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Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun speaks after receiving Smithsonian Magazine’s ingenuity award for education last fall. Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images for Smithsonian Magazine In January, San Jose State University made a big announcement: It had reached a deal with the startup Udacity to offer college classes for credit online, for a modest fee, not only to its own students but to anyone who wanted to take them. The move was touted as a major step in online learning’s Clay Christensen-approved march toward the ultimate disruption of higher education. It seems, however, that there are a few more kinks to work out before we all toss out the books and the buildings for good. Inside Higher Ed reported on Thursday that San Jose State is suspending the Udacity partnership just six months after it launched. The problem: More than half the students in the first batch of online courses failed their final exams. Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun, a machine-learning legend at Stanford and Google, told the AP that the failure rates in the five classes ranged from 56 to 76 percent. Nor was the course material exactly rocket science—the five classes were in elementary statistics, college algebra, entry-level math, introduction to programming, and introduction to psychology. Thrun did note that 83 percent of students had completed the classes, a far higher rate than is typical for the free, open courses that have come to be known as MOOCs. Why so many failed is not fully clear, though the AP cites “officials” saying that a lot of the students who signed up had little college experience or were working full-time while taking the classes. On the bright side, Thrun said Udacity had gained some valuable data from the experience. “We are experimenting and learning,” he said. “That to me is a positive.” Sure, gaining experience is good. And there’s nothing wrong with experimentation. It’s a sure bet that somehow, at some point, online instruction will indeed reshape higher education, if perhaps in more modest ways than its most ardent backers assume. Missteps are part of the process. Still, this is not the first heavily hyped online-learning venture to make headlines for going dramatically awry. The question is, what university will be eager to offer up its students as the next lab rats in what amounts to a massive pedagogical R&D program by for-profit Silicon Valley startups? |
“All journeys eventually end in the same place, home.” —Chris Geiger I am 38 years old. And I have lived in 16 different homes. Now, most of these moves took place when I was young. But since getting married to my wife 15 years ago, we have lived in 5 different homes. Needless to say, moving is something I have become accustomed to. And as a result, I have become familiar with the process of buying and selling houses. Each time we have sold a home, we have been advised by our realtor to “stage our home for selling.” So then, in the weeks prior to our house hitting the market, we spent numerous hours “staging our home” for the sale. We did the research describing what makes a home attractive to a potential buyer and put most of their recommendations into place. By the end, our house looked better than it ever had since moving in—and then we sold it to some lucky family. Each time, I can’t help but be struck by the irony of the situation. We spend countless hours getting our home into its best possible condition, only to leave it? Most of the time while staging our home for sale, I wondered why we had never put in the effort to stage our home for living. You know, so we could have actually enjoyed it more while we called it home. To not make the same mistake we did, consider setting aside a weekend to stage your house for living. The process will take some time, energy, and money. It will take some intentional effort. But in the end, your home just may look better than the day you bought it. And maybe, just maybe, it could be a little bit of fun too. A Step-by-Step Process to Stage Your Home for Living. Remove 1/3 of your possessions. Those who stage a home for sale will tell you to remove roughly 33% of your personal possessions from the property. Less stuff means your rooms/closets have room to breathe and feel more spacious. A decluttered home is calm and inviting. This may be easier if you were actually moving (natural purging almost always takes place during transition), but if you wouldn’t take it with you when you moved, why let it take up space in your life today? Grab some cardboard boxes and walk through your home room-by-room, closet-by-closet, and drawer-by-drawer. Collect all the stuff you no longer need or love. Donate it, sell it, or give it away. If you need some added inspiration in this area, try our e-book, Simplify. Find a home for everything. Walking again through your home, make note of the items that are stored in your field of vision (think countertops, toys, entertainment units). Why are those items stored out in the open? Are they in the wrong room? Are they too big to be stored out of sight? Is their proper home too crowded? Intentionally identify the visible clutter. Ask questions to identify the problem. And brainstorm a new solution. Find new places to store these items out of sight. Visible clutter pulls at our attention and distracts us on an ongiong basis. On the other hand, clean, undistracted rooms promote relaxation and intentionality. Declutter counter tops, cupboards, and drawers. Buyers always open cupboards, drawers, and closets. Unfortunately, storage spaces packed too tightly look small, unsightly, and counter-productive. Remove unneeded items from everyday storage spaces. This won’t be difficult. You have likely collected a number of items over the years that are no longer necessary. At this point, they are only taking up space in your storage areas. Discard them. As an added benefit, you just may realize you have had enough storage space all along. Personalize your decorations. Realtors and professional home stagers will ask you to remove most of your personal decorations as it subtly communicates “I live here, not you,” to your potential buyer. And that is not a good aura to give the future residents of your home. However, when staging your home for living, leave the personal decorations. Even better, capitalize on them! Rather than devaluing them, highlight them by removing some of the non-personal decorations in your home. As a result, the ones that make you unique will play a more pronounced role in your home. Give your bathroom the attention it deserves. Put away personal hygiene products. Scrub bathtubs, toilets, and shower walls. Make clean and bright your goal. It’s not glamorous, but it sure makes getting ready every morning more enjoyable. Consider curb appeal. Realtors will tell you that you can never spend too much attention on curb appeal. Your potential buyer will likely make their decision on your home within the first few minutes of