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This article originally appeared on VICE UK. If it's fair to say that Metal Gear Solid arrived on UK shores on a wave of hype back in early 1999—and it is—then it's also fair to say that Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, released three years later, arrived on a tsunami of the stuff. The original had come somewhat out of nowhere: a surprise that became a media darling that became a sales phenomenon, despite the stupid name. The second had no such luxury. Instead, Metal Gear Solid 2 was an event. It didn't have a release window, it had a fucking D-Day: a global countdown of breathless excitement and sophisticated marketing, backed by a games press ready to lap it all up and spew it back out. The recently-launched PlayStation 2 was (once again) being heralded as a new dawn for gaming, described not as a machine of primitive bleeps and bloops anymore but of "emotions" and "jacking in" to the fabled living, breathing worlds. MGS2 was the game that was going to show how far the medium had come. In terms of hype, expectation, and cultural awareness, it was to games as The Phantom Menace was to cinema. It was also nearly as shitty. On the morning of March 9, 2002, I sat dumbfounded as the credits rolled on MGS2, having played it for 14 straight hours after getting it on launch day. To say I was a fan of the series is an understatement. I was a fanboy. I loved MGS, with its grand mixture of stealth mechanics and Hollywood production values (the voice acting especially), its coherent and clever approach to making players feel like they were the driving force in an imaginative, intelligent big-budget thriller that felt like a movie and played like a dream. I'd never seen anything like it. Nobody had. I had the expensive Premium Package version: it came with dog tags and a T-shirt, which in keeping with games industry logic (and average player BMI) was a thousand times too large for any mammalian body. It also arrived a day later than my friends' normal copies, and I nearly cried. I completed all 300 stages in the spin-off (stop-gap, cash in, take your pick) MGS: VR Missions to play as the Cyborg Ninja for about a minute. I bought anything with the Metal Gear Solid brand on it. At a time when I should have perhaps been worrying more about exams, whether Adidas poppers were really still acceptable, and girls, I was theorizing about Solid Snake's next step. So imagine my thoughts when I found out exactly what Hideo Kojima, the game's creator and the hottest, smartest designer in the world, had been up to. Rather than elation, there came the various stages of grief, each crashing in sharper and faster than an HD Hindenburg documentary on 30x fast forward. What... the fuck... was that? Kojima had badly fallen out with his usual English translator between games, but why did it seem like David Icke had been drafted in to rewrite MGS, while obviously drunk and reading Orwell for Beginners? (Potential upside: would Kojima, now having obviously gone over the high side, soon appear on Wogan? And could I get tickets?) Definitely not Solid Snake Where was the bit where Solid Snake fought a Harrier jet on the George Washington Bridge, like I'd seen in one of those gorgeous trailers? In fact, where was Solid Snake in general? After spending two hours playing as him he was gone, relegated to a secondary role, so that players would foster a deeper affinity for his character while they controlled a rookie named Raiden. It was a bold move for a high-profile sequel with a huge established audience (and their expectations), but then The Empire Strikes Back would have been too if it were about a talking door handle that fell in love with C-3PO, and no one wanted that either. Raiden—and his section of the game—was so bland and forgettable that it was impossible not to wonder what had gone wrong. The hyper-detailed tanker that opened MGS2 featured magazines you could shred with gunfire, ice buckets you could knock over and watch the contents melt, and plasma screens you could fire at and watch bleed out. It was replaced with a boxy, beige oil rig dubbed Big Shell which was generally so forgettable that Konami had to include a map for you to get around it. It was a long way from Shadow Moses's cold intensity, an Alaskan backdrop that seemed as unique and threatening as its inhabitants. Both games follow near-identical structures (which is the point, it turns out), but whereas in MGS you were snaffling key cards and throttling guards to progress deeper into the bowels of an otherworldly nuclear storage base with a world-threatening mechanical minotaur in the middle, here you were constantly circling a featureless warehouse merely to get into another one, like a particularly grueling work experience shift at Amazon. The Big Shell's anodyne nature was made worse by a story that went from intriguing to baffling to The Matrix Reloaded in about six hours. Magical realism is Kojima's thing: the original game featured a character called Decoy Octopus. Decoy Octopus. But that made sense in context. None of MGS2 makes sense in any context beyond "hubris." Particularly galling is Raiden's girlfriend calling you up all the time to bemoan your relationship and demand a 20-minute chat about fuck all, squared, while you attempt to avert world-ending catastrophe. Oh, and she's called Rose, to your Jack, because Titanic must have been on at some point. A few hours of blindly browsing this is likely to reward you with a more coherent story than 'MGS2' It gets more nonsensical at an almost geometric rate. There are so many plot threads, in-jokes, call backs, double-crosses, and needless interruptions that it feels like the video game equivalent of pressing the "random article" feature on Wikipedia for 14 hours. In attempting to tell a postmodernist tale encompassing societal control, AIs, the role of the player and the currency of information, among a trillion other things, Kojima dropped the ball, the baby, and the fucking bomb. Sons of Liberty deliberately echoes the original for both narrative and tonal reasons, in every area apart from the rather crucial one of being interesting. By repeating the previous game's beats, Koj had to match or better its narrative and characters. Something to go alongside the intensity of this Sniper Wolf battle, or the invention of Psycho Mantis reading your memory card. We got a fat man on roller skates. Boss battles, staging, pacing: everything is a faded copy, a reflected glory. MGS's FOXHOUND appealed because they were unique, as were the places you fought them. Dead Cell is a covers band, and MGS2 is a tribute album filled with empty yet painfully over-earnest renditions of the original material. MGS2's final hours are the worst: a barely-interactive mess of Codec calls and cutscenes filled with nothing but mindless exposition, a descent into madness as Kojima, desperate to tie everything from Raiden's relationship with Rose to him being the adopted amnesiac son of the President of the United States (Snake's brother) who's now Dr. Octopus and is planning to bomb New York, to set it free, to Snake's other brother who is dead but is really still living in an arm grafted onto someone else but isn't really, goes totally fucking mental. It was, quite simply, a phenomenal let down, burying its incredible aesthetic and mechanical advances—holding up guards, multi-layered alert and escape phases, non-lethal play—under a load of drunk gibberish. The reviews weren't much better. Like me, members of the games press were obviously fans of Kojima. He was a genius, but he also made "adult" games: that is to say they weren't overtly childlike, as opposed to actually being mature. And in an industry yearning for acceptance as being something other than glorified toys, Kojima's sermons on nuclear proliferation, asymmetry theory, genes, memes, and so on seemed like a turning point. If Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto was the Steven Spielberg of games, then Kojima was both Wachowskis: a high concept king with a faux-intellectual edge pushing (some of) the boundaries of a medium. We wanted to love MGS2, and the coverage was rabid. One mag had a regular "MGS2 Watch" segment. Usually, there was nothing in it. But the reportage of nothing was something. MGS2 was a business, and it sold magazines. Back before the mass uptake of the internet, games mags were still king. To get the latest information, you had to pay. And I paid. I followed MGS around from cover to cover, place to place, like some demented early 2000s equivalent of a Bay City Rollers fan, there the second doors opened no matter the venue, believing all the hype. So when I read the reviews, I was elated. To see them now is like reading the babblings of children. When I finished the game then I wondered what they had been playing. One of the lone dissenting voices, Play (who I wrote for years later) gave it 78 percent, presumably killing whoever wrote it immediately after. Still: did the others really love it? Later, another thought: had the mags, like me in the hours after I'd finished it, tried to convince themselves it was actually brilliant? The pressure from fans and PRs—and, in some cases, editors—to score big games highly is real: it persists to this day. Was this a factor? Was I just an outlier? Or had we all been suckered by ingenious, sophisticated marketing and our own expectations? I was in denial. I tried to convince myself I'd missed something. It had to be good. When friends asked about it, I said it was great. Parts of it were amazing. Had I missed something? In reality, there was nothing to miss, but MGS2 was important. It was a personal watershed: the first time I'd really been let down by a series I loved, and also the first time I realized the terrifying ease on which hype warps both expectations and creative freedoms. Kojima, always keen to be seen as an auteur, joined fellow millennium-era zeitgeist busts such as George Lucas and the Wachowskis in a grand mistake: presuming we cared about the minutiae of universes expanding, bloating, at a geometric rate. We didn't. Our mistakes lay elsewhere. Kojima recovered with MGS3: Snake Eater, one of video gaming's finest hours. Its predecessor, however persists in my mind now as not a great game, or even a good one, but instead as an important reminder of the danger—and perniciousness—of the good ship hype, and all those who sail in it, whether they're fans, creators, or journalists. Follow Steve on Twitter. |
Bill and Hillary Clinton are coming under fire today after State Department documents showed that officials rubber-stamped the former president’s expansive and sometimes high-priced overseas speaking engagements while his wife was in charge of foreign policy with many of those nations. “These documents are a bombshell and show how the Clintons turned the State Department into a racket to line their own pockets,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. Judicial Watch and the Washington Examiner teamed to seek and publish those documents today. “How the Obama State Department waived hundreds of ethical conflicts that allowed the Clintons and their businesses to accept money from foreign entities and corporations seeking influence boggles the mind,” said Fitton, adding, “That former President Clinton trotted the globe collecting huge speaking fees while his wife presided over U.S. foreign policy is an outrage." The Examiner reported that the former president gave 215 speeches and earned $48 million while Hillary Clinton was at State. The joint investigation also found Foggy Bottom didn’t object to a single proposed speech. The duo’s income has become an issue in her burgeoning presidential campaign. They have a net worth of an estimated $80 million, with much of their bank account built on speech fees collected by Bill Clinton from venues around the world. Said Judicial Watch: Mr. Clinton’s speeches included appearances in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Central America, Europe, Turkey, Thailand, Taiwan, India and the Cayman Islands. Sponsors of the speeches included some of the world’s largest financial institutions — Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, American Express and others — as well as major players in technology, energy, health care and media. Other speech sponsors included a car dealership, casino groups, hotel operators, retailers, real estate brokers, a Panamanian air cargo company and a sushi restaurant. Editor's note: Judicial Watch is representing the Washington Examiner in the newspaper's federal lawsuit seeking access to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau records under FOIA. Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com. |
We end Simplicity Week with a bang, and the bang in question comes from you executing your friends, one after another. Skull & Roses is the game Matt’s reviewing here, although throughout the review he calls it Skulls and Roses, and actually, the new, gorgeous edition is just called “Skull”. But never mind our charming incompetence! This isn’t just one of the simplest games we’ve ever played. It’s one of our favourite games, period. And just to make sure your friends come over and get involved, Matt’s also going to teach you the single darkest secret known to SU&SD. How to “make” “pizza”. But what if I were to tell you that for the next Opener, we’re planning something even better? Ah, it’s a good time to be a board gamer. A very good time. |
Anyone in the market for an easy-to-carry folding knife that fits in the pocket — what the old-timers called a “pocketknife” — faces an embarrassment of riches. There are tens of thousands of models to choose from, from high-tech customs to the “knife” that costs $1 at Wal-Mart. In the past twenty years the market has come to be dominated by modern folders, or so-called “tactical” folders. These are knives that open with one hand, have a pocket clip, have a lock, and using cutting-edge steel. The best of these knives are truly great, but their aggressive appearance and large size can make them less welcomed in public and in your pocket. If you want to carry a knife, but are looking for something easier to carry or less threatening, you need to take a look at traditional folders. Traditional folders are what your grandpa carried, and they’re made by brands that your great grandpa was familiar with in many cases. I recently got bit by the traditional folder bug and I am glad I did. There are some truly excellent pieces of cutlery made in the traditional style. Five makers are pumping out excellent production traditional folders, and the custom world is giving birth to gems that refine patterns centuries old. Makers new and old If you are looking for something that is easy to carry, immaculately finished, and totally people-friendly you could go to the two stalwarts of the traditional folder market, Case and Queen, both of which have survived for close to a century now. Additionally AG Russell, though the professor emeritus of the knife world, is actually a newer maker, having started in the 50s and 60s. And two new companies, Great Eastern Cutlery (GEC) and Canal Street Cutlery, are making what is old new again with truly top-shelf designs and materials. But beware, as there are lot of junky traditional folders out there. Schrade sold their name and the stuff that goes out under their brand is of much lesser quality than it was a few decades ago. The same is true for Winchester. Buck’s stuff is still good, but not in the same league as the folks above. Careful research and consultation with traditional knife forum goers can save you money and heartache. The five brands mentioned above all have sterling reputations for exceptional quality. Even Case, the inhabitant of many a hardware store display case, has truly superlative fit and finish. The main drawback with these traditional knives is the steel. Case uses two steels in its production knives: Tru-Sharp and CV. Tru-Sharp steel is a whipping boy for many an Internet hater, but their other steel, CV (for Chrome Vanadium), is well liked. The other companies use very good steel generally — my recently purchased Queen came with mirror polished D2. That works for me. Case, AG Russell A couple of patterns have really caught my eye. I like the simplicity of form of a Copperhead, pictured above.The Copperhead is a knife with a single, clip-point blade and double bolsters (the metal caps on both ends). I also really, really like the Sway Back with its wharncliffe blade and positive handle angle. This is a small, refined, gentleman’s knife, something I imagine opening wax sealed bourbon bottles on Mississippi riverboats in the 1850s. There is nothing else that looks like a Sway Back. Case makes a line of very high end production knives in collaboration with perhaps the finest traditional knife maker on the planet — Tony Bose. Bose and his son Reese have books filled with orders, but if you can find one of their blades on the secondary market be prepared to be amazed. I have only seen one Bose in person and it had fit and finish that exceeded anything I have ever seen. They regularly sell for more than $1,000. Ron Lake’s designs are amazing blends of traditional and modern folders and they are, well, beyond most mere mortals. Lake’s more unusual or rare designs will regularly sell for more than $10,000. Finally there are the work knives. Case trademarked the term “Sodbuster” but Case, GEC, and AG Russell all make knives in this pattern — a very simple, non-threatening, drop-point blade with a synthetic handle, usually delrin or some other hard plastic. The handle shape is also very simple: a straight spine with a gentle curve to the interior. The only flourish is usually found around a large brass or gold-colored pivot. There are other patterns, but the bulk of a Congress or a Canoe pattern knife is something I just don’t like. The Swiss option There is still yet another option in the traditional folder market — the Victorinox Swiss Army Knife (SAK). After years in the wilderness of modern folders, I rediscovered the joys of a great SAK when I purchased on my very favorite blades of all time, the SAK Alox Cadet. The SAK Alox Cadet has the super soft, easy to sharpen steel that all Victorinox knives come with, but its main selling point is the thin, slim profile, highly durable handle scales, and the just-right tool complement. This SAK, like most traditional folders, comes out via a nail knick and it lacks a lock, but this is a very high-tech looking blade. How good is the Cadet? Take a gander at the EDC thread (login required) over on Usual Suspects Network, a forum that started by focusing on high-end production and custom knives, and in and amongst the kilobuck blades there are dozens and dozens of Cadets. The range of colored scales adds a bit of collectibility to an already awesome knife. The burnt orange and sapphire blue are particularly handsome. You have so many choices when it comes an EDC blade, but it does you well to look at what your grandpa carried. You might find that you don’t really need the one-hand opening or the pocket clip, and that you can get by with an incredibly handsome, jigged bone handled knife or the gear geek favorite SAK Alox Cadet. These knives are as pocket and people friendly as knives come. |
Any doubts about the political stakes for St. Louis County’s open 24th District state Senate seat should be squelched in the next few weeks, as many of the state’s biggest political players – politicians and donors -- are jumping in on behalf of their parties’ favored contenders in this fall's election. The bipartisan crowd also signals that the district, which takes in much of mid-county from Creve Coeur to Chesterfield, is deemed now to be politically swing turf up for grabs. Before redistricting in 2011, the 24th District was considered as leaning Democratic although the seat is now held by Republican John Lamping, who has opted against running for re-election. State Rep. Jill Schupp, D-Creve Coeur, has no primary opposition for her party’s nomination. Even so, she is unveiling on Tuesday a long bipartisan list of prominent backers for her bid for the seat. One of the three Republican contenders, John R. Ashcroft (son of the former governor, senator and U.S. attorney general, John C. Ashcroft ), is about to roll out an equally powerful team of supporters. They are expected to include wealthy financier Rex Sinquefield, the state’s top donor. Schupp’s endorsement list includes Dr. William Danforth, the former chancellor of Washington University and brother of retired Sen. John Danforth, a Republican. Her list also includes St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch and a bipartisan crowd of several of the district’s current and former mayors, including: Creve Coeur Mayor Barry Glantz, former Creve Coeur Mayor Harold Dielmann, Overland Mayor Michael Schneider, and Town and Country Alderman Linda Rallo, who oversaw Republican Cole McNary’s unsuccessful 2012 statewide bid for treasurer. Schupp also lists the public support of influential Democrats, such as veteran activist Joyce Aboussie, who generally prefers to stay behind the scenes; environmentalist Kay Drey; and A.J. Bockelman, executive director of PROMO, the state’s biggest LGBT group. U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo, also is slated to headline a fundraising event for Schupp later this month. Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster, a Democrat (and former Republican) who is running for governor in 2016, keynoted an event for Schupp last summer. As of the last campaign-finance reports, filed in April, Schupp had accumulated $316,326 in the bank -- more than three times that of her nearest GOP competitor. Top Republicans line up behind Ashcroft Those campaign reports showed that Republican Jack Spooner had amassed $104,574 in the bank, far more than his two Republican rivals -- Robb Hicks and Ashcroft. Even so, it appears that Ashcroft may have the momentum. Most of the state’s top Republicans, led by U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., will be in St. Louis in a couple weeks on behalf of Ashcroft, who is seeking his first political office. A campaign spokesman said that Blunt and U.S. Reps. Ann Wagner,R-Ballwin; Jason Smith, R-Salem; and Billy Long, R-Springfield, will headline an event for Ashcroft in an effort to generate enthusiasm and campaign dollars. Ashcroft's event is expected to be in the Clayton office of Pelopidas LLC, a consulting firm whose clients include Sinquefield. Some close to the Ashcroft campaign said that Sinquefield is expected to make a major donation soon to underscore GOP efforts to match Schupp's money-raising, which has been underway for more than a year. Former U.S. Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo. and a former governor, is a co-chair of Ashcroft's campaign. So is Bucky Bush, brother of former President George H. Bush and uncle of former President George W. Bush. Another key backer is state Auditor Tom Schweich. Such high-level support for Ashcroft appears aimed, in part, at sending a signal to his two Republican rivals that they won’t be getting any major GOP support or money in the future. Also seeking the 24th District seat is Libertarian Jim Higgins. This month's events, for both Ashcroft and Schupp, are expected to generate a lot more money. The June fundraising frenzy reflects the fact that the end of this month will mark the end of the most important money-raising period before the Aug. 5 primaries. The next campaign-finance reports are due July 15. |
China’s yuan suffered its biggest weekly loss on record today, as the central bank stepped up its intervention to weaken the currency ahead of a key government meeting next week which may be used as a platform to unveil more market reforms. Directed at squeezing out speculators betting on continued yuan gains, the central bank has set about actively weakening its currency since mid-last week by using a mix of weak daily fixings and asking its agent banks to buy dollars. The sudden slide in the yuan has added to global investor nervousness about China’s slowing economy, high levels of local government debt and an increasingly risky shadow banking system. The intervention reached a frenzied pitch today, with the onshore yuan falling by its daily one per cent limit against a midpoint fixing for the first time since July 2012. Some analysts expect more weakness in the coming days. Today, the yuan briefly weakened to 6.1808 per dollar in intraday trade, more than 0.8 per cent below the previous close despite the central bank fixing the yuan slightly stronger at 6.1214 per dollar. The Chinese currency closed at 6.1450 per dollar, down 0.27 per cent from the previous day’s close at 6.1284. It racked up its biggest-ever weekly loss of around 0.9 per cent and largest monthly loss of 1.4 per cent. “I think there is a good chance for spot yuan to break the 6.20 psychologically important level, and it can happen as early as next week,” said Kenix Lai, a senior market analyst at Bank of East Asia. “Only fast depreciation of the yuan can stamp out speculative money betting on yuan appreciation.” Stepped-up efforts by the People’s Bank of China to actively weaken the currency has led the yuan to a dramatic weakening cycle that many analysts believe may be a prelude to more foreign exchange market reforms including widening a daily trading band at an annual parliamentary meeting next week. While the yuan has been allowed to move in a 1 per cent trading band against the US dollar on either side of the central bank’s daily reference rate since April 2012, it has mostly hugged the stronger end of the band. As a relatively low-risk, high-yield currency that has gained more than 35 per cent against the dollar since it was revalued in 2005, the Chinese yuan has become a growing favourite among international investors. The yuan has firmed every year against the dollar since 2010 with recent gains coming amid very little volatility and despite widespread weakness among emerging market currencies, fuelling growth of speculative capital flows. Reuters |
