingling with the melody Of nature's hidden minstrelsy — Australia! There is a land where, floating free, From mountain-top to girdling sea, A proud flag waves exultingly; And FREEDOM'S sons the banner bear, No shackled slave can breathe the air, Fairest of Britain's daughters fair — Australia! Criticism [ edit ] Publication of Caroline Carleton's poem caused an immediate controversy; that it was nice poetry, but "too tame";[6] one regretted that nothing more inspiring than the colour of the sky and the prettiness of the scenery could be found for the poem; one wondered "how hidden wealth could gleam in the darkness" and so on,[7] another that it could equally refer to, say, California,[8] while another longed for a time when such a peaceful song accorded with international politics, and regretted that the contest was restricted to South Australians, that the prize was so paltry, and there was no mention of sheep.[9] The Advertiser of 24 October, gave a spirited defence of the judges, and of Mrs. Carleton's poem, culminating in several parodies purporting to be the "real Song of Australia".[10] Performances and public reaction [ edit ] One of its first public performances was for a South Australian Institute soirée at White's Rooms, King William Street, on 14 December 1859 by the Adelaide Liedertafel, conducted by Herr Linger.[11] The song, played by orchestra and chorus under Professor Joshua Ives, was a feature of the opening ceremony of the Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition in 1887. The song was a particular favourite of the Australian baritone Peter Dawson.[12] who called it "The finest national anthem ever written".[13] His performances included notably: Recital in London as a duet with Richard Nitschke in 1905. [14] Duet with Clara Serena at Wembley on (the then) Australia Day 24 July 1924. [15] A gramophone recording HMV EA1003 of Dawson and vocal quartet singing "Song of Australia" was released in 1932.[16] Proposed national anthem [ edit ] The song was one of four included in a national plebiscite to choose Australia's national song in 1977. Nationwide it was the least popular of the four choices, but it had the distinction of being the most popular choice in South Australia.[17] This result can be attributed to the fact of "Advance Australia Fair" being exposed to schoolchildren in the more populous States, where "The Song of Australia" was sung in schools only in South Australia and, to a lesser extent, in Western Australia and Tasmania. The four songs in the plebiscite were "Waltzing Matilda"; the then anthem, "God Save the Queen"; the now current anthem, "Advance Australia Fair"; and "Song of Australia". |
Sergio Marchionne, the Ferrari chairman, has sent a strongly worded message via the Italian media to the bosses of F1, that they had better take his threat to pull Ferrari out of Formula 1 seriously, otherwise they are 'playing with fire'. He has been increasingly strong on his Ferrari quit threat, based on his unhappiness about what he sees as the dumbing down of F1's complex hybrid engines and the technical DNA of the sport. He has support. albeit far less vocal - from Mercedes. Marchionne suggested at the Italian media lunch in Maranello on Monday that they may even start their own breakaway series. Of course the other real issue behind the scenes, is the maintenance or not of Ferrari's privileges, like the $100m bonus payment, which it is understandably keen to maintain in the post 2020 contract. There is nothing new in this kind of talk, but dropping the "B" word [Breakaway] has usually proved the point at which the people who bring it up are overplaying their hand. Marchionne has nevertheless placed that particular card on the table now, to get Liberty's attention and that of its investors. Marchionne took Ferrari public recently and knows what market and investor sentiment is all about - so here we have one US listed company threatening the long term viability of another. This time he also got personal - putting F1's managing director of motorsports, Ross Brawn in the crosshairs. Brawn, will no doubt remind the chairman, that he was the man whose mastery of F1 technology and the rules in F1 at the time led to Ferrari's unrivalled period of F1 dominance from 1999 to 2004. Ferrari has yet to get anywhere close to matching that in the modern era. "The main thing that bothers me is that inside Liberty Media there is a person with great experience in F1, which is Ross Brawn, who is trying to giving a direction that is not in the DNA of the sport," said Marchionne. "If the objective is that after 2020 the engines are more simple and the cars all the same, like in NASCAR, then Ferrari will leave Grand Prix racing the next day. Ross goes on TV and gives out commandments like Moses, but then who can go and talk to Moses' boss (Carey) can also disagree. "What we are doing here, Mercedes, Renault, Honda and ourselves, in supplying engines to other teams for 15 million euros a year is already a miracle. "To Brawn I say, 'What more do you want for that figure?' "Next year with only three engines per driver for the season the costs increase because of all the work on reliability. "However I do agree with Liberty that the races are boring with few overtakes, like Abu Dhabi. We need to make them more exciting. It's the fault of the regulations, which put too many brakes on the engineers' creativity. You need real freedom to create the cars. "We have been part of F1's history, so we understand bullshit and we understand F1. "We have a race department that works only on F1, so we know F1 well. "We have to try to balance [Liberty's] interests with ours, but I think that we can arrive to that in time to avoid Ferrari's exit from Formula 1. "But we will have to work at it. If they think we are bluffing then they are playing with fire." Do you think Ferrari is bluffing or do you think they would quit F1 if Liberty sticks to its proposed path? Leave your comment in the section below Do you think Marchionne would pull Ferrari out of F1 or is he bluffing |
ISTANBUL (RNS) In this ancient city, there are few sights more iconic than the dome of the Hagia Sophia, towering over the old city for more than 1,400 years. But recent conversions of former Byzantine-era churches from museums into mosques, encouraged by religious and political leaders, have caused alarm among religious minorities and Turkey’s Christian neighbors. “We currently stand next to the Hagia Sophia Mosque,” Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Bulent Arinc, remarked last month during a dedication of a museum of Caucasus carpets and rugs in the Hagia Sophia complex. “We are looking at a sad Hagia Sophia but hopefully we will see it smiling again soon.” Arinc, also a senior Cabinet minister from the ruling Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party, mentioned two recent conversions of smaller Byzantine-era museums — in Trabzon in the northeast and Iznik near Istanbul — that have become working mosques. The speech was just the latest call for the building to be converted into a mosque after a sermon in October by the imam of the neighboring Sultan Ahmet mosque. He told worshippers a conversion must take place, and his comments were soon followed by a campaign launched by the far-right National Turkish Student Association. Reaction from the Greek Foreign Ministry to the Arinc speech was swift, calling the speech “an insult to the religious sensibilities of millions of Christians and actions that are anachronistic and incomprehensible from a state that declares it wants to participate as a full member in the European Union.” “If it is to reopen as a house of worship, then it should open as a Christian church,” the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew — the Archbishop of Constantinople — told Turkish newspaper Milliyet in February, saying that the Hagia Sophia had served as a Christian church for hundreds of years before Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. “It was built as a church and not a mosque,” he added. The Hagia Sophia has been standing since 360, when the first church was constructed soon after the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. Two more churches were built on the same site in 415 and in 532. The Ottoman conquerors refurbished the building into a mosque in 1453. It became a museum after a decree by the founder of Turkey’s secular republic, Kemal Mustafa Ataturk, in 1935. Some critics say the spate of conversions of Byzantine-era Christian houses of worship from museums to mosques reflects the government’s payback against Turkey’s former secular military elite, which has historically jailed leaders of religious parties and staged coups against elected governments. “It is mostly a challenge to the secular rulers of Turkish republic,” said Engin Akyurek, a professor of Byzantine art at Istanbul University. The government “re-converts church-mosques which were used as museums during the republican era so it is related to the domestic politics,” he said. Still, despite concerns, the conversions continue. In recent weeks it was announced that the Monastery of Stoudios — the largest Byzantine-era monastery in Istanbul — would be converted into a mosque next year. Part of the former monastery complex became a mosque in the 15th century but fell into disrepair, and after being gutted by two fires, it was abandoned in 1920. Historians say this will destroy one of Istanbul’s earliest Byzantine monuments. “To use this building for some function, a mosque or anything else, would mean to reconstruct almost 80 percent of the building,” said Akyurek. “So, it will not be a fifth-century building anymore. It will be a catastrophe for that building.” With provincial elections slated for March — and expected to be a crucial test of the government’s decade-long rule — some see the museum-to-mosque conversions as a way for the Justice and Development Party to shore up its religiously conservative base, especially in the face of large protests earlier this year challenging its conservative policies, such as a tightening of the sale of alcohol. Still, others are wary that the party’s political strategy to court religious voters will do irreparable damage to the country’s cultural and religious monuments and antagonize other religions. “Supporting the reopening of Hagia Sophia has become the litmus test of the true believer,” said Professor Robert Ousterhout, director of the Center for Ancient Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. “Protests by the academic community have fallen on deaf ears.” YS/MG END RESNECK |
A handout picture released by the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) on June 17, 2013, shows Syrian President Bashar al-Assad speaking during an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper in Damascus. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad issued a decree on Sunday banning the use of foreign currency in commercial transactions, state news agency SANA said. "It is prohibited to make payments, reimbursements, commercial transactions and any other commercial operation in foreign currency or in precious metals," it quoted the decree as saying. "The Syrian lira is the only currency" allowed in business and commerce, SANA added. Those breaking the law risk jail sentences of between six months and 10 years of hard labour, depending on the sum involved, and a fine. The US dollar is the preferred foreign currency in Syria where the lira has lost three quarters of its value against the greenback since the outbreak of the anti-regime uprising more than two years ago. At the start of the conflict in March 2011 one dollar fetched 50 liras, while a dollar today is worth more than 200 liras. Dollars have been used in the sale of land, namely in the upscale Damascus suburbs, and by importers who trade in goods such as rice, sugar, textile and electronic equipment. "The measure is symbolic because it comes 10 years almost to the day after Bashar al-Assad cancelled law 24/1986, which very strictly forbade Syrians from having dollars in their possession," said Jihad Yazigi, director of financial weekly the Syria Report. "Today's decision is aimed at making it very difficult to make any transactions in anything other than the Syrian lira," Yazigi told AFP, adding that the goal was to "control the exchange rate". |
Take some time this week to remember your original happy hour: Saturday mornings as a kid, waking up at dawn, jumping on the couch with a bowl of chocolate cereal, turning on the ‘toons, tuning out the outside world, and working your way into a sugar hangover before noon. This week, we tell the story of the worlds first action figure with NFL Hall of Fame legend and cultural icon, ?Broadway? Joe Namath and the ?Father of the Modern Action Figure? Marty Abrams of MEGO Toys. Joe Namath may be the greatest pop-culture crossover of all time. He was a Super Bowl MVP, a movie and television star, a talk show host, a fashionista, a product spokesmen and friends with the pop-culture elites. Marty Abrams may be the most important influence in action figures as the creator of the ?Worlds Greatest Super Heroes?, celebrity licensing and Micronauts a toylike with connections to the Transformers. Marke and Johnny Heck captured this exclusive two-on-two interview in the halls of SDCC 2018 as the dynamic duo of ?Joe and Marty? prepare for their SDCC panel to celebrate the return of MEGO action figures to the retail shelves and a second chance to own your childhood as popular MEGO action figures including Action Jackson, The Fonz, I Dream of Jeannie, Jimmy Hendrix, Dracula, WonderWoman are reissued and new characters are introduced into the MEGO family like Harley Quinn, the bar patrons of Cheers and Freddy Krueger. Join in studio hosts, Grim Shea, Marke and Jimmy The Gent this Super Bowl weekend to talk to two champions of play and celebrate The Worlds First Action Figure! No cowls, no superpowers, no capes, no flights and only on special occasions, Beautymist pantyhose tights. |
Story highlights Japanese agency cancels tsunami warnings and advisories It says sea levels may rise, but doesn't expect tsunami damage The quake struck early Saturday about 200 miles east of Japan's main island A 7.3 magnitude earthquake rumbled early Saturday in the Pacific Ocean about 200 miles east of Japan's main island, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. The same organization canceled all such advisories and warnings a short time later. Sea levels might change slightly in some coastal locales, but no damage from a tsunami was expected, according to the agency. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center also said there was no widespread tsunami threat around the greater Pacific region. Saturday's quake happened at about 2:10 a.m. local time, with an epicenter about 203 miles east-northeast of Tokyo, the USGS said. The quake hit at a depth of about six miles. The Fukushima prefecture was where a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami damaged several nuclear reactors in March 2011. More than 15,000 people were killed in that quake and tsunami, and material damage related to the incident was estimated to be about $300 billion. |
WWE Studios and Film Roman have tag teamed to co-finance and co-produce the web series “Camp WWE,” a comedy series aimed at adults that will revolve around what WWE’s wrestlers were like as kids. The companies will produce up to 13 three-minute installments of the online show that will be distributed across WWE’s digital platforms. “Entourage” scribe Mike Benson will write the series. His credits also include “The Bernie Mac Show.” “With a combination of their unique personalities, distinctive characteristics and huge built-in loyal fan base, WWE Superstars make for ideal animation subjects in ‘Camp WWE,'” said Dana Booton, general manager for Film Roman, which has produced the animation for “The Simpsons” and “King of the Hill.” In the show, parents of the WWE stars pack up their kids, their masks, chains and kneepads and send them off to Camp WWE to be transformed into model citizens by the most terrifying counselor who ever lived, Mr. McMahon, after they prove to be a nightmare for teachers and other kids. SEE ALSO: Yabba Dabba WWE! Cena, McMahon Set For Flintstones Movie “Film Roman has been involved with some of the most well-known and humorous animated series,” said Michael Luisi, president WWE Studios. “They are the perfect partners for WWE Studios to capture our Superstars in a truly unique and fun way.” Related WWE's Stephanie McMahon and Paul Levesque Talk Brand's Global Reach 'The Simpsons': Demogorgon Ted Sarandos Orders Homer Simpson to Binge TV (Exclusive Photo) Benson is repped by UTA, Inphenate and Hirsh Wallerstein. WWE Studios recently set up a sequel for “No One Lives,” that the Soska Sisters are directing; and a film based on the TV show “The Fall Guy,” set to star Dwayne Johnson. SEE ALSO: WWE Studios, Lionsgate Scare Up ‘See No Evil’ Sequel This year, the film division’s slate includes the Halle Berry thriller “The Call;” “Dead Man Down,” with Colin Farrell, Noomie Rapace and WWE’s Wade Barrett;” “The Marine 3: Homefront,” with WWE’s Mike “The Miz” Mizanin; and “12 Rounds 2: Reloaded,” with WWE’s Randy Orton. The latter two were released direct-to-homevideo through 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. The Miz also stars in “Christmas Bounty,” a holiday action comedy that bows on ABC Family on Nov. 26. Warner Bros. Home Entertainment releases the film on Blu-ray and DVD on Dec. 3. And WWE Studios will release Jason Momoa’s “The Road to Paloma” on homevideo with Anchor Bay Films later this year. Next year, WWE Studios has “Scooby-Doo WrestleMania Mystery,” out in the spring from Warner Home Entertainment; and “Leprechaun,” while a “Flintstones” movie, pairing up the animated characters with WWE’s roster of stars, is out in 2015. |
× CHARGED: Sheboygan parents accused of passing out on bridge, leaving daughter to fend for herself SHEBOYGAN COUNTY (WITI) — Two Sheboygan parents are charged — accused of passing out on a bridge, and leaving their two-year-old daughter to fend for herself. 25-year-old Robert Alegria faces a charge of obstructing an officer, and child neglect as party to a crime. 34-year-old Brandy Dickey faces one charge of child neglect as party to a crime. A criminal complaint filed against these parents says on Sunday, November 9th, just after 6:15 p.m., Sheboygan police were dispatched to the 900 block of S. 8th Street for a report of a two-year-old child screaming after that child was apparently left unattended on the 8th Street bridge. Upon arrival, the complaint says police found Alegria and Dickey passed out, along with a two-year-old child, who appeared to be sleeping on top of Alegria. An officer tried to wake all three, but was unable to receive any response. Eventually, Alegria woke and attempted to stand up, but struggled due to the two-year-old child that was on top of him and the fact that he appeared to be highly intoxicated, according to the complaint. The complaint says a strong odor of intoxicants was coming from Alegria, and as he attempted to stand up, he almost fell several times. When Dickey woke up, the complaint says she was slurring her speech, and was speaking very slowly. An officer could smell an odor of intoxicants coming from Dickey as well. In speaking with Alegria and Dickey, police learned they had come to the area to go fishing, and they had been drinking at a bar. As police tried to convince Alegria to allow them to care for his daughter as the investigation proceeded, the complaint says Alegria refused to comply, and told police to leave the girl alone — using vulgarities toward the officer. The complaint says police determined Alegria was a risk to his daughter’s safety, as he continued to hold onto her while he was unstead on his feet — nearly losing his balance to the point where police had to work to prevent him from falling. Police had to physically pull the girl out of Alegria’s arms, according to the complaint. The two-year-old girl was taken to the hospital for observation. There, the complaint says the girl informed police that she was very cold, and that she had been outside for a long time. |
Barack Obama smile moments after he signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Bill next to U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science February 17, 2009. REUTERS/ Larry Downing Since the beginning of the Great Recession, the longstanding canard from the political and economic left has been that the "stimulus" — the Obama administration's attempt to mitigate 2009's economic trauma — was too small. A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research takes a look at the administration's $796 billion fiscal stimulus (known as ARRA), and more specifically at the $318 billion dedicated to state and local governments. Economists Gerald Carlino and Robert Inman reach an interesting conclusion (via Dylan Matthews): Simulations using the SVAR specification suggest ARRA assistance would have been 30 percent more effective in stimulating GDP growth had the share spent on government purchases and project aid been fully allocated to private sector tax relief and to matching aid to states for lower-income support. "Aggregate federal transfers to state and local governments are less stimulative than are transfers to households and firms. It is important to evaluate the two policies separately," They write. Also: "Within intergovernmental transfers, matching (price) transfers for welfare spending are more effective for stimulating GDP growth than are unconstrained (income) transfers for project spending." The research suggests that the refrain that the stimulus was "too small" is misguided, or perhaps incomplete. If anything, the stimulus was poorly allocated. |
EUCLID, Ohio -- An 85-year-old Euclid man's home has become the target of mysterious egging attacks that began in March 2014 and haven't stopped. The continuous onslaught of eggs has baffled police, neighbors and local government officials who have tried and failed to identify the source of the attacks that have ruined the man's home and kept his family on edge. "The accuracy is phenomenal," Albert Clemens, Sr. said. "Because almost every time when it's nice weather and they launch five or six of these at a time, they almost invariably hit the front door." Clemens green two-story house sits on the corner of Wilmore Avenue and East 210th Street. He and his wife bought the home as newlyweds about 60 years ago. Though his wife has since passed away, Clemens still lives there with his 49-year-old daughter and 51-year-old son. The house has been pelted with eggs several times a week -- sometimes more than once a day -- for the past year. The attacks always happen after dark and last around 10 minutes each. The family has been awoken as late as 2 a.m. by what sounds like the crack of a gunshot against the aluminum siding or front door. Clemens and police believe the eggs are being launched from a block or two away. The siding on the front of Clemens' home is destroyed, splattered with dried egg residue that stripped off the paint. Other than a few rogue eggs that hit nearby homes, no other neighbors have been targeted. "Somebody is deeply, deeply angry at somebody in that household for some reason," Euclid Lt. Mitch Houser said. Winter offered a short respite for the family, as the egging became less frequent during the cold weather. But both Clemens and police anticipate the attacks picking back up as the snow and ice thaw. An unsolved mystery Euclid police have not taken the investigation lightly. They've spent a year doing undercover stakeouts, canvassing the neighborhood and even sending eggshells for testing. The department's entire community policing unit was dedicated to tracking down the eggers at one point. Officers respond quickly to every egging call at the home -- which is less than a mile from the police station. Both Clemens and detectives are at a dead end when it comes to suspects. Clemens had suspicions about a young man across the street who confronted him a couple years ago and asked him to stop calling police about suspicious activity in the neighborhood. Clemens said that he had started calling police more often as he noticed more crime -- mostly suspected drug activity. Another neighbor Clemens suspected was ruled out when officers saw him standing outside as an attack occurred in the presence of police. Investigators have taken several different approaches to nabbing the eggers, including installing a surveillance camera on the house. Detectives even collected some eggshell samples and tested them in a crime lab. The eggs were traced back to a local Amish farm, but the trail ended there. Clemens says the culprits either have access to a large supply of eggs or are stealing them from businesses that throw them out when they go bad. Detectives have followed this thread, visiting local restaurants and businesses asking about missing eggs. They've also tried collecting fingerprints from eggshells, but Houser said that's an impossible task. When an egg breaks, it releases proteins that destroy DNA. Officers have gone door to door questioning neighbors and handing out fliers. Nobody has come forward with any tips. "The person or people who are doing it have remained very tight-lipped apparently," Houser said. "I would imagine it would be hard to keep a secret of something that had been done hundreds of times and for nobody to step forward to talk about it." The guilty parties don't appear to be intimidated by police interest in the case. An officer last year was taking a report when a barrage of eggs was launched at the house. One hit him in the foot. Houser said he's never seen this level of vandalism in his 20 years of police work. It's frustrated the whole department, which has dedicated hundreds of hours toward solving the egging mystery. "The man hours put into that investigation were huge and one of the reasons it's so frustrating that we don't have somebody right now that we can criminally charge," Houser said. The culprits will face charges of felony vandalism and criminal damaging, Houser said. Additional charges could be tacked on if investigators find evidence that the attacks are a hate crime. The search continues Clemens is waiting until the perpetrators are caught before he repairs the tarnished siding. His insurance company is refusing to settle a claim until the guilty party is found. He said he used to clean up after each attack, but it became so frequent that he couldn't keep up. Police initially offered a $500 reward for information, but bumped it up to $1,000 after nobody came forward. That money is still up for grabs. "We're not going to let it go," Houser said. "We'll continue to put effort into it until we figure something out." Despite all the torment, Clemens said he'd never consider moving from his beloved home. "I like the neighborhood," Clemens said. "I like the city of Euclid. I would live and die in this house -- but it's been kind of a nightmare." |