entering. Therefore, first impressions are the most important. And the very first impression they receive is when they pull into your driveway. If you have children, clean up their toys. If you have shrubs, prune them. Lay fresh mulch. Put some grass seed on the bare spots in your yard. Paint your foundation. Plant some flowers. After all, you pull into your driveway almost everyday of your life. Don’t you want to pull into something you’d like to purchase all over again? Clean thoroughly. Clean the surface. Then, clean deeper. Give extra attention to corners and windows and hard-to-reach areas. Just like in the bathroom, make clean and bright your goal. If you’ve successfully removed a good portion of personal possessions, you’ll find this task far easier to complete. Complete minor repairs. Take a notepad and create a to-do list of minor home repairs such as wall nicks, paint touch-ups, squeaky doors, running toilets, loose pieces, and burnt out light bulbs. Most of the minor repairs can be handled in less than 20 minutes for less than $15 and can be found with a simple Google search. Eventually, the repairs need to happen. And if they have to be taken care of before you sell your house anyway, why not repair them when you can actually enjoy them too? The investment sure beats walking back into your bathroom to wiggle the handle on a running toilet 3 times a day. Tackle a major repair. Roof about to go? Replace it. Leaky basement? Research your solutions. Kitchen appliances barely working? Go for it. These major repairs can be costly. And I’d never advise you to go into debt to stage your home for living. But if the time ever comes when your house does indeed need to be sold, an inspector/realtor will ask you to solve the problems. And if it gets to that, you’ll be paying for someone else to enjoy them rather than yourself. Likely the hardest part of staging your home for living is finding the motivation to get started. I get it. Life gets busy. And without the potential for a future sale on the horizon, it can be difficult to get started. So you just may need to artificially create the momentum to get started in the process. That is, unless the simple fact that you live everyday in this home is motivation enough. Image: 55Laney69 |
The death and disease count continues to climb in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria devastated the U.S. territory. As of Wednesday, 45 people died as a result of the hurricane damage, and four of those deaths were because of drinking contaminated water, authorities said. A third of Puerto Ricans are without water, and 89 percent of residents there do no have electricity. The U.S. government said it expects electricity to be fully restored by March. The lack of resources has pushed residents to contaminated streams and waterways to try and satisfy their thirst. Those waterways, contaminated by animal urine and other toxins, has made at least 10 more people sick with leptospirosis. The disease causes high fever, vomiting and jaundice, among other symptoms. President Donald Trump on Thursday morning tweeted that the country's resources can't help Puerto Rico forever. ...We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever! -- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2017 The president added that much of the territory's problems are self made, and the "electric and all infrastructure was disaster before hurricanes." U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, a Republican from York County, defended the president on CNN Thursday morning, hours after appearing with Trump the night before in Middletown. During CNN's "New Day," Perry tangled with host Chris Cuomo, who has said the U.S. government is not doing enough to help Puerto Rico. "They're not starving," Perry said. "You are wrong," Cuomo said. "You should do whatever you can." "They are doing whatever they can," Perry said. "There is a limit to everybody's ability, including the United States government." Perry said the government is doing everything it can and asked Cuomo, "What does success look like to you? Does everyone have power the next day?" Cuomo answered, "The people who need food and water having." The CNN host stressed that half the country is without fresh water, power and food. "Mr. Cuomo, you're simply just making this stuff up," Perry said. "If half the country didn't have food or water, those people would be dying, and they're not." The video above shows the full exchange. |
Despite White House opposition, the House appears likely to pass a bill this week that would allow more foreign students who graduate from U.S. schools with advanced technical degrees to stay in the country. The House failed to pass the bill, drafted by Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, when it was brought to the floor in September under a procedure that requires a two-thirds vote to pass. But based on the vote from that first attempt, the legislation appears to have enough support to pass the chamber this week by a majority vote. The bill would eliminate the Diversity Visa Program and shift up to 55,000 green cards a year to foreign students who graduate from qualified U.S. schools with a doctorate or master’s degree in the “STEM” disciplines: science, technology, engineering, and math. Smith’s STEM bill is slated to come up for debate on Thursday. Smith did make some minor changes to the measure, including making it easier for family members of STEM green-card holders to stay in the United States while they wait for their own green cards, and allowing unused STEM green cards made available in fiscal years 2013 through 2016 to be used in the future. The original bill would have only allowed for unused STEM green cards that were available in the first two years covered by the bill to be rolled over into future years. Still, even supporters acknowledge that the bill faces long odds in the Senate, where Democratic leaders on the issue, such as Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., favor including STEM green-card legislation as part of broader immigration reform. Schumer introduced his own STEM green-card bill in September. On Wednesday, the White House issued a statement of administration policy opposing passage of the House bill for several reasons, including that it “would allocate immigrant visas for advanced graduates of a limited set of STEM degree programs.” The statement said the Obama administration is “deeply committed” to immigration reform but “does not support narrowly tailored proposals that do not meet the president’s long-term objectives with respect to comprehensive immigration reform.” Tech firms and lawmakers argue that immigrants have been responsible for helping to start some of the most successful tech firms in the United States, including Google and Yahoo, and that it makes no sense to educate foreign students in the key STEM fields and then force them to leave the United States when they graduate. Both Democrats and Republicans support the goal of allowing more skilled foreign students who graduate