related media assets (image or videos) available. Click to see the gallery. 2 related media assets (image or videos) available. Click to see the gallery. In a statement delivered in Parliament, the Transport Minister details the underlying reasons behind the tunnel flooding incident, along with the punishments meted out and ensuing steps taken by authorities. SINGAPORE: In the wake of SMRT’s tunnel flooding episode, the rail operator must assume responsibility and set things right because “it begins from the top”, said Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan on Tuesday (Nov 7). He was delivering a ministerial statement in Parliament on the issues which have embroiled the rail operator since last month, when heavy rains flooded a tunnel at Bishan MRT station, disabling the North-South Line for more than 20 hours. Advertisement An internal probe uncovered falsification of maintenance records and yesterday SMRT announced disciplinary action against six staff along with an inquiry into another seven at managerial level. These led to nearly a dozen Members of Parliament (MPs) tabling related questions for Mr Khaw to address. “The tunnel flooding incident was preventable. It should not have happened,” he reiterated. “It was not due to any inadequacy in the design of flood prevention measures. Neither was it due to an extraordinary storm. “It was due to poor maintenance and neglect of duties by the specific SMRT maintenance team responsible for the Bishan storm water sump pump system.” Advertisement Advertisement “NOT BEEN MAINTAINED FOR MONTHS” Mr Khaw explained how MRT tunnels are fully protected against flooding, primarily by the aforementioned sump pump system which collects storm water and pumps it out to external drains to prevent it from flowing into the tunnels. “The flood protection system at Bishan has served us well for the last 30 years and is designed with a huge buffer,” he said. “However, the lack of maintenance, including the failure to check that sub-systems were in working condition, has led to this incident.” Mr Khaw noted that all three pumps in the Bishan storm water sump pit were functional, along with each of the five float switches controlling the system. “Why these float switches failed to function normally on Oct 7 is a subject of the ongoing LTA investigation,” he said. Still, based on SMRT’s findings, “it appears that the Bishan flood protection system had not been maintained for many months”, said Mr Khaw. “Maintenance records were signed off and submitted for December last year, March this year and June this year. However, these records do not match any corresponding logs for track access and pump activation. No track access approvals were issued for preventive maintenance of the Bishan portal sump pumps on these three dates. Pump logs also showed that the pumps were not activated for these same dates, which were required as part of the maintenance procedures.” “In other words, the maintenance records may have been falsified.” "PUMPS AT KEMBANGAN, LAVENDER NOT SERVICEABLE" The maintenance team responsible for Bishan’s flood protection system comprises a manager, an engineering supervisor and four other crew members, Mr Khaw revealed. Three of these have been with SMRT for more than 20 years, with one employed for 28 years. Two were with SMRT for six and eight years. One had joined for a little over a year. All six have been suspended, Mr Khaw stated. Aside from Bishan, SMRT has found that two out of eight pumps at Kembangan and three out of four at Lavender - both tunnel portal locations - are not in serviceable condition. The rail operator is investigating the relevant teams, said Mr Khaw, but meanwhile the head of the Building and Facilities maintenance group, Vice-President Ng Tek Poo, has been suspended along with six other managerial staff. These include another vice-president, a chief engineer, a deputy director and three managers. Elsewhere in SMRT, the organisation has not found any evidence of falsification or wilful dereliction of duties in the core railway maintenance and engineering groups, said Mr Khaw. There will next be a series of audits by SMRT’s Readiness Inspection teams and regulator LTA will also separately assess SMRT’s findings. “While investigations by LTA will take a few more weeks to complete, the facts of the Oct 7 incident are not complicated, and the cause of the incident is clear. My ministry will therefore not be convening a Committee of Inquiry,” Mr Khaw announced. RECTIFICATIONS BY SMRT, LTA Mr Khaw then noted the immediate steps taken by SMRT and LTA: “First, SMRT has replaced all existing float switches at the Bishan storm water sump pit. Second, LTA has enhanced the resilience of the flood protection system by replacing the pumps at Bishan with heavier-duty ones capable of handling water with more sediments, and installing additional parallel float switches. “Third, a new radar-based sensor system has been added to independently monitor water levels in the storm water sump pit. Fourth, the sump pump control panel has been relocated away from the tracks, to enable easier manual access to pump operations if needed during operating hours.” “The removal of accumulated sludge, silt and debris in the sump pit is also in progress,” he added. “For the other portal systems at Kembangan, Lavender and Changi, SMRT has replaced or repaired all the non-serviceable pumps. The float switches were also replaced as a precaution.” Internally, SMRT has also reorganised the unit overseeing the maintenance of the flood protection system. Vice-president Ng Tek Poo has been replaced by existing employee Siu Yow Wee, a mechanical engineer. Further, the rail operator has upped the maintenance frequency for flood protection systems from quarterly to monthly, and is tightening its flood recovery plans and intends to strengthen coordination with the SCDF and PUB through regular exercises. Additional emergency equipment such as portable pumps are also being procured. SMRT has also invited a team of experts from Taipei Metro to do a thorough and independent review of its operations, to flush out any gaps and recommend improvements. “Last but not least, to develop and cultivate a stronger culture of accountability, ownership and open reporting across the whole organisation, SMRT is strengthening internal processes and staff support,” said Mr Khaw. FLOODING ASIDE He also emphasised that SMRT's larger mission was to raise train reliability - part of which involved renewal works on older lines. "In the short term, this may cause disruption to commuters," said Mr Khaw. "Metros elsewhere have the option to close down an entire line. We do not. Closing a major rail line like the North-South and East-West Lines to expedite these renewal works would certainly help us get to our destination sooner." "Until all these key ageing systems are replaced or renewed, the North-South and East-West Lines remain at risk of major disruptions, even with diligent maintenance." He pointed out that "limited engineering hours" were a significant obstacle to achieving renewal. "For the re-sleepering project, we shortened operating hours marginally on Sundays. That was a great help. Given the scale of outstanding asset replacement programmes, we will need many more extended engineering hours, perhaps even on weekdays." "Line closures will of course inconvenience commuters. I seek commuters’ understanding and patience should we decide to do so." “THIS IS OUR SINGAPORE WAY” Mr Khaw commended SMRT chairman Seah Moon Ming “for taking these steps and for emphasising that it is the responsibility of management to set the right culture of professionalism and excellence”. “It begins from the top,” he said. "If there is poor work culture, the CEO is responsible. You set the corporate culture ... This is our Singapore way.” Mr Khaw then promised that "flooding will not recur" before concluding by repeating that the incident should not have happened. “SMRT management has accepted full responsibility over this sad episode,” he said. “I have interacted with many SMRT staff ... They are committed to the goal, they are determined to regain the trust and confidence of our commuters. I know they are just as upset as me that some of their colleagues in charge of maintaining the tunnel portal sump pits have failed us. “I share their disappointment and also embarrassment, deeply. But we are determined to get back on our feet, back to our work, and soldier on.” Said Mr Khaw: “The heavy-lifting has to be done by SMRT. But they will not be alone. The resources of LTA, MOT will be there to support them. Other agencies, especially PUB, DSTA, DSO and GovTech, have offered their expertise to help us in this journey. “I am grateful for their assistance. This gives me the confidence that we can complete this job of raising train reliability … We just have to lean in, redouble our efforts and work smarter.” |
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is set to participate in a fundraiser in late May at the home of a longtime friend. (Charlie Neibergall/AP) An ambitious fundraising effort that aims to collect as much as $1 billion to support presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee is taking form, with plans to kick off an aggressive schedule of finance events in Los Angeles at the end of this month. Investor Thomas Barrack Jr., who did real estate business with Trump in the 1980s, is scheduled to host a campaign fundraiser honoring the candidate on May 25, according to multiple sources familiar with the plans. The gathering at Barrack's home is set to include a photo line, cocktails and dinner. A spokesman for Barrack declined to comment and referred questions about the event to the Trump campaign. A campaign aide confirmed the event was taking place. The dinner fundraiser is set to be the first of as many as 50 finance events that the campaign and party are racing to set up as they try to rapidly build out a structure to appeal to major donors. Trump's willingness to participate in the functions — after months of bashing other candidates for their ties to wealthy contributors — represents a dramatic shift in his posture. The Trump campaign, which has no apparatus to solicit contributions, is now finalizing plans with the RNC to participate in a joint fundraising committee that can accept large contributions. The so-called victory fund is expected to be led by a group of senior party financiers, including Ray Washburne, a former RNC finance chairman, according to several people familiar with the plans. Washburne left his RNC post last year to serve as finance chairman for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's presidential campaign. In a brief phone conversation, Washburne declined to comment. It remains unclear who else will be part of the effort, but GOP officials are working to bring together a group of heavyweight party fundraisers with strong ties to major Republican donors in hopes of winning over reluctant contributors. Trump faces an incredibly steep climb to raise the $1 billion that he has said is needed before November. While he has secured the backing of some prominent donors and fundraisers, including New York investor Anthony Scaramucci, many top GOP bundlers have been privately discussing their reservations about helping the real estate magnate raise funds. The angst is so acute that some have offered to quietly send over a list of the donors they know, but do not even want to be assigned a bundler number to get credit for the checks they bring in. [Trump turns to general election — and away from past positions] One exception is Barrack, a prominent real estate investor, founder and executive chairman of Colony Capital and a longtime Trump friend. He is not new to politics, having served as a deputy undersecretary at the Interior Department in President Ronald Reagan’s administration. In February, Barrack endorsed Trump, showering praise on his friend. “His mastery of financial, political and economic intellectual complexity combined with his charm and emotional intelligence when partnering with New York labor unions, governmental regulatory bodies, Wall Street lenders, sophisticated institutional global investors, demanding developers, global media and entertainment companies and hard-working employees, is a dynastic art form,” Barrack said in a statement issued by the Trump campaign. Barrack's event is expected to kick off a series of fundraisers for the campaign and the still-forming joint fundraising committee. Such a fund is one of the most lucrative ways for a presidential candidate to scoop up big donations for the fall general election battle. That’s because a victory fund can take contributions many magnitudes greater than the $2,700 an individual can give to a candidate’s campaign per election. The additional funds are routed into party coffers, which then use the money to finance national get-out-the-vote operations. In 2012, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney raised nearly $500 million through a joint fundraising agreement with the three national Republican party committees and four state parties, an effort that began in early April 2012. Because of all the committees involved, an individual donor could give nearly $135,000. By the end of June 2012, Romney Victory had already scooped up $140 million. Now, such joint fundraising efforts can solicit even larger amounts, thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission. That did away with an aggregate cap on how much individual donors can give to federal campaigns, parties and PACs in one year. In addition, a measure tucked into a 2014 appropriations bill allowed national parties to collect separate checks for convention, legal and building expenses. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has pursued this strategy most aggressively. In the fall, she set up a victory fund with the Democratic National Committee and a record 32 state committees that can accept up to $356,100 per donor per year. |
Researchers from the University of Bonn and from China have discovered a fossil fly larva with a spectacular sucking apparatus. Around 165 million years ago, a spectacular parasite was at home in the freshwater lakes of present-day Inner Mongolia (China): A fly larva with a thorax formed entirely like a sucking plate. With it, the animal could adhere to salamanders and suck their blood with its mouthparts formed like a sting. To date no insect is known that is equipped with a similar specialised design. The international scientific team is now presenting its findings in the journal eLIFE. The parasite, an elongate fly larva around two centimeters long, had undergone extreme changes over the course of evolution: The head is tiny in comparison to the body, tube-shaped with piercer-like mouthparts at the front. The mid-body (thorax) has been completely transformed underneath into a gigantic sucking plate; the hind-body (abdomen) has caterpillar-like legs. The international research team believes that this unusual animal is a parasite which lived in a landscape with volcanoes and lakes what is now northeastern China around 165 million years ago. In this fresh water habitat, the parasite crawled onto passing salamanders, attached itself with its sucking plate, and penetrated the thin skin of the amphibians in order to suck blood from them. "The parasite lived the life of Reilly," says Prof. Jes Rust from the Steinmann Institute for Geology, Mineralogy and Palaeontology of the University of Bonn. This is because there were many salamanders in the lakes, as fossil finds at the same location near Ningcheng in Inner Mongolia (China) have shown. "There scientists had also found around 300,000 diverse and exceptionally preserved fossil insects," reports the Chinese scientist Dr. Bo Wang, who is researching in palaeontology at the University of Bonn as a PostDoc with sponsorship provided by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The spectacular fly larva, which has received the scientific name of "Qiyia jurassica," however, was a quite unexpected find. "Qiyia" in Chinese means "bizarre"; "jurassica" refers to the Jurassic period to which the fossils belong. A fine-grained mudstone ensured the good state of preservation of the fossil For the international team of scientists from the University of Bonn, the Linyi University (China), the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology (China), the University of Kansas (USA) and the Natural History Museum in London (England), the insect larva is a spectacular find: "No insect exists today with a comparable body shape," says Dr Bo Wang. That the bizarre larva from the Jurassic has remained so well-preserved to the present day is partly due to the fine-grained mudstone in which the animals were embedded. "The finer the sediment, the better the details are reproduced in the fossils," explains Dr Torsten Wappler of the Steinmann-Institut of the University of Bonn. The conditions in the groundwater also prevented decomposition by bacteria. Astonishingly, no fossil fish are found in the freshwater lakes of this Jurassic epoch in China. "On the other hand, there are almost unlimited finds of fossilised salamanders, which were found by the thousand," says Dr Bo Wang. This unusual ecology could explain why the bizarre parasites survived in the lakes: fish are predators of fly larvae and usually hold them in check. "The extreme adaptations in the design of Qiyia jurassica show the extent to which organisms can specialise in the course of evolution," says Prof. Rust. As unpleasant as the parasites were for the salamanders, their deaths were not caused by the fly larvae. "A parasite only sometimes kills its host when it has achieved its goal, for example, reproduction or feeding ," Dr Wappler explains. If Qiyia jurassica had passed through the larval stage, it would have grown into an adult insect after completing metamorphosis. The scientists don't yet have enough information to speculate as to what the adult it would have looked like, and how it might have lived. |
Researchers develop WiKey technology that can sniff out keystrokes with 97.5 percent accuracy using an off-the-shelf Wi-Fi router and a $200 laptop. A group of academic researchers have figured out how to use off-the-shelf computer equipment and a standard Wi-Fi connection to sniff out keystrokes coming from someone typing on a keyboard nearby. The keystroke recognition technology, called WiKey, isn’t perfect, but is impressive with a reported 97.5 percent accuracy under a controlled environment. WiKey is similar to other types of motion and gesture detection technologies such as Intel’s RealSense. But what makes WiKey unique is that instead of recognizing hand gestures and body movement, it can pick up micro-movements as small as keystrokes. The research, conducted by Michigan State University and China’s Nanjing University, relies 100 percent on the 802.11n/ac Wi-Fi protocol and uses a TP-Link WR1043ND WiFi router ($43) and a Lenovo X200 laptop ($200). Using the above equipment, researchers were able to use the Wi-Fi signal’s Channel State Information values to detect movements within a given environment. Channel State Information (CSI) in the past has been used to detect macro movements such as the presence of someone in a room, or hand or arm movements. A variation of this technology called WiHear was even developed to detect movements of a mouth with the ability to detect nearly a dozen different syllables spoken by a test subject. But WiKey takes WiHear lip reading to an entirely new level by detecting finger, hand, and keyboard key movements. The researchers see the WiKey technology as a theoretic attack vector, but they also see WiKey with applications that go beyond attacks. “The techniques proposed in this paper can be used for several HCI (human computer interaction) applications. Examples include zoom-in, zoom-out, scrolling, sliding, and rotating gestures for operating personal computers, gesture recognition for gaming consoles, in-home gesture recognition for operating various household devices, and applications such as writing and drawing in the air,” wrote co-authors of the scientific research (PDF) Kamran Ali, Alex X. Liu, Wei Wang and Muhammad Shahzad. To capture keystrokes, or micro-movements, isn’t easy. Under a controlled environment, which doesn’t include a lot of movement such as people walking around or multiple people sitting close to one another using a laptop, researchers are able to detect even the slightest variations in wireless channel activities. Along with that data researchers also factor in wealth of information including signal strength, where the keyboard is located and what, where and why is interference occurring. In order to collect micro-movement data using Wi-Fi, researchers use the router’s MIMO channels. MIMO is a wireless term used to refer to a router’s ability to use multiple antennas between a sender (router) and receiver (WNIC) that pass more than one data signal simultaneously of the same radio channel. The researchers explain: “Each MIMO channel between each transmit-receive antenna pair of a transmitter and receiver comprises of multiple subcarriers. These WiFi devices continuously monitor the state of the wireless channel to effectively perform transmit power allocations and rate adaptations for each individual MIMO stream such that the available capacity of the wireless channel is maximally utilized. These devices quantify the state of the channel in terms of CSI values. The CSI values essentially characterize the Channel Frequency Response for each subcarrier between each transmit-receive antenna pair.” If that didn’t sound challenging enough, next researchers have to filter out radio noise (frequency changes) and environmental movements not related to typing. Then, even after noise is removed, there are other considerations researchers needed to factor such as the time it takes to press a key. By associating values based on the above culling of data researchers assigned number values to each keystroke (as seen below) based on individual typists. Under the most ideal controlled circumstances where test subjects were limited to type only one a half-dozen different sentences and typing one key every one second the researchers achieved 97.5 percent accuracy. That controlled environment also didn’t include real-world scenarios such as people walking around in the same room and typing on additional laptops. In what researchers call a real-world scenario WiKey drops to an average keystroke recognition accuracy of 77.5 percent. “WiKey requires many samples per key from each user which may be difficult to obtain in real life attack scenarios. Still, there exist ways through which an attacker can obtain the training data. For example, an attacker can start an online chat session with a person sitting near him and record CSI values while chatting with him,” researchers wrote. Researchers point out that this level of accuracy might be all that’s needed sniff out a password typed into a laptop. Other than being used in a potential attack, researchers hope WiKey can have a variety of non-attack applications such as gesture recognition. “We have shown that our technique works in controlled environments (using commodity hardware), and in future we plan to address the problem of mitigating the effects of more harsh wireless environments by building on our micro-gesture extraction and recognition techniques proposed in this paper,” the researchers wrote. |
Once upon a time there was a majestic hotel steeped in European tradition … “The Grand Budapest Hotel” starts out with a monument to the writer of this tale. She hangs her trinket on a statue along with many others, signify her affection. Then she opens his book. And off the packed Saturday night theater at Destiny USA took off into the fanciful world of Gustave H, concierge supreme, and Zero Moustafa, Lobby Boy loyal to the core. Directed by Wes Anderson and written by Anderson and inspired by the words of Stephan Zweig, this rambling comedy surfs centuries, ages and de-ages characters, and presents enough twists and turns to make the winding downhill skiing and luge escape scene seem tame. It’s quirky. And Ralph Fiennes as Gustave and newcomer Tony Revolori as Zero are perfect as odd fellows stuck together by work and kept together by an escapade so large it took 30 famous Hollywood cameos to finish the job. Fiennes is gumby-faced as the wrongly accused concierge dealing with prison, escape, and absolute antics to prove he did not murder the old woman who’d left him a priceless painting. Of course, that, he did steal. Fiennes proves to be a perfect leader and foil all in one, as Anderson has drawn this man in the midst of an outbreak of a World War that will change this European paradise forever. Revolori, meanwhile, is a master of deadpan, big eyes alight in an inner knowledge that his love for birthmarked baker Agatha (played by Saoirse Ronan, brightly) is good, right, and will prevail over anything Gustave can throw in their path. “Don’t flirt with her,” the Lobby Boy warns with a wagged finger at the notorious lover of many people and things. The plot is funny and the actors are humorous, a mix of slapstick and serious wordplay. Among the side players, Willem Dafoe stands out as a bad guy and Ed Norton as a good cop. Bill Murray’s on-screen turn as a member of the Crossed Keys is rather irascible, another in a long line of good and eccentric choices by the wily Anderson. The capacity crowd cheered at the end. They had gotten the sly and silly that had lured them there. Mark Bialczak is a veteran journalist who has lived in the Syracuse area since 1983. In early 2013, he was set free to write about whatever he wants. Click here to read Mark’s BLOG. comments |
When I'm talking I can hear my own voice. And with that feedback I can tell almost immediately when I’ve made an error. Like I just did. An error. Adults have this skill and so do older children. But we are not born with this ability. It develops between ages two and four. So finds a study in the journal Current Biology. Researchers had adults, four-year-olds, and two-year-olds say “bed” repeatedly. But scientists filtered the sound so that the subjects heard themselves through headphones pronouncing it as “bad.” Adults spontaneously compensated, and changed so that the word sounded correct to their own ears. They wound up saying “bid.” Four-year olds also adjusted their speech. But the two-year olds kept saying “bed” even though they kept hearing “bad.” So if two-year olds ignore their own vocal feedback, how do they learn to say words correctly? It’s not clear. But this study suggests that toddlers must have an alternative source of auditory feedback. Researchers think it might simply be that they rely on parents to monitor and correct their speech. Then again, with sentences like... (sound clip of a toddler), it's no surprise they aren’t paying attention to what they are hearing. —Christie Nicholson [The above text is a transcript of this podcast.] |
Breitbart, the site for all things alt-right, has seen its ads plummet a whopping 90 percent in the last three months, Digiday reports. The site had barely 26 advertisers in May, a sharp decline from a high of 242 in March, per MediaRadar findings. Other conservative sites, including Townhall, The Blaze and National Review, have also experienced declines, though less acute than Breitbart, according to Digiday. Breitbart has also seen its traffic take a hit. In April the site clocked in 10.8 million uniques, according to comScore, down 13 percent from a year ago (though Digiday notes other sites have seen declines after a peak following Donald Trump’s inauguration). Also Read: Milo Yiannopoulos Set to Self-Publish His Book Despite 'Liberal Media Machine' Sabotage The drop comes as consumer boycotts are gaining momentum. Sleeping Giants, a Twitter account started in November aiming “to stop racist and sexist media by stopping its ad dollars,” reports that 2,200 advertisers worldwide committed to stop advertising on Breitbart and other similar sites as of June 5. Ad tech companies including AppNexus and The Trade Desk have stopped sending ads to Breitbart, the report goes on to say. Breitbart’s own scandals may have also contributed to the site’s decline. Last February, the site’s most recognizable face, Milo Yiannopoulos, was ousted after making questionable statements about pedophilia. And more recently, writer Katie McHugh was fired after posting an inflammatory tweet about the London terror attack. Breitbart could not be reached for comment. Also Read: Breitbart Writer Fired Over Racist Tweets Turns to Crowdsourcing for Medical Bills According to the Digiday report, the 20 categories of Breitbart’s advertisers had shrunk to mostly conservative brands, including American Patriot Daily and Cosmohurtskids.com. But Breitbart is still seeing some tech holdout, including Taboola’s content recommendation engine and ads by Google appearing on its site. And tech giant Amazon is still stickling by Breitbart, despite intense pressure from employees and consumers to drop the site. The News follows a recent report by Vanity Fair which noted that Breitbart traffic has “cratered” since Trump’s inauguration. Also Read: Breitbart Writers Ordered to Be Less Critical of Jared Kushner (Report) Last year, Breitbart clocked an impressive 45 million unique monthly visitors and 2 billion pageviews, according to the site. But, as Digiday notes, even if all of Breitbart’s advertising decide to drop the site, its billionaire benefactor Robert Mercer may decide to continue supporting it. |
This 2011 photo shows the sub-basement room in Philadelphia where four malnourished mentally disabled adults, one chained to the boiler, were found locked inside. (Ron Cortes/Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) For 10 years, the group targeted mentally disabled people, luring those who were vulnerable and estranged from their families and locking them inside cabinets, basements and attics, according to prosecutors. The group’s ringleader, Linda Weston, persuaded the victims to allow her to become their representative and began collecting their disability benefits. The victims, prosecutors said, lived in the dark and in isolation, and were fed food laced with drugs to keep them sedated; they were brutally punished if they tried to escape. On Thursday, a federal judge sentenced Weston, 55, to life in prison — plus 80 years — for her role in the scheme. Linda Weston. (Philadelphia police via AP) “Your acts were unconscionable,” U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe told Weston, according to NBC News. “You are evil.” Of Weston’s sentence, Rufe said: “Ironically, in prison you will get three meals a day and medical and psychological services . . . something you didn’t do for your captives.” Weston had pleaded guilty in September to 196 counts, including murder in aid of racketeering, kidnapping and involuntary servitude. Thursday, she apologized in court. “I am sorry,” Weston said, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “I believe in God, and God knows what happened.” Rufe responded, “There are a lot of people in this courtroom who know what happened, too.” The case horrified Philadelphia, where in 2011 a landlord discovered four disabled adults locked inside a boiler room, NBC reported. Police rescued them from an apartment building in the Tacony neighborhood. The case was dubbed the “Tacony dungeon” case. The group ran the operation in three other states, prosecutors said. Two others — Eddie Wright and Weston’s daughter, Jean McIntosh — have also pleaded guilty; two others are awaiting trial. In all, six disabled adults and four children were victimized by Weston’s group. Some of the victims made impact statements in court. Other didn’t survive the ordeal. One female victim died in 2008 of bacterial meningitis and starvation in Virginia after being locked in a kitchen cabinet and attic for months, prosecutors said. Another victim died in 2005 after being kept in a basement with other captives; the victim was fed little food and barred from using the bathroom. “You are evil and done a bad job on me,” one of the victims, Drwin McLemire, said in court, NBC reported. “I’m trying to get over this and get this part behind me.” The plea Weston entered in September spared her from the death penalty. “Her decision was motivated largely by concern for her children, so there could be some sort of closure for them,” Weston attorney Patricia McKinney had said of her client’s guilty plea. McKinney told the Inquirer that Weston suffered abuse as a child, and she pushed back on depictions of her client as a monster. “Usually people are not born with a ‘666’ on their heads,” McKinney said earlier this year. “Nothing that Linda Weston did was not also done to her as a child.” That plea agreement paints a shocking portrait of abuse. Sometimes, victims were forced to live in attics naked. Mentally disabled adults were fed a diet of Ramen noodles, beans or stew just once a day. Several victims said they were forced to drink their own urine and eat human waste. Some were encouraged to have children in order to collect more benefits. Some victims were held for years, and the mentally disabled captives were moved around to avoid authorities, prosecutors said. The group stole more than $200,000 in Social Security benefits from victims, some of whom were forced into prostitution, prosecutors said. “When the individuals tried to escape, stole food or otherwise protested their treatment, Weston and others punished them by slapping, punching, kicking, stabbing, burning and hitting them with closed hands, belts, sticks, bats and hammers or other objects, including the butt of a pistol,” U.S. District Attorney Zane Memeger said in a statement. In court Thursday, one of the victims, Tamara Breeden, told Weston, “I forgive you.” But, she added: “I don’t like what you did to me. I hope you stay in jail for a long time.” READ MORE: Opinion: It’s illegal to torture prisoners and animals, but not disabled people Effects of child abuse and neglect, if untreated, can last a lifetime, study finds |