Officer Melissa Panebianco followed Quider Johnson from pawn shop to pawn shop for three months before he got arrested last March. Johnson, now 19, had been selling things like TVs, jewelry and other electronics to pawn shops around the city. The exact same ones that had been reported missing by Frankford residents whose houses had been broken into. Each time she identified the stolen items at pawn shops, Panebianco, 30, the 15th Police District’s burglary expert, helped reunite the victims with their belongings. All the while, she kept a close eye on Johnson, waiting for his next sale. Her secret weapon? A tool called LeadsOnline. Run by a Dallas, Texas-based company, LeadsOnline is an online database that officers in the Philadelphia Police Department, like Panebianco, use to nab burglars and recover stolen items. They can do that because Philadelphia pawn shops are required by city law to file a report with LeadsOnline every time they purchase an item from an individual. That report includes a photo of the seller and the seller’s ID, the seller’s thumbprint and a photo and description of the item, including a serial number, if possible. "I want to solve every single burglary, but I can't." PPD Officer Melissa Panebianco Some 393 Philadelphia police officers are registered on the site, said LeadsOnline spokeswoman Lindsay Williams. That includes every officer in the investigative unit, said police spokeswoman Christine O’Brien. One cop in the Major Crimes Unit, Officer Deborah Jones, is on the pawn detail and responsible for investigating crimes and recovering items using LeadsOnline, said Jones’ supervisor Lt. Jonathan Josey. The City of Philadelphia has paid $75,000 to LeadsOnline every year starting in December 2011 for access to the database, according to city records. Pricing is based on the size of the department, Williams said, so that police departments of any size can afford it. That subscription fee includes an unlimited number of searches on the tool, as well as an unlimited number of police users. More than 5,200 law enforcement agencies use LeadsOnline, including the police departments of New York, San Francisco and Chicago, according to a LeadsOnline press release. Advertisement For Panebianco, LeadsOnline has changed how she can respond to burglaries. In the past, there was no way for her to search pawn shop transactions for stolen items unless she drove around to each pawn shop and asked to see, say, all the TVs the owner had purchased in the last week. With LeadsOnline, she can monitor transactions at every local pawn shop. With Johnson, the teen who she caught selling stolen items to pawn shops, it started with a serial number. A Frankford resident gave Panebianco the serial numbers for the TVs that were stolen from his house. (At community meetings, she always reminds residents to write down the serial numbers for their electronics.) She tracked one down through LeadsOnline and flagged Johnson’s name so she’d get an alert every time he sold something to a pawn shop. She was able to solve a dozen cases this way, she said. One time, she responded to a burglary in the neighborhood and by the time she had talked to the victim, written up the report and got back to the district, she had an email alerting her that Johnson had sold those items — the same ones detailed in her report — to a pawn shop. (Why wasn’t Johnson arrested the first time Panebianco connected him to a stolen item? Because a detective has to draw up an arrest warrant to do so and they often have a lot of work on their plate, she said. Johnson, charged with burglary and theft, among other things, is now awaiting trial.) ### Getting the Police Department a computerized pawn shop transaction database has been a long time coming. In a 1998 Philadelphia City Paper article, Capt. John McGinnis, former head of the major crimes unit, said a computerized system would help cops do their jobs better and save the city money by cutting out labor costs. As the City Paper story explained, officers used to collect pawn slips with information about each pawn shop transaction from shops around the city and gave them to the major crimes unit to check against local and national crime databases. In 1998, they collected more than 500,000 pawn slips. The Police Department didn’t get a computerized system until 2012 — more than a decade after McGinnis told the City Paper how valuable it would be. It’s not clear what took so long. (Though the Police Department does have a track record of dragged-out tech upgrades.) We couldn’t reach McGinnis, who retired last year, for comment. (In the City Paper article, McGinnis said that in order for the Police Department to get a computerized system, City Council would likely have to pass a bill that required pawn shops to report information about transactions electronically. Council did so in 2010, with a bill sponsored by Councilman Jack Kelly. Though Council worked with the Police Department to craft the bill, Kelly said he didn’t introduce the bill because the PPD asked him to. “I wanted to make it known to people that you can’t pawn anything in Philadelphia,” the former councilman told us over the phone earlier this week.) In the summer of 2012, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey sent letters to every pawn shop and precious metal dealer in the city, saying they had to register with LeadsOnline. ### Though she sings its praises, LeadsOnline isn’t foolproof, Panebianco said. Pawn shop owners take blurry photos of sellers. They write vague descriptions of items, making it hard to use the search functionality. There’s also the slippery slope of investigating every item you find on the platform. You can look into all the transactions that don’t seem right, like a teenager selling a class ring. Sooner or later, you’ll start recovering items and solving burglary cases for districts outside of your own and she would, she said, “if I had the time and the sanity to do it.” Though nearly 400 Philly cops are registered on the platform, it does seem like the Police Department, which employs 6,600 cops, could do a better job of spreading the word about LeadsOnline. To his knowledge, Josey, the major crimes supervisor, said the Police Department doesn’t have any programs to spread awareness about the tool. When Panebianco found out about it last year, she only knew of one other cop using it — the cop that had told her about it. Since then, she’s been preaching the LeadsOnline gospel. The cops in her district know that she uses LeadsOnline to investigate, so they take detailed burglary reports and know to turn to her when items get stolen, she said. It wasn’t exactly in the job description. Panebianco’s captain initially tapped her and another cop as the burglary specialists, asking them to pay special attention to those cases by taking photos of crime scenes and trying to get fingerprints (not every district has a burglary point person, she said). When she found out about LeadsOnline, it morphed into a more investigative job. She regularly makes crime maps, like a crime analyst does, and keeps a big, three-ring binder with copies of all the recent burglary reports. In the early days, she was so hooked on the prospect of solving cases that she’d be at home, checking LeadsOnline. “I want to solve every single burglary, but I can’t,” she said. It makes her crazy sometimes. But her investigating days are coming to a close, at least for now. Panebianco, who has a master’s in public safety management from St. Joseph’s University, is getting promoted. She’ll become a sergeant at a new district later this month. Though she’s kind of relieved to get off the burglary beat, she said she’ll miss the satisfaction of reuniting people with their things. Like the 80-year-old couple whose home got broken into while they were out grocery shopping. Equipped with serial numbers for the stolen items, Panebianco checked LeadsOnline and recovered their possessions in half an hour. When she called the victim to tell her, the woman started crying. “That’s what I’ll miss,” Panebianco said. -30- |
Episode 217: The Art Of Living At The Poverty Line Enlarge this image Spencer Platt/Getty Images Spencer Platt/Getty Images On today's Planet Money, we meet a single mother who makes $16,000 a year — and who managed to fund a vacation at a Caribbean resort with an interest-free loan from one of the world's largest banks. Edith Calzado gets credit cards with teaser zero-percent interest rates — then transfers her balance before the rate ticks up. She signs up for store cards to get discounts — then pays off her bill on time. She gets food stamps and lives in subsidized housing. Her son is doing well in school. She may be the single most successful and productive beneficiary of government assistance you'll ever meet. Note: This podcast was originally posted in 2010. Music: Stars' "Fixed." Find us: Twitter/ Facebook/Spotify/ Tumblr. Download the Planet Money iPhone App. |
Paul D. Stewart/SPL Referees are overworked. The problem of bias is intractable. The referee system has broken down and become an obstacle to scientific progress. Traditional refereeing is an antiquated form that might have been good for science in the past but it's high time to put it out of its misery. What is this familiar litany? It is a list of grievances aired by scientists a century ago.If complaining about the faults of referee systems is nothing new, such systems are not as old as historical accounts often claim. Investigators of nature communicated their findings without scientific referees for centuries. Deciding whom and what to trust usually depended on personal knowledge among close-knit groups of researchers. (Many might argue it still does.) The first referee systems that we would recognize as such were set in place by English scientific societies in the early nineteenth century. But these referees were never intended to play the part of supreme scientific gatekeepers. That notion emerged in around 1900 (see 'Past notes'). It was exactly then that some began to wonder whether referee systems might be fundamentally flawed. In this sense, peer review has always been broken. Today, with the debate about the future of peer review more fraught than ever, it is crucial to understand the youth of this institution. What's more, its workings and its imagined goals have evolved continually, and its current tensions bear the marks of this. The referee system has become a mishmash of practices, functions and values. But one thing stands out: pivotal moments in the history of peer review have occurred when the public status of science was being renegotiated. Scientific publicists In 1831, William Whewell, a Cambridge professor and philosopher of science, proposed a scheme to the Royal Society of London. He suggested that it commission reports on all papers sent for publication in the semi-annual Philosophical Transactions. Written by teams of eminent scholars, these reports might, he argued, be “often more interesting than the memoirs themselves” and thus a great source of publicity for science1. Besides, authors would be grateful to know that their papers would be read carefully by at least two or three people. The society was just then launching a new journal to be called the Proceedings of the Royal Society, a cheaper monthly periodical to include abstracts of papers presented at the society. It had pages to fill and seemed the ideal place for these new reports. At the time, editors of scientific journals made publishing decisions by personal fiat, perhaps in consultation with some trusted helpers. For publications that belonged to a scientific academy or society — such as the Philosophical Transactions — the vote of some committee of eminent persons would determine a manuscript's fate. (The temptation to conflate these practices with modern referee systems has led to the stubborn myth that the origins of the scientific referee can be traced back as far as the seventeenth century.) Timeline: Past notes How organized academic review has evolved over 300 years. Jean-Baptiste Colbert Presenting the Members of the Royal Academy of Science to Louis XIV (oil on canvas), Henri Testelin (1616–95)/Bridgeman Images 1665 Henry Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society in London, creates the Philosophical Transactionsto simplify his correspondence. He uses no referee system. 1699 France’s Royal Academy of Sciences is given power by Louis XIV (picturedcentre, with academy members) to report on and approvebooks for publication and bypass the royal censors. 1752 After vicious satires of the Philosophical Transactions, the Royal Society establishes a committee to vote on what to publish. 1831 Cambridge professor William Whewell convinces the Royal Society to commission public reports on manuscripts. Might referees increase the visibility of science? 1833 By now the reports have become private and anonymous. 1892 A pamphlet ‘On the Organisation of Science’ published in London by ‘A Free Lance’ kick-starts a movement to standardize the selection and distribution of scientific papers. Might referees be guardians of the literature? 1892 A paper surfaces that was rejected by a Royal Society referee in 1845, outlining the kinetic theory of gases more than a decade before James Clerk Maxwell’s famous paper. Might referee systems be fundamentally flawed? 1968 British physicist John Ziman describes the referee as “the lynchpin about which the whole business of Science is pivoted”. Outside the United Kingdom and North America, many editors and scientists remain largely unconvinced. 1973 External refereeing becomes a requirement for publication in Nature10. 1991 An e-mail/FTP server at xxx.lanl.gov for freely sharing unreviewed physics preprints goes live. Later relocated to the web at arXiv.org, it becomes a touchstone for discussions about the end of peer-reviewed journals. 2006 PLoS ONE launches as an open-access journal that eschews ‘importance’ as a factor in peer review. 2007–11 EMBO Journal, the Frontiers series and BMJ Open, among other journals, experiment with open peer review, publishing reviewers’ names or notes alongside papers. Whewell was not much concerned about preventing shoddy papers from being printed; he was not proposing a new mechanism to inform publishing decisions. Instead, he was one of many people campaigning to increase the public visibility of science and give a unified identity to the scientific enterprise in England. (It was he who, a few years later, coined the word 'scientist' to this end.) This movement had begun in 1830 and is now most remembered for Charles Babbage's Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, a screed about the paucity of state funding for, and public recognition of, science. But its more consequential legacy is the referee system. Whewell was cribbing from a century-old custom at the French Academy of Sciences in Paris of writing reports that evaluated inventions and discoveries in the service of the king. There, researchers who were elected to the academy were paid by the state as a reward for scientific eminence, and politicians seemed to value their opinions. Indeed, to be an expert (a French word not yet common in English) was almost by definition to be a writer of reports. Whewell reckoned that those French académiciens must be doing something right. The proposal to turn the Royal Society into a corps of expert judges in the style of the French academy was met with enthusiasm. But translating the report-writing practice across the Channel proved more complicated than Whewell expected. News or views? Whewell agreed to write the first report. His collaborator was a former student at Cambridge, John William Lubbock, a mathematically inclined astronomer who was also the Royal Society's treasurer. They jointly selected a manuscript submitted by George Airy, another up-and-coming astronomer. The paper, 'On an inequality of Long Period in the Motions of the Earth and Venus', used sophisticated mathematical methods to calculate how the orbits of these planets were influenced by the gravitational force each exerted on the other. Whewell and Lubbock took turns reading the manuscript — copying technologies at the time left much to be desired. Both instantly knew what they thought of it. And they completely disagreed. They argued about the paper for months. Both wrote draft reports, which could not have been more different. Whewell's focused on the significance of the problem and on Airy's remarkable conclusions. Lubbock's picked at the inelegant ways in which Airy had constructed his equations. Most fundamentally, they argued about what a reader's report ought to be. Whewell wanted to spread word of the discovery and to place it in the bigger picture (think Nature's News & Views and Science's Perspectives). “I do not think the office of reporters ought to be to criticize particular passages of a paper but to shew its place,” he told Lubbock. If they picked out flaws, he warned, authors would be put off. Lubbock had other priorities: “I do not see how we can pass over grievous errors,” he wrote. Feeling that they had reached an impasse, Lubbock went to the author himself to deliver his suggestions for improvement. Airy was understandably irritated that his manuscript was being subjected to this strange new procedure. “There the paper is,” he wrote to Whewell, “and I am willing to let my credit rest on it.” He had no intention of changing his text. Lubbock threatened to pull out, but ultimately relented and swallowed his criticisms, acknowledging that this was “the first report which the Council have ever made” and trying to see the bigger picture. He thanked Whewell for putting his “shoulder to the wheel” and signed his name to the report2. With disaster averted, Whewell's version of the report was read publicly at the society on 29 March 1832, and was printed in the Proceedings, while Airy's full paper appeared in the Transactions. Lubbock's critiques never became public. Not long before, the Astronomical Society of London (now the Royal Astronomical Society) and the Geological Society of London had also begun to experiment with similar reports. It was a geologist, George Greenough, who introduced the term 'referee' in 1817, importing into science a term he knew from his days as a law student3. But it was the Royal Society's system of reports that caused the British scientific world to take notice. The practice gradually spread to other societies, including the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Linnean Society of London. But it was not really until the twentieth century that journals unaffiliated with any society slowly followed suit. Anonymous judges The struggle between Whewell and Lubbock represented two distinct visions of what a referee might be. Whewell was the authoritative generalist, glancing down on the landscape of knowledge. He was unconcerned with — and probably not in a position to critique — the details. Such referees were, according to the Royal Society's president, “Elevated by their character and reputation above the influence of personal feelings of rivalry or petty jealousy”4. Lubbock was a younger specialist, Airy's equal. This allowed him to take a fine-tooth comb to Airy's arguments; it also put him in the position of reviewing a direct competitor. Initially, Whewell's vision won out. But the system began to transform even as it lurched into existence. After a couple of years, the reports became shrouded in secrecy. The last Proceedings issue to include one was in mid-1833, and no negative reports were ever published. A letter Whewell wrote in 1836 shows that he himself had changed his view: he describes the referee as a defender of a society's reputation, working behind the scenes to exclude publications that do not belong. Neither the Royal Society's archives — nor the personal papers of those involved — are clear on how this happened, but we should not be surprised that it did. In England, unlike France, there was little precedent for public authorities judging from on high what constituted good or bad science. Signing one's name to explicit criticism of a colleague would have been ungentlemanly. More familiar was the anonymous critic who purported to speak for the public, epitomized by the anonymous book reviews that dominated English periodicals throughout the period, from the Quarterly Review to the lowly Mechanics' Magazine (the practice survives today in The Economist). Through anonymity, as one uncredited editor argued in 1833, “the individual is merged in the court which he represents, and he speaks not in his own name, but ex cathedra (with full authority)”5. Justifications of the anonymity of the scientific referee took a similar view. It took just a decade for the referee to become an established scientific persona, and not a noble one. An 1845 exposé in a London magazine painted a picture of referees as scheming judges quite possibly “full of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness”. Hidden away in some secret chamber, this scientific judiciary, the article implied, used the cover of anonymity to advance their personal interests — perhaps through undetectable acts of piracy — at the expense of helpless authors6. It was only near the turn of the twentieth century that the idea began to take hold that editors and referees, taken as one large machinery of judgement, ought to ensure the integrity of the scientific literature as a whole. Amid calls to curtail the “veritable sewage thrown into the pure stream of science” (a suggestion7 by the physiologist Michael Foster in 1894), English scientific societies debated combining their publishing apparatuses, with a standardized referee system overseeing all of scientific publishing. (The plan was abandoned, in part because it would have meant convincing publishers of independent journals, such as the Philosophical Magazine, to go out of business.) “The referee was reimagined as a universal gatekeeper with a duty to science.” Nonetheless, the referee was gradually reimagined as a sort of universal gatekeeper with a duty to science. As this idea gained ground, many began to worry that the system itself might be intrinsically flawed, a force that impeded creative science and which ought to be abolished. Such worries culminated in what was surely the first formal inquiry into the workings of referee systems — in 1903, by the Geological Society of London. The inquiry found that opinion was sharply divided on the subject, receiving several vitriolic statements about the injustices and inefficiencies of the systems in use. The 'referee' was in such disrepute that they nearly banned the use of the term in all society business. But referee systems survived, and were slowly set up by independent journals as well. Outside the Anglophone scientific world, referee systems remained rare. Albert Einstein, for example, was shocked when an American journal sent a paper of his to a referee in 1932. The idea that any legitimate scientific journal ought to implement a formal referee system began to take hold in the decades following the Second World War. Apotheosis and fall In the 1960s, refereeing emerged as a symbol of objective judgement and consensus in science. The referee was, in the words of the physicist and science writer John Ziman, “the lynchpin about which the whole business of Science is pivoted”8. Just as in 1830s England, the relationship of science to the public was at the foreground of these changes. The scientific community was once again working hard to solidify perceptions of its role in society. The very phrase 'scientific community' dates from this time. Researchers wanted to preserve autonomy while holding on to the massive government funding that had come their way since the Second World War. Allocations for basic research in the United States, for instance, swelled by a factor of 25 in less than a decade9. 'Peer review' was a term borrowed from the procedures that government agencies used to decide who would receive financial support for scientific and medical research. When 'referee systems' turned into 'peer review', the process became a mighty public symbol of the claim that these powerful and expensive investigators of the natural world had procedures for regulating themselves and for producing consensus, even though some observers quietly wondered whether scientific referees were up to this grand calling. Current attempts to reimagine peer review rightly debate the psychology of bias, the problem of objectivity, and the ability to gauge reliability and importance, but they rarely consider the multilayered history of this institution. Peer review did not develop simply out of scientists' need to trust one another's research. It was also a response to political demands for public accountability. To understand that other practices of scientific judgement were once in place ought to be a part of any responsible attempt to chart a future path. The imagined functions of this institution are in flux, but they were never as fixed as many believe. |