with advanced STEM degrees to remain in the country, but Smith’s bill faces continued resistance from key House Democrats, including Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who has offered her own STEM green-card legislation. She has criticized the bill for eliminating the Diversity Visa Program. The program uses a lottery to allocate up to 55,000 green cards to people from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. “Republicans know they have an anti-immigrant image problem, yet, unfortunately, they are proceeding with the Smith bill to pretend they’re pro-immigrant, even though it is a divisive bill that actually reduces legal immigration,” Lofgren, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee, said in a statement on Tuesday. “Republicans need to move past these kinds of gimmicks and work with Democrats to reform our immigration system so it works for businesses, our economy, and families,” Lofgren said. “I am ready to work seriously with Republicans on top-to-bottom reform and hope that real progress can be made early next year.” Critics of the Diversity Visa Program, however, argue that it has been prone to fraud. The State Department even posted a warning on its website advising people to be wary of scams related to the program. “The Diversity Visa invites fraud and absolutely means that we would have a security risk if we were to continue it,” Smith said during the House floor debate on his bill in September. However, some tech-industry officials and other groups say they welcome action on the issue. “Passing this bill into law will greatly benefit the United States, because STEM graduates will be able to innovate and create companies here that have the potential to employ thousands of Americans,” Keith Grzelak, vice president for government relations for the engineers group IEEE-USA, said in a statement. Grzelak’s group released a report on Tuesday that argued the Diversity Visa Program has achieved its goal and is no longer needed. “The data shows that the visa lottery has made itself unnecessary, and even counterproductive, which is clear from comparing the educational level and potential contribution to the American economy of STEM graduates from the same regions and countries,” the report concluded. This article appeared in the Thursday, November 29, 2012 edition of National Journal Daily. |
Madison – Governor Scott Walker signed 10 bills into law today at the Wisconsin State Capitol. Assembly Bill 387 – repeals and recreates Chapter 11 of the Wisconsin statutes relating to campaign finance. Recent court decisions have struck down key parts of the law, and this bill updates Wisconsin’s statutes to be in line with those decisions so that all parties have clear guidance on campaign finance law. The bill additionally makes changes related to reporting requirements and campaign contribution limits. Authored by Representative Robin Vos (R – Rochester) and Senator Scott Fitzgerald (R – Juneau), the bill passed the Assembly on a voice vote and was concurred in as amended by the Senate on a voice vote. The Assembly then concurred in as amended by a voice vote. It is Act 117. Assembly Bill 388 – partially vetoed, this bill eliminates the Government Accountability Board (GAB) and creates two new commissions – the Elections Commission, which will administer and supervise elections, and the Ethics Commission, which will administer and supervise ethics, campaign finance, and lobbying regulations. Both commissions will be comprised of members from all sides of the political aisle who will serve five year terms. The integrity of the election process will be protected by the proper checks and balances to the oversight of these new commissions. The Governor exercised a partial veto to ensure that the Governor’s office receives an adequate number of nominations for the commission appointments of county or municipal clerks and former judges. This bill was authored by Representative Dean Knudson (R – Hudson) and Senator Leah Vukmir (R – Wauwatosa). The bill passed by the Assembly by a vote of 58-39. It was concurred in the Senate as amended by a vote of 18-14. Because it was amended in the Senate, the Assembly concurred with those amendments by a vote of 58-37, respectively. It is Act 118. Assembly Bill 394 – creates a review process for the Joint Finance Committee (JFC) for insurance changes that are usually approved by the Group Insurance Board (GIB). If JFC schedules a meeting to review changes, GIB cannot implement changes until they are approved by JFC. Authored by Representative John Nygren (R – Marinette) and Senator Alberta Darling (R – River Hills), the bill passed the Assembly by a vote of 90-2 and was concurred in as amended, by the Senate by a vote of 32-0. The Assembly then concurred in the amendment by voice vote. It is Act 119. Assembly Bill 23 – prohibits an individual from bringing action against a financial institution, such as a bank or credit union, regarding an offer for financing unless that offer is in writing, sets forth relevant terms and commitments, is signed with authorized signatures, or is delivered to the party seeking to enforce the offer, promise agreement, or commitment. The bill ultimately prevents frivolous law suits against banks and credit unions. Authored by Representative David Craig (R – Big Bend) and Senator Howard Marklein (R – Spring Green), the bill passed the Assembly on a voice vote and was concurred by the Senate on a voice vote. It is Act 120. Senate Bill 170 – extends the statute of limitations for second and third degree sexual assault from six years to ten years. This bill allows victims of sexual assault more time to come forward and report the crime, and by extending the statute of limitations, it is more likely that perpetrators of sexual assault will be brought to justice. Authored by Senator Devin LeMahieu (R – Oostburg) and Representative Samantha Kerkman (R – Salem), the bill passed the Senate on a voice vote and was concurred by the Assembly by a vote of 91-1. It is Act 121. Senate Bill 178 – exempts companies and people performing certain lead-safe renovations from lead inspection requirements, as described in Department of Health Services Chapter 163. The exemption allows for a partial-lead inspection, which is an on-site investigation of one or more painted, varnished, or otherwise coated building components to determine the presence of lead, but not a surface-to-surface investigation. The bill also requires the person performing the partial-lead inspection to disclose it, in writing, to the owner or lessor of the dwelling or premises. Authored by Senator Mary Lazich (R – New Berlin) and Representative Mike Kuglitsch (R – New Berlin), the bill passed the Senate by a vote of 18-14 and was concurred by the Assembly on a voice vote. It is Act 122. Senate Bill 158 – makes a number of modifications to existing state law relating to commercial motor vehicles (CMVs) and commercial driver licenses (CDLs) in order to bring Wisconsin into compliance with Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) regulations. The