In the summer of 1978, the composer James Tenney was in Toronto preparing the premiere of his latest work, Harmonium #5, dedicated to his mentor, John Cage. The great minimalist composer was of course present for the event, stopping in during rehearsals where he might catch a glimpse of the score. At some point, when Tenney’s head was turned, Cage deposited among his notes a single sheet of paper, which sat undisturbed for 38 years. Discovered by Tenney’s widow Lauren Pratt in December, this page contained a modest, minimalist piece entitled All Sides of the Small Stone, for Erik Satie and (Secretly Given to Jim Tenney as a Koan). The composition finally got its world premiere last week at Redcat in downtown Los Angeles. “I think [Cage] composed it on the spot, put it in that pencil score of Jim’s and closed it up,” says Pratt of the discovery, which occurred while she and members of the Mexican ensemble Liminar were going through Tenney’s original scores. “I could recognize that hand. It looks like John Cage’s hand. We’d never seen [the score]. If Jim knew about it, he would tell people. But he never told me.” Violin and viola virtuoso Mark Menzies of CalArts arranged and conducted the piece. A harmonic line on piano, scaling up, back and repeating, bears a deliberate resemblance to the Satie classic Gymnopédie. Menzies had his pick of a number of former Cage associates and specialists on the faculty, including Michael Pisaro, Wolfgang von Schweinitz and Ulrich Krieger, to help arrive at a jazz ensemble of piano, vibes, bass and, in the harmonic line, three trumpets, two double basses and two flutes. The composition lasted about 10 minutes, but appears to be both open-ended and open to interpretation. Facebook Twitter Pinterest John Cage: inspired by the I Ching. Photograph: Erich Auerbach/Getty Images “I’m assuming that the small stone is a bit like a sense of a memento. There is something very circular through the harmonic line,” says Menzies, seated at a piano in his cramped office. “What’s also very important is the part of the title that says ‘Given Secretly to Jim Tenney as a Koan’. Koan, in this case, is a riddle or a mystery or contradiction. And the riddle here is what do you do with this harmonic little sequence, basically a scale? Do the other instruments play the scale? Is it atmospheric? Do they make melodies out of it? The very fact the solution is not cast in stone means that every performance is necessarily different.” Considered one of the most influential composers and music theorists of the 20th century, Cage studied briefly under Arnold Schoenberg in the 1930s before turning away from traditional western musical language to embrace a more open process incorporating chance as well as elements of Eastern philosophies. Experiments with the Chinese divination text the I Ching led to his landmark composition of 1952, 4’33”, in which he sat at the piano and refrained from playing for the duration of the time designated by the title. “He was able to create 4’33” because the I Ching kept giving him silence,” Menzies explains about the ancient process based on patterns of randomly tossed sticks or dice. “It’s not that he used chance to create his pieces. That’s what most people misunderstand. In those transactions with the I Ching, what matters is the question you ask. The way he had of preparing the composition, setting the framework and setting all the components in motion, the random outcome of the I Ching enabled him to see the opportunities in the materials he had set in motion.” Even as a teenager in Colorado, Tenney was a fan of Cage’s music, attending a 1947 performance of Sonatas and Interludes, another landmark piece, which uses prepared piano (which sees items inserted among the strings to reimagine part of the instrument as a percussion section). At the time, Tenney couldn’t have foreseen Cage would one day become his mentor and that he would himself record the piece in 2002, 10 years after the maestro’s death and only four years before his own in 2006. While there is no current plan for a studio recording of the piece, last week’s premiere was recorded for posterity. Of course, Cage provided no explicit instructions, but both Pratt and Menzies feel he wouldn’t have cared if a recording were made or not. While there may be others out there, the new piece is a rare find. “Inevitably, when you get something like this, you want the world to hear about it.” |
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Congress is quietly moving to tighten its security as many shun media coverage of the Democrat’s IT scandal. Politico reported that the U.S. House of Representatives is holding member-only “listening sessions” this week. These private meetings will cover solutions to possible cyber-security leaks of congressmen’s emails and other data, alleged theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment and much more. All of this is related to a group of IT administrators, mostly from Pakistan, who worked for more than 40 Democrats in the House, but who were tossed off the House computer network last February by Capitol Police. Imran Awan, his brothers, wife and the other members of this crew of House IT administrators worked as shared employees for various congressmen. They didn’t work for one of the six pre-approved IT contractors the House recommends. They were private contractors. It is unclear if any of them underwent background checks in order to obtain these positions. “The Committee on House Administration has been conducting an internal review on shared employees, specifically in the IT field. As a part of that process, the committee is hosting two identical bipartisan member-only listening sessions the week of November 13,” said committee spokeswoman Erin McCracken. Politico also downplayed the exposure the IT administrators represented by reporting: “Several hardline conservatives and right-wing bloggers have seized on conspiracy theories related to the investigation, claiming that Awan had access to Wasserman Schultz’s emails while she was chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee and that he, not Russia, was behind the leak of thousands of DNC emails during the election. The intelligence community, including the CIA and FBI, has said conclusively that Russia was behind the hacks as part of its widespread attempt to influence the 2016 election.” That’s an opinionated and declarative statement from a publication that should know this is a complex topic. Even The Nation, which is hardly staffed with “hardline conservatives” or “right-wing bloggers,” questioned the Russia narrative in 4,500-word article. (This isn’t shocking, as The Nation endorsed Bernie Sanders for president in 2016, not Hillary Clinton.) The story was so controversial The Nation later added an editor’s note: For more than 150 years, The Nation has been committed to fearless, independent journalism. We have a long history of seeking alternative views and taking unpopular stances. We believe it is important to challenge questionable conventional wisdom and to foster debate—not police it. Focusing on unreported or inadequately reported issues of major importance and raising questions that are not being asked have always been a central part of our work. This journalistic mission led The Nation to be troubled by the paucity of serious public scrutiny of the January 2017 intelligence-community assessment (ICA) on purported Russian interference in our 2016 presidential election, which reflects the judgment of the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA. That report concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally ordered the hacking of the DNC and the dissemination of e-mails from key staffers via WikiLeaks, in order to damage Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. This official intelligence assessment has since led to what some call “Russiagate,” with charges and investigations of alleged collusion with the Kremlin, and, in turn, to what is now a major American domestic political crisis and an increasingly perilous state of US-Russia relations. To this day, however, the intelligence agencies that released this assessment have failed to provide the American people with any actual evidence substantiating their claims about how the DNC material was obtained or by whom. Astonishingly and often overlooked, the authors of the declassified ICA themselves admit that their “judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. The Nation’s article mostly drew on a report prepared by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a group of former officers (mostly analysts) from the U.S. Intelligence Community. VIPS was formed in 2003 in response to how the Bush administration characterized U.S. national intelligence information as they marched toward the invasion of Iraq. In this recent report, however, VIPS argued that the theft of the DNC e-mails wasn’t a hack, but was an inside leak that didn’t involve Russia. “Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack. Of equal importance, the forensics show that the copying was performed on the East coast of the U.S. Thus far, mainstream media have ignored the findings of these independent studies…. VIPS member William Binney, a former Technical Director at the National Security Agency, and other senior NSA ‘alumni’ in VIPS attest to the professionalism of the independent forensic findings,” said the VIPS report.” This isn’t to say that Imran Awan or anyone from his crew had anything to do with the DNC leaks, but it should be noted that, despite what many in the media have pushed, their involvement can’t be ruled out either. Imran, after all, was Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s (D-FL) IT person at the time this data got out, which was also during the period when Rep. Wasserman Schultz was at the head of the DNC. The problem with so many in Congress and the media downplaying this case is doing so takes pressure off Congress to come clean about what happened as they reform a system that could effect anyone who contacts their congressman. Miniter is the author of Kill Big Brother, a cyber-thriller that shows how to keep our freedom in this digital age. |
The fiscal third quarter is usually the weakest for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL ). The main reason is that customers tend to hold off on purchases ahead of new product launches, especially for the iPhone. Source: Shutterstock But, things have not gone according to plan this year — that is, the company pulled off a standout performance in Q3, with beats on revenue, profit and iPhone sales. Consider that the 7.2% increase on the top-line was the highest rate in nearly two years. Really, the only glaring issue for the earnings report was Greater China. During the quarter, there was a 10% year-over-year drop in revenue to $8 billion. Note that AAPL continues to feel the competitive pressures from operators like Huawei, Xiaomi, BBK Electronics, Oppo and Vivo. Regardless, there still appears to be a spark in the momentum of the overall business, and this is likely to last through next year. In other words, AAPL stock still looks attractive. So, here are some of the takeaways from the company’s earnings report: Takeaway #1: Status of the iPhone 8 When it comes to AAPL, it’s all about the iPhone. But, this year, there have been fears that the new version could be delayed, primarily because of the complex nature of the device and difficulties procuring supplies of certain elements. But, the Q3 report from AAPL provides some much-needed comfort. Keep in mind that management provided guidance of $49 billion-$52 billion in revenue, compared to the consensus of $49.2 billion. At the high end of the range, the growth rate would be an impressive 11%. All in all, this is a good indication that AAPL is confident that there should be a timely rollout of the iPhone 8. Granted, it’s not clear what the device will include. But, given that this will be the 10-year anniversary, it’s a good bet that it will be notable. Rumors of features include Augmented Reality (AR), wireless charging, a 3D camera, facial recognition and edgeless displays. It also looks like the company will release updates for the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. Takeaway #2: Diversification Over the past few years, AAPL has been working hard to lessen its dependence on the iPhone, and the third quarter provides evidence that this is starting to show results. For example, even though global PC sales continue to lag, AAPL has nonetheless been able to find growth with its Mac line of computers and laptops. During the quarter, this segment saw revenue increase 6.7%. There was also a nice lift in the iPad category, with shipments up 15% to 11.42 million. AAPL is showing quite a bit of traction with businesses and schools. Although, the big highlight is the services business, which jumped by 22% to $7.3 billion. This is the catchall for things like app downloads, Apple Pay and Apple Music. For Wall Street, the services category is critical since the revenue is generally recurring, which offsets the cyclical nature of the iPhone business. Takeaway #3: Valuation On the news of the earnings report, Apple stock is up nearly 6% to $158. For the year, the return is 36%, with the market cap at a staggering $824 billion. In light of this, is there room for more gains? Or, could much of the good news already be baked in? For the most part, the valuation on AAPL stock still remains reasonable, with the forward price-to-earnings ratio at about 15x. By comparison, other mega tech operators such as Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL , NASDAQ: GOOG ), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB ) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT ) sport multiples of 20x or higher. So, if the growth continues for AAPL — which appears to be a good bet — than there is certainly more room on the upside for the shares. Tom Taulli runs the InvestorPlace blog IPO Playbook and operates PathwayTax.com, which provides year-round tax services. Follow him on Twitter at @ttaulli. As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. |
Turtle Excluder Device (TED) video One of the major threats to marine turtles in the marine environment is incidental capture, injury, and mortality during fishing operations. Of the many fishing methods used around the world, trawling is one of the more destructive and has been responsible for many turtles drowning after being trapped in a trawl net. To attempt to reduce the amount of turtles caught as bycatch by trawlers something called a Turtle Excluder Device (TED) was developed. Simply put, the TED is a metal grill placed in front of the trawl bag which allows small marine life (the intended catch) such as prawns to enter but blocks the passage of larger animals such as sea turtles. A flap beside the TED allows the animal to escape. In 2009 the Marine Research Foundation, in conjunction with Conservation International – Philippines, asked Scubazoo to film footage of their demonstration of the use of a TED. Filmed near Kota Kinabalu the following video shows the Turtle Excluder Device working as turtles fly down the trawl net and escape before entering the bag end. Special thanks to Hai Leng Enterprise sdn bhd. Update: On 4th April the Malaysian Fisheries Department launched a ‘Turtle and Turtle Excluder Device’ workshop in Kuala Terrengganu citing the need for fishermen to install TED’s on their trawlers. Prawn trawlers have been identified as one of the main causes for turtle deaths around the world. Shrimp importing countries such as the USA will only accept shrimp caught by countries which use the TED. Source – Bernama Preview and license Turtle Exclusion Device photos at Scubazoo’s stock photo library Contact us to inquire about licensing Turtle Exclusion Device Footage Watch more videos on Scubazoo’s YouTube Channel Article tags: Chris Tan, Conservation International, Kota Kinabalu, Marine Research Foundation, Scubazoo, TED, turtle excluder device, Turtle Exclusion Device, underwater filming « Previous Page |
Years of willful deception, the sands of time, and simple neglect all tend to cloud our perception of the reality of history. This is especially true for politically radioactive topics like 9/11. With the debate over 9/11 heating up as the 15th anniversary of that fateful day draws near, it’s a good time to get back up to speed. WhoWhatWhy believes there are essential pillars of the 9/11 debate that must be acknowledged by all parties before any healthy discussion of that paradigm-changing topic can take place. What follows is a refresher list of “known knowns” — select, broad aspects of 9/11 that are at present beyond reasonable doubt: • The money trail was never followed to its logical conclusion. The 9/11 Commission concluded the question of who funded the attacks “was of little practical significance.” • The Bush White House pushed back against any independent investigation into 9/11. • Once the White House agreed to an independent investigation, it provided a budget of $3 million, or 27% of the amount requested by 9/11 Commission co-chairs, Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton. • The Bush White House’s first choice to lead the 9/11 Commission was the highly controversial Henry Kissinger. Under intense pressure due to conflicts of interest, he resigned a month later. • The 9/11 Commission was compromised by having White House policy advisor Philip Zelikow as its executive director. He was alleged to have been in close contact with controversial White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove throughout the investigation. • The 9/11 Commission — the only independent investigation into the greatest terror attack in US history — began with a particularly benign mandate. The Preface to the report asserted: “Our aim has not been to assign individual blame,” but “to identify lessons learned.” • Saudi agents — some with ties to the White House — sent financial and logistical support to men who then provided that support to the hijackers. That’s according to the Congressional 2002 Joint Inquiry report, multiple media accounts and at least one FBI agent who worked on 9/11 cases. • Efforts to further investigate Saudi nationals were resisted by the White House and CIA over and over again. • Indian intelligence, corroborated by the FBI, showed a wire transfer of $100,000 from the phone of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Mahmud Ahmad to 9/11 lead hijacker Mohammed Atta in 2000. Ahmad (also reported as Ahmed) was in Washington D.C. on the morning of the attacks, meeting with US lawmakers. • The $100,000 transaction was never mentioned in the 9/11 Commission report — and Ahmad was never detained for questioning. • The “28 pages” from a redacted chapter of the 2002 Joint Inquiry report into the attacks, we were told, had “nothing to do with national security.” But national security was the very reason given for withholding them for 14 years by both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama White Houses. • Those 28 pages were partially released in July of 2016, but were still heavily redacted at crucial passages. • Multiple, overlapping war game drills created some level of confusion at the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) on the morning of the attacks. • Around noon on 9/11, air traffic controllers who handled some of the hijacked flights made a recording recalling their experiences of the events from a few hours earlier. The tape was later destroyed by an unidentified FAA supervisor without any transcripts taken. • In the days before 9/11, highly abnormal levels of put options — bets that a stock price will fall — were in place on major US stock markets for not only the airlines involved, but also for multiple financial giants that suffered significant losses in the attacks. • The SEC’s investigation into those irregularities gave little details for their benign conclusion that all trades were legitimate and curiously destroyed all their records. • Blaming Iraq was the talking point advanced by the Bush administration within days of the attacks. Later, multiple reports surfaced alleging that the neoconservatives who made up the hawkish Project for a New American Century think tank and the Bush Administration had been planning for (and discussing the need to publicly justify) an invasion of Iraq (and Afghanistan) long before 9/11. • Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. • Opium production (used to make heroin) in Afghanistan plummeted under Taliban rule in 2001, but then ballooned again when US forces retook control of the region. • In the late 90s, the US supported the Taliban and its agenda for a unified Afghanistan. Three years before 9/11, US oil giant Unocal pulled out of a long-negotiated deal to build natural gas and oil pipelines through the region, from the resource-rich Caspian basin south to the Indian Ocean. Skeptics insist the US government and Unocal suddenly saw the Taliban, which provided a base of operations for Al-Qaeda, as an obstacle to those pipeline plans. This is by no means a full list of inadequately-investigated facts surrounding 9/11. People loyal to the official narrative at first denied the veracity of many of these facts. Later, when the corroborations and confirmations became overwhelming, they shifted gears, insisting these “knowns” didn’t matter. We invite you to add your own bullet points in the Comments section below, though we encourage you to focus on what has been well-documented, i.e., what is available for all to verify on the public record. Related front page panorama photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from flag (Greg Williams / Flickr – CC BY-NC 2.0) Where else do you see journalism of this quality and value? Please help us do more. Make a tax-deductible contribution now. Our Comment Policy Keep it civilized, keep it relevant, keep it clear, keep it short. Please do not post links or promotional material. We reserve the right to edit and to delete comments where necessary. Related print |
Syria has said it welcomes Russia's proposal for the country to put its chemical weapons under international control, Reuters reports, quoting Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem. The reaction followed a statement by the Russian foreign minister on Monday that it had Syria to put its chemical weapons under international control if the move would avert military strikes. Sergey Lavrov said he had already conveyed the idea to Muallem during talks in Moscow and that Russia expected "a quick and, I hope, a positive answer". The statements brought a sharp response from the commander of the Free Syrian Army, the main Syrian rebel group, Selim Idriss, who accused both the Syrians and the Russians of "deceit". "We call for strikes and we warn the international community that this regime tells lies, and the liar [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is its teacher. Putin is the biggest liar," he said in an interview to Al Jazeera. For his part, Lavrov said as well as handing over the weapons and having them destroyed, Syria should also become a full member of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The statement was prompted by a comment made by John Kerry, US secretary of state, suggesting that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avoid a US strike by surrendering all his chemical weapons within a week. Further clarification from the State Department indicated that Kerry had been speaking rhetorically. Al Jazeera's Barnaby Phillips, reporting from Moscow, said the Russians were running with Kerry's remark. "He wasn't bringing a proposal to the press conference, he was responding to a question from a reporter," he said. "The Russians have picked this up and run with it. it is a new idea and it certainly throws the cards up in the air somewhat." The developments came during a day of increasing rhetoric surrounding the debate of military intervention, with Russia warning that an attack on Syria risked causing an "outburst of terrorism" in the region at a time when Assad government was still ready for talks to end the conflict. "All the more, politicians share our estimation that a military solution will lead to an outburst of terrorism both in Syria and in neighbouring countries," Lavrov said on Monday after talks with Muallem. "The possibility for a political solution remains," he said, emphasising that Muallem had assured him at the talks in Moscow that Syria was still "ready for peace talks". UN chief's response Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, said he too welcomed Russia's proposals and called for the creation of UN-supervised zones in Syria where chemical weapons could be destroyed. "I am considering urging the Security Council to demand the immediate transfer of Syria's chemical weapons and chemical precursor stocks to places inside Syria where they can be safely stored and destroyed," Ban said, adding that the step would overcome the Security Council's "embarrassing paralysis". Al Jazeera's Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Washington DC, said the latest development could change the dynamics of the situation. "An alternative that had zero support up until now, was one that would allow Assad to sign an international treaty and give him 45 days to do so, saying he won’t use chemical weapons," she said. "This hasn’t been introduced in the Senate but this new plan [introduced by Russia] could draw support for it. The bottom line is - the dynamics have changed." Russia and the US agreed in May to organise a peace conference in the Swiss city of Geneva, bringing all sides to the negotiating table but it has not happened amid continued US-Russian tensions. "We are truly ready to take part in the Geneva conference without preconditions," Moallem said in Moscow, but he warned that the position would change if military strikes took place. Shortly after the Moscow press conference ended, Kerry and his British counterpart William Hague reiterated that Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack at the centre of the current crisis. |
For the last several years, politicians around here—Mayor Emanuel included—have been enthusiastically championing charter schools as the next great thing in public education. But if a north-side charter school gets its way, the pols might have to drop the "public" part of the appellation. According to the operators of the Chicago Math and Science Academy, a school in Rogers Park, charter schools are not really public schools so much as "public charters." Huh? "The important point is that we're public charters but we're not governmental," said Salim Ucan, the founding principal of CMSA. It is, to be sure, a subtle distinction, which they've been advancing in a legal case that has forestalled a union-organizing effort by teachers. Coincidentally, of course. Before I get into the details, let me break for a refresher on this whole charter school thing. As you may recall from my last primer, charters are basically publicly financed schools with private school privileges. They can limit enrollment to any kid whose parent fills out an application, as opposed to regular neighborhood schools that have to admit everyone who walks through the doors. They reserve the right to toss out, for one reason or another, miscreants, malcontents, slow learners, low achievers, and assorted other knuckleheads (but enough about my high school career). These students then get sent down the street to the regular public school, which has no choice but to take them. And—last but certainly not least—charter schools can hire and fire teachers without worrying about contract niceties like due process. In Chicago, creating more charters is what's known as school reform. CMSA was welcomed to town eight years ago by 49th Ward alderman Joe Moore, who now rather sheepishly admits he didn't see things working out this way. "It's really quite sad," he said. "The school had done a lot of good work over the years." It's an affiliate of an Ohio-based operation called Concept Schools, which was created by Taner Ertekin and Ehat Ercanli, a couple of Turkish-born educators who claimed to have produced extraordinary results with inner-city kids in Cleveland through a highly regimented curriculum heavy on math and science. They opened CMSA in 2004 in the old St. Jerome's school on Morse Avenue. Five years later, with enrollment rising, the school wanted to move to a bigger site, the old Mega Mall building at 7212 N. Clark. The relocation required a zoning change. Their consultant on that move was Christopher Hill, a former commissioner of the city's planning department under Mayor Daley. Their zoning lawyer was Gery Chico, Mayor Daley's former chief of staff and school board head (and the guy who came in second in February's mayoral election). Chico's wife, Sunny Chico, was on their board (she's not anymore). Moore's enthusiastic endorsement pretty much guaranteed they got their zoning change. "I went and visited the school—it was a disciplined, nurturing environment," said Moore. "So I went to bat for them on getting the building and the zoning change. I thought they were good for education in my ward." By 2010 the school's enrollment had grown to roughly 600 students and they employed about 35 teachers and nine staff. The school had developed a good reputation for educating working-class black and Hispanic kids from the neighborhood. "Things were going well," Moore said. "And then things changed." Part of the problem, he said, is that Ucan, the founding principal, was promoted to Concept's vice president. "Salim's a good communicator," Moore said. "After he left, it's gotten worse." In particular, the school officials have not taken kindly to an effort by teachers to form a union. "We felt our voices weren't being heard when it came to decision-making issues," said Jen Collins, a teacher at the school. In addition, the teachers wanted salaries governed by a single school-wide contract as opposed to contracts with individual teachers. "You'd like a sense of what you expect to be making in ten years," said Nicole Bardoulas, another teacher in the school. Under state law, if more than 50 percent of a public school's workforce signs union cards, the school is required to recognize the union as a bargaining agent and begin negotiating a contract, a process overseen by the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board. And more than half of the CMSA teachers and staff did so in June 2010, asking that they be represented by the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff. But school officials didn't recognize the union. Moore says he met with school officials and pleaded with them to