Hit ‘Em Up: Donald Trump and the 9/11 Jew Money Mafia With the American Israel Public Affairs Committee having announced last week Donald Trump as the headliner at its 2016 conference in Washington later this month, some observers – those, for instance, of the white nationalist persuasion who continue to fall for the “Wrestlemania-style events that you gobble up like Roman citizens watching a lion eat a gladiator” – may be confused as to what is happening. Der FuhrHair hosted by AIPAC? What the actual fuck, many may be asking, is going on? For those who have not been reading Aryan Skynet on a regular basis, Jewish Journal’s Jacob Kornbluh fills in some details: How does one go from serving as AIPAC’s Southwest Regional Political Director a year ago to running Donald Trump’s national political operation today? Ever since Trump announced his White House bid last June, Michael Glassner has been serving as his campaign’s national political director. In part, he is credited with landing the coveted Sarah Palin endorsement ahead of the Iowa Caucus last month. […] Upon moving to New Jersey in the late nineties, Glassner served as a senior advisor to Lewis Eisenberg, the then-Chairman of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey and a prominent Republican Jewish leader. He worked out of the Port Authority’s World Trade Center office but left just before 9/11 to join IDT Corp in Newark. Glassner credits his former boss, IDT founder Howard Jonas, whom he referred to as “a strong Zionist and an AIPAC guy,” with encouraging him to become more active in pro-Israel politics. Intermittently between 2000 to 2008, Glassner would take time off to return to the campaign trail: running George W. Bush’s general election campaign in Iowa, fundraising for Bush’s ’04 re-election effort, and in ’08, where he managed Sarah Palin’s vice presidential campaign. “My interest in pro-Israel politics had grown exponentially,” Glassner recalled. “Particularly since 9-11, which represented a real credible threat to all Americans and in particular as a Jew, I felt very strongly about the threat of radical Islam and so I became more and more involved with AIPAC.” In 2014, Glassner officially joined AIPAC as their Southwest Regional Political Director where, according to his LinkedIn profile, he managed AIPAC’s legislative mobilizations, conducted briefings with candidates, and spoke at political events throughout the region. […] Glassner, however, is more than just any Zionist Jew. Skynet, regular readers will recall, reported this past August on Donald Trump’s disturbing appointment of the AIPAC operative as Political Director of his 2016 presidential campaign: Michael Falcone of ABC News, in a 2011 article covering Glassner’s handling of the failed presidential campaign of cheesecake pin-up Sarah Palin, pulls back the sinister curtain of U.S. politics just far enough for a glimpse of the highly connected and criminal Semites with whom Glassner associates both socially and professionally: After the senator [Bob Dole]’s defeat by Bill Clinton in 1996, he followed Dole to the Washington law firm of Verner, Lipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand, consulting on international business issues before taking a job as chief of staff to the chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. His loyalty to former bosses is clear. Glassner still keeps in touch with Dole, and he spends every July 30 with Ron Shiftan, the former executive director of the Port Authority with whom he shares a birthday. “Michael is not an ideologue; he does not come at a problem from the far left or from the far right or even from the far middle,” Shiftan said, “Michael is someone who gets things done.” […] Glassner declined ABC News’ request for comment. He is spending his time settling into his new role. Lewis M. Eisenberg, former chairman of the Port Authority, said that Glassner was his liaison to state and local politicians on a variety of transportation projects. “His job was very political,” Eisenberg said. “He was my go-to guy who always made sure things ran smoothly and you never saw him. The waters would be smooth after he left but you’d never know his boat was on those waters.” Ronald Shiftan, though a cursory internet search might only identify him as the Vice Chairman of Lifetime Brands, a harmless-enough-sounding kitchenware outfit, was for many years a General Partner in the notorious Bear Stearns, one of the firms engaged in highly unusual trading activity in the days leading up to September 11th, 2001. Researchers Mathewson and Nol found that Bear Stearns investors “traded 3,979 contracts from Sept. 6 to Sept. 10 on September options that profit if shares fall below $50. The previous average volume for those options was 22 contracts.” One of the principal lobbyists backing New Jersey “Godfather” Eisenberg’s World Trade Center privatization scheme was Ronald Lauder, heir to Estée Lauder and Chairman Emeritus of the cosmetics and fragrance company bearing her name. A July 2001 press release from the New York Port Authority demonstrates how Lauder, in his official capacity as Chairman of the Research Council on Privatization, framed the Zionist initiative as a conservative, cost-saving measure: New York State Research Council on Privatization Chairman Ronald S. Lauder said, “By moving the World Trade Center off the state inventory and into the free market, Governor Pataki is once again putting taxpayers first. Across his time in office, Governor Pataki has consistently used the power of private enterprise to deliver better services for taxpayers faster and at a lower price. Today’s success is the latest and the highest profile example of Governor Pataki’s focusing government on what it should be doing and avoiding areas it has no business meddling in. and avoiding areas it has no business meddling in. And today, with this multi-billion dollar deal done, hard-working New York taxpayers have 3.2 billion reasons to appreciate Governor Pataki’s leadership.” Under the Reagan administration, Lauder occupied positions as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Affairs and the U.S. Ambassador to Austria. Lauder was President of the National Jewish Fund at the time of 9/11 and is the current President of the World Jewish Congress. The Shiftan and Lauder families’ collaboration predates their machinations involving the World Trade Center. Ronald Shiftan’s father, the chemist Ernest Shiftan, served as Vice President of International Flavors and Fragrances, which supplied its concoctions to Estée Lauder. Leonard Lauder, Ronald’s older brother, credited Ernest Shiftan with the billions his family made, according to Perfect Scent author Chandler Burr. Shiftan is remembered as a highly regarded figure within the perfume industry, but “little data is immediately available concerning his career […] in great part due to secretive practices”. The Shiftans’ relationship with the Eisenbergs is also a personal one: they are neighbors in wealth-infested Rumson, New Jersey. The New York Post reported in 1999 that a culture of “back-stabbing” and “tug-of-war over control” prevailed during Shiftan’s tenure as Deputy Executive Director of the Port Authority, with Shiftan allied with New Jersey Governor Christine Whitman and Port Authority Chairman Lew Eisenberg against Executive Director Robert Boyle and New York Governor George Pataki. Shiftan, the Post interestingly noted, complained that one Port Authority project staffer “canceled a meeting with him at Boyle’s behest because ‘I might request information from him about sensitive matters.’” New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who would later be instrumental in securing Larry Silverstein’s notorious $4.5 billion double indemnity payout, filed a civil corruption lawsuit against Boyle, who left the position in December of 2000. During the crucial days of September 2001, Shiftan took over as Executive Director of the Port Authority after the previous holder of that office, Neil Levin, went missing and was reported to have died in the World Trade Center attacks. It was in his capacity as Deputy Director on 9/11 that Shiftan made a strange remark related by Lewis Eisenberg in an article published in New Jersey’s Star-Ledger on September 13th, 2001: Lewis Eisenberg, chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, got his first report of the disaster that would engulf his agency when his phone rang early Tuesday morning. It was the bistate agency’s deputy director, Ronald Shiftan. “He was driving toward the Holland Tunnel on his way to work and he called me saying, ‘I can’t believe it. I just saw a bomb in the World Trade Center,’” Eisenberg said. With the agency’s executive offices in One World Trade Center crumbling, Shiftan and other Port Authority executives rushed to an emergency command post at the authority’s Journal Square PATH station in Jersey City. Never mind the airplanes. Shiftan “saw a bomb in the World Trade Center” – and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, indeed, would title its probe into the day’s attacks “PENTTBOMB”, or “Pentagon/Twin Towers Bombing Investigation”. In any event, Shiftan would receive a medal from Hunter College President Jennifer Raab for his “heroism in the aftermath of 9/11”, whatever that entailed. Recalling what Falcone characterizes as Glassner’s “loyalty to former bosses” – Shiftan specifically – one has to wonder with some apprehension what sickening evil he contemplates when he rubs his nasty hands together and cackles at night. Rainer Chlodwig von Kook Advertisements |
Episode 489: The Invisible Plumbing Of Our Economy So we're making a T-shirt and we do this Kickstarter campaign and we raise $590,807 (which, really, we can't thank you enough). It turns out the money collected on Kickstarter is handled by Amazon. Great, we figure: This is the company that will sell you anything on the planet and get it you you the next day. And what we need in this case isn't even a thing, really. We just need Amazon's bank to send money electronically to a checking account at Chase bank. It's just information traveling over wires. How long could it take: A minute? An hour? It took five days. On today's show: Why the invisible pipes that move money around America are so slow. (And why the ones in England are so much faster.) Music: The Black Keys' "Countdown." Find us: Twitter/ Facebook/Spotify/ Tumblr. Download the Planet Money iPhone App. |
"It's Dangerous to go alone take this!" I started this compilation, as a celebration of the 30 years of music of our Beloved Series, The Legend of Zelda, It had always been a dream to have the full soundtrack of the Series, this was a big undertaking, but since there was no compilation around the Internet I decided to make it myself, for this compilation I created a cover for each one of the Games, and tagged all files with the year, composer, etc. At first I thought to make a selection of the most memorable tracks from each game, but as I heard the songs I couldn't help to not include almost all of them, in some cases going into the hundreds per title, but I did decided to leave out some of the Soundtracks that were just to ambient with no melody. But you can rest assured all the memorable tracks are here. I really hope all the fandom gets to share and enjoy this amazing soundtracks, they mean so much to us, I just can't thank the Nintendo Team enough for their work on the series, the songs included in this compilation, never fail to get me emotional, remember those nostalgic moments of my childhood, and even sometimes just cry with them. My only request is for you to keep this compilation alive on the Internet, please seed if you can as the other mirrors might get taken down. With love to all the Zelda fans form a Zelda fan - JAM ♫ 801 song files ♪ 27 hours 5 minutes of Music ◙ File Size 2.37 GB ☼ .RAR File / .mp3 files from 128- 320 kbps Dropbox Mediafire Mega Torrent *Edit For those planning on downloading via android , @Zenolab has recommended to use simpleunrar, it gives some kind of error so install the app it requests, Immediately the songs will appear in music. Make sure to set the destination folder to music Follow me to stayed tuned for future projects including a Zelda Fan Music compilation! Please share and Seed! :relaxed: ▲ ▲ ▲ |
I was relieved when I first came across Tim Brown's talk on typographic modular scale and his accompanying tool. For a non-designer like me, it takes the guess work out of deciding upon font sizes. Team Sass's sass plugin makes using a modular scale even easier. This is all fantastic and gets you most of the way there, but the problem is that most modular scales get big pretty quickly and top level headings are then too large for small screens. You can give headings smaller sizes for smaller screens in an ad-hoc fashion, but that seemed a bit too hacky of a solution for me. I'd been kicking around an idea to have a different scale for small screens that doesn't grow as dramatically and with the help of Sassmeister I made a working example of this idea. Following is a step by step breakdown of the code from this example. First you'll need to specify your default modular scale settings: $ms-base : 16 px ; $ms-ratio : $fourth ; Followed by your default scale variables: $ms-norm : $ms-base ; $ms-med : ms ( 2 ); $ms-lrg : ms ( 3 ); $ms-xlrg : ms ( 4 ); $ms-xxlrg : ms ( 5 ); $ms-xxxlrg : ms ( 6 ); Typically, it is best to design things mobile first, but in this instance the small screens are the exception. It really doesn't matter which you consider your "default", and using this idea there can be as many different scales for screen sizes as the design calls for and any scale could be considered the default. In this example I stuck with the ms namespace for variables even though these aren't official Modular Scale settings. You'll want to pass the modular scale variable in to another variable so it can be easily changed when you set up the small screen scale: $ms-smscr-ratio : $minor-third ; $ms-smscr-norm : $ms-base ; $ms-smscr-med : ms ( 2 , $ms-base , $ms-smscr-ratio ); $ms-smscr-lrg : ms ( 3 , $ms-base , $ms-smscr-ratio ); $ms-smscr-xlrg : ms ( 4 , $ms-base , $ms-smscr-ratio ); $ms-smscr-xxlrg : ms ( 5 , $ms-base , $ms-smscr-ratio ); $ms-smscr-xxxlrg : ms ( 6 , $ms-base , $ms-smscr-ratio ); In my sassmeister example I set the font-sizes directly on heading elements, in a real project you mighty want to set up an array of placeholder selectors that look something like this: % font-size-med { font-size : $ms-smscr-med @ media screen and ( min-width : 30 em ) { font-size : $ms-med ; } } An example that utilizes Sass Maps, the Breakpoint plugin, and Compass' vertical rhythm looks something like: $sizes : ( lrg : ( $ms-lrg , $ms-smscr-lrg ) , med : ( $ms-med , $ms-smscr-med ) , norm : ( $ms-norm , $ms-smscr-norm ) ); @each $ name , $ size in $ sizes { % font-size- # { $ name } { @include adjust-font-size-to ( nth ( $size , 2 ) ); @include breakpoint ( $bp-sm ) { @include adjust-font-size-to ( nth ( $size , 1 ) ); } } } Declaring the media query in the placeholder selector gets around the current inability to extend from within media queries in Sass. This will provide you with placeholder selectors for font size that can be mixed and matched with placeholder selector for font style like so: .subhh2 { @extend % font-alternate ; @ extend % font-size-xlrg ; } |
From Mick Ronson on Ziggy Stardust to Brian Eno on Low to Robert Fripp on “Heroes”, David Bowie had a knack for finding other masterful musicians and pushing them to their full potential. That held true on his final masterpiece, Blackstar, which showcases the instrumental acrobatics of jazz saxophonist Donny McCaslin and his ensemble. Now, McCaslin is returning with his first album of his own since working with Bowie. “Looking at him when I was playing in the studio and the conviction and the passion that he sang with, that’s the same way that I play as a saxophone player,” McCaslin tells EW. “There was a lot of that energy bouncing off of all of us when we were recording Blackstar and I wanted to make sure that that was all present in this new record.” Out Oct. 14, Beyond Now features the same group of musicians that defined Blackstar‘s aesthetic — keyboardist Jason Lindner, bassist Tim Lefebvre, and Mark Guiliana — and also pays tribute to Bowie with two covers, of 1977’s “Warszawa” and 1995’s “A Small Plot of Land.” Check out McCaslin’s take on “A Small Plot of Land” — featuring guest vocalist Jeff Taylor — below, and read on to learn more about his experience working with Bowie and what he learned from collaborating with the rock legend. [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/271107370?secret_token=s-sAUdD" params="visual=true&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /] ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did you decide to cover these two Bowie songs? DONNY MCCASLIN: It started with “Warszawa.” We played a week at the Village Vanguard [in New York], the third week of January this year. As David had just passed, it was such an emotional time. I was thinking about what would be a good way to pay tribute to him and our keyboardist Jason Lindner suggested “Warszawa.” We played it every set that week. It was so great to be able to channel the feelings that were going on and the things I was processing emotionally into the overall performance, but especially that song. I knew that I wanted to record it. “A Small Plot of Land” was suggested by Beyond Now‘s producer, David Binney. That one felt like it would be a good match. It resonates with us and we feel we can tell our own story within that framework. Both of these Bowie songs are from albums he did with Brian Eno. Did you think the sound they had together particularly fit your group? I do. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but as I settled on those two songs I did notice that. This past month, I’ve delved deeper into his discography and I’ve found some more songs that I want to adapt for this group. Not all of them are collaborations with Eno, but a large amount are from that Berlin trilogy period. Tunes off Lodger, another song or two off Low — that period just seems to resonate with me. How did playing with Bowie on Blackstar influence this album and your musical style? The title track “Beyond Now” is directly inspired by a song of David’s that we recorded during the Blackstar sessions, but that didn’t make the final record. All the originals were written last summer — before he passed away, but while the Blackstar recordings were still really fresh. [The sessions concluded in spring 2015.] Songs of his were just kind of running through my unconscious. That was part of it. Another aspect is I know he always loved it when we would really go for it and stretch out and push. For example, “‘Tis a Pity She Was a Whore” off of Blackstar, that was the first take that we did of that song. We were all just pushing hard. We were all excited. There’s a spot near the end of the tune where he goes “Woo!” and that encapsulates how we were feeling. That intensity was something I wanted this album to represent — that we were just going to put it all out there. It’s the way that we played anyway, but it got to another level because of the whole Blackstar experience and everything that happened with David. The idea of putting it all out there, the way that I saw him do it, that inspired me. Did Bowie know you’d record some of his songs for a record? I went over to his place in November of last year and we were listening to Blackstar. I was hearing it for the first time. I told him that I was checking out his discography, looking to adapt some of his tunes. He seemed happy [laughs]. He was looking forward to hear what he would do with them, was my impression. There are also covers of Mutemath and Deadmau5 songs on the album. How did you choose those? There’s some other influences on the record. The first song, “Shake Loose,” the urgency was coming from my idea of David and trying to engage the listener right away. The way the melody is phrased is really coming from Kendrick Lamar. David and [producer] Tony Visconti had talked about Kendrick being something that they’d listened to and were excited by recently — and I am also a Kendrick Lamar fan. As that melody was coming out, I remember feeling like the sassiness of it was inspired by Kendrick Lamar. “Bright Abyss” and “Beyond Now” both have Deadmau5 influences. His last record while (1<2) was a record I listened to a lot over the last year and a half. “Coelacanth I” is a Deadmau5 tune from that record that resonated with me. Mutemath’s “Remain” was a suggestion from my producer. He sent me a list of tunes to check out and the build on that tune is remarkable on the original version. It just gets bigger and bigger. I haven’t really checked out a lot of their records, but that track, I heard it and was like, “That would be perfect.” |
2 JavaScript values: not everything is an object by Dr. Axel Rauschmayer 3 JavaScript, The Definitive Guide 6th Edition David Flanagan Pg. 45 4 JavaScript, The Definitive Guide 6th Edition David Flanagan Pg. 43 7 In which 10 days of May did Brendan Eich write JavaScript (Mocha) in 1995? I have always found this statement confusing: “Everything in JavaScript is an Object”. What did they mean by this? How can a Function or an Array at the same time be an Object? Before we tackle this question, we need to understand how the different Data Types are categorized. In JavaScript, there are two Data Types: Primitives and Objects. (Object Types are also sometimes referred to as Reference Types). 1 Primitive Object Number Function String Object Boolean Array Symbol null undefined Based on this categorizing, the simple anwser is no, not everything in JavaScript is an Object. Only values that belong to that Type are Objects. Another way of looking at it is, any Type that isn’t a Primitive Type is an Object Type. But what is it that differentiates Primitives from Objects? And more importantly, what do people really mean when they say “everything” or “almost everything” is an Object”? There are two main distinctions: mutability, and comparison. Mutability From my experience, what people really mean when they talk about values being “object like” is their mutability. More specifically, they’re talking about the ability to add and remove properties. For example, because Functions and Arrays belong to the Object Type you can add properties to them just like you would an object literal. var func = function() {}; func.firstName = "Andrew"; func.firstName; // "Andrew" var arry = []; arry.age = 26; arry.age; // 26 This opens the door to all sorts of fascinating use cases, and is really the key to understanding how Prototypes and Constructors work. However because Primitive Types are immutable, we’re unable to assign properties to them. 2 The parser will immediately discard them when attemping to read their value. var me = "Andrew"; me.lastname = "Robbins"; me.lastname; // undefined var num = 10; num.prop = 11; num.prop; // undefined At this point, I think it would be useful to examine things at a more fundamental level. With regards to primitives, what does it really mean to say that their values cannot be changed? Consider the following code: 1 = 2; // ReferenceError This might seem like a silly example, but I think it shines a much needed light on exactly what we’re talking about when we talk about mutability. When you type the number 1 into the JavaScript console, the compiler assigns that piece of data to the Primitive data type. Therefore when you attempt to change the number 1 to the number 2, it fails and probably has a heartattack. Comparison and passing around Besides mutability, another important distinction between Primitive Types and Object Types is the way they’re compared and passed around within the program. Primitive Types are compared by value, while Object Types are compared by reference. What does this mean? Let’s look at Primitives first. Consider the following code: "a" === "a"; // true This is true because the value “a” is equal to “a”. Simple. However what happens when we introduce variables into the picture? Nothing has changed except that we’re now storing our Primitive Types into variables. var a = "a", b = "a"; a === b; // true Since Primitive Types are compared by value, the result will true. The value of the variable a is exactly equal to the value of the variable b. In other words, “a” equals “a”. Aristotle would be proud. However look at this. If we apply the same example to an Object Type, we get the opposite result. var a = {name: "andrew"}, b = {name: "andrew"}; a === b; // false Why is this? Object Types must reference the same object in order for its comparison to be true. In the example above, we’re creating a new object for the variable b. As David Flanagan puts it: “…we say that objects are compared by reference: two object values are the same if and only if they refer to the same underlying object.” 