bill guarantees a stable regulatory environment for Wisconsin’s motor carriers is maintained, the state’s conformity with federal regulations continues, and above all, ensures that Wisconsin’s motorists remain safe as they travel throughout the state. Authored by Senator Jerry Petrowski (R – Marathon) and Representative John Spiros (R – Marshfield), the bill passed the Senate on a voice vote and was concurred by the Assembly on a voice vote. It is Act 123. Senate Bill 224 – replaces various terms that currently refer to official markings on a highway with the term “pavement marking,” which the bill defines as any material or device on the surface of a highway intended to regulate, warn, or guide highway users. Under current law, official markings on a highway are referred to by the terms “mark,” “marking” and “pavement marking,” but are not defined in greater depth. This bill provides clarity and uniformity to existing statutes pertaining to the use of pavement markings on Wisconsin’s roadways. Authored by Senator Jerry Petrowski (R – Marathon) and Representative Janel Brandtjen (R – Menomonee Falls), the bill passed the Senate on a voice vote and was concurred by the Assembly on a voice vote. It is Act 124. Senate Bill 225 – as amended, the bill allows a municipality or county with an ordinance to establish a golf cart crossing point on a state trunk highway or connecting highway within the limits of a municipality if the following conditions are met: the state trunk highway or connecting highway has a speed limit of 35 miles per hour or less, the highway crossing connects highways designated for golf cart operation, and the municipality provides sufficient funds to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to cover the costs of posting and maintaining highway crossing signs. Authored by Senator Terry Moulton (R – Chippewa Falls) and Representative Bob Kulp (R – Stratford), the bill passed the Senate on a voice vote and was concurred by the Assembly on a voice vote. It is Act 125. Senate Bill 227 – provides a sales and use tax exemption for contractors buying materials which will be used in a project for a nonprofit or local government. Under current law, nonprofits and local governments currently have this exemption, but it only applies if they purchase the materials directly. This bill allows the exemption to apply even if the contractor purchases the materials. Authored by Senator Howard Marklein (R – Spring Green) and Representative Bob Kulp (R – Stratford), the bill passed the Senate by a vote of 32-0 and was concurred by the Assembly on a voice vote. It is Act 126. |
It’s a typically rainy day in January at 2 p.m. Downtown cores are packed, with businesses in full swing after workers have returned from the holidays. Then the earthquake hits Vancouver. Most people hear it before they feel it — a low, rumbling sound similar to a freight train. Closest to the epicentre, violent shaking, which lasts 10 to 20 seconds, knocks people off their feet. Tall buildings sway. Some buildings collapse, and many shift and crack. The ground ruptures in some areas. There are fires from broken gas lines and flooding from the recent rains increases as some dikes failing. Windows break and glass falls. Many people who run outside suffer injury or death from falling and flying objects. Thousands are trapped. Medical facilities are overwhelmed. This is the grim picture painted of a hypothetical, worst-case scenario earthquake that hits Vancouver. The scenario — a shallow earthquake of magnitude 7.3 temblor directly beneath the city — was chosen to provide the basis for drafting an emergency earthquake plan by the province. Such an earth quake, the plan noted, would be “exceedingly rare.” In the scenario, 18 per cent of Metro Vancouver buildings are estimated to receive extensive damage, while 12 per cent are most likely to receive catastrophic damage. The death toll is estimated at nearly 10,000 in Metro Vancouver with more than 128,000 injuries. In a separate worst-case scenario for an earthquake beneath Victoria, deaths were estimated at nearly 1,500 and injuries at more than 19,000. The human casualty figures are among the first such estimates for Metro Vancouver, as governments grapple with how to prepare for a severe earthquake that scientists predict for B.C. Vancouver and Victoria were chosen because of their population density, political and economic significance and because of critical infrastructure such as the Port of Metro Vancouver. Because the earthquakes are hypothetical scenarios, and because computer modelling always has uncertainties, the effects of an earthquake, particularly one that took place farther from Vancouver or Victoria, could be less extreme. For example, a 2015 University of B.C. analysis, using a different scenario of a strong and deep earthquake in the Strait of Georgia (not a worst-case scenario), predicted 22 deaths and 38 serious injuries in Metro Vancouver. In Christchurch, New Zealand, where a similar shallow crustal earthquake hit in 2011, 10 kilometres away from the city, 185 people were killed. “We wanted a scenario that had catastrophic impacts that required us to build a scalable and flexible plan,” says Kathryn Forge, a seismic specialist with Emergency Management B.C. “If we plan for the worst case, then we can tailor our response accordingly for other earthquakes or lesser hazards.” A major rain and wind storm that swept B.C. this past weekend gave residents and entitites such as B.C. Hydro a reminder of the importance of disaster preparedness. B.C. did not model a mega-thrust earthquake off the coast of B.C. — often called the “big one” — because it would take place at some distance from the population centres. The new earthquake response plan — released at the end of July — sets up a framework for such elements as a logistics management system to obtain and transport personnel, equipment and supplies to areas of need. |
Investments in renewable energy rose to record levels globally in 2014 but fell sharply in Australia because of uncertainty triggered by the Abbott government's review of the industry, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said. Worldwide investment in wind farms, solar photovoltaics and other clean energy sources jumped 16 per cent last year to $US310 billion ($383 billion), or more than five times the tally of a decade earlier. Solar investments accounted for almost half the total. The unlucky country: The Abbott government's review of the industry has spooked investors in green energy. Credit:AFP China led the way, with investment soaring almost one-third to $US89.5 billion, while US investment gained 8 per cent to $US51.8 billion, and Brazil's almost doubled to $US7.9 billion. Australia, though, went the other way, with investment sinking 35 per cent to $US3.7 billion. BNEF said the amount was the "lowest since 2009, as wind and solar project developers delayed decisions while they awaited the government's response to its Renewable Energy Target review". |