recognize the union. "I listened to their side of the story," he said. "They told me they demanded a lot of teachers, like longer hours and making home visits. They said they were afraid they'd lose that if the union comes in. I told them, 'It's too late to keep the union out—they're already in. Work with your teachers.' But they wouldn't listen to me." Instead, school officials fired a teacher, Rhonda Hartwell, who was advocating for the union. The union filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the state on Hartwell's behalf. The school eventually settled the case, agreeing to pay Hartwell $40,000 while admitting no wrongdoing. As for recognizing the union and negotiating a contract—well, that's where things got really tricky. The Illinois Education Labor Relations Board doesn't have jurisdiction in cases involving private or "nongovernmental" schools. Instead, labor issues at those schools fall under the authority of the National Labor Relations Board. And CMSA officials have argued that's the kind of school they are. On July 29, 2010, they filed a request with the NLRB, asking them to assume jurisdiction in the matter on the grounds that they are a nongovernmental school. To prove their point, they recited a long list of ways in which they claimed to have no connection with any supervising governmental body, even though in 2009 they signed a five-year charter contract with the Chicago Public Schools. For instance, they argued that no government owns their "primary place of business," although they don't have to pay property taxes on the site since it's a school. They said nothing in their CPS charter agreement "addresses the pay and benefits" that "must be offered to CMSA employees." And even though CPS and the state pay them about $5.5 million a year to run their school, CPS has no say in how they spend it. "At most, CPS might correct typographical errors, or ask for clarifications if it has questions about certain numbers obtained in the budget report," according to the brief. I'm sure incoming CEO Jean-Claude Brizard, a charter school advocate, will be happy to know about that. In short, CMSA is a public school in that members of the general public get to attend (provided they fill out those application forms) and the school receives public money. Obviously, school officials have no problem with that. But they say they're not really a public school because no government regulates them beyond that charter contract they signed with CPS. I'm glad that's all cleared up. The larger question is why CMSA even raised these issues in the first place instead of just recognizing the union and negotiating a contract with their teachers. I tried to ask Ucan during our short phone conversation, but he said he was too busy to talk and directed me to the brief. It was there I found a down-is-up and up-is-down section in which the school claims to be looking out for workers in states with weak labor laws. If the National Labor Relations Board doesn't take the case from the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board, academy officials argue, the board will risk "disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of employees" from states "unlike Illinois" that "do not offer public sector bargaining laws that permit public employees to organize for purposes of collective bargaining." In other words, they're actually looking out for the union rights of charter school teachers in union unfriendly states. That's not how the CMSA teachers see this, of course. From their perspective, school officials are just trying to thwart their organizing efforts. They note that if the NLRB takes jurisdiction, the teachers will have to start collecting signatures from scratch. "It's already been almost a year since we told them we wanted to form a union," said one teacher who didn't want her name used in print. "The longer they drag this out, the more they think they can break our resolve." In September an NLRB regional officer ruled against academy officials, saying the school is "accountable to CPS" and therefore "a political subdivision of the State of Illinois"—in other words, a public school. Academy officials appealed the ruling to the NLRB's national office. A decision is expected in the coming weeks. For his part, Moore says he's disappointed with CMSA officials. On April 18, he sent them a letter urging them to stop their "scorched earth" labor practices. They did not respond. "I think they're making a tragic mistake here," Moore said. "They're spending a ton of money on lawyers fighting this thing. It's only going to lead to continued acrimony and demoralization. This is just not a way to run a school." E-mail Ben Joravsky at bjoravsky@chicagoreader.com. Joravsky discusses his reporting weekly with journalist Dave Glowacz at mrradio.org/benj. Subscribe to their podcast at the iTunes Store. |
9-Jul-2015: How RSA works. RSA public-key cryptosystem (named after its inventors: Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman) is most used asymmetric public-private key cryptosystem. Let's start with some theory. Prime numbers Prime numbers are the numbers which has no divisors except itself and 1. This can be represented graphically. Let's take 9 balls or some other objects. 9 balls can be arranged into rectangle: ooo ooo ooo So is 12 balls: oooo oooo oooo Or: ooo ooo ooo ooo So 9 and 12 are not prime numbers. 7 is prime number: ooooooo Or: o o o o o o o It's not possible to form a rectangle using 7 balls, or 11 balls or any other prime number. The fact that balls can be arranged into rectangle shows that the number can be divided by the number which is represented by height and width of rectangle. Balls of prime number can be arranged vertically or horizontally, meaning, there are only two divisors: 1 and the prime number itself. Integer factorization Natural number can be either prime or composite number. Composite number is a number which can be breaked up by product of prime numbers. Let's take 100. It's not prime. By the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, any number can be represented as product of prime numbers, in only one single way. So the composite number phrase means that the number is composed of prime numbers. Let's factor 100 in Wolfram Mathematica: In[]:= FactorInteger[100] Out[]= {{2, 2}, {5, 2}} This mean that 100 can be constructed using 2 and 5 prime numbers ($2^2 \cdot 5^2$): In[]:= 2^2*5^2 Out[]= 100 Using composite number as a container Even more than that, it's possible to encode some information in prime numbers using factoring. Let's say, we would encode "Hello" text string. First, let's find ASCII codes of each character in the string: In[]:= ToCharacterCode["Hello"] Out[]= {72, 101, 108, 108, 111} Let's find first 5 prime numbers, each number for each character: In[]:= Map[Prime[#] &, Range[5]] Out[]= {2, 3, 5, 7, 11} Build a huge number using prime numbers as bases and ASCII codes as exponents, then get a product of all them ($2^{72} \cdot 3^{101} \cdot 5^{108} \cdot 7^{108} \cdot 11^{111}$): In[]:= tmp = 2^72*3^101*5^108*7^108*11^111 Out[]= \ 1649465578065933994718255257642275679479006861206428830641826551739434\ 9344066214616222018844835866267141943107823334187149334898562231349428\ 5708281252457614466981636618940129599457183300076472809826225406689893\ 5837524252859632074600687844523389231265776082000229507684707641601562\ 5000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000\ 000 It's a big number, but Wolfram Mathematica is able to factor it back: In[]:= FactorInteger[tmp] Out[]= {{2, 72}, {3, 101}, {5, 108}, {7, 108}, {11, 111}} First number in each pair is prime number and the second is exponent. Get the text string back: In[]:= FromCharacterCode[Map[#[[2]] &, tmp]] Out[]= "Hello" That allows to have some fun. Let's add exclamation point to the end of string by manipulating only the big number. ASCII code of exlamation point is 33. The next prime number after 11 is 13. So add it (by multiplying by $13^{33}$): In[]:= tmp = tmp*13^33 Out[]= \ 9494539005656577744061615691556750598033024729435332190254469113536733\ 9032823543118405499931761589928052797992206631285822671397023217541663\ 5920521812548793623881568510051214975599793760307837993570818136014139\ 9497958680836430182400405525832564875875193876694267121604212637095253\ 0725145452728611417114734649658203125000000000000000000000000000000000\ 000000000000000000000000000000000000000 So we got new number. Let's factor it back and decode: In[]:= factored = FactorInteger[tmp] Out[]= {{2, 72}, {3, 101}, {5, 108}, {7, 108}, {11, 111}, {13, 33}} In[]:= FromCharacterCode[Map[#[[2]] &, factored]] Out[]= "Hello!" Wow, that works. Will it be possible to remove one 'l' character from the string at the third position? 'l' has ASCII code of 108 and it is exponent for two prime numbers in our expression: 5 (first 'l') and 7 (second 'l'). To knock out the character, we divide the big number by the corresponding prime number with the exponent of 108 (divide by $5^{108}$): In[]:= tmp = tmp/5^108 Out[]= \ 3081154065769189664244341216329094565621009415122099836376732969546063\ 1079164051611808432546107410277501678916823138724630810880390384343750\ 1196528030610615786507542545262118293483878711112407171889948257893463\ 8494741216231004109210436295299274515484540190050751059821909485854359\ 9630924207126074604240892753608704 In[]:= factored = FactorInteger[tmp] Out[]= {{2, 72}, {3, 101}, {7, 108}, {11, 111}, {13, 33}} In[]:= FromCharacterCode[Map[#[[2]] &, factored]] Out[]= "Helo!" Using composite number as a container (another example) Let's say, the initial container number is 1. Let's increment the number at the second position within it by multiplicating by the first prime number (3): In[]:= tmp = 1*3 Out[]= 3 Then let's set the number at fourth posistion to 123. The fourth prime number is 7 (the percent sign in Mathematica denotes the last result): In[]:= tmp = tmp*7^123 Out[]= 26557071110804040505330743411815438275701018334410643480070773\ 5780279761186999642944265644421128096489029 Then let's set the number at fifth position to 456. The fifth prime number is 11: In[]:= tmp = tmp*11^456 Out[]= 19917948660639605307938425372554395433764512138284060223646519\ 1257621966825293455339751080188144910510813322192288287162176499976800\ 9147068591160798243308591883294649069355015558472564457422829073938118\ 4396204999051856879940101934339913600942451006747982291524910653185084\ 4057972896537894301213735252418639782974592077393028390193060138936503\ 0125465578958567377627063815620261557939484036628536230966158222960762\ 8509899641574477547658142457598168497006309608599830554758951672484533\ 9216105863754463712957143732563375990198901073698626584903164027850451\ 8825659837114080589573087269 Then let's decrement the number at fourth position, the fourth prime number is 7: In[]:= tmp = tmp/7 Out[]= 28454212372342293297054893389363422048235017340405800319495027\ 3225174238321847793342501543125921300729733317417554695945966428538287\ 0210097987372568919012274118992355813364307940675092082032612962768740\ 6280292855788366971343002763342733715632072866782831845035586647407263\ 4368532709339849001733907503455199689963702967704326271704371627052147\ 1607807969940810539467234022314659368484977195183623187094511747086804\ 0728428059392110782368774939425954995723299440856900792512788103549334\ 1737294091077805304224491046519108557427001533855180835575948611214931\ 260808548159154369939012467 Let's factor the composite number and get all the numbers we set inside container (1, 122, 456): In[]:= FactorInteger[tmp] Out[]= {{3, 1}, {7, 122}, {11, 456}} So the resulting number has $3 \cdot 7^{122} \cdot 11^{456}$ form at the end. This is somewhat wasteful way to store the numbers, but out of curiosity: since there are infinite number of prime numbers and so any number of infinitely big numbers can be stored within one (although huge) composite number. Coprime numbers Coprime numbers are the 2 or more numbers which don't have any common divisors. In mathematical lingo, GCD (greatest common divisor) of all coprime numbers is 1. 3 and 5 are coprimes. So are 7 and 10. So are 4, 5 and 9. Coprime numbers are the numerator and denominator in fraction which cannot be reduced further (irreducible fraction). For example, $\frac{130}{14}$ is $\frac{65}{7}$ after reduction (or simplification), 65 and 7 are coprime to each other, but 130 and 14 are not (they has 2 as common divisor). One application of coprime numbers in engineering is to make number of cogs on cogwheel and number of chain elements on chain to be coprimes. Let's imagine bike cogwheels and chain: If you choose 5 as number of cogs on one of cogwhell and you have 10 or 15 or 20 chain elements, each cog on cogwheel will meet some set of the same chain elements. For example, if there are 5 cogs on cogwheel and 20 chain elements, each cog will meet only 4 chain elements and vice versa: each chain element has its own cog on cogwheel. This is bad because both cogwheel and chain will run out slightly faster than if each cog would interlock every chain elements at some point. To reach this, number of cogs and chain elements could be coprime numbers, like 5 and 11, or 5 and 23. That will make each chain element interlock each cog evenly, which is better. Semiprime numbers ... are also used in RSA in its core. Semiprime is a product of two prime numbers. An interesting property of semiprime: In 1974 the Arecibo message was sent with a radio signal aimed at a star cluster. It consisted of 1679 binary digits intended to be interpreted as a 23×73 bitmap image. The number 1679 = 23×73 was chosen because it is a semiprime and therefore can only be broken down into 23 rows and 73 columns, or 73 rows and 23 columns. ( Wikipedia ) Modular arithmetic ... is also used in RSA in its core. I've written the article about it. The only difference is that I used CPU reigsters in the article which leads to modulo base like $2^{32}$ or $2^{64}$, while modulo bases in RSA are very large semiprimes. Fermat little theorem Fermat little theorem states that if $p$ is prime, this congruence is valid for any $a$ in the environment of modulo artihemtic of base $p$: $a^{p-1} \equiv 1 \pmod p.$ There are proofs, which are, perhaps, too tricky for this article which is intended for beginners. So far, you can just take it as granted. This theorem may be used to sieve prime numbers. So you take, for example, 10 and test it. Let's take some random $a$ value (123) (Wolfram Mathematica): In[]:= Mod[123^(10 - 1), 10] Out[]= 3 We've got 3, which is not 1, indicating the 10 is not prime. On the other hand, 11 is prime: In[]:= Mod[123^(11 - 1), 11] Out[]= 1 This method is not perfect (some composite p numbers can lead to 1, for example p=1105), but can be used as a method to sieve vast amount of prime numbers candidates. Euler’s totient function ... also used in RSA. Wikipedia link. It is a number of coprime numbers under some n. Denoted as φ(n) or ϕ(n), pronounced as "phi". For the sake of simplification, you may just keep in mind that if $n=pq$ (i.e., product of two prime numbers), $\varphi (pq)=(p-1)(q-1)$. This is true for RSA environment. `Euler’s theorem' Euler’s theorem is generalization of Fermat little theorem. It states: $a^{\varphi (n)} \equiv 1 \pmod{n}$ But again, for the sake of simplification, we may keep in mind that Euler's theorem in the RSA environment is this: $a^{(p-1)(q-1)} \equiv 1 \pmod{n}$ ... where $n=pq$ and both $p$ and $q$ are prime numbers. This theorem is central to RSA algorithm. RSA example There are The Sender and The Receiver. The Receiver generates two big prime numbers ($p$ and $q$) and publishes its product ($n=pq$). Both $p$ and $q$ are kept secret. For the illustration, let's randomly pick p and q among the first 50 prime numbers in Wolfram Mathematica: In[]:= p = Prime[RandomInteger[50]] Out[]= 89 In[]:= q = Prime[RandomInteger[50]] Out[]= 43 In[]:= n = p*q Out[]= 3827 3827 is published as public key, named "public key modulus" or "modulo". It is semiprime. There is also public key exponent $e$, which is not secret, is often 65537, but we will use 17 to keep all results tiny. Now The Sender wants to send a message (123 number) to The Receiver and he/she uses one-way function: In[]:= e = 17 Out[]= 17 In[]:= encrypted = Mod[123^e, n] Out[]= 3060 3060 is encrypted message, which can be decrypted only using $p$ and $q$ values separately. This is one-way function, because only part of exponentiation result is left. One and important consequence is that even The Sender can't decrypt it. This is why you can encrypt a piece of text in PGP/GnuPG to someone using his/her public key, but can't decrypt it. Perhaps, that's how CryptoLockers works, making impossible to decrypt the files. To recover message (123), $p$ and $q$ values must be known. First, we get the result of Euler's totient function $(p-1)(q-1)$ (this is the point where $p$ and $q$ values are needed): In[]:= totient = (p - 1)*(q - 1) Out[]= 3696 Now we calculating decrypting exponent using multiplicative modulo inverse (multiplicative inverse was also described in my previous article) ($e^{-1} \pmod{totient=(p-q)(q-1)}$): In[]:= d = PowerMod[e, -1, totient] Out[]= 2609 Now decrypt the message: In[18]:= Mod[encrypted^d, n] Out[18]= 123 So the $d$ exponent forms another one-way function, restoring the work of what was done during encryption. So how it works? It works, because $e$ and $d$ exponents are reciprocal to each other by modulo $totient=(p-1)(q-1)$: In[]:= Mod[e*d, totient] (* check *) Out[]= 1 This allows... $m^{ed}=m \pmod n$ (1) In[]:= Mod[123^(e*d), n] Out[]= 123 So the encryption process is $m^{e} \pmod{n}$, decryption is $(m^{e})^{d}=m \pmod{n}$. To prove congruence (1), we first should prove the following congruence: $ed \equiv 1 \pmod{((p-1)(q-1))}$ ... using modular arithmetic rules, it can be rewritten as: $ed = 1+h (p-1)(q-1)$ $h$ is some unknown number which is present here because it's not known how many times the final result was rounded while exponentiation (this is modulo arithmetic after all). So $m^{ed}=m \pmod{n}$ can be rewritten as: $m^{1 + h((p-1)(q-1))} \equiv m \pmod{n}$ ...and then to: $m \left(m^{(p-1)(q-1)}\right)^{h} \equiv m \pmod{n}$. The last expression can be simplified using Euler's theorem (stating that $a^{(p-1)(q-1)} \equiv 1 \pmod{n}$). The result is: $m (1)^{h} \equiv m \pmod{n}$ ... or just: $m \equiv m \pmod{n}$. Breaking RSA We can try to factor $n$ semiprime (or RSA modulus) in Mathematica: In[]:= FactorInteger[n] Out[]= {{43, 1}, {89, 1}} And we getting correct $p$ and $q$, but this is possible only for small values. When you use some big ones, factorizing is extremely slow, making RSA unbreakable, if implemented correctly. The bigger $p$, $q$ and $n$ numbers, the harder to factorize $n$, so the bigger keys in bits are, the harder it to break. Difference between my simplified example and a real RSA algorithm In my example, public key is $n=pq$ (product) and secret key are $p$ and $q$ values stored separately. This is not very efficient, to calculate totient and decrypting exponent each time. So in practice, a public key is $n$ and $e$, and a secret key is at least $n$ and $d$, and $d$ is stored in secret key precomputed. For example, here is my PGP public key: dennis@...:~$ gpg --export-options export-reset-subkey-passwd --export-secret-subkeys 0x3B262349\! | pgpdump Old: Secret Key Packet(tag 5)(533 bytes) Ver 4 - new Public key creation time - Tue Jun 30 02:08:38 EEST 2015 Pub alg - RSA Encrypt or Sign(pub 1) RSA n(4096 bits) - ... RSA e(17 bits) - ... ... ... so there are available openly big (4096 bits) $n$ and $e$ (17 bits). And here is my PGP secret key: dennis@...:~$ gpg --export-options export-reset-subkey-passwd --export-secret-subkeys 0x55B5C64F\! | pgpdump gpg: about to export an unprotected subkey You need a passphrase to unlock the secret key for user: "Dennis Yurichev " 4096-bit RSA key, ID 55B5C64F, created 2015-06-29 gpg: gpg-agent is not available in this session Old: Secret Key Packet(tag 5)(533 bytes) Ver 4 - new Public key creation time - Tue Jun 30 02:08:38 EEST 2015 Pub alg - RSA Encrypt or Sign(pub 1) RSA n(4096 bits) - ... RSA e(17 bits) - ... ... Old: Secret Subkey Packet(tag 7)(1816 bytes) Ver 4 - new Public key creation time - Tue Jun 30 02:08:38 EEST 2015 Pub alg - RSA Encrypt or Sign(pub 1) RSA n(4096 bits) - ... RSA e(17 bits) - ... RSA d(4093 bits) - ... RSA p(2048 bits) - ... RSA q(2048 bits) - ... RSA u(2048 bits) - ... Checksum - 94 53 ... ... it has all variables stored in the file, including $d$, $p$ and $q$. RSA signature It's possible to sign a message to publish it, so everyone can check the signature. For example, The Publisher wants to sign the message (let's say, 456). Then he/she uses $d$ exponent to compute signature: In[]:= signed = Mod[456^d, n] Out[]= 2282 Now he publishes $n=pq$ (3827), $e$ (17 in our example), the message (456) and the signature (2282). Some other Consumers can verify its signature using $e$ exponent and $n$: In[]:= Mod[2282^e, n] Out[]= 456 ... this is another illustration that $e$ and $d$ exponents are complement each other, by modulo $totient=(p-1)(q-1)$. The signature can only be generated with the access to $p$ and $q$ values, but it can be verified using product ($n=pq$) value. Hybrid cryptosystem RSA is slow, because exponentiation is slow and exponentiation by modulo is also slow. Perhaps, this is the reason why it was considered impractical by GCHQ when Clifford Cocks first came with this idea in 1970s. So in practice, if The Sender wants to encrypt some big piece of data to The Receiver, a random number is generated, which is used as a key for symmetrical cryptosystem like DES or AES. The piece of data is encrypted by the random key. The key is then encrypted by RSA to The Receiver and destroyed. The Receiver recovers random key using RSA and decrypts all the data using DES or AES. → [list of blog posts] |
This article is a follow-up of a previous article I wrote, 11 Tips for making a fun platformer. Once again, this article focuses on platformers, but the philosophy behind each idea can be applied to any type of game, whether 2D or 3D. This time there are a few more practical tips. 1. Keep the camera simple The most simple (and best) camera is the one that always keeps player in the middle of the screen. This gives the player equal time to react to objects appearing from the left and right edges of the screen. The camera stops moving when the player reaches the edge of the level. For example, if the player reaches the left edge of the level then the camera stops moving left. It will continue to follow the player horizontally when the player moves away from the left edge of the level. An optional addition is to make the camera look ahead in the direction the player is moving. For example, when the player runs right then the camera shows more of the level on the right side of the player, so he can see ahead. When he stops moving then the camera slowly moves to position the player in the middle of the screen. Ideally, the player should not be aware of the camera. 2. Allow the player to move in the air when jumping The player should have at least the same manoeuvrability when he is jumping through the air, as he has when he is running on the ground. This means that he should move left or right at the same speed, and be able to shoot or use items with the same ease as when he is running. 3. Make it easy to climb ladders The player can grab onto the ladder when he is in the green rectangle, even if he is in the air. The character grabs onto the ladder when the player presses up*. The rectangle is slightly bigger than the ladder to make it easier to grab onto the ladder. The player should be able to move up, down, left, right and diagonal when he is on a ladder. When the player moves up and bangs his head against collision (red rectangles), automatically move him towards the middle of the ladder (while he is pressing up). This will make it easier to get through narrow gaps. Allow the player to be able to shoot or use items while he is on a ladder. At any time the player should be able to jump off the ladder by pressing the jump button. He can also fall off the ladder when he moves all the way to the left or right and no longer touches the ladder. * To start climbing the player can press up, jump or a grab button, depending on the other mechanics of the game. Generally, pressing the up button to start climbing is the easiest and most intuitive. But it may not be ideal if your character has a gun which can aim up, so pressing up will aim the gun up to shoot upwards. In this case the jump button or an extra grab button can be used to start climbing up. Prototype it to find what is the easiest and most fun. (This also applies to vines and swinging ropes. See below.) 4. Make it easy to climb vines on the side of a wall Ideally, climbing ladders and climbing vines will use the same code. Therefore climbing vines will be the same as climbing ladders, except, usually vines are wider and encourages more horizontal movement. 5. Make it easy to swing on ropes The player can grab onto the rope when he is within the green rectangles and he presses up. Like the ladder earlier on, the green rectangles are slightly bigger than the rope to make it easier to grab onto the rope. When the player is swinging on the rope, allow him to move up or down the rope when he presses up or down, no matter what angle the rope is swinging at. For example, if the rope is swinging at a 45 degree angle, pressing up still moves the player up the rope. Allow the player to be able to shoot or use items while he is swinging on a rope. At any time the player should be able to jump off the rope by pressing the jump button. 6. Let the player double jump whenever Usually the player is only allowed to do the second jump of a double jump when the first jump reaches a certain state (for example, specific height, within a certain time limit, or when she is moving up). Allow the player to do the second jump at any time while he is in the air. It makes the game feel more responsive and fun. The only limit should be that he has to release the jump button and press it again to do the second jump. 7. Avoid using inertia When the player stops pressing left or right then the character should stop moving immediately. Avoid giving the character inertia which causes him to move forward a short distance before stopping. Inertia is acceptable in an ice level where it adds to the challenge of the level. But avoid having it throughout the game. Inertia can lead to the player falling off ledges or running into enemies or hazards, therefore making the game feel unresponsive. 8. Make moving platforms friendly The first moving platform the player encounters should be easy to use and not have a big penalty for falling off or missing it (for example, the penalty can just be climbing up a short ladder to get back to where the platform is). The first platform makes the player aware there are moving platforms in the game. Avoid making moving platforms travel far. If the platform travels far and the player misses it then he has to wait a long time for the platform to return. When he has to travel via moving platforms over a large area (for example, over spikes) then have multiple moving platforms. If you have a platform that constantly moves back and forth to take the player between two ledges, then only start moving the platform when the player clearly sees it. When he gets to the ledge and does not see the platform (because it is off screen) then he may not know there is a platform there, and leaves to explore the rest of the level. Alternatively, if you want to make sure the player does not miss seeing the moving platform, let the platform only start moving when the player climbs on it. Another option is to make the platforms move along rails, so that when the player sees a rail he knows there is a moving platform nearby. 9. Avoid adding leaps of faith Generally, the player should see what lies at the bottom of the platform he is currently standing on. So that he knows if it is safe to jump off or not. If the player cannot see what lies past the bottom of the screen’s edge, then add clues so the player knows what lies at the bottom. Examples: Skulls, flies or blood indicates there are spikes or rotating blades at the bottom. A red glow indicates there’s fire or lava at the bottom. A power-up in mid-air is an invite to jump off safely. An enemy’s head sticking out the bottom of the screen, and moving horizontally will give the player an idea of where there is ground to land on. If there are no clues, then most of the time the player should be able to jump off and land safely at the bottom. If there is an enemy at the bottom and off screen, then position the enemy in such a way that the player will have time to react to the enemy when he lands on the ground (for example, the enemy may be in an idle pose and delay for about 2 seconds before he starts attacking the player). Avoiding leaps of faith removes the sense that the game is unfair. The player will feel it is unfair for him to make decisions when he cannot see the possible outcomes. Some platformers have a main ground. Usually when the player falls out the bottom of the screen, past the main ground then he dies instantly. This is quickly learned by the player when it happens the first time. The leaps of faith generally apply to platforms above the main ground. 10. Remove frustrating elements By removing frustrating elements your game will become more fun. Here are some examples of frustrating elements: A cut scene which you cannot skip before the boss fight. When the boss kills you then you are forced to watch the cut scene again. Extremely difficult jumps that you have to retry countless times to get right. Spending large amounts of time collecting items to achieve a goal (for example, collect 100 stars to get a special weapon) then losing all the items when you die. Complicated button combos which take too long to do a special attack and is interrupted when an enemy punches you. Losing health when you fall from a high height. Being attacked by enemies who are still off screen. 11. Keep the background in the background Make sure the background does not interfere with the foreground. This will help the player see which platforms he can stand on and makes it easier to identify items and enemies. Some tips on how to push the background backwards: Use less contrasts in the background (for example, reduce the background image’s contrast setting in GIMP or Photoshop). Use cool colours in the background, such as shades of blues (for example, place a semi-transparent blue layer over the background image in GIMP or Photoshop). Have less, slower or less frequent animations in the background. The animations should not distract the player. Use parallax scrolling (that is, the background scrolls slower than the foreground). Here it is easy to see what is in the background and it does not interfere with the foreground. 12. Emotion is more important than reason You can have the most brilliant, genius, unique, awesome ideas and mechanics or systems for a game. But what does it feel like when you play it? In other words: prototype and let your emotions be the final judge. 13. A fun game has a good user interface There are various definitions of what a user interface is, but most of them include the following: Information that allows a user to make a decision. The user input system. The feedback generated by the user input. This leads back to the first point: information to make the next decision. Examples of non-game user interfaces: The controls and dials of a car. The LED, buttons and beeps of a washing machine. The remote control of a television. The buttons and highlighted floor number of a lift. What makes a good, non-game user interface? Clear information. Easy to use. Clear and instant feedback. These are also an important part of making a fun game. References Discuss Some more discussion of these tips on Make Games SA. |