3 Now, what happens when we pass these values around? var a = {name: "andrew"}, b = a; b.name = "robbins"; a === b; // true This might seem strange at first, but look closer at what’s happening. Because objects are part of the Object type, it’s values are compared and passed by reference. Reference to what? Reference to the same underlying object. In the above example, we’re setting b equal to a. We didn’t create a new object. We’re simply creating a reference to another object. A different way of looking at it is that we’re pointing the variable b to a. Therefore when we mutate the “name” property on b, we’re at the same time mutating the “name” property on a. Back to Primitives, how would the same example apply to them? var a = "Andrew", b = a; b = "Robbins"; a === b; // false Remembering that Primitives are compared and passed by value, when we set b equal to a, we’re actually creating a new copy of a. Therefore when we change the value of b and then compare it to a, the value is not the same anymore. Wrapper Objects Some of you may be wondering, “Ok, if Primitives aren’t Objects then why can I call methods on them?” The answer is Wrapper Objects. When you attempt to call methods on a Primitive, JavaScript does a magic trick behind the scenes. It takes your Primitive value and converts it to a temporary Object using a constructor function. 4 The decision of which constructor function to use will depend on the Primitive value you’re attempting to change. For example, calling .length on a string will use the built in String() constructor to temporarily change the Primitive to an Object—allowing you to use the length method to mutate it. This temporary Object is called a Wrapper Object. 5 Interestingly enough, the two Primitive values null and undefined do not behave this way. Trying to call methods on these values will result in a TypeError. We can use the typeof keyword to show the difference. typeof "s"; // "string" typeof new String(s); // "object" As a sidenote, it’s useful to know that there’s a well-documented bug 6 in JS compilers which returns “object” when executing typeof null. typeof null // "object" Considering that JavaScript was written in 10 days 7, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it =) It’s also useful to know that properties on Primitives are read-only, and temporary. var hello = "hello"; hello.slice(1); // "ello" (Here we're actually calling slice not on hello, but of a copy of hello) hello; // "hello" Summary JavaScript values can be categorized into two Types: Primitives and Objects. The Primitive Types are String, Number, Boolean, Symbol, undefined and null. The Object Types are Function, Object and Array. The two distinctions between Primitives and Objects are their mutability and the way they’re compared and “passed around” within the program. Primitives are immutable. Another way of saying this is that their values can’t be changed. On the other hand, Objects are mutable. Their values can be updated and changed. Primitives are compared by value. When assigning one primitive to another using variables, a copy is made. Objects on the other hand are compared by reference. Reference to what? Reference to the underlying Object. When assigning one Object to another, a reference / pointer is created. At this stage, mutating a value on one Object will update the value on the other Object. When attempting to call methods on Primitive values, JavaScript uses a Wrapper Object to temporarily coerce the Primitive. The resulting Object is read-only and garbage collected after execution. In the next section, we’ll go over how these Types fit into the bigger picture by analyzing Prototypes, Constructors, and Inheritance. Update: 11/8/14 Recently there was a discussion over at https://javascriptkicks.com/stories/1669 regarding the performance of both Objects and Primitives. @drewpcodes wanted to know which approach would be faster: storing floating point numbers in Primitive form or Objects form? I was curious to know as-well so I wrote a small program to test it out. You can find the code I used here: http://jsfiddle.net/pmqortov I created two arrays: one array stored the data as Objects, and another stored the data as Primitives. Based on @drewpcodes use-case, the data I used was 150 floating point numbers. I also decided to limit both arrays to 150 entries so it wouldn’t freeze my computer. I then iterated over the arrays and saved a timestamp before and after every iteration. Then I did a little math on each timestamp and found the average in ms. For the sake of accuracy, I looped 5000 times for each instance. I noticed increasing this number would freeze Chrome. =) Surprisingly enough, the list containing the data stored as Objects was actually 2ms faster then stored as Primitives! Here were the actual numbers: // List with Objects // Average execution across 5000 repetitions: 16.8528 ms // List with Primitives // Average execution across 5000 repetitions: 18.2898 ms At this point I don’t have an opinion either way of which method is best for storing your data. It could be that at higher volumes the Object method would be advantagous, but I’d like to see more evidence first. Cheers! |
It seems that just about everyone wants to get involved in releasing a bullion coin at the moment and the Perth Mint are certainly making that happen lately, with a string of commissioned coins. Just recently we’ve had the Saltwater Crocodile, the Great White Shark, the Wedge-Tailed Eagle and to a lesser extent, the latest Stock Horse. That’s not even allowing for coins like the Yellowfin Tuna silver bullion coin not produced by Perth. This latest one foregoes the usual nature theme for something a little different and perhaps, more interesting as a result. It features a head-on view of a warship and the subject is the Battle of the Coral Sea. Available as a 1/2-ounce fine silver coin, the US company Goldline also has a 1/10-ounce gold version up for sale that has yet to appear on the Perth Mints own website. Mintage is unlimited and the coin is sold by Goldline in the US and the Perth Mint itself in Australia only. At the time of writing we’ve had issues accessing Goldlines site but it may be different for you. REVERSE: features a representation of the Southern Cross and the American flag with a naval ship sailing in the foreground. The design includes the inscription BATTLE OF THE CORAL SEA, WAR IN THE PACIFIC 1941-45, and The Perth Mint’s traditional ‘P’ mintmark. OBVERSE: depicts the Ian Rank-Broadley effigy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the 2014 year-date, and the monetary denomination PACKAGING: Acrylic tubes of 25 coins with 20 tubes to a 500-coin monster box. It’s likely dealers will offer individually also. |
BY: Follow @MaryLouByrd12 A cross that graced the top of a hill in the small city of Grand Haven, Michigan, for over 50 years will now be removed after the threat of a lawsuit by an outside activist who has filed other lawsuits to advance his cause. The Grand Haven City Council voted three to two earlier this week to have the cross removed from Dewey Hill. Their decision comes after months of heated debate, rallies organized by veterans, and heartfelt letters penned to the editor of a local paper in this city of less than 11,000 residents. "I never saw an issue quite like this," said Grand Haven resident Brandon Hall, a blogger for West Michigan Politics. While the issue was a contentious one it also showed the majority of residents were united. "One thing I want to make clear: Grand Haven is not divided. It is very united in support of the cross," Hall said. "All my atheist friends hate what is going on here," he said. "It’s very surprising that one guy can come from out of state and start all this. It is very shocking and disappointing," said Hall. He said many residents believe the council caved to a "bully." Mitch Kahle came into Grand Haven and threatened to sue the city if the cross was not removed. He also targeted a school club. Kahle is no stranger to pressuring governmental agencies. In Hawaii, his victories include the removal of crosses in various locations, church descriptions from the official Honolulu City website, and nativity scenes. In 1997, his first victory was forcing the Army to remove a 37-foot cross at Schofield Barracks. Kayle also received the coveted Freedom from Religion Foundation award for his work in convincing the Hawaii Senate to drop prayers to open legislative sessions. On his Facebook page, Kahle basked in the local media attention he garnered as a result of the cross removal. He wrote: "Our state-church victory in Grand Haven is covered today by the AP, the Detroit Free Press, WZZM13, WOOD8, FOX 17, The Muskegon Chronicle, The Grand Haven Tribune, and more …" Kahle created the Remove the New Haven Cross Facebook page, and a message received by the Free Beacon asking for comment said, "We are pleased with the outcome." No further questions were answered and the person who responded did not identify himself. "Michael Kahle is a bully. He is an atheist extremist who targets Christians and gives atheists a bad name," Hall said. He said it was unbelievable that "our council gave in to this bully. Some chatter around the city this week is now centering around the possibility of recalling Council Member Robert Monetza, who voted to remove the cross. The two other council members who voted yes—John Hierholzer and Michael Fritz—cannot be recalled because they are up for reelection this year, according to Hall. Monetza did not respond to a request from comment, nor did Fritz. Hierholzer said he had no comment. Mayor Geri McCaleb asked what types of questions the Free Beacon wanted to ask and once they were provided by email she did not respond. "The cross has stood on Dewey Hill for 50 years and depending on what happens in the vote tonight, the story of the Dewey Hill cross will enter into a new chapter—either we'll fight on or we'll capitulate to demands of people who do not live in our community on behalf of other people who do not live in our community," McCaleb said on Monday night. "I understand the vast majority of our citizens prefer to keep the cross, possibly to even display it more often. Contrary to the thinking of our constitutional authorities, though, it really is a First Amendment establishment clause here. It's embodied in some 60 years of case law judgments," Monetza said before voting yes to have the cross removed. Monetza pointed out the city was faced with "the prospect of a grotesque circus of rotating and competing displays and messages. Further, there's nothing to keep the situation from escalating with more and more demand for expressive displays until Dewey Hill stops being a beautiful backdrop to our downtown and becomes a hideous billboard." Remove the Grand Haven Cross proposed three of its own displays to sit atop Dewey Hill: There is No God, Pro Choice, and Equality Now. But the battle for the cross may be far from over. "We in Grand Haven are ready for the fight. It is far from over. The council members forced this on the agenda, against the will of the people and the mayor," Hall said. The council members who voted to remove the cross, "sold Grand Haven down the river for 30 pieces of silver." Kahle is "underestimating GH residents. They value this tradition and we also don’t like a bully," Hall said. The Keep the Grand Haven Cross Facebook page announced it is accepting donations to purchase Dewey Hill. Update: This post has been updated; a reference to a satirical newspaper was removed. |
Add Franklin Graham to the growing list of Vladimir Putin’s American Religious Right cheerleaders. Religion News Service reports today that Graham defended the Russian leader in Decision Magazine, writing that his law on “homosexual propaganda” is “simply to protect children.” Graham says that Russia is a better model of godliness and morality than America because of the Obama administration’s “gay-lesbian agenda” that “is contrary to God’s teaching.” He also defended Russia’s support for Syria’s brutal Assad regime. “Isn’t it sad, though, that America’s own morality has fallen so far that on this issue—protecting children from any homosexual agenda or propaganda—Russia’s standard is higher than our own? In my opinion, Putin is right on these issues,” Graham writes. “Obviously, he may be wrong about many things, but he has taken a stand to protect his nation’s children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda.” He concludes with a warning that the US is entering in its own phase of communism and will experience God’s judgment. |
Major depressive disorder is a common, but serious, psychiatric dysfunction that affects 21% of the population worldwide. Rolipram, a first-generation phosphodiesterase-4 (PDE4) inhibitor, has been shown to have significant antidepressant and cognitive enhancement effects; however, it was unsuccessful in clinic trials because of PDE4-dependent side effects such as nausea and emesis. In this study, we investigated the neuropharmacology of the novel PDE4 inhibitor chlorbipram and the classical PDE4 inhibitor rolipram. Using antidepressant-sensitive behavioral tests, we demonstrated that the acute single administration of chlorbipram (0.075-0.6 mg/kg) produced antidepressant-like effects, as evidenced by decreases in the duration of immobility in Kunming mice in the forced swim and tail suspension tests, and no significant changes in locomotor activity. Scopolamine-induced cognitive dysfunction was also significantly attenuated in the Morris water maze test after the treatment of Sprague Dawley rats with different doses of chlorbipram (0.5-1.5mg/kg). Furthermore, we evaluated the emetic potential of chlorbipram in beagle dogs. After oral administration, 0.5mg/kg rolipram showed emetic profiles in all dogs within 20 minutes, whereas chlorbipram did not induce any emesis during the 120-min observation period, even at the 1.0mg/kg dose. Together, our data suggest that chlorbipram is a novel antidepressant and cognitive enhancer with little or no emetic potency. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans in Congress chastised President Barack Obama’s top health adviser on Thursday for declining to testify before an oversight panel about problems in rolling out the president’s signature healthcare program known as Obamacare. U.S. President Barack Obama walks out to deliver remarks alongside Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (R) and other Americans the White House says will benefit from the opening of health insurance marketplaces under the Affordable Care Act, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, October 1, 2013. REUTERS/Larry Downing Less than a day after Congress ended a 16-day partial government shutdown precipitated by Republican demands to delay or defund Obamacare, they sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius demanding she make officials available for the October 24 hearing. The online insurance exchanges that are a central part of Obamacare rolled out on October 1 despite the shutdown but have been hobbled by technical difficulties that Sebelius has said are being fixed. The House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing is titled: “Implementation Failures: Didn’t Know or Didn’t Disclose?” The letter from majority members of the committee said they invited Sebelius on October 11 to appear at the hearing, only to learn on Wednesday that she would not attend. The administration has not agreed to provide other administration officials, the letter added. “It’s well past time for the administration to be straight and transparent with the American people,” said a separate statement by Republican Representative Fred Upton, who chairs the panel. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had no immediate comment. A spokeswoman for the panel’s Republican majority did not respond to a Reuters inquiry about whether subpoenas would be issued by the committee. Upton said top administration officials had previously said that everything was on track, but the broad technological failures revealed that was not the case. “Either the administration was not ready for launch, or it was not up to the job,” he said. Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is expected to provide private health coverage to an estimated 7 million uninsured Americans through the new online marketplaces that opened for enrollment in all 50 states on October 1. But the website Healthcare.gov, the administration’s online portal for consumers in 36 states, was hobbled by technical issues - including error messages, garbled text and delays loading pages - that administration officials partly blame on an unexpectedly high volume of 14.6 million visitors in its first 10 days. Sebelius recently appeared on the cable-television comedy program, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” for an interview that focused on the website’s problems. But HHS and the White House have largely declined to disclose information about the problems plaguing the federal marketplace’s information technology system, which cost nearly $400 million to build, according to a report by the watchdog Government Accountability Office. “This is wholly unacceptable. Secretary Sebelius had time for Jon Stewart, and we expect her to have time for Congress,” Upton said. Upton’s panel is one of at least three House committees expected to hold hearings as part of a new Republican plan to attack the healthcare reform’s weaknesses, beginning with the problem-plagued technology behind its launch. The oversight is expected to span the cost of new insurance plans under the healthcare law, online security, fraud, the role of the Internal Revenue Service and the fate of consumers who are unable to enroll in coverage in the coming weeks, according to congressional aides. “It’s not just a bumpy rollout. We’re crossing a bridge with a warning sign that says: BRIDGE OUT,” said Republican Representative Tim Murphy, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce panel’s health subcommittee and plans to hold his own hearings. “We’ll be trying to get people from the administration to tell us whether they were pretending everything was OK or was there an internal cover-up or did they just not know?” he added. Oversight is also not the only strategy Republicans are planning. House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement that Republicans will rely on “smart, targeted strikes” aimed at splitting Obama’s support in Congress. His office did not elaborate. But strategists say Republicans plan to use newly begun budget talks to jettison provisions of the law that are also unpopular with Democrats, possibly including a $29 billion tax on medical devices and a panel to control costs within the Medicare program for the elderly and disabled. |
SHIT, IN – Friday saw Carly Fiorina joined Ted Cruz in Some Hurting Industrial Town (SHIT) in Indiana for a major campaign announcement. The G.O.P. hopefuls unveiled several high level cabinet positions available for bidding thanks to a partnership with Ebay. Carly Fiorina, the ousted CEO of HP and failed Republican nominee, opined that her recent colossal failures have removed the roadblocks of shame, and that pairing with Cruz was a match made in heaven: “People keep asking me if joining the Cruz campaign stripped me of my dignity. I want to respond to those accusations right now and say: ‘how dare you!’. This reminds me of when I was CEO of Hewlitt Packard and we acquired Compaq who coincidentally resided in Ted Cruz’s home state. Now when I made the (albeit easy decision) to offshore thousands of jobs from Houston, people attacked me. But I did what I always do and I stood up for my convictions of outsourcing American jobs! And now as I stand before you I urge you all to join me in opening your wallets.” Senator Cruz joined his vice president hopeful with plenty of praise as he revealed plans that are affordable enough for all Americans to have a role in his campaign: “In this world, unlikable people need to stick together, after all isn’t that what being a Texan is all about? Now as Carly mentioned we have many high level positions such as Secretary of State and Attorney General available I want to reiterate that this is not about money, in fact we still have plenty of Cruz Crew Deputy Delegate name tags available for donations under $1,000. This will be the first political appointment decided on Ebay, where the auction is set to start Monday, May 2nd and run until Sunday, May 8th. |
After Norwegian comedy singer duo Ylvis ignited the world’s interest in sounds that animals make with “What Does The Fox Say?,” other artists have begun exploring these questions more in-depth. English artist James Chapman has created a series of comics comparing how different languages around the world write down the sounds animals make. The panels are a delight to see, with bright colors and cute animals. The comparisons between languages are also interesting, no matter what your native language is. Depending on what language you speak, some of these can seem pretty wacky. As an English speaker, the Dutch horse sounds pretty funny to me (Vrinsk?), but I also admit that, with a lame showing like “oink,” we can use some work on our verbs for animal sounds. Mice, cats, and bees, however, seem to have inspired international consensus on the sounds they make. Chapman is a PhD physics student and illustrator from Manchester who runs a great Tumblr featuring more of his illustrations, as well as one just for animal sounds. Scroll down to see what farm animals sound like in different languages below! Source: chapmangamo.tumblr.com |
The Conservative candidate in a Manitoba federal byelection race has angered a local teenager by openly questioning whether the taunting he experienced in front of a CBC News camera was real or not. Evan Wiens, 17, is demanding an apology from Ted Falk for suggesting he would stage his own bullying incident in his efforts to promote a gay-straight alliance at his school. "To think that I would stage something like that to get attention, that's really insulting to me," he said Thursday. Wiens told CBC News in February that he was the only openly gay student at Steinbach Regional Secondary School, but he was starting a gay-straight alliance in the hopes of encouraging others to come forward. He spoke out amid a heated debate about the Manitoba government's anti-bullying legislation, which requires schools to accommodate students who want to start anti-bullying clubs, including gay-straight alliances. A number of religious educators and others in Steinbach opposed the legislation — then known as Bill 18 — saying it infringes on their freedoms. During the February interview, Wiens was taunted by other students who made quips like "Penis!" and "I'd tell a gay joke, but…" as they walked past him. Those remarks were caught on camera, with Wiens describing them as examples of bullying. "I get bullied really often, and those types of incidents happen quite often to me even when media is not around," he said Thursday. 'We don't know,' says Falk The CBC News interview was brought up during an interview with Falk that was published Thursday in The Carillon, the newspaper in Steinbach. While Falk acknowledged that homosexual people do face bullying, he questioned whether the taunting that Wiens experienced during the interview was real or not. "Whether that was staged we don't know," Falk told the newspaper. When asked if he was suggesting the teens had staged the scene, Falk replied, "By the organizers, yeah." Wiens said he was shocked and hurt by the political candidate's comment. "My own journey with Bill 18 was so long ago, and I'm just confused why he would think that it would be necessary to say that I would stage a bullying incident for myself," he said. Bill 18 was passed into law in the Manitoba legislature in September. In a statement emailed to CBC News, Falk stood by his questioning. "I have no idea if it was staged or not," he wrote. Falk added that he is "100 per cent against bullying of anyone, anywhere and for any reason. Bullying is bullying, no matter who it is directed against." The NDP's candidate in Provencher, Natalie Courcelles Beaudry, issued a statement late Friday calling on Falk to apologize to Wiens. "I am both sad and disappointed that Mr. Falk has chosen to use his candidacy in this byelection as a platform to question the integrity of a brave young man like Evan Wiens," she said. "I admire Evan's strength in turning a personal struggle into an opportunity to foster understanding and a sense of community amongst his peers at Steinbach Regional Secondary School. Our young people deserve our support and respect." |