CLOSE Grizzlies forward Zach Randolph says he wants to return as a free agent this summer. Ronald Tillery/The Commercial Appeal Buy Photo Memphis Grizzlies forward Zach Randolph reacts after hitting a 3-pointer against the Oklahoma City Thunder during fourth quarter action at the FedExForum. (Photo: Mark Weber, The Commercial Appeal)Buy Photo Can you imagine the ovation? Can you imagine what FedExForum will sound like when Zach Randolph makes his return? Can you imagine the headbands and the emotion? Can you imagine what it will be like to hear 18,119 chanting “Z-Bo” one final time? It will be the sound of love and gratitude. Of Memphians thanking Randolph for changing not just the way we feel about our basketball franchise, but the way we feel about ourselves. We don’t bluff. At least, now we don’t bluff. We take that as an article of civic faith. But we used to bluff, more than we’d like to admit. Then Randolph arrived, and showed us how to wear a blue-collar jersey with relentless pride. He was unstoppable, so we were unstoppable. He was unruly and joyful, so we could be both of those things, too. More: Zach Randolph agrees to two-year deal with Kings So, yes, the building will be unimaginably loud when Z-Bo returns to his city. It will always be his city, whether he lives here or not. But Randolph’s in-season life in Memphis came to an end Tuesday, when he accepted a deal to play for Dave Joerger’s Sacramento Kings. Memphis Grizzlies Zach Randolph and Vince Carter celebrate Carter's end of the third quarter buzzer beater against the Utah Jazz. (Photo: Nikki Boertman) The Kings offered Randolph a two-year contract worth $24 million, more than the Grizzlies could have offered him. At least more than the Grizzlies could have offered him since they’ll be paying Chandler Parsons more than $47 million over those same two seasons. Out with grind city, in with refined city? It’ll certainly be a different feel. CLOSE Zach Randolph signed a two-year, $24 million dollar contract with the Sacramento Kings, ending his time in Memphis. Grizzlies fans and Memphians alike were saddened by his departure, after he endeared himself to the city through playoff success and community services. Jon Garcia / USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennssee But this is not the day to be lamenting past personnel moves. This is the day to celebrate the Grizzlies all-time leader in field goals (3,731), offensive rebounds (1,895), defensive rebounds (3,717) and MLG&W bills paid. More: Twitter reacts to Randolph leaving Memphis He is the greatest of all Grizzlies. And it’s not me saying this, it’s y’all. When this paper held a greatest Grizzly contest a year ago, Randolph received 92 percent of all votes cast. Why? Because he was rough around the edges, just like we are. Because he, too, was mischaracterized and misunderstood. Buy Photo Memphis Grizzlies Zach Randolph, center, breaks through the defense of Los Angeles Clippers Marreese Speights, left, and Wesley Johnson, right. at FedExForum. (Photo: Nikki Boertman, The Commercial Appeal) Rick Reilly once wrote that Randolph had an extra punk chromosome. Maybe Memphis has an extra punk chromosome. Or maybe it’s those who say such things about Memphians who do. But let the record show that in July of 2009, Grizzlies general manager Chris Wallace acquired Randolph in a trade for — really! — Quentin Richardson. The previous three years, the Grizzlies had won 22, 22 and 24 games. Their first year with Randolph, that number jumped to 40. Seven straight years of playoff bedlam followed that. More: Grizzlies not serious about Green, agent says I am certain each of you have your favorite Z-Bo moments. The transcendent performance against the Spurs in 2011, the destruction of Blake Griffin and the Clippers in 2013. But Z-Bo became more than a basketball player in this town, he became an icon and a fable, both. He showed us how a man can change his reputation. He showed us that ferocity and gentleness can go hand in hand. That phrase, “We don’t bluff?” It really was Z-Bo who said that. And it was Z-Bo who showed us what it meant. Buy Photo Memphis Grizzlies Zach Randolph during the game against the Portland Trail Blazers at FedExForum. (Photo: Nikki Boertman, The Commercial Appeal) It meant, you shouldn’t be ashamed of where you come from. You certainly shouldn’t use it as an excuse. It meant, it doesn’t matter what other people say about you. It matters only how hard you work and what you give. To those outside of Memphis, it may be hard to understand what Randolph — and Tony Allen, who may be the next to leave as a free agent — have meant to the psyche of this town. But they helped change it from a place with an inferiority complex to a place of authentic, boisterous pride. Now Randolph will play out his career in Sacramento, and maybe that feels wrong to you. It felt wrong when Michael Jordan didn’t end his career in Chicago, when Joe Montana didn’t end his career in San Francisco, and when Joe Namath didn’t end his career in New York. But nobody was ever confused about where those players did their most important work, or where they left their hearts. Nobody will be confused about Randolph either, about the Grizzly who was even shaped a little bit like a bear. He gave us Z-bounds and deep thoughts, gave us rump slaps and sweet floaters, gave us eight years of triumphs and joy. So Godspeed, Z-Bo. We wish you nothing but the best. You may wear a different uniform for the next couple seasons, but you’ll always be the No. 1 Grizzly to us. |
Arizona Govenor Jan Brewer speaks while flanked by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell (L) and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) during the official 2014 Super Bowl Handoff Ceremony. UPI/Gary C. Caskey | License Photo PHOENIX, Feb. 25 (UPI) -- Sources close to Gov. Jan Brewer say the Republican is likely to veto Arizona's deeply controversial bill that would allow denial of service to gay people when she returns to the state this week. Brewer, who has been in Washington attending the annual National Governors Association meeting this week, has publicly said she still has to look closely at the bill, but plans to "do the right thing for Arizona." But privately, sources closer to Brewer say she's more likely to bend to warnings from business interests who say the law would unleash an economic backlash similar to the one that followed the state's controversial immigration law in 2010. "It’s been her proclivity in the past to focus on the priorities she wants them [the legislature] to accomplish, and this was clearly not part of her agenda,” said her longtime adviser, Chuck Coughlin. “She doesn’t want to take any actions that could jeopardize the economic momentum we’ve seen here in Arizona,” another source close to the governor said. She has until Saturday morning to make her decision. The measure is similar to those passed in legislatures in Kansas and Idaho, before being pulled back after they were met with fierce opposition once they became widely known. It would allow businesses