Touch Me, I'm Sub Pop's Warehouse Manager Mudhoney's Mark Arm Hurt His Left One Fulfilling Record Store Orders Order a Mudhoney record from Sub Pop, and odds are Mark Arm shipped it to you himself. Shawn Brackbill Seeing Mudhoney frontman Mark Arm pulling records from shelves in Sub Pop's warehouse is akin to finding Iggy Pop at the Jiffy Lube. Really? Arm—one of the catalysts of gr*ng*—has to work a day job? He can't live off the royalties from "Touch Me I'm Sick"? What kind of world is this? On record and onstage, Arm sounds like one of the most dissatisfied, cantankerous characters ever to expectorate onto a microphone. But gliding around this warehouse and leaning against this table before a Flatron computer (wait, dude doesn't even have his own chair?!), processing orders from music retailers worldwide, he exudes a calm, comfortable acceptance of his role in the universe. Dressed in a forest-green T-shirt emblazoned with no band logos or any design whatsoever and wearing black jeans and sneakers, Sub Pop's warehouse manager looks at least 15 years younger than his actual 50. He has all of his hair, which still hangs lankly, longly, and blondly from his noggin. If you get near Arm, you'll notice he has the most intense eyes; you feel like if you touched his brow, the radiation from his disdain could incinerate you. But he also possesses one of the broadest smiles I've ever seen and frequently laughs like a champ. Arm is a guitar-thrashing, larynx-shredding icon of Seattle music, so people probably have grandiose ideas about what his life is like. Maybe this article is a demystification. "You're going to blow it for all of these people..." Arm warns, printing out another invoice from another record shop on a recent Monday morning. Arm started working at Sub Pop seven years ago. Before that, he worked at Fantagraphics, where he fulfilled mail orders. "Mostly picking comic porn and sending it out to people overnight," Arm says. "You think Fantagraphics is all cool underground comics stuff, but at the time I was working there, most of the stuff that was selling was really shitty, gross comic porn." Ensconced at Sub Pop now, Mudhoney's wildest member typically arrives at headquarters about 9:30 a.m. and leaves around 5:30 p.m. "First thing I do is check e-mail," Arm says, chuckling. "If there are orders, like these [points to invoices on his desk], I pick 'em and fulfill 'em and send 'em out." To achieve this, Arm wheels a large yellow plastic bin on a gurney and then pulls LPs and CDs from the many shelves in Sub Pop's vast warehouse. Today, orders are pouring in for the new King Tuff LP, Postal Service's Give Up (still!), Fleet Foxes' Helplessness Blues, Nirvana's Bleach (still!), Band of Horses' Cease to Begin (huh?), and Mudhoney's 1988 debut EP, Superfuzz Bigmuff (the most popular Mudhoney release, along with the "Touch Me I'm Sick" 7-inch). After Arm removes his haul from the bin, he scatters packing peanuts in a box before placing the merchandise in a box with the care of a mother putting her offspring in a crib. He then tosses more packing peanuts over the merch like a chef sprinkling spices into a pot. His technique is impeccable. Finally, he grabs a tape gun and seals the box with a few noisy flourishes and then applies the UPS address sticker. Another Sub Pop package is ready to ship to another satisfied customer. "I mostly send stuff to international distributors and to record stores that have direct accounts with us," Arm says. "Cassidy [Gonzales] over here does mail order. He also fills in for me when I'm gone. He actually knows more about how the warehouse runs than I do because he knows all these different jobs, whereas I only know one." So how's business? We hear so many stories about the music industry being on its deathbed. "It's good," Arm says. "It took a big hit in 2008. There were stores that looked like they might not survive, like Amoeba's stores in San Francisco and LA. They were huge accounts, and they would always get enormous amounts of stuff. And all of a sudden, they were barely ordering anything. Then they changed their terms on how they paid for things. But they're back up to their previous standards at this point, so that's encouraging. "What's weird is there are stores like CD Alley that now mostly order vinyl. That's been a major shift over the last several years." As warehouse manager, Arm must keep Sub Pop and subsidiary label Hardly Art's huge catalog organized. "It's kind of messy, but there is a method to where everything is placed. I keep stock on hand, or try to, so we always have enough. Some things, when they're brand-new and hot, we run out of. It's usually an issue with manufacturing. We've run out of the Beach House record [Bloom] for the second time since it's come out. The jackets are a difficult job—they glow in the dark or something—so it takes a little while for them to get made." That Arm wears a Sport Aid bandage indicates that Sub Pop is thriving. Pulling records and taping boxes ain't no joke. "I'm going to see a physical therapist tomorrow. It's from repetitive motion—I assume from [warehouse work], since it bugs me more here than it does when I'm playing guitar. It doesn't bug me at all when I'm playing guitar. We have insurance. Sub Pop takes really good care of its employees." This job consumes a lot of time, and it's been four years since the last Mudhoney album (The Lucky Ones). It takes longer now to create albums because everybody has other responsibilities. Bassist Guy Maddison, for example, is a stat nurse at Harborview, and guitarist Steve Turner lives in Portland, where he deals records, so Mudhoney don't practice much. "We just got back from Australia," Arm says, "so we're probably not gonna practice till next week. We have a bunch of shit to do, because we have Bumbershoot coming up and then right after that we're going into the studio for three days. We have a couple of new songs that we haven't worked on." Despite the long gap between releases, Sub Pop hasn't pressured the band to make another album. "But there's pressure from us, because it's been fucking too long," Arm says, laughing. "We've put down tons and tons of riffs over the last two years. The main sticking point is me coming up with lyrics I'm happy with. The other one is getting together to work on our ideas—but that's kind of the easy part once Steve gets into town." It seems like by now, Arm should be relaxing in a mansion, watching rare krautrock videos on a 72-by-48-inch screen. But here he is, schlepping lesser mortals' records. Maybe I have a misguided idea of Mudhoney's place in the music business. "We're kind of outside of the business at this point. It was weird when we were in a situation where we could live off of music. We came from early '80s American hardcore. The idea that you make money off of this shit was hard to imagine. You were stoked if you made $100 for a show—if you didn't lose all the money you'd just sunk into renting the hall." Come on, Mark. Do you really have to work a day job? "Oh yeah. I might not have to if we toured more, but that's an impossibility with people's families. At this point, I don't really want to be gone for half a year. I like hanging out with my wife and dogs and going surfing when I can. I'm not a great surfer, so I'm not looking for the killer, insane waves. I'm looking for waves I can ride. I started surfing five or six years ago. Falling while skateboarding hurts too much at my age." Huh. Mark Arm surfs. But he still doesn't have his own chair. |
You say that, for liberal capitalism, evil is always elsewhere, the dreaded other, something that liberal capitalism believes it has thankfully banished and kept at bay. Yet isn’t there also, in the contemporary imagination, a powerful idea of internal (social, psychological, domestic) evil? For decades, popular films and novels have been obsessed with the idea of evil lurking within (in the mind, in the house, in the neighborhood). The Timothy McVeigh affair in the US seems to have renewed political worries about “the evil within” (within each one of us, within the heart of the US). Just over a month ago, Andrea Yates, a Texas mother, systematically drowned her five children, prompting a national discussion about whether or not we are all capable of such evil. Philosophically, the new interest in Kant’s conception of “radical evil” (and its Lacanian reinterpretation) would seem to fall in line with this idea of internal (rather than external, political) evil. Indeed, throughout most of the history of the West, it would seem that evil has been conceived as “internal,” as something that morally haunts each one of us. So, my questions: In addition to the notion of “external” evil you propose, do you also recognize this notion of “internal” evil? Is this idea perennial, or does it tell us something peculiar about our historical moment? Do you see these two notions of evil (external and internal) as connected with one another in any way? There is no contradiction between the affirmation that liberal capitalism and democracy are the good and the affirmation that evil is a permanent possibility for any individual. The second thesis (evil inside of each of us) is simply the moral and religious complement to the first thesis, which is political (parliamentary capitalism as the good). There is even a “logical” connection between the two affirmations, as follows: 1. History shows that democratic liberal capitalism is the only economic, political, and social regime that is truly humane, that truly conforms to the good of humanity. 2. Every other political regime is a monstrous and bloody dictatorship, completely irrational. 3. The proof of this fact is that political regimes that have fought against liberalism and democracy all share the same face of evil. Thus, Fascism and Communism, which appeared to be opposites, were actually very similar. They were both of the “totalitarian” family, which is the opposite of the democratic-capitalism family. 4. These monstrous regimes cannot produce a rational project, an idea of justice or something of that sort. Those who have led these regimes (Fascist or Communist) were necessarily pathological cases: One needs to study Hitler or Stalin with the tool of criminal psychology. As for those who have supported them, and there were thousands of them, they were alienated by the totalitarian mystique. They were finally directed by evil and destructive passions. 5. If thousands of people were able to participate in such ridiculous and criminal undertakings, it is obviously because the possibility of being fascinated by evil exists in each of us. This possibility will be called “hatred of the Other.” The conclusion will be, first, that we must support liberal democracy everywhere, and, second, that we must teach our children the ethical imperative of the love of the Other. My position is obviously that this “reasoning” is purely illusory ideology. First, liberal capitalism is not at all the good of humanity. Quite the contrary; it is the vehicle of savage, destructive nihilism. Second, the Communist revolutions of the twentieth century have represented grandiose efforts to create a completely different historical and political universe. Politics is not the management of the power of the State. Politics is first the invention and the exercise of an absolutely new and concrete reality. Politics is the creation of thought. The Lenin who wrote What is to be Done?, the Trotsky who wrote History of the Russian Revolution, and the Mao Zedong who wrote On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People are intellectual geniuses, comparable to Freud or Einstein. Certainly, the politics of emancipation, or egalitarian politics, have not, thus far, been able to resolve the problem of the power of the State. They have exercised a terror that is finally useless. But that should encourage us to pick up the question where they left it off, rather than to rally to the capitalist, imperialist enemy. Third, the category “totalitarianism” is intellectually very weak. There is, on the side of Communism, a universal desire for emancipation, while on the side of Fascism, there is a national and racial desire. These are two radically opposed projects. The war between the two has indeed been the war between the idea of a universal politics and the idea of racial domination. Fourth, the use of terror in revolutionary circumstances or civil war does not at all mean that the leaders and militants are insane, or that they express the possibility of internal evil. Terror is a political tool that has been in use as long as human societies have existed. It should therefore be judged as a political tool, and not submitted to infantilizing moral judgment. It should be added that there are different types of terror. Our liberal countries know how to use it perfectly. The colossal American army exerts terrorist blackmail on a global scale, and prisons and executions exert an interior blackmail no less violent. Fifth, the only coherent theory of the subject (mine, I might add, in jest!) does not recognize in it any particular disposition toward evil. Even Freud’s death drive is not particularly tied to evil. The death drive is a necessary component of sublimation and creation, just as it is of murder and suicide. As for the love of the Other, or, worse, the “recognition of the Other,” these are nothing but Christian confections. There is never “the Other” as such. There are projects of thought, or of actions, on the basis of which we distinguish between those who are friends, those who are enemies, and those who can be considered neutral. The question of knowing how to treat enemies or neutrals depends entirely on the project concerned, the thought that constitutes it, and the concrete circumstances (Is the project in an escalating phase? Is it dangerous? etc.). |
0 Shares Many people have been speculating about how many stars from NXT will get called up when RAW and Smackdown split. It is obvious that the WWE is going to need a lot of talent for the brand split and the logical option for the WWE draft is to promote from within. The great thing about running such a successful developmental system like WWE is doing with NXT is that plenty of stars are ready to make the jump if needed. Bryan Alvarez on the latest edition of Wrestling Observer Live (subscription required but recommended), says that from what he is hearing, 6 names are likely getting called up from NXT to the main roster for the 2016 WWE draft. In the professional wrestling world (especially in WWE) things are known to change but that is the rumored plan right now is 6. 6 is a fairly significant number. I think it is easy to automatically assume Finn Balor and Bayley will be 2 of these rumored 6. There has been heavy speculation over the past several months that they would be getting a call up but it never came to fruition. With the Brand Split, the WWE would be fools not to include them as they are more than ready. Speculation: Shinsuke Nakamura, Samoa Joe, Asuka and American Alpha are all names that could be moving up. Joe and Asuka are currently champions so it might hold them back a bit, but I expect a couple of these names to be included. The other options are recently brought in talent from TNA: Bobby Roode, Eric Young and Austin Aries could all be promoted. They have been wrestling for a number of years and are past the need for developmental. Other names possible: The Revival? Hideo Itami? Nia Jax? Alexa Bliss? It is too difficult to predict. Let us know who you think will be promoted to the WWE main roster and be included in the 2016 WWE draft from NXT in the comment section below. [irp posts=”13042″ name=”WWE Money In The Bank 2016 Predictions”] |
The plum pudding model of the atom The current model of the sub-atomic structure involves a dense nucleus surrounded by a probabilistic "cloud" of electrons The plum pudding model is one of several scientific models of the atom. First proposed by J. J. Thomson in 1904[1] soon after the discovery of the electron, but before the discovery of the atomic nucleus, the model represented an attempt to consolidate the known properties of atoms at the time: 1) electrons are negatively-charged particles and 2) atoms are neutrally-charged. Overview [ edit ] In this model, atoms were known to consist of negatively charged electrons. Though Thomson called them "corpuscles", they were more commonly called "electrons" as G. J. Stoney proposed in 1894.[2] At the time, atoms were known to be neutrally charged. To account for this, Thomson knew atoms must also have a source of positive charge to balance the negative charge of the electrons. He considered three plausible models that would satisfy the known properties of atoms at the time: Each negatively-charged electron was paired with a positively-charged particle that followed it everywhere within the atom. Negatively-charged electrons orbited a central region of positive charge having the same magnitude as all the electrons. The negative electrons occupied a region of space that itself was a uniform positive charge (often considered as a kind of "soup" or "cloud" of positive charge). Thomson chose the third possibility as the most likely structure of atoms. Thomson published his proposed model in the March 1904 edition of the Philosophical Magazine, the leading British science journal of the day. In Thomson's view: ... the atoms of the elements consist of a number of negatively electrified corpuscles enclosed in a sphere of uniform positive electrification, ...[3] With this model, Thomson abandoned his earlier "nebular atom" hypothesis in which atoms were composed of immaterial vortices. Being an astute and practical scientist, Thomson based his atomic model on known experimental evidence of the day. His proposal of a positive volume charge reflects the nature of his scientific approach to discovery which was to propose ideas to guide future experiments. The orbits of electrons within the model were stabilized by the fact that when an electron moved away from the centre of the positively-charged sphere, it was subjected to a greater net positive inward force, because there was more positive charge inside its orbit (see Gauss's law). Electrons were free to rotate in rings which were further stabilized by interactions among the electrons, and spectroscopic measurements were meant to account for energy differences associated with different electron rings. Thomson attempted unsuccessfully to reshape his model to account for some of the major spectral lines experimentally known for several elements. The plum pudding model usefully guided his student, Ernest Rutherford, to devise experiments to further explore the composition of atoms. As well, Thomson's model (along with a similar Saturnian ring model for atomic electrons put forward in 1904 by Nagaoka after James Clerk Maxwell's model of Saturn's rings), were useful predecessors of the more correct solar-system-like Bohr model of the atom. The colloquial nickname "plum pudding" was soon attributed to Thomson's model as the distribution of electrons within its positively-charged region of space reminded many scientists of "plums" in the common English dessert, plum pudding. In 1909, Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden conducted experiments with thin sheets of gold. Their professor, Ernest Rutherford, expected to find results consistent with Thomson's atomic model. It wasn't until 1911 that Rutherford correctly interpreted the experiment's results[4][5] which implied the presence of a very small nucleus of positive charge at the center of gold atoms. This led to the development of the Rutherford model of the atom. Immediately after Rutherford published his results, Antonius Van den Broek made the intuitive proposal that the atomic number of an atom is the total number of units of charge present in its nucleus. Henry Moseley's 1913 experiments (see Moseley's law) provided the necessary evidence to support Van den Broek's proposal. The effective nuclear charge was found to be consistent with the atomic number (Moseley found only one unit of charge difference). This work culminated in the solar-system-like (but quantum-limited) Bohr model of the atom in the same year, in which a nucleus containing an atomic number of positive charges is surrounded by an equal number of electrons in orbital shells. As Thomson's model guided Rutherford's experiments, Bohr's model guided Moseley's research. Related scientific problems [ edit ] The plum pudding model with a single electron was used in part by the physicist Arthur Erich Haas in 1910 to estimate the numerical value of Planck's constant and the Bohr radius of hydrogen atoms. Haas' work estimated these values to within an order of magnitude and preceded the work of Niels Bohr by three years. Of note, the Bohr model itself only provides substantially-reasonable predictions for atomic and ionic systems having a single effective electron. A particularly useful mathematics problem related to the plum pudding model is the optimal distribution of equal point charges on a unit sphere called the Thomson problem. The Thomson problem is a natural consequence of the plum pudding model in the absence of its uniform positive background charge.[6] The classical electrostatic treatment of electrons confined to spherical quantum dots is also similar to their treatment in the plum pudding model.[7][8] In this classical problem, the quantum dot is modeled as a simple dielectric sphere (in place of a uniform, positively-charged sphere as in the plum pudding model) in which free, or excess, electrons reside. The electrostatic N-electron configurations are found to be exceptionally close to solutions found in the Thomson problem with electrons residing at the same radius within the dielectric sphere. Notably, the plotted distribution of geometry-dependent energetics has been shown to bear a remarkable resemblance to the distribution of anticipated electron orbitals in natural atoms as arranged on the periodic table of elements.[8] Of great interest, solutions of the Thomson problem exhibit this corresponding energy distribution by comparing the energy of each N-electron solution with the energy of its neighbouring (N-1)-electron solution with one charge at the origin. However, when treated within a dielectric sphere model, the features of the distribution are much more pronounced and provide greater fidelity with respect to electron orbital arrangements in real atoms.[9] |
“Warning: we are going to be adulting, and if this is an issue, this might not be your Friday morning panel.” With these words, moderator Maryelizabeth Yturralde opened the Sex and Science Fiction panel at San Diego Comic-Con, which featured writers Wesley Chu, Gini Koch, and Nick Cole, comics artist and illustrator Camilla d’Errico, and cartoonist and comics writer/artist Marisa Acocella Marchetto. As is often the case with panels on such dense, baggage-laden themes, it felt as if the discussion touched on a wide range of subjects within the larger subject of sex and sexuality, but lacked the time to really delve into any one of them. Still, the panel covered a number of interesting questions, and even some controversy. Yturralde started off by asking the panelists how they use sex and sexuality, and their reasons for it. Chu talked about how often sex is used in a very narrow manner—either as masculine power over women, or as a part of a “they’re meant for each other” romance. He felt that increasingly, fiction has a lot more variations in how it can be used, citing Kameron Hurley’s Mirror Empire, which portrays women with strong sexual agency. Koch noted that sexuality is part of being human, along with romance and humor, and for a character to be fully formed, they need a sexual life, which might be involve them being gay, straight, bi, or even completely uninterested—you learn a lot about a character, she said, by how they act in bed. d’Errico talked about the problem of how nudity is often immediately linked to sexuality, and treated with the assumption that it can only be sexual, and Marchetto talked about her forthcoming graphic novel Ann Tenna, which she describes as a romance with science fiction as part of the story, using sex as an exploration of connecting with the higher self. Cole offered a contrarian viewpoint, saying that “Sex ruins everything.” He argued that a lot of writing now has “an agenda of sex” that distracts from the story. As an example, he pointed out that Han Solo wasn’t thinking about “nailing Princess Leia” while he was navigating the asteroid field—he was thinking about not getting killed. Other panelists conceded the point, with Chu noting that if Han Solo was thinking about sex while piloting through the asteroids, “he’s got problems.” Koch observed that afterward, he might be thinking about how much he’d just impressed Leia. Cole asked again if you’re supposed to stop the adventure to dwell on the sex and relationships, and Koch countered with the example of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the quiet moments developing Indy and Marion’s relationship provided breathing space amidst the action. d’Errico added that while she values the character development that happens when two characters fall in love, she doesn’t like it when romance is shoehorned into a story, or when a woman is used “just to give the male lead some action.” Marchetto said that she’d like to see an opposite case, with men “shoehorned” in for the benefit of female characters, to which Yturralde suggested reading Joanna Russ. Yturralde asked how the panelists used sex within the context of science fiction to create something different that speaks to a common experience of sex. Marchetto talked about sexual experiences as a powerful exchange of energy between two characters, coming from a place of love. Koch talked about how when she had a female character have sex halfway through her book, “I couldn’t believe how many people said ‘oh, she’s really a slut!'” She argued again for sex and romance as part of action stories, citing Terminator as another example, and added that giving female characters sexual agency also gives them more power. Chu added that American culture puts sex on a pedestal, and that while love is powerful, sex is not necessarily romance, and sex can mean different things to different characters. Cole offered another contrarian viewpoint, saying that just on this panel alone, there were radically different ideas about the sacredness or lack thereof in sex. The danger, he argued, is that in treating sex casually, you’re likely to profane what’s sacred for someone else. Koch plainly did not agree that this was a valid argument against using sex in fiction, stating that you can’t please all of the people all of the time, and that your work would suffer if you tried to be all things to all people. A discussion about “something that you pull out of the toolbox to say ‘this is sexy'” continued in Koch’s vein, with d’Errico talking about an artwork she had done showing a girl with a hole in her chest that was deemed “too sexual” by a father with a young daughter. “Puritanical” American attitudes came in for a bit of a beating, with d’Errico remembering how, as a teenager, she was surprised to see the cover of Vogue Italy—an actual fashion magazine—with a naked woman on the cover. At this point the audience questions began; the first questioner (dressed rather magnificently as one of the War Boys from Mad Max: Fury Road) asked how you portray the normalization of different sexual attitudes in stories set in the future. Both Koch and Chu talked about how you use description and the character’s focus to make these points without derailing the story; Koch’s example was a character seeing a naked person walking down the street and only noting that they had interesting piercings, and Chu’s was of character who looks at a naked woman sitting in a chair and really only notices the chair. Cole noted that you should always be aware that sex is tied to commercialism and commercialism is determined by the zeitgeist: “You always have a group of people who objectify another group and that’s what they use to sell soap.” A digression ensued, as Cole expressed concern that current objectification of women was taking away from the feminist movement of the 70s. Marchetto agreed, talking about how female TV anchors these days have increasing displays of cleavage, and wondered how a woman talking about the news was supposed to happen when “there are people who probably want to fuck you right now.” d’Errico talked about game platforms where viewers could watch other people play video games, and how the top players were all women who couldn’t play, but wore low-cut tops. After further discussion of objectification—during which Cole brought up the “Jeff Goldblum maneuver…be funny and you can get any girl ever”—Chu offered a slightly more positive take with the example of Sense8, pointing out while some things may be getting worse, the general move in fiction is towards greater openness on sexual matters. The Q&A got back on track with a question about deciding how you write a sex scene—”Playboy or Hustler.” Marchetto said that it depends on the character and where you want to take the story, and Koch talked about how it depends on the words you use, such as your choice of slang words for orgasm and how you spell them. She noted that Harlequin has a lot of resources, as well as Romance Writers of America. “Those are the people who write this every day, so you get a lot of good advice.” The next question asked about whether any of the writers had received any pushback on sex scenes, or pressure to remove or add them. The general consensus was that generally, your editor only asks you to remove a scene or trim it if it doesn’t add to the story. Koch talked about an editor telling her to remove a scene on the grounds that an injured character would not be in any kind of mood for sex, and Marchetto talked about using sex scenes as comedy. d’Errico said the only problem she had ever gotten was over an image of a girl with an object in her mouth—it was not meant to be sexual, but in France, any image of a girl with something in her mouth is deemed too much so. The final question concerned the use of bad or awkward sex, such as the birth control discussion or the STD discussion. Cole didn’t believe there was a place for such things in escapist fiction, arguing that writers are trying to entertain and not “kill the vibe” for the sake of realism—except, possibly, in the case of dystopian fiction where you want to show consequences. Koch said that it depends on the tone of your book; those discussions will add realism if you want. Chu closed the discussion with pointing out that every word in a story should be about the character or plot, and if you’re going to include anything like this, it has to have a purpose besides “being real.” Karin Kross is attending her seventh SDCC, and she, her husband Bruce, and her friends Shellie and John are posting about SDCC at nerdpromnomnom. She can be found elsewhere on Tumblr and Twitter. |