ASMR massage videos – Handpicked for relaxation July 6, 2015 ASMR Videos Comments ASMR massage videos are massage videos with an element of relaxation. The gentle and caressing touch of a massage can almost be felt trough the screen. Massages themselves have been the pillars of relaxation for centuries. ASMR Massage – Relaxation of a touch I have been a consumer of massage videos long before I discovered the meaning of ASMR. The environment of these videos often feature candles and dim lightning. The slow movements of hands and the pleasurable expression on the face of the person being massaged communicates a feeling of peace and quiet. Just by watching this relaxing process happen, you get calm and sleepy. Out of all ASMR videos, I would recommend watching massage videos when you are trying to sleep. Relaxing massage videos The internet is, and has been for many years, full of massage videos. Most of them are tutorials and demonstrations, some of them are ASMR massage videos. ASMR has been on the rise for while now and all kinds of videos are being created. Some of these ASMR massage videos instruct you how to give a full body massage or explain about massage techniques. Others are just watching the whole process happen without any explanations. So whether you are here for a massage tutorial or just searching massage videos for relaxation, you are in the right place. I have listed all the best massage videos below. List of ASMR massage videos There are only a couple of ASMR channels that produce high quality massage vids. I have included their videos in this list and the rest are from talented ASMRtists, whose focus is on other types of ASMR videos. You can either use these as tutorials or just relax and enjoy. In this ASMR massage video you will see the instructor applying some cacao and oil on the skin, making art and finally wiping it off with a wet cloth. All with chocolate sounds accompanied by soft speaking. ASMR back massage – Massage is one of the best and oldest ways to help the body reduce tension. It is important to remember to take care of your body by allocating some of your precious time to treat your body with a relaxing massage. Watching this massage video can be both relaxing and beneficial to the viewer also. Oil massage – Massage techniques you see here are intended only for relaxation so it is not a deep tissue massage. The video is narrated with soft whispering. Head and scalp massage with lots of scrubbing sounds. Sit back and relax with this calm massage video Back Tickling, Tracing, Scratch, Brushing, Binaural Ear to Ear Whisper. Full asmrmassage. ASMR massage head. The traditional head massage is originally from India. ASMR scalp massage – Scalp massages can be very relaxing. It will help the circulation around your scalp and forehead area and release tension there. It’s one of my favorite massages to do to myself. Relaxing face and scalp massage Relaxing back massage with relaxing white noise This massage video focuses on arms and legs. Massages at home Massages are a great way to relax at home or to spice up your relationship. If you like watching these videos, you can mimic the masseuse’s motions and try them at home. All you need is a normal bed, some nice lightning and massage oil. The massage oils have different scents. I would recommend buying a pack of 3-5 different scented oils for variation. I like these Kama Sutra Massage Oils . Comments |
Moscow: A Russian oligarch is facing the biggest divorce payment in history after his wife demanded a £3.8 billion (Dh21.2 billion) settlement. Dmitry Rybolovlev, 43, a mining magnate ranked as Russia's 10th richest man, is locked in a bitter divorce case with Elena, his wife of 23 years and the mother of his two daughters. At stake are a £72 million motor yacht, moored off the Italian coast and a string of properties from London to Singapore, including a £62 million mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, bought from Donald Trump. Rybolovlev's assets also include an art collection stuffed with paintings by Picasso, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Monet. In court papers, Rybolovleva, also 43, has accused her husband of serial infidelity and of carousing on the couple's yacht with a number of other women. She is said to be "sick to the back teeth of his fondness for other women". The case, which is being heard at a Swiss court, has exposed the publicity-shy Rybolovlev's high-rolling lifestyle. Lawyers acting on behalf of Rybolovleva, who runs a cultural foundation near Geneva, have indicated that she is looking for assets and cash worth close to £3.8 billion, or half the wealth that Rybolovlev has accrued since they were married in 1987. Although Forbes estimated earlier this year that her husband was worth about £5.6 billion, she believes that he's worth a lot more and has hidden much of his wealth in offshore accounts. If her claim is successful, it would be the most expensive divorce in history, outstripping Rupert Murdoch's £1.1 billion divorce from Anna, his wife of 32 years. When Russia's richest man, Roman Abramovich, split from his wife in 2007, his wife Irina could have been entitled to £1 billion. |
we are trying to cook ham hocks and anasazi bean soup in our 16" dutch oven. It requires us to bring to a boil and then simmer 3-4 hours. We do not have a stock pot, so we thought we would use our dutch oven outside instead. Any advise. Thank you, Terry Ann Whitby @Terry - That should work just fine. Have all the heat underneath the D.O. and keep the lid on to simmer. You shouldn't need much heat underneath once it boils. I'm having to prepare dessert for 25 people and plan on using one 12 inch D.O for Peach Cobbler and two 10 inch D.O.'s for Monkey Bread. Would you recommend stacking since everything is being baked or should I just leave all three D.O.'s on the ground? @Chris - I think stacking DOs looks cool, and saves ground space, but is more of a bother. Having the DOs on the ground allows you to check and adjust each one individually. Hi DutchOvenDude, Have you noticed the quality of charcoal continues to go down? Briquettes burn too fast and too hot to do much beyond grilling burgers & dogs. I'm certain they're aerating the product--same volume, less weight. It makes slow cooking much more problematic. I now use less charcoal (lower temp) and must replenish throughout the cooking process--much more work! Excellent information! I wish there was a booklet that explained how many charcoal bricks to use and how to place them! I saw one once but have not been able to find it again! I would like to pass along to my Boy Scout Troop! As a new dutch oven user, I'm having a tough time trying to figure out how "375 for stewing" translates to an oven burner. It would be much easier to say "medium heat" or "simmer" versus "put your hand in the top and see how long you can leave it there." Do you have a handy tool to translate oven burner temperature instead of briquettes? Thanks! A common briquette is about 3.75 cu in or roughly 2 fluid oz. A Campbell soup can is 10.5 oz or about 5 briquettes. Teamed with the rule of 3 or 4 or that handy calculator I feel I can set temp pretty easily with my DO now. Thanks for the script! RE: Stewing at 350 Stewing is a multi-part process. Simmering on the stove top is the latter part. The initial step for stewing is a low and slow baking in a humid environment. Thus to stew meat you use a dutch oven to maintain a humid place inside your larger oven. Set the dial, place the meat in the DO and the DO inside the oven. The meat really should cool completely before adding the liquid ingredients, but there isn't always enough time for that. Stew meat should always be very well marbled/ love this info post - I am a beginner and the info is very helpful! Thanks. I want to do baked potatoes for Girls Camp. I have about 40 people going. Can I wrap the potatoes in foil and place them in the DO to cook. I have never done this before. So can you tell me if this will work or not. I will have about 5 to 6 DO so I won't have to stack the potatoes much. Thank you @JoLynn - Sure, you can do that. It's just like baking potatoes in your conventional oven at home. As a life long camper using dutch ovens and a Boy Scout leader for 27 years, plus a gourmet cook, I love using dutch ovens. However, a warning to those using anasazi beans for the first time, they cook quicker than most beans. They are useful for a quick meal instead of 2 1/2 hours for pinto. They do have a nice creamy taste and are good plain or in soups. I just inherited a DO & it looks like a bundt pan on the inside. Will this affect cooking times and temps? This is a great site with excellent recipes and information. The charcoal calculator is an awesome tool. For JoLynn, there are a lot of recipes for dutch oven loaded baked potatoes. You could alter the recipes a bit to suit different tastes. Also saves the trouble of having to cut open the potatoes, put in adds, etc. By already having that in the DO, you just serve and eat. Hope this helps. This is harder to do all this than to set the tempicture of my Dutch Oven. If my grandparents could do it ,certainly I can do it I would like to try pulled pork, but prefer to use wood instead of charcoal. And using a cast iron Dutch oven. Any suggestions or recommendations? Thanks Hi there DOD! Love this site, it's the best I found yet! Just bought a DO. made amazing chicken on my first outing using charcoal bricks. I would like to learn to use only wood as you do so, I am not reliant on carrying around or finding bricked test. do you have any tips, other than wood types, on using wood? thanks,T @Stacey and @Tony - There's nothing to using wood versus briquettes. You just make a fire, keep adding wood until there are enough coals, and then use those instead of briquettes. Using pieces of wood that are 1 to 2 inches in diameter creates good sized coals that break apart - too big and it's just a burning log, too small and the coals don't last. Keep the fire burning in an appropriate spot (like a fire pit) and scoop coals out to a cooking spot as needed. Make sure the wood is not rotting or insect infested. Really, I can't think of anything that makes using wood more challenging than briquettes. What's an example recipe that would use the lid of a 12" oven as a skillet? And, would you ever cook on the lid and the oven simultaneously? @Duncan Richardson - I have made pizza in an upside down Dutch oven. Using a lodge X type lid stand place tye upside down lid on it place pizza dough and toppings and then put the bottom pot over top the pizza. Been cooking dutch and open fire for about 30 years,,used to have lots of oak to cook on now I use mostly charcoal(Kingsford only),for the pots and oak for the open fire,,,you have a great site,,,,keep it up,,,,D P's forever,Randy Hi, Thank you for the information. I need to make cobbler for 18 people in a deep dish 12in DO and wonder what the difference in Cooking time will be. I am doubling the recipe and originally it says 20mins. @Amanda - Doubling the ingredients in the same size dutch oven means the food item will be very thick and will most likely not cook properly in the center. For stews, soups, and such it's ok, but not for baking and your cobblers would probably not turn out very well. It would be better to make two batches, either in two separate dutch ovens or one after the other. I'm new to baking with a DO, and have been told to preheat the DO for a pie. but I just read above that you don't preheat unless frying/searing meat. What do you think are the pro/con of preheating? @Kerry - That is a general statement above, but there are some instances when heating the DO first makes sense. The biggest problem is that if you put your DO on coals with nothing in it and then get sidetracked preparing ingredients, you might come back to a burned out, crusty DO. If you put a little oil or butter in, as in frying meat, then you'll hopefully notice the smoking oil before damage is done to the DO. But, when heating a DO, I don't leave it unattended. Heating a DO really only takes a couple minutes. As long as you are right there with it, it's fine to heat it first. Most cooking does not really need it, though. Some things, like cookies and breads turn out better when the DO is already warmed up. Two comments, On the July 10 question, as to when would you cook on the lid and the dutch pot, Flap jacks on the lid and Bacon in the pot. They came out great. Myself being a new user to DO, I have found that a cheap infrared thermometer from Harbor Freight has worked very well for me on judging the heat. I just "shoot" in the middle of the side, on the outside of the oven to gauge my overall temp. @FarmBoyRoy69 says: I have an infared thermometer that I use to shoot the temp of my oven. works great. costs about $50-75 but I use it for a lot of other things around the farm. the best way I found to count the heat Size of the oven, plus 3 on top .minus 3 under approx 340-350, , seems to work well up to a 14"Oven, remember preheat time & the charcoal will last approx 50 minutes, more heat needed 2 up 2 down will raise the temp approx 30' This is a very good page with lots of good recipes Love Dutch Oven cooking and your site. About to buy a large dutch oven to use either on the camp fire or on a camp stove top. 3 questions for you: When you use on the fire do you add coals to the lid as described for charcoal? Does stove top cooking work? Does doubling recipes work? (Thinking of desert for a large group) Thank you for all your great information! @Tracy - Yes, add coals to the lid. Stove top works for soups or frying where you just need heat underneath. Doubling recipes typically does not work because the D.O. would be too full. Using two D.O.s works better. Great site; it's obvious that you really do use DO's not just write about them. Great suggestion for rotating the pot/lid. I used to use 1/4 turns but 1/3 is probably more effective and using the legs as guides means not having to move the coals around. And, like I said, I'm lazy and look for the easiest way to do things - setting legs in the same spots means I don't have to think so hard. Some people place the feet on small, flat bricks and you kind of have to rotate in thirds if you do that. (It does help the coals get air and not smother) @David - Yes, I do. Actually, making Frito Casserole tonight - family loves it.And, like I said, I'm lazy and look for the easiest way to do things - setting legs in the same spots means I don't have to think so hard. Some people place the feet on small, flat bricks and you kind of have to rotate in thirds if you do that. (It does help the coals get air and not smother) I see you can use parchment paper...I guess that's good for baking...but, for juicier foods like stew or acidic sauces, can a slow cooker liner or cooking bag be used? Love your site...retired chef looking for a different exciting way to cook. Thanks Dude! Lorie @Lorie - The heat on a dutch oven is not a constant, even temperature like a slow cooker. A hot spot where a coal is close to the dutch oven will cause the metal to get hot enough to melt liners and bags. Paper liners do get browned and crumbly sometimes. I wouldn't want a plastic liner to melt onto the metal. I am a horrible cook in the kitchen but LOVE everything on your page- so helpful for me when we are out camping and I get to use all my fun cooking gear (Dutch Oven, etc.). I'm newer to D.O cooking, I purchased a 14" oven. I'm wondering what size D.O are most D.O recipes designed for? Should i double the cobbler recipe I found with the larger pot? @Josh - 12-inch DO is the size for all the recipes here, unless specified differently. For a 14-inch DO, use about 1/3 more ingredients than called for using a 12-inch DO. The worst problem to stabilized the temperature are the ashes that remains. Use a grill surface instead of plate, to segregate the ashes from the combustion area and keeps the briquettes alone. In the lids brush away the ashes before open it, every 45 minutes and replaced with new briquettes. Thanks for your site- My husband bought my DO as a gift I love it. Glad to see the info about the charcoal. When I first used it I had no idea how to know temp but I had oak burning in the campfire and used coals from it. The biscuits browned on bottom not on top-just flip them over and it was fine. Looking forward now to using charcoal. Thanks again I got a 10 in Dutch oven for Christmas and have started cooking with it some. My question is where your recipes are for 12 inch should I just use 1/3 less ingredients instead of 1/3 more like a 14 inch? Thanks for the help. @Brendan - Use between 2/3 and 3/4 of the amounts. It's actually about 70% of the volume in a 10-inch as compared to a 12-inch. Great resource and info. I have been D O cooking about 15 years but forget tips and methods since I don't cook outside every month. More often in the summer and fall.I forget tips and other info over the winter and spring. Thank you. Thank you for your web site it is very helpful; I have made many of your dishes with much success. :) What is the best method for removing ashes from the DO? Is there a special broom or tool you recommend? My plastic hand broom keeps getting melted lol. Thanks!! @Nathan - A straw handbroom works great since it is natural material and doesn't melt. Thank you, DutchOvenDude! I'm taking 14 Girl Scouts camping this weekend, and wanted to find out how to bake our monkey bread in the Dutch oven. My 10-year-old daughter and I found all of this info extremely helpful! Camping with Webelos this weekend. Lots of great Dutch oven insights to put to use! @Ed - I hope your gang had a good time and good food! GREAT Site with lots of good info that I will use for my Feast Weekend this weekend. . . you answered it already, but I just wanted to reiterate - do NOT just double a recipe and toss it in the DO expecting it to cook the same. My son did this to make a French Toast casserole for twice the amount of people. Unfortunately this only resulted in warm mush and a bunch of hungry campers. Hi , could you please make a pdf or printer version of this which we can download ? having a printed version when we don't have wifi and when we are first time Dutch Oven cookers ; it will be easy too .Better to undercook stuff and then cook them right than burn them !! Elizabeth, what I did was open the Windows Snipping Tool and took a screen shot of the recipe which creates a PNG you can save. Open the PNG and you can print it. If you print this page (or other DutchOvenDude pages) the comments, navigation, and ads are not printed - just the content. Hi there, We love outdoor dutch oven cooking, but I've always felt that I was using too many charcoal bricks. This article was exactly what I needed to refine my cooking process - Thank you very much, cb Is there any difference in charcoal use when using a "deep" dutch oven? I purchased a 12" DEEP oven, which holds the same amount as a 14" regular oven — 8 quarts of yummy goodness! If trying to maintain 350 degrees, should use 24 charcoals or 28? Much thanks in advance. Barbara @Barbara - I would use 24 for a 12 inch, deep or not. If you are cooking a mass of something, like bread, and use amounts for a 14 inch 8 quart dutch oven but cook it in a deep 12 inch, then it will not be as spread out as much as it should - possibly resulting in uncooked center or burnt outer. Things like stews, soup, or other liquid items don't matter. Like to read and refresh my memory. Don't cook often enough to remember all the tips. Lots of good advice for a novice or someone who has been cooking for awhile. Thanks Have cooked with dutch ovens for quite a while but have never cooked by burying it in a hole with coals on the bottom and top and then covering with dirt. Have heard about this way but would like some information on this method. @Terry - I've not buried d.o.s in holes. I've seen it done with large hunks of meat, but not in a d.o. I think any other food would need to be checked occasionally which isn't possible when it's buried. Besides, it takes a lot of work and time to dig the hole, make the fire, cook, and then uncover. When I was Scout Master of a High Adventure Troop, we carried in everything in our backpacks - no trailers. I designed a small light weight D.O. as follows: 2 - Pie pans 1 - Smaller Cake pan 4 - Metal nuts 3 - Alligator clips Place nuts in bottom of pie pan Place cake pan on nuts Place food in cake pan Place second pie pan on top Seal with Alligator clips Works well for individual meals. Each scout carried one. Follow up to my previous post. For recipes calling for top heating place a third inverted pie pan on top. Place coals there. @William - I have a similar lightweight oven that I made. Something like this have you ever heard of anyone ever using silicone bakeware inside a dutch oven, taking caution to not excede the 425` limit of silicone. Is it feasible to bake a buntd cake? Oct 04, 2015 - Terry Ann WhitbyOct 04, 2015 - Dutch Oven DudeOct 13, 2015 - ChrisOct 15, 2015 - Dutch Oven DudeOct 30, 2015 - KimiDec 11, 2015 - Frank W. 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The Texas School Board has managed to receive lots of attention here because of its regular attempts to undermine science education, either through approving standards that promote phony controversies in science or by attempting to get publishers to modify the contents of reasonable science textbooks. Once again, science content is the source of Texas controversy—but this time it's in the social studies books. And for once, the school board isn't at fault. The social studies books were submitted to the Texas School Board in April, and they will be the subject of public hearings tomorrow. In advance of those hearings, the National Center for Science Education arranged for an analysis of their content, finding that the content covering climate science is severely lacking. In three cases, the textbooks seem to confuse climate change and ozone depletion. One implies that it's the loss of the ozone layer that's leading to the planet's warming by letting more sunlight in. Two others confuse carbon dioxide emissions with those of ozone destroying chemicals. One states that “Fossil fuel emissions have also caused a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica,” while another argues "Scientists believe the Earth is absorbing more of the sun's harmful rays" as part of its coverage of science issues. The problematic phrasing of the second—which suggests that scientists simply believe stuff, rather than being convinced by the evidence—makes appearances in several texts. Other passages create a false balance. One states that "Scientists disagree about what is causing climate change," when very few of them, in fact, disagree about attributing the majority of warming to human influences. If those are confused and misleading, at least one of the textbooks presents a bizarre opinion that we've never seen voiced by an actual scientist: “Some scientists say it is natural for the Earth's temperature to be higher for a few years. They predict we'll have some cooler years and things will even out.” But the clear winner of the lot is a book from McGraw-Hill Education called World Cultures & Geography. Here, in an actual implementation of a "teach the controversy and let the students decide" approach to education, the book offers a "What do you think?" section with two contradictory opinions on whether humanity is driving global warming. The one in favor comes from the scientists of Working Group I (The Physical Science Basis) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The opposing opinion? That comes from two leaders of the Heartland Institute, a think tank that has received money from fossil fuel interests. This is the group that put up billboards that evoke guilt-by-association, noting that the Unabomber had mentioned climate change was a concern. (Somewhat ironically, the Heartland duo argue that it's all a natural cycle, much like the other textbook suggests.) It's clearly not the job of a social studies textbook to go into either how the scientific process produces reliable information or how the vast majority of the evidence has indicated that emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are warming our climate. But that doesn't excuse the authors of these texts from getting basic facts right, such as recognizing that the vast majority of scientists have concluded that humanity is warming the planet. (Or that climate change and ozone depletion are distinct issues.) At any rate, public school text books most certainly should not be taking the approach popularized on news talk shows, where think tank members are accorded equal footing with the experts who actually study a field. |
“The Doctor Is In” shirt based off the “You’re The Last of The Time Lords, Charlie Brown” comic is here! NEW HE PODCAST – Episode 83 “Ass Merkins” Please enjoy this comic sans any sort of commentary or post regarding a 20 million pound party thrown for some fancy pants inbreds, and paid for by people who generally don’t give a shit about them. I have been furiously sketching and shipping preordered HE Book 2’s. 15 more left today and there are about 65 left to go. I am making the sketches extra special since I know you guys have been waiting a long time. Sorry for the truncated post, but I am running right now to see The Decemberists play in Dallas. They are one of my favorite bands and I have never seen them live, so I am SUPER excitedpants. COMMENTERS: How else might The Doctor have interacted with the royal wedding? I bet there was a Cyberman attack brewing in the basement and he stopped it in the nick of time. |