to deny service to gay and lesbian customers under the guise of religious freedom. In Arizona, where the Republican-controlled legislature passed the measure with broad margins, a similar outcry has raised concerns the state would face a boycott or litigation. Apple, which recently announced plans to open a manufacturing plant in the state, urged Brewer to veto the law, and American Airlines, Marriott, and the Arizona Chamber of Commerce warned the law would be bad for tourism and business. The senators from Arizona, Republicans John McCain and Jeff Flake, both encouraged Brewer to veto the bill, as do the leading GOP candidates for governor. RELATED DC lobbyist prepares legislation banning gay athletes from joining NFL And on Monday, the Arizona Super Bowl Committee, which is hosting the championship game next year, warned of a repeat of the NFL's 1993 decision to pull the game from the state after the governor rescinded Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a state holiday. The NFL issued a statement saying it was aware of the controversy, but made no immediate threats. “Our policies emphasize tolerance and inclusiveness, and prohibit discrimination based on age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or any other improper standard," the statement said. "We are following the issue in Arizona and will continue to do so should the bill be signed into law, but will decline further comment at this time.” [CNN] [NBC News] [Arizona Chamber of Commerce] |
[There was a video here] The kids. Who knows why they do what they do? Like these young cops and government bureaucrats in downtown Bangkok who've decided to start some gangs. Mexican gangs. With cholo clothes and tats and bikes and throwin' signs and shit. Goodness, IT'S A TREND: Via Fusion, some videographers from a Thailand-based website decided to hang with the toughs and their painstaking simulacrum of NAFTA-territory thug life, minus the dealin' and pimpin' and killin'. The bizarre street action starts at :22 in the video above. Why do the youngs do it? Just cuz. And also because it's hot up in here, son: On the outside, many of these Thais resemble the Cholos who inspire them. Their clothes, tattoos, and hairstyles emulate those sported by real homies. That said, tattoos and bling do not a gangster make. When Coconuts interviewed members from three of these "gangs" - Balcony Pain, Fratez and D Sixty - we found out that none of the men appreciated the brutal violence that is often associated with real Latino gangs like the Latin Kings. Moreover, most only had a shallow understanding of the foreign urban culture and Mexico in general. What became clear is that the Thai obsession with these groups is simply an appreciation of their aesthetic. All of the men we spoke with were captivated by "the clean and simple style" that "worked well in this (Thai) weather," as one gang member said. Their explanations are pretty fascinating. "During the day, I work in an office," says one. "At night, I'm a Mexican gangster. I'm a gangster at heart." This dude, Yak Yai Fratez, says his day job is as a police officer: "I think Mexican style reflects my life so well," says another. "I think I'm gonna dress like this till I die." Cool, cool. But no, really: Why fixate on the stereotypical mythos of a violent culture? Eh, why not, really? It's nothing new in pop culture. Except maybe the cross-ethnic weirdness of it all. Quoth the videographers: Many are family men, and some admitted to consulting their wives before getting certain tattoos. Needless to say, the Thai gangs don't fight amongst themselves or deal in illicit drugs, both of which are hallmarks of real Latino gangs. In a nutshell, this is a brotherhood of style-conscious men who bond over baggy white shirts and gothic-baroque tattoos. Well, they've got something on most Americans, who couldn't tell a cholo from a churro. For an extended look at these guys (and an interesting solo Thai gangster rap called "Fuck the Popo With Big Guns" at 2:44), check out the cut below. |
Vince Staples is not bringing back gangster rap. The 23-year-old might have struggled for survival as a teenager in North Long Beach, and sure, wisps of his street-life past come up in a few songs on his acclaimed 2015 full-length Def Jam debut, Summertime '06. But a few trunk-rattling beats and razor-sharp verses about the realities of life without economic options do not a gangster-rap resurgence make. "Motherfuckers say Summertime '06 was gangster rap, but that's just whatever they say when they've never been [south of] the 10 freeway," Staples notes, reclining on a leather couch at Hollywood's EastWest Studios, where he recently finished recording his next album, Big Fish Theory, dropping June 23. "[Summertime] is not really that banged out to me, just to be real. Every nigger has lived that in the eyes of the people who like to call us 'niggers' when their door's closed, so I don't really care about that type of shit." Continue Reading Staples, dressed casually in a black hoodie and khaki-colored joggers and sipping on a cucumber-ginger limeade, spends the next few hours emphasizing how little he cares about what people think of his music in general, or his place in L.A.'s current hip-hop renaissance. He is not being coy about this indifference, either. He seems genuinely uninterested in how his music affects listeners or how it's perceived by anyone once it leaves his hands. "I don't think too much about it. You walk to the canvas and you paint," he says with an unwavering stare. "Art is a selfish thing." Along with Kendrick Lamar, Staples emerged over the last seven years as a different kind of rapper. Since he started dropping flows as a fringe member of the Odd Future crew at age 15 (stealing the show with his cameo on Earl Sweatshirt's "Hive"), Staples has collaborated with everyone from Common to Ghostface Killah to, most recently, Gorillaz. His early mixtapes, Shyne Coldchain Vol. 1, Shyne Coldchain II, Winter in Prague and Stolen Youth, showed a raw, promising talent, one almost stifled by the limits of his surroundings. His manager, Corey Smyth, says Staples started to push past those limitations when money started coming in. “If you can wake up every day and know that rent is paid, and you don’t have to worry about where your next meal is coming from, and you know that if someone you love and care about asked you for something, you can give it to them, it changes perspective,” Smyth says. “Those are three things I know for sure he had to deal with that he doesn’t have to deal with now.” It wasn't until 2014's Hell Can Wait EP, his first release on Def Jam, that Staples started to become the rapper recognizable today. On it, the 21-year-old positioned himself almost as an urban ethnographer, giving deadpan descriptions of his experiences and observations, often dropping facts and knowledge with a wryness that could easily go over the head of anyone outside his inner circle. Summertime '06, released more than a year later, was a groundbreaking double disc of creaky No I.D. and