Related Stories When it came to politics, Jerry Doyle and I disagreed on, well, pretty much everything. Politically, Jerry was just to the right of Attila the Hun. There is a line in Babylon 5 where his character, Michael Garibaldi, suggests that the way to deal with crime is to go from electric chairs to electric bleachers. That line is quintessential Jerry Doyle. I say this with confidence because I overheard him saying it at lunch then stole it for the show. Despite our differences, when Jerry ran for congress as a Republican not long after Babylon 5 ended, I donated to his campaign. Not because I agreed with him, but because I respected him; because there was one area in which we agreed: the vital intersection between the arts of acting and storytelling. In that respect, Jerry was a consummate professional. Regardless of whatever was going on in his life, whether it was marital issues, a broken arm, forced couch-surfing with Bruce and Andreas or other problems, he never once pulled a prima donna on us; he showed up every day on time, knew his lines, and insisted that the guest cast live up to the standards of the main cast, to the point of roughing up one guest star who showed up not knowing his lines. Trust me when I say that after Jerry got done with him, every day he showed up, he knew his lines. And then some. He was funny, and dangerous, and loyal, and a prankster, and a pain in the ass; he was gentle and cynical and hardened and insightful and sometimes as dense as a picket fence...and his passing is a profound loss to everyone who knew him, especially those of us who fought beside him in the trenches of Babylon 5 . It is another loss in a string of losses that I cannot understand. Of the main cast, we have lost Richard Biggs, Michael O'Hare, Andreas Katsulas, Jeff Conaway, and now Jerry Doyle, and I'm goddamned tired of it. So dear sweet universe, if you are paying attention in the vastness of interstellar space, take a moment from plotting the trajectory of comets and designing new DNA in farflung cosmos, and spare a thought for those who you have plucked so untimely from our ranks...and knock it off for a while. Because this isn't fair. And Jerry Doyle would be the first person to tell you that. Right before he put a fist in your face. Which is what I imagine he's doing right now, on the other side of the veil. J. Michael Straczynski Executive Producer, Babylon 5 Share this URL: https://goo.gl/JOQh5c |
Claire Jones, 32, a food laboratory technician, became pregnant after having a brief affair with Marcus Bazerra, 35, a work colleague. She kept the pregnancy a secret from her boyfriend of 11 years, David Stoneman, and told him she was putting on weight because of a wheat allergy. On the night of Dec 28 last year Jones gave birth alone in the bathroom of Mr Stoneman's parents' house but the baby was stillborn. She wrapped the body in plastic bin bags then drove back to the house she shared with Mr Stoneman, 33, and acted as if nothing had happened. Cardiff Crown Court heard Jones failed to attend ante-natal appointments and police were later contacted by Mr Bezerra who became concerned. Jones told officers the baby was stillborn and she had flushed it down the lavatory. But forensic officers searched the house and her car and found the dead baby concealed in the boot. Jones pleaded guilty to endeavouring to conceal the birth of a child. She was sentenced to 48 weeks in prison, suspended for two years. In a victim impact statement read to the court, Mr Stoneman said he was "absolutely devastated" and had been left "emotionally broken" by the incident. "I struggle to connect the Claire I knew with the Claire who has done this," he said. Mr Williams said: "Mr Bezerra spoke in similar terms." Andrew Heyward, defending, said a psychiatrist had not found her to be suffering any particular mental illness. He said she was currently suffering from severe depression and had attempted an overdose. Judge John Curran told Jones: "Your campaign of lying had a devastating effect on two young men who loved and believed in you." The judge also ordered that Jones be placed under the supervision of the probation service. |
According to Marc Stein of ESPN, the Hornets are currently condensing their front office and have let go one of their scouts, Scott Howard, as a result. Hearing that the Hornets, in a condensing of their front office structure, have quietly let go well-regarded longtime scout Scott Howard — Marc Stein (@ESPNSteinLine) May 1, 2015 The removal of Howard isn't the major headline here. Even if he was a well regarded scout, turnover in that area is expected. What's more interesting is Stein reporting the Hornets are condensing their front office. Charlotte has frequently been making small changes to their front office the last few years, with last year's highlight being the resignation of Rod Higgins. With all the change, it's worth asking if this plan to condense the front office is a part of moving away from the Higgins era and in to the Cho era.There's also the constant fear of owner Michael Jordan thinning ranks to give himself more say in day to day activities, but that's speculation, and there's no major evidence to say this move is related to that. Either way, the Hornets front office is going to be something worth keeping an eye on over the next few years. They're beginning to make these offseason changes a trend, and we're all curious as to why. |
The history of collegiate wrestling can be traced to the many indigenous styles of folk wrestling found in Europe, particularly in Great Britain. Those folk wrestling styles soon gained popularity in what would become the United States, and by the end of the Civil War those styles, especially freestyle wrestling, emerged in gymnasiums and athletic clubs throughout the country. From then on, tournaments were sponsored and a professional circuit of wrestlers helped promote wrestling in the United States and throughout the world. By the end of the 19th century, the Amateur Athletic Union was sponsoring competitions in freestyle wrestling, and by the start of the 20th century, colleges and universities were competing in dual meets and tournaments, and such events spread to high schools and lower age levels. During the 20th century, collegiate wrestling evolved into a distinctly American sport which was soon regulated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Wrestling in the American early colonial era [ edit ] The roots of collegiate wrestling can be traced back almost as far as the earliest moments in United States history. There were already wrestling styles among Native Americans varying from tribe and nation by the 15th and 16th centuries, when the first Europeans settled. The English and French who settled on the North American continent sought out wrestling as a popular pastime. Soon, there were local champions in every settlement, with contests between them on a regional level. The colonists in what would become the United States started out with something more akin to Greco-Roman wrestling, but soon found that style too restrictive in favor of a style which a greater allowance of holds.[1] In the backcountry of Virginia and the Carolinas, wrestling contests were among the favorite athletic events of Scots-Irish colonists. The brutality of the matches was so great that the Assembly of Virginia had to legislate against illegal holds by prohibiting "maiming 'by gouging, plunking or putting out an eye, biting, kicking or stomping upon'" an opponent. In the backcountry, these rules and laws were largely ignored.[2] The Irish were known for their "collar-and-elbow" style, in which wrestlers at the start of the match would grasp each other by the collar with one hand and by the elbow with the other. From this position, wrestlers sought to achieve a fall. If no fall occurred, the wrestlers would continue grappling both standing on their feet and on the ground until a fall was made. Irish immigrants later brought this style to the United States where it soon became widespread. There was also what became known as "catch-as-catch-can" wrestling, which had a particular following in Great Britain and the variant developed in Lancashire had a particular effect on future freestyle wrestling in particular.[3] In catch-as-catch-can wrestling, both contestants started out standing and then a wrestler sought to hold his opponent's shoulder to the ground (known as a fall). If no fall was scored, both wrestlers continued grappling on the ground, and almost all holds and techniques were allowable. A Scottish variant of Lancashire wrestling also became popular, that began with both wrestlers standing chest to chest, grasping each other with locked arms around the body, and if no fall was made, with a match continuing on the ground.[3] Wrestling in the 18th- and 19th-century United States [ edit ] By the 18th century, wrestling soon became recognized as a legitimate spectator sport, despite its roughness. It was the major physical contact sport among men of all classes, as boxing did not catch on until the 19th century.[1] Among those who were well known for their wrestling techniques were several U.S. Presidents. George Washington was known to have had a wrestling championship in Virginia in the collar-and-elbow style that was county-wide and possibly colony-wide. At the age of 47, before he became President, Washington was still able to defeat seven challengers from the Massachusetts Volunteers. Andrew Jackson and Zachary Taylor, who favored wrestling as an army sport during his days in the Illinois Volunteers, were also well known for their wrestling.[1] Abraham Lincoln, as a 21-year-old in 1830, was the wrestling champion of his county in Illinois. At this time, where working at a store in New Salem, Illinois, Lincoln had a famous bout with Jack Armstrong, also a county wrestling champion. Lincoln won decisively when, after losing his temper when Armstrong began fouling him, he slammed Armstrong to the ground and knocked him out. Two years later, while serving as a captain in the Illinois Volunteers during the Black Hawk War, Lincoln lost his only recorded match to a soldier in another unit by fall. Wrestling was also practiced by Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Chester A. Arthur, and Theodore Roosevelt,[4] who always had an inclination to anything that involved physical exercise and did regular wrestling workouts throughout his service as Governor of New York.[1] William Howard Taft who was the heaviest of the Presidents at his "best weight" of 225 lb wrestled collar-and-elbow and was also the intramural heavyweight wrestling champion at Yale University. Calvin Coolidge was described as a "tolerable good" wrestler by his father until around age 14 when he took to "duding around and daydreaming about being a big-city lawyer."[1] Wrestlers such as Abraham Lincoln did not settle for the collar-and-elbow as much as in a free-for-all style of wrestling that was widespread on the frontier.[1] Since "catch-as-catch-can" wrestling was very similar, it gained great popularity in fairs and festivals in the United States during the 19th century.[3] The collar-and-elbow style was also refined by later Irish immigrants, and gained great ground because of the success of George William Flagg from Vermont, the wrestling champion of the Army of the Potomac. After the Civil War, freestyle wrestling began to emerge as a distinct sport, and soon spread rapidly in the United States. Professional wrestling also emerged in the late 19th century (not like the "sports-entertainment" seen today). At the time of the first New York Athletic Club tournament in 1878 professional championship wrestling matches "offered purses of up to $1,000."[3] By the 1880s, American wrestling became organized, with matches often being conducted alongside gymnastic meets and boxing tournaments in athletic clubs. The first national competition took place in 1887, with L. Chenowith of the Pastime Athletic Club winning the only weight class at 134 lb. The next year the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) sanctioned its first national tournament, and soon became recognized as the governing body of American wrestling.[1] The first college student-athlete to win a national championship was Winchester Osgood, a football player at the University of Pennsylvania, who won the 1895 National AAU Championship at the heavyweight division (then for wrestlers over 158 lb). Wrestling before the 20th century was dominated largely by independent athletic clubs and not by educational institutions. Prominent athletic clubs with wrestling teams included the National Turnverein of Newark, New Jersey, the Schuylkill Navy Athletic Club, St. George's Athletic Club, the Chicago Central YMCA, the Olympic Club of San Francisco, as well as various athletic clubs associated with ethnic groups such as the Chicago Hebrew Association. The National Turnverein produced George Nicholas Mehnert, who won six national AAU championships between 1902 and 1908 and lost only one of more than 100 matches to George Dole, then a student at Yale University. Mehnert was also a gold medalist at the Olympics of 1904 and 1908.[1] Despite wrestling not yet being regulated by colleges and universities, hundreds of participants attended wrestling tournaments. The growth of cities, industrialization, and the closing of the frontier provided the necessary avenue for sports such as wrestling to increase in popularity.[3] The 20th Century: American wrestling becomes "Collegiate" [ edit ] In 1903, the first intercollegiate dual meet took place between Yale University and Columbia University.[5][6] Under the leadership of wrestling coaches Charles Mayser at Iowa State University, William "Billy" Sheridan from Lehigh University, Dr. Raymond G. Clapp from the University of Nebraska, and Hugo M. Otopalik at Iowa State University, collegiate wrestling began to gain ground in varsity athletics.[1] The Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association held its first tournament in 1905, which soon sparked many more wrestling tournaments for both college and university students and high school students. The Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association remained under student leadership for over 30 years.[7] Edward Clark Gallagher, a football and track and field athlete at Oklahoma A&M College (now Oklahoma State University–Stillwater), launched wrestling as an official varsity sport just before World War I and with his team launched a dynasty, with undefeated matches from 1921-1931. When Oklahoma A&M hosted the national AAU championship in 1925, Gallagher's varsity team won the team championship. Also, his junior varsity teams and unattached entries placed second. The two groups won almost all of the medals at that championship.[1] In 1927, Clapp published the rules for collegiate wrestling, and the next year, the first NCAA Wrestling Team Championship took place on March 30 to March 31 on the campus of Iowa State College. 40 wrestlers from 16 colleges participated, and it was among the first national championships sponsored by the NCAA, the second national championship after outdoor track and field in 1921 (and the third postseason NCAA meet after both outdoor track and field and swimming in 1924).[8] Oklahoma State University won that first championship, which was an unofficial one, and later won the first official championship in 1929. Oklahoma State would win 27 of the first 45 Wrestling Team Championships in the Division I category, including seven straight between 1937 and 1946. In 1953, Penn State University became the first team outside of the Midwest to be awarded the national championship. One of the prominent champions during that period was Myron Roderick who won three straight individual championship as a wrestler at Oklahoma State (from 1954 to 1956. Later as a coach, Roderick would lead his teams to seven championships between 1958 and 1968.[9] The rules of collegiate wrestling developed by Raymond G. Clapp, which were eventually adopted by the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association, marked a sharp contrast to the freestyle wrestling rules of the International Amateur Wrestling Federation (IAWF; now known as United World Wrestling) and the AAU.[7] From then on, collegiate wrestling emerged as a distinctly American sport. Yet American collegiate wrestlers made smooth transitions in the international styles, being able to win Olympic medals in freestyle wrestling at various games.[1] College and high school wrestling grew especially after the standardization of the NCAA wrestling rules, which applied early on to both collegiate and scholastic wrestling (with high school modifications). More colleges, universities, and junior colleges began offering dual meets and tournaments, including championships and having organized wrestling seasons. There were breaks in wrestling seasons because of World War I and World War II, but in the high schools especially, state association wrestling championships sprung up in different regions throughout the 1930s and 1940s. As amateur wrestling grew after World War II, various collegiate athletic conferences also increased the number and quality of their wrestling competition. The pattern soon developed in which more wrestlers would make the progression of wrestling in high school, being recruited by college coaches, and then entering collegiate competition. For most of the 20th century, collegiate wrestling was the most popular form of amateur wrestling in the country, especially in the Midwest and the Southwest.[1] Wrestling matches in the United States were early on particularly long, particularly among those in the Greco-Roman style. The matches most often took place in rings that were 20 feet square and set apart by three ropes. Some schools, such as Oklahoma State University, even had the wrestling rings raised on a platform, much like that of a boxing ring.[10] Although the rules of the AAU called for the referee to determine a winner after 15 minutes of wrestling if no fall occurred, the matches of the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association were finished by falls, even if it meant an hour or more of wrestling. By 1911, collegiate wrestling rules allowed the referee to determine a win in the absence of a fall after 15 minutes. The time limits have steadily decreased over the years of the 20th century.[7] Yet for more than forty years into the 20th century, freestyle and its American counterpart collegiate wrestling did not have a scoring system. The introduction of a point system by Oklahoma A&M wrestling coach Art Griffith that gained acceptance in 1941 influenced the international styles as well. The following year, collegiate wrestling would mandatorily take place on open mats laid flat on the gymnasium floor; the rings and ropes were now illegal. This further made collegiate wrestling distinct from its professional counterpart, which would soon become more entertainment than sport.[10][11] The 1960s and 1970s saw major developments in collegiate wrestling, with the emergence of the United States Wrestling Federation (USWF) (later called the United States Wrestling Association (USWA) and now known as USA Wrestling (USAW)). The USWF, with its membership of coaches, educators, and officials, became recognized eventually as the official governing body of American wrestling and as the official representative to the United States Olympic Committee, in place of the Amateur Athletic Union.[12] Soon, the Division II wrestling team championship was established in 1963. Western State (Colorado) won the first team championship in that division. The Division III wrestling team championship was established in 1974 with Wilkes University winning the first team championship.[9] Collegiate wrestlers in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s as usual made strides in the international styles, but were more well known for their scholastic and collegiate wrestling achievements. These wrestlers include Dan Gable, who won the Olympic gold medal in 1972 and was the Olympic freestyle coach in 1984, but was more famous for his 15 team championships as coach at the University of Iowa. John Smith also won gold medals at the Goodwill Games against a Soviet in Moscow and at the Olympic Games in 1988 and 1992. He is best known however for his two NCAA championships and his 90 straight victories for Oklahoma State University, where he later became a championship-winning coach.[1] Ed and Lou Banach together won five individual NCAA championships for Iowa and were able to win gold medals at the 1984 Olympics. Wade Schalles of Clarion University earned a record of 821 victories, with 530 falls, which earned him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as amateur wrestling's "all-time winning and pinning leader."[1] Other high-achieving collegiate wrestlers who have had national, international, and Olympic wrestling championship careers include Robin Reed, Kenny Monday, Cael Sanderson, Temoer Terry, Bruce Baumgartner, and Kurt Angle (who would also become a major star in professional wrestling). Today, on the collegiate level, several universities are known for regularly having competitive wrestling teams. The Iowa Hawkeyes (University of Iowa) wrestling team, the Oklahoma State Cowboys (Oklahoma State University) wrestling team, the Iowa State Cyclones (Iowa State University) wrestling team, and the Oklahoma Sooners (University of Oklahoma) wrestling team are four of the most storied and honored programs in the country and have won the majority of NCAA wrestling team championships. Other wrestling programs that were or are at the top include the wrestling teams of the Minnesota Golden Gophers (University of Minnesota), Ohio State Buckeyes (Ohio State University), the Oregon State Beavers (Oregon State University), the Lehigh Mountain Hawks (Lehigh University), the Penn State Nittany Lions (Pennsylvania State University), the Pittsburgh Panthers (University of Pittsburgh), the now-defunct Omaha Mavericks (University of Nebraska Omaha), the Northwestern Wildcats (Northwestern University), the Northern Iowa Panthers (University of Northern Iowa), Augsburg College, and Wartburg College. Collegiate wrestling teams compete for the NCAA wrestling championship each year. The NCAA awards individual championships in the 10 weight classes, as well as a team title. The Dan Gable International Wrestling Institute and Museum is located in Waterloo, Iowa. The Oklahoma State campus in Stillwater, Oklahoma is host to the National Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum. Today, the various state high school associations also host annual wrestling championships for individuals and for teams. See also [ edit ] Notes [ edit ] |
Last week, I posted a new investigation into the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice latte and exposed how Starbucks makes it difficult for its customers to know what they are drinking. This is because: Starbucks doesn’t publish the ingredients online. Starbucks doesn’t publish the allergen information online. Starbucks is inconsistent. We were given slightly different ingredients depending on who we spoke to at Starbucks. I also broke down the complete list of ingredients in this popular latte, including caramel coloring that contains the chemical 4-Mel, which is classified as a possible human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and National Toxicity Program. A 2-year government funded feeding study found that 4-Mel caused lung cancer in mice. The Center of Science in Public Interest and the Consumers Union (the policy and action arm of Consumer Reports) recently petitioned the FDA to take action to limit caramel coloring in soft drinks. This post quickly went viral, with over 3 million views on FoodBabe.com and 10 million views on Facebook in just a few days. I was incredibly impressed with your activism and how you fearlessly shared this post with your friends and family. You truly got the word out within minutes, and people were listening. This news spread quickly and major news outlets began reporting our story. This morning I had the amazing opportunity to be on a very popular national TV morning show, Fox & Friends, which gave us a huge platform to continue spreading the word. In case you missed it, the video clip is right here below: (Can you guess my favorite part?) Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com Here’s some more national coverage that we received: Entrepreneur, “Can a Food Blogger Force Starbucks to Change Its Pumpkin Spice Latte?” USA Today, “One thing NOT in Starbucks’ pumpkin latte: pumpkin” Chicago Sun Times, Food Babe takes on Starbuck’s Pumpkin Spice Latte Jezebel, Not Even Starbucks Knows What’s In Your Pumpkin Spice Latte WGN Radio, Food Babe: Starbucks needs to offer organic milk Business Insider, “Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte Doesn’t Contain Real Pumpkin, And People Are Freaking Out” Philly.com, “ There’s no pumpkin in Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte” Medical Daily, “Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte Uses Carcinogens In Its Caramel And GMO-Laden Cow Milk” While all of this coverage was nothing short of amazing, much of it centered on how this drink doesn’t contain any pumpkin. The fact that it doesn’t contain pumpkin is the least of my worries. I have been investigating Starbucks for a while and wrote my first blog post about them over two years ago (in 2012): “Top 5 Ways To Get Sabotaged at Starbucks“, in which I revealed the not so “real” ingredients in some of their food and drinks, including: Caramel Coloring (Class IV) Pesticides Carrageenan High Fructose Corn Syrup Refined Flours Chemically Derived Sugars Preservatives Growth Hormone (in food products) Azodicarbonamide Genetically Modified Ingredients (GMOs) Inflammatory Oils At the time, obtaining this information was a daunting task. It took several emails and repeated visits to Starbucks locations to finally nail down the complete list of ingredients in their flavored coffee, espresso drinks and frappuccinos. To this day, Starbucks still does not publish their drink ingredients online or in their stores. One of my main concerns from the very beginning was their use of class IV caramel coloring. Following all of the attention that my 2012 investigation received and after a national TV appearance discussing their ingredients, the Starbucks PR team reached out to me and invited me to their corporate offices in Seattle to discuss my concerns. I was pleased about this opportunity to begin an open dialogue with them that could lead to improving the quality of their products. During the next few months, I was carefully preparing for this meeting and outlining what Starbucks needed to do to improve their offerings to make the biggest impact. That was until I was blindsided in May of this year, when they suddenly retracted the invite because they thought the meeting wouldn’t be “productive”: “I want to follow-up on your request to visit our Seattle office. After much consideration, my team and I have decided that a visit probably won’t be productive for either of us at this time. We’ve made tremendous strides in our food and beverage journey to ensure transparency and quality is at the forefront in everything we do. We are passionate and thoughtful about each product we offer to our customers, made with care each time. We’re not perfect, but we stand by our products and ingredients, believe in our brand and continue to make improvements along the way. I’d still like to be your point of contact for fact checking and any questions you might have – keeping a dialogue is still important and I hope you feel the same”. I was floored that they would not agree to an open face-to-face meeting, and I asked if a phone conversation would be possible instead. I let her know I was extremely disappointed and that they haven’t answered many of our questions regarding their use of caramel coloring. I made it clear that my only goal is to create a better food system for all. Yet, they again refused to meet with me: …we’re not feeling confident a visit to our offices or phone call will solve your interests. And – she made a claim regarding their “safe” use of caramel coloring: Regarding caramel coloring, we appreciate your feedback and want to assure you that in all instances where the color is used in our beverages, the level is well below the No Significant Risk Level (NSRL) allowed by California’s Prop 65, regarded as a conservative evaluation system, and safe to consume. At no time during our email exchanges did they indicate they were interested in taking caramel coloring out of their products and simply defended its use as “safe”. All this changed last week after the Food Babe Army spoke up. I was surprised, but obviously thrilled, when a USA Today reporter quoted Starbucks’ spokeswoman Lisa Passe last week saying they are “actively looking at phasing out caramel coloring“. Also – PIX11 News in New York reported that Starbucks has a “team in place” working on getting caramel coloring out of their drinks. Starbucks changed their position towards using this coloring in their products because of you and this is awesome news! They also indicated that they’re working on listing core drink ingredients on their website. I reached out to Starbucks to confirm this information and asked them several questions: What’s your timeline for removing caramel color? When do you plan to inform your customers of this change? Do you plan on offering organic milk in your stores? Would you remove carrageenan from your soy milk offering too? They declined to provide any answers: “We actually don’t have anything else to share at this time, but thanks for checking!” Spill The Beans, Starbucks! What’s Your Timeline? If your friends or family members are drinking Starbucks, please inform them of the truth. Take the picture above dissecting the ingredients and post it on your social media pages and keep sharing! Keep the pressure on Starbucks to announce a timeline and commit to taking caramel coloring out of all of their products. It’s unnecessarily used for cosmetic reasons and removing it should be a fairly easy change to implement. I can’t think of a logical reason (other than raising profits for Starbucks) on why you need to color coffee more brown in an opaque white cup! Removing caramel coloring will be HUGE, but Starbucks should step up to the plate and come clean on their ingredients. There’s nothing prohibiting them from listing core ingredient lists on their website immediately. Dunkin’ Donuts does it, so why can’t Starbucks? Ask Starbucks to set the bar and serve organic milk in all locations. This is a big priority, and they haven’t provided a statement or reasoning behind why they can’t add organic milk to their drink options. Contact Starbucks & Ask For A Timeline: Call Starbucks Customer Service: 1-800-782-7282. Email Starbucks directly through their website here. Continue contacting Starbucks via their Facebook and Twitter pages. Also, if you saw the bogus Snopes article that came out last week trying to discredit this Starbucks investigation, check out my response to that here. The truth always prevails! Wouldn’t it be nice to walk into a Starbucks and order a drink without potential cancer-causing additives and to know exactly what you are drinking? None of these changes could become a reality without you and your unwavering determination to improve the quality and safety of our food. I hope that you all are as proud of yourselves as I am in you. Together, we can do this! Sending you much love and respect, Vani P.S. If you are a new reader to FoodBabe.com, please sign up for my email updates, you’ll be the first to know about any future breaking investigations. |