The Book of Legendary Lands Umberto Eco MacLehose Press, 432pp, £35 Places that have never existed except in the human imagination may find an incongruous afterlife in the everyday world. Umberto Eco tells of how an attempt to commemorate the brownstone New York home of Nero Wolfe, Rex Stout’s orchid-loving fictional detective, runs up against the resistance of fact. Wolfe’s house cannot be identified because Stout “always talked of a brownstone at a certain number on West 35th Street, but in the course of his novels he mentioned at least ten different street numbers – and what is more, there are no brownstones on 35th Street”. Using Eco’s typology, a fiction has been transmuted into a legend: “Legendary lands and places are of various kinds and have only one characteristic in common: whether they depend on ancient legends whose origins are lost in the mists of time or whether they are in effect a modern invention, they have created flows of belief.” Because they involve the belief that they existed, exist or can be made to exist – whether in the past, the future or somewhere off the map – legendary places are illusions rather than fictions. The distinction may sometimes be blurry, as the example of Nero Wolfe’s house shows; but the difference is fundamental to this enriching and playfully erudite exploration of the fabulous lands that human beings have invented. Fictions we know to be neither true nor false and paradoxically this gives them a kind of absolute veracity that historical facts can never have: “The credulous believe that El Dorado and Lemuria exist or existed somewhere or other, but we all know that it is undeniably certain that Superman is Clark Kent and that Dr Watson was never Nero Wolfe’s right-hand man ... All the rest is open to debate.” Unfortunately, humans have an invincible need to believe in their fictions. So they turn them into legends, which they anxiously defend from doubt – even to the point of attacking and killing those who do not share them. Eco thinks it is not too difficult to explain why humankind is so drawn to legendary places: “It seems that every culture – because the world of everyday reality is cruel and hard to live in – dreams of a happy land to which men once belonged, and may one day return.” Nowadays everyone believes that the ability to envision alternate worlds is one of humankind’s most precious gifts, a view Eco seems to endorse when, at the end of his journey through legendary lands, he describes these visions as “a truthful part of the reality of our imagination”. Yet Eco highlights a darker side of these visions when he describes how the Nazis drew inspiration from legends of ancient peoples, variously situated in ultima Thule (“a land of fire and ice where the sun never set”), Atlantis and the polar regions, who spoke languages that were “racially pure”. Himmler was obsessed with ancient Nordic runes, while in an interview after the war the commander of the SS in Rome claimed that when Hitler ordered him to kidnap Pope Pius XII so he could be interned in Germany, he also ordered the Pope to take from the Vatican library “certain runic manuscripts that evidently had esoteric value for him”. The Nazi adoption of the swastika began with the Thule Society, a secret racist organisation founded in 1918. Legends of lost lands fed the ideology of Aryan supremacy. In 1907, Jörg Lanz founded the Order of the New Temple, preaching that “inferior races” should be subjected to castration, sterilisation, deportation to Madagascar and incineration – ideas, Eco notes, that “were later to be applied by the Nazis”. Legendary lands are idylls from which minorities, outsiders and other disturbing elements have been banished. When these fantasies of harmony enter politics, a process of exclusion is set in motion whose end point is mass murder and genocide. A metamorphosis of fiction into legend occurred when some Nazis took seriously a picture of the world presented by the Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton. In his novel The Coming Race (1871), Bulwer-Lytton tells of the “Vril-ya”, survivors from the destruction of Atlantis who possessed amazing powers as a result of being imbued with Vril, a type of cosmic energy, living in the hollow interior of earth. He intended the book as an exercise in fantasy literature but the founder of the Thule Society, who also founded a Vril Society, seems to have taken it more literally. Occultists in several countries read Bulwer-Lytton’s novel as a fictional rendition of events that may actually have happened and the legend was mixed in the stew of mad and bad ideas we now call Nazism. The process at work was something like that described in Jorge Luis Borges’s story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, in which an encyclopaedia of an imaginary world subverts and disrupts the world that has hitherto been real. The difference is that in Borges’s incomparable fable the secret society that devised the encyclopaedia knew it to be fiction, while 19th-century occultists and some 20th-century Nazis accepted Bulwer-Lytton’s fiction as a version of fact. Among the marks that Bulwer-Lytton’s Vril-ya left in the real world, the most lasting was reassuringly prosaic: the name given to Bovril, the meat extract invented in the 1870s. Among the legendary places human beings have dreamed up, those that Eco calls “the islands of utopia” have exercised a particular fascination in recent times. As he reminds us, “Etymologically speaking, utopia means non-place” – ou-topos, or no place. Thomas More, who coined the term in his book Utopia (composed in Latin and only translated in 1551 after More had been executed for treason in 1535), plays on an ambiguity in which the word also means a good or excellent place. Using a non-existent country to present an ideal model of government, More established a new literary genre, which included Étienne Cabet’s A Journey to Icaria (1840), in which a proto-communist society is envisioned, Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872, an anagram of “nowhere”) and William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890). Visions of ideal societies have recurred throughout history but such societies were nearly always placed in an irretrievable past. The paradise of milk and honey of which human beings dreamed – a land of perpetual peace and abundance – belonged in religion and mythology rather than history or science. Yet by the end of the 19th century, the fiction of an ideal society had been turned into a realisable human condition. Already in the second half of the 18th century, Rousseau was writing of an egalitarian society as if something of the kind had once existed – a move repeated by Marx and Engels in their theory of primitive communism, which they believed could be recreated at a higher level. More’s non-existent land was given a veneer of science and situated in a non-existent future. Having been a literary genre, utopia became a political legend. The Book of Legendary Lands covers a vast range of non-places, including a flat and a hollow earth, the Antipodes, the lands of Homer and the many versions of Cockaigne (where honey and bread fall from the sky and no one is rich or poor). A fascinating chapter deals with the far more recent invention of Rennes-le-Château, a French village near Carcassonne that has been hailed as a site of immense treasure and of a priory established by descendants of Jesus, who supposedly did not die on the cross but fled to France and began the Merovingian dynasty. Presented by Eco in light and witty prose, these legendary places are made more vivid by many well-chosen illustrations and historic texts. Yet this is far from being another coffee table book, however beautiful. As in much of his work, Eco’s theme is the slippage from fiction to illusion in the human mind. Rightly he sees this as a perennial tendency but it is one that has gathered momentum in modern times. So-called primitive cultures understood that history runs in cycles, with civilisations rising and falling much as the seasons come and go – a view of things echoed in Aristotle and the Roman historians. The rise of monotheism changed the picture, so that history came to be seen as an unfolding drama – a story with a beginning, an end and a redemptive meaning. Either way, no one believed that history could be governed by human will. It was fate, God or mere chaos that ruled human events. Legendary lands began to multiply when human beings started to believe they could shape the future. Non-places envisioned by writers in the past were turned into utopian projects. At the same time, literature became increasingly filled with visions of hellish lands. As Eco puts it, “Sometimes utopia has taken the form of dystopia, accounts of negative societies.” What counts as a dystopia, however, is partly a matter of taste. Aldous Huxley may have meant Brave New World (1932) as a warning but I suspect many people would find the kind of world he describes – genetically engineered and drug-medicated but also without violence, poverty or acute unhappiness – quite an attractive prospect. If the nightmarish society Huxley imagines is fortunately impossible, it is because it is supposed to be capable of renewing itself endlessly – a feature of utopias and one of the clearest signs of their unreality. Whether you think a vision of the future is utopian or not depends on how you view society at the present time. Given the ghastly record of utopian politics in the 20th century, bien-pensants of all stripes never tire of declaring that all they want is improvement. They assume that the advances of the past are now permanent and new ones can simply be added on. But if you think society today is like all others have been – deeply flawed and highly fragile – you will understand that improvement can’t be inherited in this way. Sooner or later, past advances are sure to be lost, as the societies that have inherited them decline and fail. As everyone understood until just a few hundred years ago, this is the normal course of history. No bien-pensant will admit this to be so. Indeed, many find the very idea of such a reversal difficult to comprehend. How could the advances that have produced the current level of civilisation – including themselves – be only a passing moment in the history of the species? Without realising the fact, these believers in improvement inhabit a legendary land – a place where what has been achieved in the past can be handed on into an indefinite future. The human impulse to dream up imaginary places and then believe them to be real, which Eco explores in this enchanting book, is as strong as it has ever been. John Gray is the lead book reviewer of the NS. His latest book, “The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths”, is published by Allen Lane (£18.99) |
Babies born prematurely face an increased risk of neurological and psychiatric problems that may be due to weakened connections in brain networks linked to attention, communication and the processing of emotions, new research shows. Studying brain scans from premature and full-term babies, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis zeroed in on differences in the brain that may underlie such problems. "The brain is particularly 'plastic' very early in life and potentially could be modified by early intervention," said principal investigator Cynthia Rogers, MD, assistant professor of child psychiatry. "We usually can't begin interventions until after symptoms develop, but what we're trying to do is develop objective measures of brain development in preemies that can indicate whether a child is likely to have later problems so that we can then intervene with extra support and therapy early on to try to improve outcomes." The findings are being presented Oct. 19 at Neuroscience 2015, the annual scientific meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. A news conference to discuss the study will be held at 10 a.m. ET at the meeting's headquarters at McCormick Place in Chicago. One of every nine infants in the United States is born early and, thus, with increased risk of cognitive difficulties, problems with motor skills, and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorders and anxiety. To get a better picture of how premature birth affects the brain, Rogers, along with senior author Christopher D. Smyser, MD, assistant professor of pediatric neurology, and colleagues in the Washington University Neonatal Development Research Lab used functional magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor brain imaging to compare 58 babies born at full term with 76 infants born at least 10 weeks early. Each full-term baby was scanned on his or her second or third day of life. Each premature baby, meanwhile, received a brain scan within a few days of his or her due date. The researchers found that some key brain networks -- those involved in attention, communication and emotion -- were weaker in premature infants, offering an explanation for why children born prematurely may have an elevated risk of psychiatric disorders. "We found significant differences in the white matter tracts and abnormalities in brain circuits in the infants born early, compared with those of infants born at full term," said Rogers, who treats patients at St. Louis Children's Hospital. White matter tracts in the brain are made of axons that connect brain regions to form networks. The researchers also found differences in preemies' resting-state brain networks, particularly in a pair of networks previously implicated in learning and developmental problems. Among these resting-state networks is the default mode network, which tends to be most active when people are least active. The greatest differences between full-term and preterm babies were seen in this network and in the frontoparietal network. Both encompass brain circuits associated with emotion and previously have been linked to ADHD and autism spectrum disorders. Rogers said these brain circuit abnormalities likely contribute to problems that materialize as the children get older. To see whether that's true, Rogers and her colleagues are continuing to follow the babies, having completed follow-up evaluations when the children reached age 2, and again on some at age 5. The researchers plan another series of brain scans in a few years as the original study participants reach the ages of 9 or 10. "We're analyzing the data we've already gathered, but we want to bring the children back when they are 9 or 10 and continue to follow their development," she said. "We want to look at the evolution of brain development in full-term versus preterm babies, and we want to know how that may affect who is impaired and who is not." That information may help doctors and scientists target abnormalities in the brains of preterm babies and, potentially, change the course of their development. ### This work was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Additional funding comes from the McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience, the Child Neurology Foundation, the Cerebral Palsy International Foundation and the Dana Foundation. Rogers C, Herzmann C, Smyser T, Shimony J, Ackerman J, Neil J, Smyser C. Impact of preterm birth on structural and functional connectivity in neonates. Abstract presented at Neuroscience 2015, Chicago, Oct. 19, 2015. Washington University School of Medicine's 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient-care institutions in the nation, currently ranked sixth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare. |
¿Te pasa que tiendes a “predecir” lo que va a pasar? Por lo que ya vas de antemano aterrorizado por la vida. Tienes la sensación de que cometerás un error en cualquier momento. Te describirías como una persona socialmente ansioso, por lo que es mejor estar en casa o con la mascota porque así no nos juzgan, ¿verdad? Todo esto es parte de la sintomatologia de la ansiedad. ¿Pero que es ansiedad? La ansiedad es ese primo incomodo que nadie invita a la fiesta pero llega, y que además no aportó para la comida pero igual comió. Se trata de algo propio de la condición humana porque se relaciona completamente con estar posicionado en el futuro. Esta ansiedad es sentirse nervioso, con palmas sudorosas, falta de aire y palpitaciones, puedes llegar a sufrir mareos y hasta temblores. Es uno de los padecimientos más comunes en los seres humanos, porque es miedo a lo desconocido. El problema de la ansiedad es que se da de forma cíclica y viciosa. Primero que nada porque surge del pensamiento que causa ansiedad, pensamientos inexistentes y previsorios. Entonces estos pensamientos se traducen en síntomas físicos, invaden el cuerpo. Y la consciencia de vivir dichos síntomas genera aun mas intranquilidad que evoluciona a síntomas más graves. ¿Te suena? Todos alguna vez nos hemos sentido así, pero si te pasa comúnmente, podrías padecer ansiedad. ¿Cómo se maneja? Lo iremos viendo en dos dimensiones. La primera dimensión es mas técnica. Como te decía, la ansiedad tiene un contenido cognitivo marcado, porque surge del pensamiento y bien dicen que hay que eliminar los problemas desde la raíz: por lo que deberás desmenuzar el pensamiento, ¿tiene sentido? ¿Ha pasado? ¿Cuáles son en realidad las posibilidades de que suceda?. Cuando hayas superado esta parte, se pasa a lo motriz, debido a que la ansiedad tiene efectos en el físico, la pregunta entonces será ¿qué te relaja? Podrías oír música, salir a caminar, tomar una siesta, disfrutar un café o hablar con tus amigas. Por ultimo, habría que encargarse de lo fisiológico-emocional, ¿qué sientes? ¿De dónde viene? Podrías naturalmente sentirte ansiosa en una situación social donde alguna vez fallaste y te sentiste humillada, y parece tonto pero el tenerlo consciente hace que puedas enfrentarlo. Todo eso es lo técnico, por lo que ahora hablaremos de mis consejos simples para manejar esa ansiedad que en ocasiones sientes: 1 Aprende a relajarte. Parecerá repetitivo, pero me encanta incluir a la meditación porque ha probado sus beneficios no solo físicos y emocionales, sino para padecimientos específicos. Para eso, te invito leer mis entradas anteriores donde me refiero a este tema. 2. Duerme lo necesario. Un cuerpo cansado es una entidad sin la capacidad de afrontar lo que se le presenta, entre mas descansada estés, menos divagara tu cabeza 3. Acude a lugares relajados. Ambientes como el escolar o laboral pueden ser fuentes de estrés y ansiedad, lamentablemente no siempre puedes huir de ellos así que trata de tener tus lugares para reflexión y relajación y ve a ellos cuando lo necesites. Puede ser hasta un lugar que crees durante un estado meditativo. 4. Organízate. La ansiedad, como te decía, tiene que ver con querer predecir lo que aun no pasa e implica en su mayoría no tener un orden claro donde haya margen para el error. 5. No seas fatalista. Nada tiene de malo ser realista, pero si oscilas en el fatalismo ojo porque esa es un paso claro hacia la ansiedad. Ve el lado positivo aun en lo que pareciera malo, todo es oportunidad de aprendizaje. 6. No te compliques mas la vida. Existe la ansiedad cuando le das espacio en tu vida, el tener un ritmo de vida demasiado acelerado o tener muchas cosas que hacer puede enviarte hacia ella. Así que simplifícate, prioriza tus actividades. 7. Aliméntate sanamente. ¿Tiendes a padecer ansiedad? Pues aliméntate para combatirla, añade omega 3, vitamina C, ácido fólico, vitamina E, triptofano. 8. Los otros no son tu. Mucha de la ansiedad social que se experimenta es por querer llenar el modelo que otros han impuesto, por lo que la respuesta correcta mas bien es entender que se trata de entidades diferenciadas que tienen ideas distintas. Tu eres tu, no vives para llenar las expectativas de otros ni para complacerlos, estas aquí para vivir tu vida según tus ideas. Repítelo. 9. Aprende a decir que no. Esta bien querer ser parte de un grupo, pero no cuando por complaciente te creas ansiedad y compromisos de mas, así que practica el no como respuesta. Se vale ser egoísta, porque si no te cuidas tu y piensas primero en ti, nadie lo hará por ti. 10. Permite que te ayuden. Creemos que vivimos en un mundo individualizado donde cada quien debe cuidarse, y si, pero también hay personas dispuestas a apoyar a otros. Busca ayuda si lo crees necesario, no todas las cosas las pueden conquistar tu solo. Recuerda que cada uno es dueño de su sentir, así que no dejes que la ansiedad sea un intruso en tu vida. Decide sacarla, desaparecerla, porque ese es el primer paso. Espero, como siempre, sus comentarios, quejas, dudas o aportaciones. Hasta la próxima! Anuncios |
Image: Kiselev Andrey Valerevich/Shutterstock 2016 was a powerful year for science and technology innovation. CRISPR gene editing technology became nearly a household name with its potential to affect humanity. SpaceX rockets landed themselves. And a baby was born with three parents. But what's in store for 2017? While some decry the developed world is falling apart due to changing political environments, science and technology innovation is likely to continue thriving. In fact, innovation is occurring so fast, I believe 2017 will be the year governments begin to consider forming new science, technology, and futurist agencies and organizations to better contend with the rapid change. The old ones are mired in bureaucracy, conservative religious ideology, and the past—unable to contend with issues like nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. Borrowing from The Wizard of Oz, "We're not in Kansas anymore." Let's take a look at the top five developments I anticipate for 2017: 1) Neural prosthetics—the idea we can benefit greatly by connecting our thoughts directly to the computing power of machines—will become the holy grail of human progress. Artificial intelligence and robotics are developing so quickly that in the next decade, I believe they'll take away approximately 25 million jobs in America from humans. In case you don't know how many jobs that is, that's about three times as many jobs as was lost during the recent Great Recession in the US. America should look at natural disasters and past wartime scenarios to get an idea of how disruptive AI and robotics will be to the economy. Already, the world's largest hedge fund is creating tech to replace its workers with machine intelligence in less than five years time. Don't expect Wall Street to have human workers in 10 years time, unless they can somehow upgrade themselves. That's where neural prosthetics comes in. It's a technology that can and might keep humans competitive indefinitely. These so-called brain readers and communicators will allow humans to utilize AI—in real time cognition—for its own intelligence. After all, what's better than a super smart human mind? A super smart human mind directly connected to a super smart artificial intelligence. Personally, I love this idea. And I have volunteered to be a test subject of implants and headsets that read brain waves. My senior thesis in college was on brains in a vat, and the idea of being a part of the Matrix fascinates me. The use of neural prosthetics will change human nature, but without it, I doubt humans can be competitive in the future to machine labor. Besides without human labor, there's no guarantee capitalism, as we know it, can survive. After all, capitalism is based on human labor, and if machines do everything, then it's likely to end up a very different economic system. Almost by default, to keep humans competitive in the labor force, we'll have to become transhuman—and utilize radical technology as intrinsic parts of our bodies. Otherwise, only the very rich will own robotics and AI companies, leaving the rest of us in a jobless dystopia. One company called Kernel, which launched this year with a 100 million dollars of the founders own money, tech visionary Bryan Johnson, is leading the way. I expect many more startups to join the fray in 2017. 2) President-elect Trump will hire an anti-red tape FDA chief that streamlines the Food and Drug Administration, making more drugs available to save lives and improve health. No matter how you look at it, the FDA has become a bureaucracy monster. Early in 2016, I wrote about this FDA problem in Motherboard: "On average, a new drug takes at least 10 years from creation to arrival in your cabinet in America. Additionally, Matthew Herper at Forbes reports that about $5 billion is spent on average developing a new drug. New medical devices—especially those life saving ones—take upwards of seven years to hit the market. For patients, some who are dying to get the drugs and devices, this may as well be an eternity. Nearly all of this has to do with the FDA and the bureaucratic labyrinth that exists to make sure medicine is safe in America. Now don't get me wrong, I also want safe medicine. And for the most part, the FDA does that. But sometimes there are more important things than safe medicine, especially if you're suffering from a debilitating and terminal disease. For example, many people believe access to medicine before they die is more important than whether that medicine is safe or not. And with such a long, laborious, and costly medical approval process in the US, many inventors and companies that would like to create new medicine don't do it because of the prohibitive procedure of bearing a product from conception to sale." One such choice for FDA Chief being floated around by media outlets is free market-minded Jim O'Neill, managing director for Mithril Capital, which was cofounded by Peter Thiel. Mr. O'Neill, who formerly worked in the George W. Bush administration, would be just the kind of person to cut the fat off the FDA and get America better drugs for better health. 3) Driverless cars will appear in all major American cities, challenging state and local laws. This month Uber was in my hometown of San Francisco, testing out its new driverless vehicles. After several reports of driverless cars running red lights, the California DMW quickly shut it down, sending it packing to Arizona where laws are more favorable. I found this sad, as did many techno-optimists. Being in driverless cars is one of the more visceral experiences people can have that make them understand the transhumanist age has indeed arrived. Driverless cars will be a philosophical turning point for many Americans, many who are not sure they really believe the future will be automation-ubiquitous. But like California, some governments—often led by luddite lobbyists and general fear—will resist, setting up the stage for US Congress to consider the matter. At some point, the Supreme Court may even have to get involved to okay such change. The facts are the transportation industry will be completely different animal within 10 years time. And 2017 will be the year local governments rise up to grapple with the coming driverless world. 