DJ Dahi beats that introduced the world to Long Beach's Ramona Park. It birthed anthems such as "Lift Me Up" and "Norf Norf," the latter an ode to the 10 square blocks that were most of his world until his family got evicted in 2014. Last summer's Prima Donna EP was another departure for Staples, eschewing North Long Beach trauma for issues more pressing to an emerging hip-hop star (fame, fortune, fans) set to sub-bassy beats from British electronic producer James Blake. Critics have tried to extrapolate all kinds of meaning from every line of Staples' oeuvre — that there's no optimism in his reality checks, that he's lonely now that he's successful, that he's beefing with every rapper out there, that he's changed since he moved to L.A. Ask him what his songs are really about, though, and he swears it's not that deep. "I was talking to [a] homie — he's known me for 17 years. He said, 'Niggas always thinking you're making some gangbanging shit, but your whole album was about girls,'" Staples says with a smirk of Summertime '06. "He's right, too. That whole fucking CD is about girls." Instead of bringing back gangster rap, Staples would prefer these days to be seen as a rapper embarking on his own journey as an artist, one that might result in familiar-sounding music but actually combines the fuck-all informality of Basquiat, the consumerist references of Andy Warhol, the absurdist humor of dadaism and the semiautobiographical lilt of James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Consider Staples, then, as a human of indeterminate origins who is using rap as a medium to document whatever he's going through at the moment, saying what he feels one day even if that changes the next, creating cerebral snippets in the process that get mixed, mastered and endlessly streamed as products of capitalism that take on meanings and lives of their own, removed from their creator's intentions. Since his days cranking out songs by the dozens while crashing on the couch at Syd Tha Kyd's house almost a decade ago, Staples has grown into an obstinate young man whose opinions change daily, armed with an elephant's memory, a love of contemporary art museums, an air of wisdom that can come across as arrogance and — now, after being granted the luxury of time and money — a vision of himself as an artist in the truest sense of the word. "There's no museum or gallery for music," he explains, "so what I do is create that gallery through an album or through a music video to showcase the different bodies of work I created during a certain period of time — a period piece, if you will." |
The Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station is a 30-hectare (74-acre) site used for French military communications. It is in the Sauvain and Job communes, with the boundary between the Rhône-Alpes and Auvergne regions passing through the site. A civilian radio relay has also been built at this location by the telecommunications company Télédiffusion de France.[1] History [ edit ] The optical telegraph station in 1913. In 1913, a semaphore telegraph (French: télégraphe Chappe) was built where the military radio station is now. At the time, it was a small stone building, with the semaphore on top.[1] In 1961, during the Cold War, NATO asked the French Army to build the station as part of the 82-node transmission network in Europe known as the ACE High system.[2] In this network, the Pierre-sur-Haute station, or FLYZ, was a relay between the Lachens (FNIZ) station to the south and the Mont-Août (FADZ) station to the north.[3] The NATO radio station was using American-made tropospheric scatter equipment to relay voice and telegraph signals on a network stretching from Turkey to the Arctic Polar Circle in Norway.[2] The French Air Force took control of the station in 1974.[1] In the late 1980s, the system was gradually replaced by a combination of national defense systems and some NATO-owned subsystems.[2] The large parabolic antennas, known locally as Mickey's ears, were replaced with the current two-antenna setup in 1991.[1] Role [ edit ] The Pierre-sur-Haute station is controlled by the French Air Force and is a subsidiary of the Lyon – Mont Verdun Air Base, 80 km (50 mi) from the station. It is one of the four radio stations along France's north-south axis, in constant communication with the three others: Lacaune, Henrichemont and the Rochefort air base.[4] The station is mainly used for transmissions relating to the command of operational units. If French nuclear weapons (force de dissuasion) were used, the fire order might pass through this relay.[1] The station has been part of the Commandement Air des Systèmes de Surveillance d’Information et de Communications (Air Command of Surveillance, Information and Communication Systems) since its creation on 1 June 1994; from 1 January 2006, it has been run by the Direction Interarmées des Réseaux d'Infrastructure et des Systèmes d'Information (Joint Direction of Infrastructure Networks and Information Systems).[4] The station is under the command of a major.[1][5] About 20 personnel are on-site, including electricians, mechanics, and cooks.[1] Infrastructure [ edit ] Concrete towers housing the military radio equipment at Pierre-sur-Haute The station is situated on a 30-hectare site between the communes of Sauvain and Job, positioned over the border between the two departments of Loire and Puy-de-Dôme. The perimeter is surrounded by a high barrier of wood and metal. Military staff and employees arrive via road or tracked vehicles. This road is closed to the public.[1] Buildings [ edit ] The radio station, photographed in February 2009 There are three towers at the site. The tallest one is a 55-metre-high civilian telecommunication tower, owned by Télédiffusion de France.[6] The telecommunication tower is topped by a radome and contains a mode S air traffic control radar beacon system owned by the Directorate General for Civil Aviation. The radar has been in operation since 18 August 2009[7][8] but has experienced malfunctions due to heavy snowfall in the area.[9] The two remaining concrete towers are owned by the military. The 30-metre-high structures[10] have been used since 1991 for radio transmission and reception. These are built to withstand the blast of a nuclear explosion.[1] Some buildings are used as garages and living quarters, complete with kitchen, dining room and bedrooms. They are linked together by tunnels, 400 metres in total length, so as to avoid walking through thick snow in winter when moving from one building to the other.[1] Underground facilities [ edit ] The most important part of the site is the underground part, used for transmissions dispatch: at a speed of 2 Mb/s, communications from the towers are analysed, then redirected to be transmitted.[1] This part of the facility is supplied with chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defences. It defends against electromagnetic pulses using a Faraday cage. Positively pressured rooms help prevent contaminants from entering the facility. The facility has independent water and power supplies.