When British writer Kazuo Ishiguro comes out with a book, it’s an event. He is, after all, recognized as one of Britain’s most important writers. His most widely known work, Remains of the Day, for which he won the Booker Prize, is required reading on high school curricula. It was made into a star-studded movie, as was his last novel, Never Let Me Go. Kazuo Ishiguro's latest book is The Buried Giant. ( David Cooper / Toronto Star ) So when Ishiguro said in an interview that people might take his latest work The Buried Giant as “fantasy,” fellow writer Ursula K. Le Guin took notice. “It appears that the author takes the word for an insult,” she wrote on her blog. “To me that is so insulting, it reflects such thoughtless prejudice, that I had to write this piece in response. Fantasy is probably the oldest literary device for talking about reality.” “She blogged a retreat, did you see that?” Ishiguro says in an interview about a week later. “She said that she had been too hasty in accusing me of sneering at fantasy.” But it did open up a conversation about genre. For the record, he agrees with Le Guin about fantasy — it was one of the few ways he felt he could tackle the story he wanted to tell: one about societal memory. Article Continued Below In a nutshell: an elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice, journey from their small village to find their son, who they remember but only faintly. It is the time after war, when the Romans have left and England is beginning to form as a country; there is a gently balanced peace in the land. But there is also a mist, a fog that is covering up people’s memories, both personal and societal. In The Buried Giant, legendary myths from other cultures — the ferryman, for example, (right out of Greek mythology) make an appearance in this book Ishiguro refers to as a “fable.” “I didn’t really think of it as fantasy so much as going back to the old stories. I’ve always liked things like The Odyssey and Iliad, Beowulf,” he says. Also making an appearance are ogres and pixies and a dragon (Querig — remember her from the Arthurian tales?) whose breath is creating the mist that’s clouding people’s memories. Two warriors are interested in Querig: Wistan, a Saxon, who wants to slay Querig, thus parting the fogs and restoring memory, and Sir Gawain (yes, the one from the tales) whose mission is to safeguard Querig and thus the mist. The ogres and dragons, Ishiguro says, “are very important elements in storytelling and always have been ever since people started to tell stories. Somewhere along the way recently we’ve developed a prejudiced attitude toward fantasy, we’ve looked down on fantasy, when the reality is that this is what we need when we’re telling stories.” At the time he initially conceived the book, back in the 1990s, the conflicts in Yugoslavia at Srebrenica and in Rwanda, he says, had thrown him for a bit of a loop. “It seemed very, very, close,” he says. “When the Cold War ended we thought everything was going to be marvellous, that Eastern Europe was going to open up.” But suddenly, he says, there were concentration camps and the Srebrenica massacre “in places where we used to go on holiday.” Article Continued Below “Those two things were maybe the initial triggers (for the book) rather than any intrinsic fascination with ancient Britain.” In reality, he is using as a setting a period of time — about 90 years — when historians “can’t agree at all what happened.” It’s a void that’s tempting to the imagination: “because there is an historical basis, I think it makes it easier to say this is a story that should be applied to modern situations.” At the same time as Srebrenica and Rwanda, “it occurred to me that a lot of countries and nations had buried dark memories and that sometime there was good reason to bury them.” While there is an idea that if we forget history we’re doomed to repeat it, he says, the reality is much more complicated. History can also “be manipulated to mobilize hatred in a community … a lot of the time people want you to remember selective bits of history but in order to mobilize the next war.” Revisionist history and cherry-picking memory “happens all the time,” Ishiguro says. “I think the South Africans after apartheid sensed that they were really on a knife edge … What do they do with … all the resentments, anger, sense of injustice that’s bottled up in that country? And I think they almost miraculously probably got it right with their Truth and Reconciliation Committee. It was a formalized way of trying to balance the need for grievance and a sense of justice on the one hand and saying, well, let’s just let that lie. “I think it’s much more of a careful balancing act between what you remember and what you don’t.” The same is true for personal relationships, which Ishiguro juxtaposes in The Buried Giant. Axl and Beatrice seem to be warm and loving; Axl calls her “Princess” and worries for her comfort and health. But when the mists part they get a glimpse of unsettling details, remembered or dreamt, who knows? Remembering is complicated, Ishiguro is saying. Through the couple’s relationship, Ishiguro explores the question “can (love) survive remembering all the dark things from a long marriage?” (He has been married to his own wife, Lorna, for 29 years.) “On the other hand, if you don’t remember those things is the love based on something phoney?” Axl and Beatrice fear remembering things. Nations, Ishiguro points out, go on and on and on. Individuals “know their time together is limited so they feel they ought to remember so that their love isn’t based on false memory, on forgetfulness.” Or, as Beatrice puts it: “I’m wondering if, without our memories, there’s nothing for it but for our love to fade and die.” While one of the things that makes the Arthurian era enticing is that there is so little written about it, that is also what makes it difficult, Ishiguro says. Consider the language. He started writing The Buried Giant in 2004. He had, he says, the kernel of the story. After writing about 70 pages of the book, he showed it to his wife. “she said a lot of this is interesting … but the way they speak to each other is all wrong.” When he went back to the book a few years later, “I tried to make it as simple as possible while still suggesting some kind of foreignness. And I did that this time by subtracting rather than adding words. I took out words that you or I might say. I would take out a “that” or an “of” or a “from” so it seems to read simply or even more simply than normal English but it creates this kind of strange, stilted rhythm that makes it seem slightly foreign.” It’s tricky, incorporating different styles of writing, different genres, to effectively tell a story. And Ishiguro is quick to admire the trait in others. One younger writer he points to as one he thinks is important — partly because of his ability to break through the barriers of genre, is David Mitchell, whose most recent book was last year’s The Bone Clocks. “I don’t read nearly as much contemporary as I should,” he confesses. “I read things like Stephen Mitchell’s new translation of Homer. (But) I think that David Mitchell is a very important figure ... He’s somebody who did actually break the mould. One of the important things he does is right from the start he wasn’t afraid of stepping into any kind of genre. And I think he’s done a lot to break down the barriers between popular and literary and between the so-called genres.” In the end, the story is more important: Genres are “sales things, and we shouldn’t get too concerned about them.” Editor’s Note: This article has been changed from a previous version which named Wistan as a Briton and the Saxons as leaving the country. |
Kitchen Confidential is an American television sitcom that debuted on September 19, 2005, on the Fox network, based on Anthony Bourdain's New York Times bestselling book, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. Bradley Cooper played the lead character, Jack Bourdain, inspired by Anthony Bourdain. After the show's first three episodes aired on Fox, the show was put on hiatus due to Fox's coverage of the Major League Baseball playoffs. In November 2005, Fox announced the show would not air during sweeps and that only 13 episodes would be produced because it was only averaging 4 million viewers.[1] The show returned on December 5, 2005, with its fourth episode, but only received 3.38 million viewers. Four days later, Fox announced the cancellation of the series.[2] Cast [ edit ] Kitchen Confidential The cast of Main cast [ edit ] Recurring cast [ edit ] John Cho as Teddy Wong – seafood chef Frank Langella as Pino – Nolita's owner Sam Pancake as Cameron – waiter Tessie Santiago as Donna – waitress Erinn Hayes as Becky Sharp – chef Frank Alvarez as Ramon – dishwasher Episodes [ edit ] DVD release [ edit ] On May 22, 2007, 20th Century Fox released Kitchen Confidential: The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1. The 2-disc set contains all 13 episodes of the series as well as audio commentaries on the series premiere by Darren Star, David Hemingson and Bradley Cooper, on the series finale by Karine Rosenthal, David Hemingson, Bradley Cooper and Dean Lopata and two featurettes – "A Tour of the Nolita Restaurant" and "A Recipe for Comedy".[3] |
"Looking for hope" With the help of the Japanese-style swordsman Nanashi, Arthur somehow manages to take a Gray Demon down. They retreat when the demon reinfircements arrive. Nanashi says that as long as the cat Cath sticks with Arthur, he cannot die. Meanwhile, like the other Holy Knights, Golgius spends his days hidden, escaping the pursuing masses. A giant shadow appears there… it was the Boar Hat tavern. Second chapter: Wandering Knight Elizabeth can now manage the tavern by herself. …but her cooking is bad in a different way from Meliodas' (to the point that if you even know about it, you can endure it). After Golgius leaves, Elizabeth holds Meliodas' corpse in her arms and cries. Another knights comes in the bar and it's Silver who was teamed up with the Blue Demon. Then he reveals his true identity… End texts: "An unbelievable meeting after 10 years!!!! The wheels of fate turn in the opposite way." "The one showing up is Zaratras who was supposed to have been killed by Hendrickson who sank in the darkness!!! The great former Great Holy Knight visits the restaurant!" To be continued in chapter 180 / Great Holy Knight Zaratras |
The chef David Chang recently posted an innocuous photo of the shrimp cocktail he was about to enjoy at the famous Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco to Instagram. Bolder was his caption: "The best white people food ever invented," he declared. "I love it so much." One shouldn't ever read online comments, but a quick look at the feedback under Chang's photo showed that his cheeky quip hit the mark: There were many LOLs and #truths to that effect. But what struck me as odd was the tacit acknowledgment of this unheralded, underappreciated cuisine: "white people food." Let's be clear: "White people food" isn't a racist description and its connotation isn't disparaging. Think of it as shorthand for a very particular, very personal set of interactions with food, and most often experienced by the children of immigrants. Story continues below advertisement As we celebrate our country's great diversity on Canada Day, we should take a moment to consider that diversity through an edible lens. Just as many Canadians have fond memories of eating wonton noodle soup or chicken tikka masala for the first time, many others have complicated feelings toward the first innocuous shrimp cocktail of their lives. I'll start. As a child of the 1990s, my affinity for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles knew no bounds. So when Chef Boyardee introduced Ninja-Turtle-themed pasta in a can during commercial breaks for the cartoon, I knew I had to have it. So, as a spoiled only child is wont to do, I begged my mother for it, despite not really knowing what "it" was. After all, I was growing up in a traditional Chinese household, on a steady diet of white rice and steamed fish. Mother knew best and said "no" enough times, but she eventually relented after a stream of tears at the supermarket. I ate the canned pasta, microwaved, for dinner that night. It was crushing to discover that I hated it. The kids in the commercial looked so happy with their bowls of orange, gooey, salty-sweet, turtle-shaped starch. Why couldn't I be like them? In adulthood, it's been comforting to find that anecdotes such as mine are almost like a rite of passage for ethnic minorities. I've spent the past few weeks surveying friends and co-workers on the subject of their first meal of white people food, and everyone was always quick to answer, those memories permanently impressed from a young age. There was cheddar and salami on Wheat Thins crackers at a friend's house; a hot dog with ketchup and mustard shortly after arriving in Canada; Wonder Bread with Cheez Whiz at daycare; TV dinner. Most people didn't offer up taste critiques without more prompting. The idea of the dishes was more important: that you could spend your entire life to that point eating Italian pastas, Malaysian noodles or Sri Lankan curries, then be suddenly confronted with foreign foodstuff that everyone else seems to take for granted. At their most lighthearted, these childhood remembrances are inherently hilarious, like the time in Grade 10 when I was introduced to tacos. It was a DIY evening, where we each filled the hard shells with cheese, lettuce, salsa and ground beef. Once the shells were finished, everyone at the table sat back and sighed, having enjoyed the fun meal – except me. To the shock and awe of my friends, I kept on going, scooping toppings on to my plate and eating them like some bastard stir-fry medley. There were no leftovers that night, to the chagrin of my friend's mother. Not only was it a silly way to eat the remains of tacos, it was also an embarrassing realization that my household etiquette of literally eating until you are full didn't hold sway under other roofs – especially as a guest. At the other end of the spectrum, an introduction to peanut-butter sandwiches can be fraught with feelings of otherness and exclusion. A friend remembers being offered her first by a classmate in Grade 1 or 2. All the white kids had them; she had sticky rice. "I wanted to have the same lunch as everyone." At that nascent age, a shared peanut-butter sandwich that someone else's mother may have slap-dashed together became a vehicle for necessary cultural exploration. "Then I made mom buy me some more." The chef Eddie Huang recounts a similar tale on more visceral terms. In his bestselling memoir Fresh off the Boat, a raw look at growing up as the son of Taiwanese immigrants, he writes about his first encounter with one of the most beloved white people foods. Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement At a friend's house (it's always at a friend's house), he asks, "What's the orange stuff?" "Macaroni and cheese," his friend answered. Huang deemed the dish "nasty" and "it stunk like feet." He's clear-eyed about the cultural implications of thumbing his nose at mac 'n' cheese: "I suddenly realized that converting to white wouldn't be easy." Thankfully, as the years go by, white people food needn't be about "converting to white." You eventually have another shrimp cocktail and slowly it becomes yours, too, the memory imbued with nostalgia rather than angst. I'm happy to report that all of the people I surveyed, despite the potential emotional scarring of all those non-ethnic meals, are well-adjusted adult citizens of Canada. The American chefs Chang and Huang owe much of their international success to their Korean and Taiwanese culinary heritage. And I eventually realized good pasta doesn't come from a can. Story continues below advertisement White people food as a cuisine takes its cues from the awkwardness of childhood. It encompasses the desire to fit in, to want what everyone else is having, to try something for the very first time. Then you grow up, and invite friends over to your own house for taco night. |
Disaster will strike the Valley on March 10, 2009. No, that's not a prediction from the Mayan calendar. It's a mock event being held on or near Arizona State University's Tempe campus to test the disaster readiness of local public safety officials and health care workers. The "Coyote Crisis Campaign" is a five-day exercise taking place during ASU's spring break in which 1,200 volunteers will pretend to be victims from an improvised explosive device. Continue Reading Officials don't have all the volunteers they need yet -- visit the campaign's Web site for registration info if you've ever felt the need to play bomb victim (or, to get serious for a sec, help with an important community chore). The site of the fake explosion won't be announced ahead of time to make the drill more realistic, says ASU's online newspaper. Naturally, a real terrorist attack would be impossible with Obama as president, right? See the full news release from the Arizona Department of Public Safety below: State of Arizona and Maricopa County getting ready to test disaster preparedness during five-day event beginning March 9, 2009 Coyote Crisis Campaign (CCC) will focus on exercise planning issues surrounding an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) domestic terrorist attack Approximately 25 hospitals from the Phoenix area will participate in the exercise along with police and fire departments from the federal, state, county and local levels Coyote Crisis is a federal, state, local, and countywide disaster preparedness exercise being conducted March 9 - 13, 2009. Approximately 1,200 volunteers will be used to assist in an important portion of this exercise on March 10th, 2009. The majority of the volunteers will be used as mock victims to assist in the evaluation of the State's Mobile Medical Response (MMR) and the hospitals response to a domestic terrorist attack involving an "Improvised Explosive Device". "The region is assessing the ability of responding fire service participants from 10 to 15 different agencies to triage, treat and transport 100 victims in a four-hour time period following the mock detonation of an Improvised Explosive Device (IED)," said Gil Damiani, Mesa Fire Department, Assistant Chief. "The ASU Police Department and members from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, along with members from other local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies will participate in Coyote Crisis 2009 in an effort to build upon our already great working relationships. Though several areas will be evaluated, we will focus heavily on interoperability and interaction with other emergency responders to control, mitigate, and recover from a major incident," said Allen Clark, Arizona State University, Assistant Chief of Police. "Approximately 25 hospitals from the Phoenix area will participate in the Coyote Crisis exercise. Exercise objectives for participating hospitals include evaluating mass casualty management, fatality management, forensic evidence collection, family notification and reunification, and medical surge. Special emphasis will be placed on the evaluation of interoperable communication plans and systems," said Andrew Lawless, MBA, PMP - Section Chief, Education and Exercise, Public Health Emergency Preparedness, Arizona Department of Health Services. We would like the media's assistance in getting the word out to the public that this exercise will be taking place and that on the 10th of March they may see a significant amount of emergency services units, especially in the ASU area of Tempe, moving around the city in support of this exercise. All factions of public safety, healthcare, and the business community will be tested throughout this week. More information to follow in weeks to come. |
PATNA: Loudspeakers fell silent as a high-decibel vitriol-filled campaigning for 49 seats going to poll in the first phase of Bihar assembly elections ended on Saturday evening.Though the electioneering got off to positive start with the two main contenders to power — BJP-led NDA and JD(U)-RJD- Congress alliance--initially singing the development tune, it soon turned into a slanging match, with rivals freely engaging in name-calling.From 'Shaitan' (devil) to 'Brahma Pisach' (super devil) to 'Chara Chor' (fodder thief) to 'Narbhakshi' (man eater), they called each other all.As campaigning peaked, Lalu Prasad's "Hindus also eat beef" remark was hotly debated, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking to turned the tables on the RJD boss, who had latched onto RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's call for a review of the reservation policy to claim that the BJP-led Centre was contemplating scrapping caste-based quotas.As Lalu and the anti-BJP alliance's chief ministerial candidate Nitish Kumar harped on the alleged move to scrap quotas, rally after rally, to consolidate the backward caste votes, the RJD supremo's "Hindus also eat beef" remark, made in the aftermath of the Dadri lynching episode, gave BJP and Modi an opportunity to counter one sensitive issue with another.Modi vigorously stirred Bihar's melting electoral pot by accusing Lalu of "insulting" the "yaduvanshis" (Lalu's own yadav clansmen), who rear cattle, by his comment."What all is he saying. What all Yadavs eat? Whatever position Lalu rose to, it was because of these Yaduvanshis and he insulted them. What kind of abuses you are hurling at them. Is it not an insult of Yadavs and Bihar? Do not humiliate the Yaduvanshis so much? Laluji, these Yaduvanshis helped you to come to power," said Modi, addressing elections rallies in Munger, Begusarai and Samastipur on Thursday.Modi's remarks provoked accusations of trying to communalise the elections."The real Modi on display — brazen attempt to add communal texture to Bihar polls , but deafening silence on deplorable incident of Dadri," said Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar.Kumar said it was for all to see "why Vajpayee ji was forced to remind him (Modi) to follow Raj Dharma, but wonder who will do the Vajpayee today ?"Warnings of a return of "jungle raj", a term used by Lalu's critics to describe alleged lawlessness during RJD's 15-year rule, was an oft repeated refrain of the NDA leaders, including Modi and Shah.With the electoral discourse getting reduced to petty name-calling, the Election Commission expressed "deep anguish" at the "plummeting level" of speeches, saying those were aimed at causing mutual hatred and urged politicians to show restraint.With accusations and name-calling flying thick and fast, FIRs were lodged against Amit Shah, Lalu, JD(U) president Sharad Yadav and AIMIM MLA Akbaruddin Owaisi for violation of model poll code.Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah spearheaded the NDA's campaign, with the Prime Minister addressing six election rallies on October 8 and 9. Several Union Ministers like Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Nitin Gadkari, J P Nadda, Ananth Kumar and Kalraj Mishra too chipped in, addressing a string of rallies.Union finance minister Arun Jaitley released BJP's vision document that promised laptop, scooty and colour TV to dalits.BJP is contesting the polls in alliance with Ramvilas Paswan's LJP, Hindustani Awam Morcha of former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi and Union Minister Upendra Kushwaha's Rashtriya Lok Samata Party. These leaders were also present during Modi's election meetings.Lalu and Nitish led the three-party Grand Alliance's charge. Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi visited the state only for a day each for canvassing support for JD(U)-RJD-Congress combine's nominees.There was also a dash of Bollywood glamour to the campaign. Though actor-politician Shatrughan Sinha was absent from the scene, BJP fielded Hema Malini, Smriti Irani, Manoj Tiwari and actor Ajay Devgn to stump for its candidates.Voting will take place in 49 constituencies of a total of 243 in the first phase on October 12. These constituencies are spread over 10 districts of Samastipur, Begusarai, Bhagalpur, Banka, Khagaria, Munger, Lakhisarai, Sheikhpura, Nawada and Jamui.A total of 1,35,72,339 voters are eligible to exercise their franchise in the first phase.Out of the 49 seats that would go to poll on October 12, JD(U) of Nitish Kumar had won 29 in 2010. BJP, which was with JD(U) in last election, had won 13 seats, while RJD had clinched four.This time, BJP has fielded a maximum of 27 candidates, while JD(U) candidates are in the fray in 24 seats, RJD on 17, LJP 13, Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) 6, Hindustani Awam Morcha 3 and Congress 8.Prominent among those whose fate will be decided in the first phase are senior minister Vijay Chaudhary (Sarai Ranjan), veteran Congress leader and former state assembly speaker Sadanand Singh (Kahalgaon) and LJP state chief Pashupati Kumar Paras (Alauli). Paras is the younger brother of LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan. |
Jerusalem’s Grand Mufti on Friday branded plans by President-elect Donald Trump to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem an “assault” on Muslims across the globe. “The pledge to move the embassy is not just an assault against Palestinians but against Arabs and Muslims, who will not remain silent,” Muhammad Hussein said in a sermon at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City. On Tuesday, Palestinian leaders called for Friday prayers at mosques across the Middle East this week to protest Trump’s campaign pledge. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up Meanwhile, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to help stop the United States moving its embassy to Jerusalem, a top Palestinian official said Friday. Saeb Erekat said he had passed on the message from Abbas to Putin during a visit to Moscow during which he met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. “The letter asks President Putin to do what he can about the information we have that President-elect Donald Trump will move the embassy to Jerusalem, which for us is a red line and dangerous,” Erekat said. Erekat has warned that the move, which could symbolize recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, could inflame tensions in the Middle East and sink peace efforts. He has also said the PLO would revoke its recognition of Israel if Trump moves the embassy. “The transfer of the embassy violates international charters and norms which recognize Jerusalem as an occupied city,” Hussein said in his sermon, avoiding mentioning Trump by name. The Palestinians regard East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, while Israel proclaims the entire city as its capital. The city’s status is one of the thorniest issues of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967, which had been held by Jordan since 1948. It later annexed East Jerusalem but the move was never recognized by the international community. Muhammad Shtayeh, a senior Palestinian official and Fatah central committee member, said on Tuesday that the Palestinian leadership had been informed by diplomatic contacts that Trump could call for the move in his inauguration speech on January 20. The Palestinians have added the issue to the agenda of a meeting of foreign ministers from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation on January 19 in Malaysia, he added. Times of Israel staff contributed to this report. |