4) Life Extension science will go mainstream with multiple science breakthroughs and new companies joining the quest for the "Fountain of Youth" 2016 was a banner year or the life extension industry. Even Mark Zuckerberg came out and established his own multi-billion dollar commitment with the goal of curing, preventing, or managing all human disease by the end of the century. The rise of CRISPR genetic editing further gave the movement new firepower as the possibility to rewrite our very own genetic code—including our hereditary shortcoming and the aging process—became not just possible, but plausible. Finally, events like the thousand-person life extension-oriented RAAD Festival, the Longevity Cookbook, and my own Immortality Bus made headlines as America wondered aloud what indefinite lifespans meant—and how it might affect humanity. Despite that, we still live in a country with strong deathist attitudes. Ironically, I suspect that life extension will become much more well known in a Republican controlled-government, as the conflict between religious values and science allowing us to live indefinitely ultimately reach a climax, one that will end up in civil strife and Congressional discussion. I've said this on my presidential campaign trail before: The more people that label transhumanism as something dangerous, the more popular it'll become. That's human nature for you. 5) Because many leaders in the incoming Trump Administration don't believe in climate change, scientists will change their focus from carbon footprint prevention to radical geoengineering tech to save the planet. As a journalist who's traveled extensively to write more than a dozen environmental stories—many for National Geographic—I've seen some of the Earth's destruction firsthand. I've witnessed the decimation of millions of hectares of Paraguay's forests. I've seen major oil spills in the ocean. And as a Communications Director at nonprofit WildAid I've searched for extremely endangered species in Southeast Asia—some that are simply no longer there. It's sad what we as a people have done to Planet Earth. But we will rebuild. And I believe we will make Earth more plentiful and beautiful than ever before. How? With radical technology that is right now being created in laboratories around the world. In just 10 years time, I believe we may have the ability through genetic editing to regrow rainforests at 5-10 times their normal speed of growth—giving us the power to replenish the damaged Amazon basin. We already have some of the Jurassic Park tech to bring back endangered species like the Siamese Crocodile in Cambodia, where just about 400 remain in the wild. And we already have ways to do basic engineering on our climate. Rain is not something sent from the "gods," but the precise mixture of certain weather and atmospheric conditions, as China is already experimenting with. We are learning how to make it. We can be the new generation of rain makers—or of endless sunny days (though presumably we'd want a mixture of both). Perhaps, the leading green tech will be nanotechnology—where we can literally remake the planet to our taste. This type of tech involves affecting and building matter and objects on a molecular level. In line with this tech are ways of consuming pollution or even garbage—the hope is we can create nanobots that eat the waste and pollution humans have made. Already, researchers are experimenting with fungi that eat plastic. Transhumanism is the key to making the Earth pristine again, not forcing people to make less of a carbon footprint. While I believe in respecting the Earth and not polluting it, the future of beautifying nature belongs more to technology and science than human restraint. That said, my techno-optimism knows that geoengineering presents risks too, as we would be in uncharted territory. We must be careful not to create unintended long term consequences of our environment we can't reverse. Despite challenges, I'm betting 2017 is the year scientists, technologists, engineers, and the public begin to openly accept geoengineering as a leading way to fulfill goals of the environmental movement. In the face of an American government and leadership that largely is not interested in climate change, the best way forward is likely through radical science and technology innovation. Zoltan Istvan is a futurist, author of The Transhumanist Wager, and was the 2016 US Presidential candidateof the Transhumanist Party. He writes an occasional columnfor Motherboard in which he ruminates on the future beyond human ability. |
Erasure coding, a new feature in HDFS, can reduce storage overhead by approximately 50% compared to replication while maintaining the same durability guarantees. This post explains how it works. HDFS by default replicates each block three times. Replication provides a simple and robust form of redundancy to shield against most failure scenarios. It also eases scheduling compute tasks on locally stored data blocks by providing multiple replicas of each block to choose from. However, replication is expensive: the default 3x replication scheme incurs a 200% overhead in storage space and other resources (e.g., network bandwidth when writing the data). For datasets with relatively low I/O activity, the additional block replicas are rarely accessed during normal operations, but still consume the same amount of storage space. Therefore, a natural improvement is to use erasure coding (EC) in place of replication, which uses far less storage space while still providing the same level of fault tolerance. Under typical configurations, EC reduces the storage cost by ~50% compared with 3x replication. Motivated by this substantial cost saving opportunity, engineers from Cloudera and Intel initiated and drove the HDFS-EC project under HDFS-7285 in collaboration with the broader Apache Hadoop community. HDFS-EC is currently targeted for release in Hadoop 3.0. In this post, we will describe the design of HDFS erasure coding. Our design accounts for the unique challenges of retrofitting EC support into an existing distributed storage system like HDFS, and incorporates insights by analyzing workload data from some of Cloudera’s largest production customers. We will discuss in detail how we applied EC to HDFS, changes made to the NameNode, DataNode, and the client read and write paths, as well as optimizations using Intel ISA-L to accelerate the encoding and decoding calculations. Finally, we will discuss work to come in future development phases, including support for different data layouts and advanced EC algorithms. Background EC and RAID When comparing different storage schemes, there are two important considerations: data durability (measured by the number of tolerated simultaneous failures) and storage efficiency (logical size divided by raw usage). Replication (like RAID-1, or current HDFS) is a simple and effective way of tolerating disk failures, at the cost of storage overhead. N-way replication can tolerate up to n-1 simultaneous failures with a storage efficiency of 1/n. For example, the three-way replication scheme typically used in HDFS tolerates up to two failures with a storage efficiency of one-third (alternatively, 200% overhead). Erasure coding (EC) is a branch of information theory which extends a message with redundant data for fault tolerance. An EC codec operates on units of uniformly-sized data termed cells. A codec can take as input a number of data cells and outputs a number of parity cells. This process is called encoding. Together, the data cells and parity cells are termed an erasure coding group. A lost cell can be reconstructed by computing over the remaining cells in the group; this process is called decoding. Table 1. XOR (exclusive-or) operations The simplest form of erasure coding is based on XOR (exclusive-or) operations, shown in Table 1. XOR operations are associative, meaning that X ⊕ Y ⊕ Z = (X ⊕ Y) ⊕ Z. This means that XOR can generate 1 parity bit from an arbitrary number of data bits. For example, 1 ⊕ 0 ⊕ 1 ⊕ 1 = 1. When the third bit is lost, it can be recovered by XORing the remaining data bits {1, 0, 1} and the parity bit 1. While XOR can take any number of data cells as input, it is very limited since it can only produce at most one parity cell. So, XOR encoding with group size n can tolerate up to 1 failure with an efficiency of n-1/n (n-1 data cells for a group of n total cells), but is insufficient for systems like HDFS which need to tolerate multiple failures. This limitation is addressed by Reed-Solomon (RS), another form of EC. RS uses sophisticated linear algebra operations to generate multiple parity cells, and thus can tolerate multiple failures per group. This makes it a common choice for production storage systems. RS is configurable with two parameters, k and m. As illustrated in Figure 1, RS(k,m) works by multiplying a vector of k data cells with a Generator Matrix (GT) to generate an extended codeword vector with k data cells and m parity cells. Storage failures can be recovered by multiplying the surviving cells in the codeword with the inverse of GT—as long as k out of (k + m) cells are available. (Rows in GT corresponding to failed units should be deleted before taking its inverse.) This means that the group can tolerate the failure of any m cells. Figure 1: Reed-Solomon encoding with four data units and two parity units (source) With Reed-Solomon, the user can flexibly adjust data durability and storage cost by choosing different values for k and m. The number of parity cells (m) determines the number of simultaneous storage failures that can be tolerated. The ratio of data cells to parity cells determines the storage efficiency: Typical RS configurations such as RS (6,3) and RS (10,4) provide superior data durability and superior storage efficiency compared to three-way replication, since they can tolerate up to three or four failures respectively and do so with <50% storage overhead. Table 2 compares the fault tolerance and storage efficiency of replication, XOR, and RS with typical parameters. Table 2: Comparison of replication, XOR, and RS in fault tolerance and storage efficiency Figure 2. RAID-5 and RAID-6 illustrations (source) EC has long been used in local storage systems, notably in the forms of RAID-5 and RAID-6. RAID-5 typically uses XOR encoding since it only needs to tolerate a single disk failure, while RAID-6 uses Reed-Solomon with two parity cells to tolerate up to two failures. The cell size is typically configurable, with the erasure coding groups formed by the cells at the same offset on each disk. EC in Distributed Storage Systems To manage potentially very large files, distributed storage systems usually divide files into fixed-size logical byte ranges called logical blocks. These logical blocks are then mapped to storage blocks on the cluster, which reflect the physical layout of data on the cluster. Figure 3. Illustration of EC with contiguous and striped layouts The simplest mapping between logical and storage blocks is a contiguous block layout, which maps each logical block one-to-one to a storage block. Reading a file with a contiguous block layout is as easy as reading each storage block linearly in sequence. In contrast, a striped block layout breaks a logical block into much smaller storage units, typically called cells, and writes repeated stripes of cells round robin across a set of storage blocks. Reading a file with a striped layout requires querying the set of storage blocks of a logical block, then reading stripes of cells from the set of storage blocks. This section discusses how EC can be supported on both block layouts. In principle, block layout (contiguous vs. striped) and redundancy form (replication vs. EC) are two orthogonal dimensions, resulting in four possible combinations. As surveyed in Figure 4, they are all in active use by major storage systems. Some systems, including Ceph and QFS, support configuring layout and/or redundancy on a per-directory or per-file basis. Figure 4. Spectrum of existing distributed storage systems with different block layouts and redundancy forms As discussed before, erasure coding is advantageous over replication in terms of storage efficiency. However, this comes at the cost of additional complexity and more expensive failure recovery. Along the block layout dimension, striping can provide better I/O throughput than a contiguous layout since it can utilize multiple spindles in parallel. However, the implication is that most reads will be remote, stressing the need for fast full-bisection networks. This approach contradicts the traditional MapReduce paradigm of scheduling for data locality, though it is still possible if applications read and write their data with awareness of the underlying cell and stripe sizes. Design and Implementation Choosing Block Layout For HDFS-EC, the foremost question was determining which block layout was most suitable. A contiguous layout is simpler to implement since the read and write path would still be very similar to the current system with replication. However, it is only suitable when files are quite large, since the full cost savings are only realized when writing full stripes. For instance, with RS (10,4) a stripe with only a single 128MB data block would still end up writing four 128MB parity blocks, for a storage overhead of 400% (worse than 3-way replication). A contiguous layout is also only suitable for offline or background EC, since otherwise a client would need to buffer GBs of data blocks to calculate parity. On the other hand, EC with striped layout can realize storage savings with both small and large files because the cell size is much smaller (typically 64KB or 1MB). This overall smaller group size also enables online EC where clients directly write erasure coded data, since only a few megabytes of buffering are needed to calculate parity information. One drawback is that some locality-sensitive workloads will have suboptimal performance when running on striped blocks. To better serve such workloads, a striped file can be converted to the contiguous layout, but that requires almost rewriting the entire file. Based on this analysis, file size is the key determining factor. If cluster usage is dominated by large files—meaning six or more 128MB blocks, enough for a full EC group under RS(6,3) scheme—then a contiguous layout is suitable since we can avoid the implementation issues of combining blocks from multiple small files into a single group. However, if cluster capacity is dominated by small files, then a striped layout is the more natural choice to achieve better cost savings and administration. Figure 5. File-size histograms from production clusters We conducted an empirical study of the HDFS file-size distribution at three of Cloudera’s largest customers. Details of the analysis can be found in our report, and Figure 5 summarizes the key findings. Most importantly, usage by small files (less than one group) varied between 36-97% of all cluster usage, indicating that handling small files is very important. Based on this finding, we dedicated the first phase of HDFS-EC to supporting EC with striped layout. Generalizing the Block Concept on NameNode A major portion of this project is dedicated to generalizing the fundamental Block concept to support data striping. The assumption of contiguous block layout is widely and deeply embedded in HDFS internal logic. To support the striped layout, the concept of a logical block had to be separated from that of a storage block. The former represents a logical byte range in a file, while the latter is the basic unit of data chunks stored on a DataNode. Figure 6 demonstrates the concepts of logical and storage blocks. In the example, the file /tmp/foo is logically divided into 13 striping cells (cell_0 through cell_12). Logical block 0 represents the logical byte range of cells 0~8, and logical block 1 represents cells 9~12. Cells 0, 3, 6 form a storage block, which will be stored as a single chunk of data on a DataNode. For conciseness the figure doesn’t include parity blocks/cells. A naive mechanism to support this generalization is for the HDFS NameNode to monitor each storage block in its blocks map, which maps from a block ID to the corresponding block, and then use another map to go from a logical block to its member storage blocks. However, this means small files will incur significant memory overhead on the NameNode because striping results in many more storage blocks than replication. To reduce this overhead we have introduced a new hierarchical block naming protocol. Currently HDFS allocates block IDs sequentially based on block creation time. This protocol instead divides each block ID into 2~3 sections, as illustrated in Figure 7. Each block ID starts with a flag indicating its layout (contiguous=0, striped=1). For striped blocks, the rest of the ID consists of two parts: the middle section with ID of the logical block and the tail section representing the index of a storage block in the logical block. This allows the NameNode to manage a logical block as a summary of its storage blocks. Storage block IDs can be mapped to their logical block by masking the index; this is required when the NameNode processes DataNode block reports. We have simulated the NameNode memory usage with EC based on the three HDFS cluster images in Figure 5. Results show that without the new hierarchical block naming protocol, striping would increase the size of NameNode blocks map by 250%~440%. With the protocol, striping only increases the NameNode blocks map by 21%~76%. More details of the memory overhead analysis can be found in this report. Figure 6. Logical and storage blocks Figure 7. Hierarchical block naming protocol Because of this design, a logical block appears as a group of internal storage blocks on NameNode. Table 3 summarizes terminologies related to striping and EC blocks. The default EC policy is to use 6 data blocks and 3 parity blocks, and a striping cell size of 64KB. These default values were selected based on typical cluster and file sizes. A wider EC schema, such as the (10,4) setting in Facebook’s EC implementation of HDFS-RAID, has better storage efficiency but leads to more expensive recovery, as well as placing a high requirement on the number of racks in the cluster. Table 3. Glossary of EC block concepts Supporting the logical block abstraction required updating many parts of the NameNode. As one example, HDFS attempts to replicate under-replicated blocks based on the risk of data loss. Previously, the algorithm simply considered the number of remaining replicas, but has been generalized to also incorporate information from the EC schema. Other key changes include updating quota, fsck, balancer, and so forth. Client Extensions The main I/O logic of the HDFS client is implemented in DFSInputStream and DFSOutputStream . We have extended them into DFSStripedInputStream and DFSStripedOutputStream with data striping and EC support. The basic principle behind the extensions is to allow the client node to work on multiple storage blocks in a logical block in parallel. When used together with HDFS encryption, these extensions operate on encrypted data—i.e., below the encryption layer. On the output/write path, DFSStripedOutputStream manages a set of data streamers, one for each DataNode storing an internal storage block in the current logical block. The streamers mostly work asynchronously. A coordinator takes charge of operations on the entire logical block, including ending the current logical block, allocating a new logical block, and so forth. On the input/read path, DFSStripedInputStream translates a requested logical byte range of data as ranges into internal storage blocks stored on DataNodes. It then issues read requests in parallel. Upon failures, it issues additional read requests for decoding. DataNode Extensions To avoid the chance of expensive foreground data reconstruction on the client side, it is critical to identify and fix DataNode failures in the background. As with replication, the NameNode is responsible for tracking missing blocks in an EC stripe and assigning recovery work to DataNodes. The recovery work on the DataNode is handled by a new ErasureCodingWorker (ECWorker) component, which does the following to reconstruct a missing EC block: Read the data from source nodes: A dedicated thread pool, initialized at ErasureCodingWorker start time, is used to read data blocks from different source nodes. Base on the EC schema, it schedules the read requests to all source targets and ensures only to read minimum required input blocks for reconstruction. Decode the data and generate the output data: Similar to EC client, ECWorker finishes decoding/encoding work by using the codec framework that will be introduced in the Erasure Codec Framework. Transfer the generated data blocks to target nodes: Once decoding is finished, it will encapsulate the output data to packets and send them to target DataNodes. Codec Calculation Framework Data encoding/decoding is very CPU intensive and can be a major overhead when using erasure coding. To mitigate this in HDFS-EC, we leverage Intel’s open-source Intelligent Storage Acceleration Library (Intel ISA-L), which accelerates EC-related linear algebra calculations by exploiting advanced hardware instruction sets like SSE, AVX, and AVX2. ISA-L supports all major operating systems, including Linux and Windows. In HDFS-EC we implemented the Reed-Solomon algorithm in two forms: one based on ISA-L and another in pure Java (suitable for systems without the required CPU models). We have compared the performance of these two implementations, as well as the coder from Facebook’s HDFS-RAID implementation. A (6,3) schema is used in all tests in this section. Figure 8 first shows results from an in-memory encoding/decoding micro benchmark. The ISA-L implementation outperforms the HDFS-EC Java implementation by more than 4x, and the Facebook HDFS-RAID coder by ~20x. Based on the results, we strongly recommend the ISA-L accelerated implementation for all production deployments. Figure 8. Encoding and decoding performance comparison We also compared end-to-end HDFS I/O performance with these different coders against HDFS’s default scheme of three-way replication. The tests were performed on a cluster with 11 nodes (1 NameNode, 9 DataNodes, 1 client node) interconnected with 10 GigE network. Figure 9 shows the throughput results of 1) client writing a 12GB file to HDFS; and 2) client reading a 12GB file from HDFS. In the reading tests we manually killed two DataNodes so the results include decoding overhead. As shown in Figure 9, in both sequential write and read and read benchmarks, throughput is greatly constrained by the pure Java coders (HDFS-RAID and our own implementation). The ISA-L implementation is much faster than the pure Java coders because of its excellent CPU efficiency. It also outperforms replication by 2-3x because the striped layout allows the client to perform I/O with multiple DataNodes in parallel, leveraging the aggregate bandwidth of their disk drives. We have also tested read performance without any DataNode failure: HDFS-EC is roughly 5x faster than three-way replication. Note that further performance gains should be possible. With an RS (6,3) layout, a striped layout should be able to achieve approximately a 6x improvement in I/O throughput, or approximately 1GB/s of throughput. The current performance does not meet the theoretical optimum partially because the striped layout spreads logically sequential I/O requests to multiple DataNodes, potentially degrading sequential I/O pattern on local disk drives. We plan to add more advanced prefetching and write buffering to the client as a future optimization. Figure 9. HDFS I/O performance comparison Another important optimization in ISA-L is support for incremental coding. This means applications do not have to wait for all source data before starting the coding process. This will potentially enable HDFS-EC to efficiently handle slow writing applications, as well as append operations. Future Work This article summarizes the first development phase for HDFS-EC. Many exciting extensions and optimizations have been identified and documented under HDFS-8031. A major follow-on task is to build a generic EC policy framework which allows system users to deploy and configure multiple coding schemas such as conventional Reed-Solomon, HitchHiker, LRC, and so forth. By abstracting and modularizing common codec logics, the framework will also enable users to easily develop new EC algorithms. We also plan to further optimize NameNode memory consumption and reduce data reconstruction latency. To save storage space on files belonging to locality-sensitive workloads, we have established HDFS-EC phase II (HDFS-8030) to support EC with contiguous block layout. Conclusion Erasure coding can reduce the storage overhead of HDFS by approximately 50% compared to replication while maintaining the same durability guarantees. This results in a substantial storage-cost savings in hardware expenditure, since users can now store twice as much data on the same amount of raw storage. Implementing HDFS-EC required making improvements across many parts of HDFS and the collaborative efforts of developers at Cloudera, Intel, and the rest of the Apache Hadoop community. The design of HDFS-EC results in minimal additional overhead on the NameNode through the use of a new hierarchical block naming protocol, and also leverages the optimized Reed-Solomon routines in Intel ISA-L for high-performance encoding and decoding of parity information. Note: Zhe Zhang and Weihua Jiang (Intel) will lead a technical session about HDFS-EC at Strata + Hadoop World NYC 2o15, on Weds. Sept 30 at 2:55pm. Andrew Wang (Hadoop PMC) and Zhe Zhang are Software Engineers at Cloudera. Kai Zheng and Uma Maheswara G. (Hadoop PMC) are Software Engineers at Intel. Vinayakumar B. (Hadoop PMC) is a Software Engineer at Huawei; previously, he worked at Intel. |