After 17-year-old protester Qusay al-Umour was killed by Israeli soldiers in occupied territory on Monday, friends waited to see how the American papers would cover it. The Times didn’t do a story on Tuesday. They did get to it Wednesday: “Video of Fatally Wounded Teenager Sparks Palestinian Rage.” The Washington Post hasn’t covered the story in its print edition (though it has run two AP stories online). But yesterday the Post bizarrely ran this story instead, a feature story without any news peg about a blind golfer named Zohar Sharon who has won several international tournaments. Reporter Ruth Eglash went golfing with him: We are playing a round in the affluent coastal town of Caesarea, which has one of just two 18-hole courses in all of Israel… Sharon lost his eyesight in his early 20s during compulsory service for the Israel Defense Forces. Dr. James Zogby of the Arab American Institute pointed out the discrepancy to me and said, “I have long argued that the way the US media covers the Israel/Palestine story is to present Israelis as full human beings with feelings and aspirations, while Palestinians are a problem to be solved. Running these Israeli human interest stories and ignoring the Palestinian stories reinforces this frame.” The golfer story is hardly an aberration. Israeli “human interest” stories pop up regularly in the Washington Post. And in other media as well. More examples: Earlier this month, NBC’s Kelly Cobiella reported from Safed in Israel on Syrian wounded being treated by Israel after they got across the border at the Golan Heights. Salman Zarka, the head of the hospital, who coincidentally had just given a promotional tour in the United States, was interviewed; and the effusive report suggested that Israel’s help was the secret way to peace with its neighbors. Nothing about an occupation. A few weeks ago Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times did an interview with futurist Ray Kurzweil at a Times idea festival, and Kurzweil bragged of sharing his energy ideas with his friend Benjamin Netanyahu. Last month on Facebook, Dec. 19, 2016, Times reporter Jodi Kantor (who attended a Batsheva Dance Company fundraiser in 2007) offered a promotion of the Times series on Syrian refugees in Canada with a bit of piety: |
OTTAWA - Canadian home prices rose in May as Toronto remained robust despite recent government efforts to cool the market, while prices in Vancouver picked back up to hit a fresh peak, data showed on Wednesday. The Teranet-National Bank Composite House Price Index, which measures changes for repeat sales of single-family homes, showed prices rose 2.2 per cent last month. Prices were higher in all 11 cities included in the index, led by a 3.6 per cent increase in Toronto and a 3.1 per cent rise in nearby Hamilton. While other recent data suggested activity in the Toronto market cooled in May, Wednesday's report pointed to accelerating price growth in the resale market. Compared with a year ago, prices were up 28.7 per cent in Toronto and 23.5 per cent in Hamilton, a record for both. For Toronto, Canada's largest city, it was the fourteenth consecutive month of acceleration in home prices on an annual basis, the report said. Amid worries of overheating, the Ontario government announced measures at the end of April to try to rein in price gains in Toronto and the surrounding areas, including a foreign buyers tax. Prices rose 1.5 per cent on the month in Vancouver, bringing the city's price index to a new peak. Still, the annual pace of gains slowed to 8.2 per cent. The British Columbia provincial government imposed its own foreign buyers tax in Vancouver last summer, which helped cool the West Coast market, but there are signs the market is rebounding. The Bank of Canada warned last week that rising consumer debt levels and an unbalanced housing market have raised household vulnerabilities. |
Study finds childhood diagnosis of ADHD increased dramatically over 9-year period The rate of children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder rose dramatically between 2001 and 2010, with non-Hispanic white children having the highest diagnosis rates, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics (formerly Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine). The study also showed there was a 90 percent increase in the diagnosis of ADHD among non-Hispanic black girls during the same nine-year period. The study examined the electronic health records of nearly 850,000 ethnically diverse children, aged 5 to 11 years, who received care at Kaiser Permanente Southern California between 2001 and 2010. It found that among these children, 4.9 percent, or 39,200, had a diagnosis of ADHD, with white and black children more likely to be diagnosed with the neurobehavioral disorder than Hispanics and Asian/Pacific Islander children. For instance, in 2010, 5.6 percent of white children in the study had an ADHD diagnosis; 4.1 percent of blacks; 2.5 percent of Hispanics; and 1.2 percent of Asian/Pacific Islanders. The study also examined increases in the rates of first-time ADHD diagnosis. Researchers found that the incidence of newly diagnosed ADHD cases rose from 2.5 percent in 2001 to 3.1 percent in 2010 -- a relative increase of 24 percent. Black children showed the greatest increase in ADHD incidence, from 2.6 percent of all black children 5 to 11 years of age in 2001 to 4.1 percent in 2010, a 70 percent relative increase. Rates among Hispanic children showed a 60 percent relative increase, from 1.7 percent in 2001 to 2.5 percent in 2010. White children showed a 30 percent relative increase, from 4.7 percent in 2001 to 5.6 percent in 2010, while rates for Asian/Pacific Islander children and other racial groups remained unchanged over time. "Our study findings suggest that there may be a large number of factors that affect ADHD diagnosis rates, including cultural factors that may influence the treatment-seeking behavior of some groups," said study lead author Darios Getahun, MD, PhD, from Kaiser Permanente Southern California's Department of Research & Evaluation. "These findings are particularly solid given that our study relied on clinical diagnoses of ADHD based on the criteria specified within the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and that it represents a large and ethnically diverse population that can be generalized to other populations." In addition, the study found that boys were three times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than girls. Higher family incomes also were associated with the likelihood of ADHD diagnosis; children from families with a household income of more than $30,000 a year were nearly 20 percent more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than children from families making less $30,000. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ADHD is one of the most common neurobehavioral disorders of childhood. The CDC estimates that between 4 percent and 12 percent of school-aged children have the disorder, which generates health care costs of between $36 billion and $52 billion per year. Children with ADHD are more likely to experience learning problems, miss school, become injured and experience troublesome relationships with family members and peers, according to the researchers. "While the reasons for increasing ADHD rates are not well understood, contributing factors may include heightened awareness of ADHD among parents and physicians, which could have led to increased screening and treatment," said Dr. Getahun. "This variability may indicate the need for different allocation of resources for ADHD prevention programs, and may point to new risk factors or inequalities in care." This study is part of Kaiser Permanente's broader efforts to deliver transformational health research regarding the impacts of ADHD. One recent Kaiser Permanente study found an association between conditions in which the prenatal brain is deprived of oxygen and the risk of ADHD in children and adults. And last December, a Kaiser Permanente study found little evidence of increased risk of heart attack, sudden cardiac death or stroke associated with use of medications used primarily to treat ADHD. The population-based study included more than 150,000 adults aged 25 to 64 years who used ADHD medications. These studies are made possible in part by Kaiser Permanente's extensive electronic health record system, one of the largest private systems in the world. The organization's integrated model and electronic health record system securely connects 9 million people, 611 medical offices, and 37 hospitals, linking patients with their health care teams, their personal health information and the latest medical knowledge. The system coordinates patient care between the physician's office, the hospital, radiology, the laboratory and the pharmacy, and helps eliminate the pitfalls of incomplete, missing, or unreadable charts. It also connects Kaiser Permanente's researchers to one of the most extensive collections of longitudinal and de-identified medical data available, facilitating studies and important medical discoveries that shape the future of health and care delivery for patients and the medical community. In addition to lead author Dr. Getahun, study authors included Steven J. Jacobsen, MD, PhD, and Wansu Chen of the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research & Evaluation; Michael J. Fassett, MD, of the Department of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, West Los Angeles Medical Center; and Kitaw Demissie, MD, PhD, and George G. Rhoads, MD, MPH, of the Department of Epidemiology, University of Medicine and Denistry, New Jersey-School of Public Health. |
Democrats complain that Issa’s Benghazi probe has cost millions of dollars. Dems demand end to Benghazi probe All 17 Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are demanding that Chairman Darrell Issa end his year-and-a-half-long probe into the Benghazi attacks, which left four Americans dead and have become a catchphrase signifying conservative suspicion of the Obama administration. Led by ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the move to end what Democrats dismiss as a “partisan investigation” is part of a broader effort by party leaders on Capitol Hill to finally move past the political furor surrounding the incident. Story Continued Below Democrats and Obama administration officials complain that the probe has cost millions of dollars while forcing the Pentagon and other federal agencies to respond to seemingly endless congressional demands for more information, all without yielding any coverup or conspiracy. They argue that the investigation has not produced any information related to allegations that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to “stand down” military units that could have been sent to Benghazi in a bid to save U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and the other besieged Americans. ( QUIZ: How well do you know Darrell Issa?) Democrats privately believe that Issa is using Benghazi to try to hurt Clinton’s possible presidential ambitions in 2016. “This is all about putting up points against Hillary,” complained a Democrat close to the issue. “It’s clear what they’re trying to do.” Despite the increased pressure from Democrats, an Issa spokesman said there are no plans to stop investigating. Referring to Issa’s comments on Clinton and her role in the Benghazi incident, Oversight spokesman Frederick Hill insisted that the California Republican wasn’t trying to back away from anything and wasn’t seeking to damage Clinton politically. “That’s not true, that’s not our aim. We’re trying to get to the bottom of what occurred,” Hill said. “If the basic question is does the chairman still have concerns that [Clinton] had personal responsibility to ensure the safety of the people at this facility? Absolutely, he continues to.” ( Also on POLITICO: Darrell Issa, Elijah Cummings clash on IRS witness treatment) A secondary dynamic is the toxic Issa-Cummings relationship, which has worsened dramatically since Issa cut off Cummings’s microphone during a March 5 Oversight hearing on the IRS. Democrats were furious about the move and later introduced two privileged resolutions condemning Issa’s actions. While Republicans easily defeated those measures, Democrats have continued to try to paint Issa as reckless and unbound by facts or reliable information, all in a bid to use him as a metaphor for the GOP-run House. In their latest missive to Issa, Cummings and the Oversight Democrats said in a Wednesday letter that Issa should “put a halt to the Committee’s partisan investigation of the September 2012 attacks in Benghazi and begin focusing instead on conducting responsible oversight to implement constructive reforms to protect our diplomatic corps overseas.” Democrats added: “To date, the Committee’s investigation has been characterized by wild and unsubstantiated political accusations that turn out to be completely inaccurate after further investigations.” Citing fact-checking of Issa’s statement by The Washington Post and other other media outlets, Democrats criticized two previous Issa statements: that Clinton personally approved security reductions at the Benghazi site prior to the attack; and that Clinton told Panetta to “stand down.” ( Also on POLITICO: Democrats demand official apology from Darrell Issa) “Continuing this reckless patten of launching wholly unfounded accusations on national television … is undermining the credibility of our Committee and the seriousness of our work,” the Democrats claimed. “The Committee has held three hearings, conducted 27 transcribed interviews, organized several partisan delegations to Libya, issued two Republican staff reports, and reviewed tens of thousands of pages of documents. In addition, Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Admiral Michael Mullen, two distinguished public servants with decades of experience at the Departments of State and Defense, led an independent Accountability Review Board that thoroughly investigated the attacks and issued a report with 29 recommendations.” Cummings and the Democrats said they are anxious to see those ARB recommendations implemented. Issa, though, clearly has no intention of softening his approach to Benghazi, a popular topic with conservatives that once made nightly headlines on Fox News and something with which allies of Speaker John Boehner claimed he was “obsessed.” While Issa may be forced to give up the Oversight gavel in January because of GOP term limits on chairmen, he intends to press forward with his probe in the meantime. He will issue at least one Benghazi-related report by the end of the year, Hill said, and he continues to receive hundreds of pages of new documents and whistleblower testimony. “They didn’t want to do this early, they don’t want to do it late, they never wanted to do this,” said Hill, Oversight’s deputy staff director for communications and strategy, of the Obama administration’s response to the probe. ( Also on POLITICO: The battle to become the next Darrell Issa) Hill said the reason the panel continues to probe the attacks — as well as pursues its investigation into allegations that the IRS improperly targeted conservative nonprofit groups — is because the Obama administration has turned it into a battle between the committee and the administration’s legal teams, slowing down the process dramatically while exponentially increasing costs. “There are legitimate costs that come with complying with congressional oversight,” Hill said. “Pulling documents and making copies of them — that’s not that expensive. Where they really start running up the costs on these things is basically when they start pulling in lawyers and start scrutinizing all these documents for reasons to withhold things, not to turn over things, for them to be able to not cooperate with Congress.” For instance, Hill noted that the State Department would not give the committee unfettered access to some of the Benghazi materials. Instead, State Department officials delivered the documents to the Capitol every day, only to have them returned to the department every evening. A State Department minder would be present with the documents during the time they were under the panel’s scrutiny. Hill also noted that a recent poll showed the American public does not believe the Obama administration’s responses on Benghazi. Other House Democrats have launched similar broadsides against Issa in recent weeks. House Armed Services Committee Democrats, led by Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, have released a March 13 letter stating that “The total cost of compliance with the Benghazi related congressional requests sent to the [Defense] Department and other agencies is estimated to be in the millions of dollars.” Smith blasted the “ongoing and ridiculous investigations” of Benghazi by Republicans. While not singling out Issa by name, Smith said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told Smith that the Pengaton “has devoted thousands of man-hours to responding to often repetitive congressional requests regarding Benghazi, which includes time devoted to approximately 50 congressional hearings, briefings or interviews which the department has led or participated in.” |
One amazing thing that happened today is Apple made Neuroshima Hex update to v2.1 available. This version adds many multiplayer enhancements including playing with your GameCenter friends, which many of you asked for. Please note that you’ll need to update to this version before playing online. And another great thing is IGN made a list of 10 best iOS board games and put Neuroshima Hex and Caylus on two first position of this ranking! That’s something really unexpected and we’re really excited such well known gaming site as IGN thinks we make great games! To celebrate all of this we came up with an idea of starting a sale New York army $0.99 (normally $1.99) Neojungle army $0.99 (normally $1.99) Army of Frogs HD – !!! FREE !!! (normally $2.99) It’s a lucky $13 total to save – a no brainer |
VATICAN CITY -- As Christians around the world celebrated the birth of Jesus, Pope Francis used his traditional Christmas message and blessing Monday to call for a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That comes in the wake of President Trump's recent recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, which inflamed tensions in the region. "On this festive day, let us ask the Lord for peace for Jerusalem and for all the Holy Land," the pontiff said. "Let us pray that the will to resume dialogue may prevail between the parties and that a negotiated solution can finally be reached, one that would allow the peaceful coexistence of two States within mutually agreed and internationally recognized borders. May the Lord also sustain the efforts of all those in the international community inspired by goodwill to help that afflicted land to find, despite grave obstacles, the harmony, justice and security that it has long awaited." The Reuters news agency notes it was the second time Francis has spoken out publicly about Mr. Trump's decision, which was announced Dec. 6. On that day, the pope called for the city's "'status quo' to be respected" to ward off new tensions, Reuters reported. Nun looks at Nativity scene in St. Peter's Square before Pope Francis led the "Urbi et Orbi" (to the city and the world) message in Vatican on December 25, 2017 ALESSANDRO BIANCHI / REUTERS On Thursday, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to approve a resolution condemning Mr. Trump's new policy on Jerusalem, despite his warning that he'd be watching very closely at which members of the General Assembly vote for the resolution and which vote against it. The Holy Father, leader of the world's 2 billion Catholics, also depicted suffering reflected "in the faces of little children" in his Monday message, citing war and other tensions in places including the Middle East, Africa and the Korean Peninsula. He told the faithful that "the winds of war are blowing in our world and an outdated model of development continues to produce human, societal and environmental decline." The pontiff said children in the Middle East "continue to suffer because of growing tension between Israelis and Palestinians," while Syria remains "marked by war" and ongoing conflict in Yemen "has been largely forgotten." He offered a prayer that "confrontation may be overcome on the Korean Peninsula." |
“OmiseGO is the answer to a fundamental coordination problem amongst payment processors, gateways and financial institutions. By enabling decentralized exchange on a public blockchain at high volume and low cost, OmiseGO provides a next-generation value transfer service operating across currencies and asset types. Through the OmiseGO network connected to the Ethereum mainnet, anyone will be able to conduct financial transactions such as payments, remittances, payroll deposit, B2B commerce, supply-chain finance, loyalty programs, asset management and trading, and other on-demand services, in a completely decentralized and inexpensive way. Further, millions of mainstream users in the largest growing economies in the world will be enabled to make the transition from using fiat money to using decentralized currencies such as ETH, BTC, and others. The OmiseGO network is intrinsically agnostic between fiat and decentralized money: as far as adoption and usage go, the system is constructed so that the best currencies will win.” ( https://omg.omise.co/ ) For those who aren’t yet familiar, Omisego (OMG) is a blockchain based solution to the global banking monopoly held by the mega rich corporations. The public Ethereum based banking solution proposes an alternative to bank accounts through the use of blockchain technology! The Innovative company have been around since 2013, but have been gaining some serious momentum in the cryptocurrency world with their token OMG. The price at the moment is around £9 ($11.88), and in terms of market cap is 11th overall with a total cap of £833 Million ($1.1 Billion)! So why is it such a good investment now? A couple of reasons, let’s start with the fact that in 3 days, Binance will be listing the digital asset to their trading platform (12th September 2017). Although Binance isn’t one of the top 10 exchanges in terms of trading volume, a cool £27 Million ($36 million) has been traded on the platform in the past 24 hours. The move will undoubtedly affect the price, as millions of new investors will have the chance to buy in. Source (https://binance.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001495491) Now this is purely based off of an online rumour, but it does coincide with the Binance announcement made today. Apple will make their annual announcement on the same day (12th September 2017), which also happens to be Apple’s 10 year anniversarry! There have been rumours that a possible Apple – Omisego partnership will be announced at the event! If this does prove to be true, OMG would see swarms of investors new and old pumping money into it! A partnership like that would be monumental, and the price & market cap would BOOM! This is all for now, but OMG looks like a very good place to invest! Even if the Apple partnership doesn’t come to fruition, the project still has huge potential! Follow us on Twitter – Click Here Join The Bit Forum –Click Here Discover New ICO’s – Click Here |
Behringer, which is shaking up the synth market with its recently introduced DeepMind 12 synthesizer, is building a budget Minimoog clone. The company recently announced plans to create a complete line of synths, starting at $49. Today, founder Uli Behringer revealed that they’re working on a Minimoog clone. The move promises to be controversial, especially since Moog recently reissued the Minimoog Model D (right) and is going to great lengths to build new Minimoogs that match the original in sound, build quality and craftsmanship. Behringer, on the other hand, is planning a budget clone, designed to be cheap to manufacture. Here’s what Uli Behringer, right, has to say about their plans: The general rule and the law clearly describe that technology is free for everyone to use, provided it is not protected. You may have a different personal view, but that’s how our society and every industry works – again why the law has been designed the way it is. In case of the MiniMoog there is no IP (Intellectual Property) involved as the technology is more than 40 years old and all patents have long expired. As a result, the property is now in the public domain, free for everyone to use. Without this principle there would only be one car or synthesizer manufacturer in the world. For this exact reason you will find many companies who are manufacturing replicas of all sorts, including the MiniMoog – simply google it. We believe there are two typical types of customers: The ones who aspire to purchase the original product and provided they can afford the price, they will buy such a high-priced product. It is well known marketing knowledge, that lower cost and competing products do contribute to more awareness and hence stimulate both ends of the market. Many companies such as Tesla, Toyota etc. have now opened their patents to the public domain to allow other manufacturers to enter the same market and actually compete with them. Open source and open innovation are now trends that you’ll find in many industries, simply because the benefit of collaboration outweighs protection of your IP. Our primary customer is not the well-off doctor or lawyer, but the people with much less income. I was a struggling musician myself when I started my business 30 years ago and I made it my mission in life to enable musicians to pursue their musical dreams without financial obstacles. This is the reason why we work with extremely slim margins and consequentially our focus must be on achieving high volume production as otherwise we couldn’t survive. When you work with such slim margins, aside from research and development, much effort goes into DFM (Design for Manufacturing), DFC (Design for Cost) and production engineering etc. We employ over 400 engineers in MUSIC Group and we’re hiring 100 more. You will find our engineering facilities in the UK, US, Germany, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, China, Philippines etc. If you’re interested, feel free to drop by at our offices and meet our fantastic people. Perhaps this synth is a great little project to demonstrate how the design process works and I am happy to involve you in the development. Since the development has been done 40 years ago, it is a rather minimal engineering effort and once we have a working prototype and a projected price, we can then decide whether we will bring this product to market or not. Someone here in the forum had a great idea to pack this synth into a compact Eurorack format and this coincides with some of our engineers’ ideas. I will have our designers to come up with a quick design draft for you to comment on. Thanks Uli What do you think about Behringer’s plans? Would you want to own a Minimoog knockoff? Or should Behringer do something more creative, like they did with the DeepMind 12, and create something new that builds on classic designs? Leave a comment and let us know what you think! |
Four-Story Building Approved for UDF Site in Short North Rendering via Architectural Alliance. A four-story building will soon rise on the current site of the United Dairy Farmers store and adjacent parking lot in the Short North. The latest proposal from Elford Development for the corner was approved at last week’s Italian Village Commission meeting. The building will feature large storefronts for retail and restaurant uses along both First Avenue and High Street, with office space above. Ground level parking accessed from Pearl Alley will provide spaces for 13 cars. “We are very excited about the project,” said designer Jonathan Grubb of Architectural Alliance, “It will definitely be a great addition to the Short North community.” Commissioner Josh Lapp, who voted to approve the building, characterized the board’s response as generally positive as well. “The commission was enthused about the project due to the less-than-stellar condition of the site currently, including the curb cuts and parking lot that make the area unsafe for pedestrians,” he said. “I think overall there is a lot of excitement that one of the most important, and currently dreary, corners in the Short North is being rejuvenated.” Lapp added that Elford and Architectural Alliance were responsive to concerns brought up by the commission, with significant changes being made to the proposal since it was first brought before the review board in July. “My concerns about Pearl Alley, specifically, were addressed,” he said, “and I think this treatment – brick parking, rear storefronts, etc – really sets a new benchmark for Pearl and makes it more pedestrian friendly and active.” All renderings by Architectural Alliance. Related Articles: No related articles. About the Author Brent Warren is a staff reporter for Columbus Underground covering urban development, transportation, city planning, neighborhoods, and other related topics. He grew up in Grandview Heights and has a Master's Degree in City and Regional Planning from OSU. Tags: |
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