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has directed all the government officials not to entertain the requests of MLAs or ministers seeking free passes of high profile events or concerts. According to a source, Kejriwal has told his Principal Secretary to communicate with all the departments to put a blanket ban on demands of free passes of entertainment events in the city by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs and ministers. Kejriwal has also directed that if someone makes a request for free passes then department head should also inform the Chief Minister's office about the same. "Kejriwal also directed that if anyone wishes to attend any event or concert then they can buy the tickets of the programme and attend it," a senior officer said. Ministers and MLAs can only attend the event if they have bought the tickets or they are invited by the organiser for an event. In past, practice of demanding free passes for high profile events like IPL matches, plays and music concerts were common by the ministers and MLAs. Various departments used to arrange passes from the organisers in exchange of assuring hassle free events. The source confirmed that recently, a similar request was brought into the notice of Chief Minister who denied giving permission. Recently, a delegation of the Event and Entertainment Management Association (EEMA) met Chief Minister and highlighted the issue of corruption faced while organising an event. Delegation told Kejriwal, that they face corruption at several steps while conducting any event. To hold an event in Delhi, organisers have to give 20 to 30 per cent of passes free for VIP entry. Kejriwal assured that Delhi government doesn't want any passes for the events and even he will buy tickets if he has to attend any concert. |
It is not everyday that you get to see 1,000 Jaguar cars lined up in front of one of the UK’s most recognised and historic landmarks, but that just so happened to be the case last weekend. As part of their annual celebrations the Jaguar Enthusiasts Club (JEC) hosted the Royal Windsor Jaguar Festival, or Jagfest if you’ve been seeing the posts on social media. We were lucky enough to attend the event and get up close and personal with all of the cars in attendance and thought we’d share the experience with you too. While Her Majesty the Queen did not attend the event herself, the Royal atmosphere was alive and well during the day with thousands of classic car fans adorning the Long Walk in high spirits. The festivities were not limited to just the long walk, however, as a parade of 240 of Jaguar’s most significant models paraded around the town and through the castle. The parade featured some of Jaguar’s most significant cars and ran in chronological order, bar a few icons sprinkled into the mix to keep those watching on their toes, and was fronted by the iconic XJ13 prototype. A typically noisy start to a beautifully executed parade. Displayed in the parade and on show was a full representation of the marque’s great work and the dedication of its fans who turned out in force to celebrate Jags of all ages. We would like to thank the Jaguar Enthusiasts Club for a fantastic day and a chance to get up close and personal with some beautiful historic motorcars. If you want to take a look at some of the great work the JEC are doing then click HERE to reach their Facebook or hit the banner below to go to their website. That’s enough talk, though, let’s take a look at some of the best Jags from the day. |
1995 studio album by Guided by Voices Alien Lanes is the eighth full-length album by American lo-fi band Guided by Voices, released on April 4, 1995.[1] The album was GBV's first release with Matador Records. According to James Greer's book Guided by Voices: A Brief History: Twenty-One Years of Hunting Accidents in the Forests of Rock and Roll the advance for the record was close to a hundred thousand dollars, one of the more expensive deals in Matador's history. In contrast to the lucrative deal, Greer mentions that "The cost for recording Alien Lanes, if you leave out the beer, was about ten dollars." Reception [ edit ] In contemporary reviews, Matt Diehl of Rolling Stone described the album's music as "hooky rock that infuses songwriting smarts and a love of melody with a sometimes spiky, sometimes whimsical sense of experimentation".[6] Caroline Sullivan of The Guardian gave the album a positive review, stating that "Pollard's songs are gems that stay just this side of self-conscious eccentricity".[4] Sullivan noted the song's lengths, stating that they were "just enough time for Pollard to wheeze a few oblique lines and guitarist Tobin Sprout to trace out a raucous melody."[4] Robert Christgau of The Village Voice gave the album a "dud" rating.[10] Legacy [ edit ] Mark Deming of AllMusic described Alien Lanes as being similar to Bee Thousand, though without "as many obvious masterpieces" and "fewer obvious mistakes".[2] Pitchfork Media included Alien Lanes in their 'Top 100 Albums of the 1990s' polls, at No. 27.[11] Magnet named it the best album of 1995.[12] The album was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[13] Track listing [ edit ] All songs written by Robert Pollard unless otherwise noted. "A Salty Salute" (R. Pollard, Tobin Sprout) – 1:29 "Evil Speakers" – 0:58 "Watch Me Jumpstart" – 2:24 "They're Not Witches" (Greg Demos, Jim Pollard, R. Pollard) – 0:51 "As We Go Up, We Go Down" – 1:37 "(I Wanna Be a) Dumbcharger" – 1:13 "Game of Pricks" – 1:33 "The Ugly Vision" – 1:34 "A Good Flying Bird" (Sprout) – 1:07 "Cigarette Tricks" (Demos, J. Pollard, R. Pollard, Sprout) – 0:18 "Pimple Zoo" – 0:42 "Big Chief Chinese Restaurant" (J. Pollard, R. Pollard) – 0:56 "Closer You Are" – 1:56 "Auditorium" (R. Pollard, Sprout) – 1:02 "Motor Away" (R. Pollard, Sprout) – 2:06 "Hit" – 0:23 "My Valuable Hunting Knife" – 2:00 "Gold Hick" – 0:30 "King and Caroline" (R. Pollard, Sprout) – 1:36 "Striped White Jets" – 2:15 "Ex-Supermodel" (R. Pollard, Sprout) – 1:06 "Blimps Go 90" – 1:40 "Strawdogs" (Sprout) – 1:17 "Chicken Blows" – 2:21 "Little Whirl" (Sprout) – 1:46 "My Son Cool" – 1:41 "Always Crush Me" – 1:44 "Alright" – 2:56 Personnel [ edit ] Guided By Voices Robert Pollard - vocals, guitar, drums, percussion (track 17), keys (track 10) Tobin Sprout - vocals (tracks 9, 23, 25), guitar, bass, drums, percussion, piano (tracks 8, 27) Jim Pollard - bass Mitch Mitchell - guitar, bass Kevin Fennell - drums, percussion Jim Greer - bass, backing vocals (track 5) Greg Demos - bass, guitar (tracks 4, 12), violin (track 22) Cover versions [ edit ] Tracks from the album have been covered by various artists since its release. These include: |
DIGG THIS A core problem with government is that its managers believe that all reality will conform to their wishes if they issue the right orders, pass the right laws, and put the right people in charge. Reality resists this simple-minded approach; witness the debacle of the war on terror. Sadly, the same group that has managed that war is now managing another one: the war on recession. The tendency of these managers is to fabricate a view of cause and effect that conforms to what they would like to do. In the war on terror, we were told that the 9-11 attacks came about because shadowy bad guys from afar resent our freedom. If you believe that, the answer is more militarism and killing as a preventative measure. If, however, you realize that these attacks grew out of a desire for vengeance against American military policies, the implied policy solution looks radically different. So it is with the economy and the proper policy response to recession. If you believe that there is no good reason for an economic downturn other than a wave of animal spirits and flagging public confidence, your response is to inject optimism via the printing press. Surely, nothing makes folks happier, temporarily, than for them to find themselves awash in newly printed bills. This will lead to internal joy, consumer spending, and thus recovery. So believes the silly political class. Consider a different view of cause and effect. If the recession is a correction to an overly pumped economic boom, matters change. The recession, then, is not an aberration crying out for correction; it is itself the correction for the unsustainable economic bubble that preceded it. It should be welcomed in the same way we welcome a sober day after a drunken evening, or the detoxification of an addict after a period of addiction. But here again, government begins with a view of cause and effect that conforms to its institutional wishes. The recession is the problem, and the only problem, and it can be corrected through the usual means: issuing orders, passing laws, and giving more power to the right people. It gets worse. A recession contains at least one feature that turns out to be a saving grace for consumers who are hit with economic instability. In the midst of layoffs, tighter lending standards, and a riskier entrepreneurial environment, at least there are some sectors that have declining prices. At least in some areas, the purchasing power of money is rising. This makes life a bit easier. In times when there is very little good news, this is something to hang on to. But instead of seeing falling prices as the silver lining in the recessionary cloud, government (and the media as an echo) sees them as the cause of all other problems. So, wouldn’t you know, government sets out to stamp out falling prices on the theory that if this succeeds, the entire economy will rise like a phoenix from the ashes. This was the view during the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover’s and then FDR’s economic team was convinced that falling prices represented not a saving grace but a mortal economic sin. They spent more than ten years trying to make all prices rise. This, they believed, would cause recovery. They tried inflating the money supply. They tried wage and price floors, with vigilante enforcement, and even all-round industrial price planning. Finally, FDR tried the ultimate sand-in-your-face tactic: he went to war, and sent all those unemployed folks to foreign lands to kill and be killed, or to make-work jobs in the military-industrial complex, the CCC on steroids. What did we learn from that debacle? Let’s make it official: we have learned nothing from our experience during the Great Depression. Even now, people are under the impression that falling prices cause recessions. Here is proof from the lead to this NYT story: “With sinking home values continuing to drag down the economy…” Sorry, but it just isn’t true. Falling house prices are not good news for homeowners who believed that they had purchased an asset that would forever go up in price. But they are wonderful news for people who are shopping for homes. They can buy more for less, and avoid frightening levels of mortgage debt in the process. In macroeconomic terms, the housing bust is also a welcome event since it was precisely this sector that was wildly ballooned during the boom. Unsound investments (or consumption goods masquerading as investments) must be leveled out before economic recovery can begin. But it is really true that an economy can survive and thrive with falling prices. Falling computer prices didn’t drag down the economy in the 90s. Nor did falling clothing prices. And consider the Gilded Era, the most prosperous until that point in all of human history. The consumer price index fell from 47 in 1864 to 25 in 1900u2014which is nearly by half. That’s another way of saying that money became twice as valuable. And where was the calamity? Savings and pay packets zoomed in value. This period is called the second industrial revolution because of the astounding increases in productivity, population, and technology. Falling prices and sustainable economic expansion are positively related in all of economic history. If government and the Fed succeed in propping up home prices or preventing them from falling as much as they might otherwise, what will be the result? Homes will continue to be overexpensive and, on the margin, unwarranted purchases. This will not bring about economic recovery. This will force American consumers to spend more at precisely the time when they should be saving and getting out of debt. There are lessons here. One is to never permit the government to discern the relationship between cause and effect. Government invariably rules out the possibility that the structure of the public sector itself is to blame for the problem, whether that problem is terrorism or recession. Another lesson is that we need to shut down the machinery that allows government to enact its plans. If there continues to be a slice of the population that gets its kicks from issuing orders and trying to make the world conform to them, these people ought to be given a video-game console to play with. The game can be called Grand Theft Society. The stakes are too high to permit them to play their games using real wealth and real lives. Lew Rockwell Archives The Best of Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. |
AMC has announced that it is developing a companion series for The Walking Dead that is targeted to make it on air in 2015. Current Walking Dead executive producers Robert Kirkman (who also creatred the comic book on which the show is based), Gale Anne Hurd and David Alpert will also work on the new series. “After 10 years of writing the comic book series and being so close to the debut of our fourth, and in my opinion, best season of the TV series, I couldn’t be more thrilled about getting the chance to create a new corner of The Walking Dead universe,” said Kirkman in an announcement by AMC, who will also produce the series.. “The opportunity to make a show that isn’t tethered by the events of the comic book, and is truly a blank page, has set my creativity racing.” Charlie Collier, AMC’s president and general manager, added: “Building on the success of the most popular show on television for adults 18-49 is literally a no-brainer. We look forward to working with Robert, Gale and Dave again as we develop an entirely new story and cast of characters. It’s a big world and we can’t wait to give fans another unforgettable view of the zombie apocalypse.” No word yet on if the series will feature any characters and events from the comic book or introduce completely new story lines, as Kirkman’s quote seems to suggest. The Walking Dead returns with season 4 on October 13. |
The Dolphins are preparing for the possibility that they might need to play next season without safety Isa Abdul-Quddus, according to multiple industry sources. Abdul-Quddus sustained an injury in the neck/shoulder region in the team’s 15th game of the season at Buffalo and was placed on injured reserve. At this point, there’s uncertainty whether he will be able to play. He hasn’t given up hopes of playing and continues to go through medical tests. Swelling in the region has been among the issues that have caused concern, according to an associate of his. The Dolphins have a plan in place to cover themselves at safety in case Abdul-Quddus cannot play, but the details of that are not known. Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to the Miami Herald Abdul-Quddus, 27, who signed a three-year contract last offseason, played well and seemed the ideal fit alongside Reshad Jones before Jones’ season-ending injury. Pro Football Focus rated Abdul-Quddus 24th among all safeties last season. The need to cover themselves in case Abdul-Quddus cannot play means the Dolphins have yet another issue to address on defense in free agency and the draft. The Dolphins plan to add defensive linemen and linebackers in the offseason — both are priorities — and also might add another corner. Restricted free agent Michael Thomas, special teams ace Walt Aikens and developmental players Jordan Lucas and A.J. Hendy are the other safeties on the roster beyond Jones and Abdul-Quddus. Aikens didn’t play a defensive snap during the regular season last year. Bacarri Rambo, who appeared in nine games and started five, is a free agent. The Dolphins signed Rambo after Jones’ season-ending rotator cuff injury that limited Jones to six games last season. Jones said he will be ready well before the start of next season. Safety is a deep position in free agency, a group including Jacksonville’s John Cyprien, Dallas’ Barry Church, Indianapolis’ Mike Adams, San Diego’s Jahleel Addae, Arizona’s Tony Jefferson and D.J. Swearinger and Houston’s Quintin Demps. |
The 29-year-old Czech right-winger graciously took some time to sit down with Your Flames Authority George Johnson for a chat on all things Frolik and Flames. When partnered last season with Mikael Backlund and Matthew Tkachuk, the 3M Line, the Flames' most consistent trio, was born. Since arriving here two seasons ago, Michael Frolik has proven to be the consummate pro and a model of consistency. JOHNSON: Your hometown, Kladno, has churned out so many NHLers over the years. Jagr, Pivonka, Plekanec, Voracek, Pavelec. Gudas. And the list goes on. Obviously quite the nurturing ground for aspiring hockey players. FROLIK: A pretty cool place to grow up. My town is a hockey town, so many players are from there. I just remember my brother, six years older than me, going to watch his games and watching the pro team there. See the fans cheering, all the excitement. I wanted to be a part of that. So it was always my dream to play for that team, to one day play in the men's league. I never thought I could go this far. All our family was about hockey. My dad (Stanislav) played, too. Even if I had to skip school for hockey it was OK. So I don't know what would've happened if I hadn't made it in hockey. But it was like that. A lot of guys to look up to. JOHNSON: One above all? FROLIK: Obviously when I was little, Jagr. For sure. Everybody knew him. There wasn't much coverage in Czech of NHL when I was growing up but everybody knew him. I remember Jagr coming to one of our practices, I must've been six or seven, and skating with us in a Pittsburgh jersey. I'm sure I have some old pictures at home of that, somewhere. He was like a god to us. A cool moment. JOHNSON: You've now played alongside your childhood god on multiple occasions. A lot of times when we finally do meet and interact with our heroes they don't quite live up to expectations. FROLIK: Things change a little bit as you get older, of course. I've met him a few times with the national team over the years. You can see, yeah, that he's a little different. In a good way. What he does off the ice and in preparation for games is really interesting. You see what still drives him to play and play well. It's pretty amazing. It was fun to see what works for him. Definitely cool to be in the same room and play together on the national team. JOHNSON: You said your dad played. FROLIK: Until he was 30 years old in the second Czech league. It wasn't easy back in those days, nobody was leaving, so there were two pretty good leagues. After he retired, he got his own company. JOHNSON: Other sporting interests? FROLIK: I played soccer, too. We lived in a small village beside Kladno and I played for our team there. At 13, I chose hockey and decided to stick to that. I'm glad I did. JOHNSON: Was there a point in time when you began to believe a pro career was possible? FROLIK: I always played against older guys, one or two years older usually. So I was always ahead. My goal was to play for my hometown team. When you play for the national teams, 16, 17, you start to think maybe you could go somewhere with it as a career. JOHNSON: Did you mind being called Baby Jagr as your skills developed and your profile grew? FROLIK: Did I mind it? No. Everybody who's young in Czech and pretty good, they compare to Jagr. (Thomas) Hertl, recently. But we know there's only one Jagr. Nobody can get close to him. An unbelievable player. So I never took it seriously. Same hometown, my idol growing up so it was nice, actually. But I knew it was never going to be close. JOHNSON: Veering off topic a bit … best vacation spot. FROLIK: In Spain. A little island called Formentera, close to Ibiza. I've been there a couple of times. Or St. Bart's in the Caribbean. One of the nicest places I've ever seen. Beautiful. JOHNSON: Top of the to-go bucket list? FROLIK: I've never been to Hawaii … JOHNSON: C'mon. You've never been to Hawaii? Even I'VE been to Hawaii. FROLIK: (smiling) Yeah, but you're a lot older. But I think Hawaii's the next destination. JOHNSON: Favorite band. FROLIK: OI'm not really a one-band kinda guy. I kinda like what's current. But if I had to choose, a Czech rock band called Kabat. We always play them in the room when I'm with the national team. JOHNSON: Favorite non-hockey athletes? FROLIK: I like soccer. So (Lionel) Messi, obviously. I think he's great. So fun to watch. I enjoy watching Ronaldo, too. They're the best in the world right now. And Roger (Federer). You can't go wrong there. I had a chance to meet him for a little bit when I was at the tournament in Miami. Everybody kind of loves him, even the other players. Seems like such a class guy. And it's amazing what he's done, still doing - winning two Grand Slams this year. He's The Man, for sure. JOHNSON: Your girlfriend Diana Kobzanova is, like yourself, well known back home. FROLIK: She is. She was a host in radio for a long time, one of the top three radio stations in Czech. She had her own show. And she was a model before she went to radio. JOHNSON: And your daughter, Ella, will turn three in December. Best part of being a dad? FROLIK: You really find out what love means. Before, I thought I did. After she was born, everything changes. It's so nice, you come home and she runs to you, hugs you and gives you a kiss. There are no lessons to being a good parent but we're trying. Sometimes it's busy. There are ups and downs. But in the end, it's the best thing that's ever happened to me. JOHNSON: With Chicago, spring of 2013 and lifting the Stanley Cup at the TD Garden in Boston. Can you select one moment that has a special place in your mental scrapbook of that night? FROLIK: Definitely. When we were on the ice afterwards, celebrating, and my parents came down. My brother was there, too. They arrived the day before the game, in Boston. Just barely made it in time. And the ending of the game … crazy. A special moment when you have the Cup in your hands and you can take a picture with your family. I still get goosebumps when I look at that picture or even when I think about it. JOHNSON: Something you couldn't have envisioned when you were six or seven and Jagr showed up for a spin in his Penguins' jersey. FROLIK: No. Never. JOHNSON: International highlights over a lengthy list of appearances for your country? FROLIK: I'd say two. In junior, when I was 16, my first under-20 tournament. I think it's the last medal we've won as a Czech team under-20, in 2005. So it's been awhile. I remember scoring a nice goal, going through a bunch of guys. For men's, the bronze medal in Bratislava. We had one of the best teams ever for Czech, I'd say. Sweden just beat us in the semifinal. Everybody from NHL was there - Jagr, (Patrik) Elias. A pretty good lineup. The crowd was awesome. A great experience. JOHNSON: Your line, alongside Matthew Tkachuk and Mikael Backlund, was one of the revelations of the Flames' season. FROLIK: In this league, you can never really tell. But I think you have a pretty good idea quickly after you start playing together. You can feel the click right away. Chuckie, when they put him with Backs and I, you felt that click. Immediately. After the first game together, you're thinking 'This might work.' So you keep at it, trying to improve it. Every year's different. Things change. But I hope we can stay together and be better than last year. JOHNSON: Replicating that feeling you had in Boston, hoisting that jug-eared silver Cup again, as a Calgary Flame, would be smashing, no? FROLIK: When you get the taste of it, there's nothing to compare. I remember talking to Duncan Keith during the playoffs that year and he said: 'Hey, buddy. There's no better feeling in the world than this. Believe me.' And he was right. It's hard to win. One of the hardest (trophies) in all of sports. You win a round and you've got a tougher opponent coming. And that happens three times in a row, right? It's a long run. But that's what makes it so special. So to go all the way and beat everybody … the best feeling ever. |
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) lashed out at his Democratic colleagues for their all-night sit-in to attempt to force votes on gun control measures. Ryan said that a House committee voted on Democrats' proposal to ban gun purchases by people on the no-fly list and it failed. "That's a fact they didn't want to talk about," said Ryan, noting that the bill would never get 50 votes in the Senate, much less 60. Ryan said it's "well-known" that if Democrats want a bill to go before the House, then it needs 218 signatures. "They're not doing that. ... They're trying to get on TV," said Ryan. He then pointed out that Democrats are trying to raise campaign funds by drawing attention to the anti-gun protests. "If this isn't a political stunt, then why are they trying to raise money off of a tragedy?" he asked, holding up a solicitation sent out by Democrats. Ryan said "in this country we do not take away people's constitutional rights without due process," adding that the ACLU agrees with this point. He said the House will remain focused on "confronting radical Islamic extremism" and defeating terrorism. Watch his comments above. 'Radical Islam' Killed Them!: Gohmert Confronts Dems at Gun Control Sit-In Judge Nap: IT Specialist Is Hillary's 'Beast in the Night' in Email Probe NEW INFO: Cruz, Sessions Warn Obama of Refugee Terror Threat |
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