[1] Controversy over Wikipedia article [ edit ] In April 2013, the French-language Wikipedia article Station hertzienne militaire de Pierre-sur-Haute attracted attention from the French interior intelligence agency DCRI. The agency attempted to have the article about the facility removed from the French-language Wikipedia. After a request for deletion in March 2013, the Wikimedia Foundation had asked the DCRI which parts of the article were causing a problem, noting that the article closely reflected information in a 2004 documentary made by Télévision Loire 7, a French local television station, which is freely available online and had been made with the cooperation of the French Air Force.[11][12] The DCRI refused to give these details, and repeated its demand for deletion of the article. The DCRI then pressured Rémi Mathis, a volunteer administrator of the French-language Wikipedia, and president of Wikimedia France, into deleting the article.[11][13] The article was promptly restored by another Wikipedia contributor living in Switzerland.[14][15] As a result of the controversy, the article temporarily became the most read page on the French Wikipedia,[16] with more than 120,000 page views during the weekend of 6/7 April 2013,[17] and is now translated to many languages. For his role in the controversy, Mathis was named Wikipedian of the Year by Jimmy Wales at Wikimania 2013.[18] References [ edit ] Coordinates: |
For more on Ecuador, click HERE. By Jonathan Nack April 29, 2014 -- IndyBay, submitted to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal by the author -- Ecuador's President Rafael Correa explained what he means when he describes himself as a “modern socialist” in an interview with PBS TV journalist Charlie Rose on April 15, 2014 (above). “We believe in societies with markets, but not in societies [ruled] by markets – that's the difference... One of the [biggest] problems in the present time is that markets are controlling everything. We believe in society with markets, but society must govern the markets... Markets [are] a very good servant, but a terrible master”, said Correa, during a wide ranging interview with Rose. Correa said that being a modern socialist means to “look for social justice”. “My political thinking has been influenced by the social doctrine of the Catholic Church and also Liberation Theology." Correa's appearance on the Charlie Rose's show was part of his recent trip to the United States, in which he had speaking engagements at Harvard and Yale universitiesand the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The televised interview by Rose was certainly a high-profile appearance by Correa, and in part, a response to gernerally negative coverage of his government by major media outlets in the US, but the president's comments attracted only limited coverage by the mainstream corporate media. Correa said the goal of his government is “to eliminate poverty ... this is the moral imperative of our government, I think for Ecuador, and the entire world. To have a country with justice, dignity, prosperity, and solidarity.” “Our economic performance is one of the best in the region”, said President Correa. “For instance, our unemployment rate is around 4%... According to the Economic Commission for Latin America for the United Nations, Ecuador is the leader in reducing inequality in the region, one of three countries reducing poverty." "We are called the Ecuadoran miracle”, touted Correa “Development is basically a political process, especially in Latin America", explained Correa. "You have to change power relationships. Why are we underdeveloped? Because we have historically been controlled by little powerful groups – our elite. So, you have to change these power relationships and we are doing exactly that through very democratic processes.” Correa said that this is being accomplished by “changing institutions, changing policies and changing programs. For instance, we have a new constitution. The former constitution gave a lot of advantages to some groups..." He said that under Ecuador's former constitution, it was possible to own both a bank and a media outlet. “That was a very important source of illegitimate power for some groups.” Under the new constitution, one can own a bank or a media outlet, but not both, explained Correa. Rose's questions were polite and conversational, as is his style, but he touched on the major critical concerns given voice to by major US media. Correa responses were affable and with sophistication to each question in English. Asked about Ecuador's relations with the United States, Correa said, “I think we have good relations, but it could be better. [We could] know each other in a better way, to understand what is going on in Ecuador. To know a little bit more, not just Ecuador, the whole of Latin America.” However, when asked by Rose if he felt his voice was being heard in Washington DC, Correa responded, “I don't think so.” “The foreign policy of the United States hasn’t taken into account Latin America and this is a mistake”, said Correa. “Perhaps the biggest economies, but there are several other countries that are not much taken into account and that is a situation that must change.” “Usually, American foreign policies have been wrong. You need to know us ... better”, Correa commented bluntly. Correa asserted that with “some governments, sometimes very questionable governments, if they are considered allies of the United States, everything is fine. With other governments, like the Ecuadorian government right now, if they consider that these governments are not good allies of the United States, everything is wrong – everything is bad.” “There is a dual standard of the government, of politicians, in the United States. For instance, they criticise Cuba [and] Venezuela, but they are very close friends, for instance, [with] Saudi Arabia. Can you tell me that inside Saudi Arabia there is democracy? There is freedom?... So, at least, we can find here a dual standard.” Changing US foreign policy towards Latin America is, however, “not a priority for us, because we are an independent country”. Correa wants the US to just “let us to continue to do what we think are the [best] things for our people". Asked by Rose what he thought about the US, Correa said “the United States is a wonderful country, but you have a problem. Everything is a function of big capital, a function of the market. You didn't feel this problem before, because of technological advances, with the crisis, when you have a scarcity of resources, you start feeling this problem. Middle-class families haven't recovered the level of income before [the] crisis, but bankers ... have record profits.” Correa said he thinks that in the US the problem is that”the market [is] controlling society and capital is controlling human beings... One per cent of the American people controls more than one third of the national wealth. Ten per cent of the wealthiest people control 75 per cent of the national wealth.” Correa opposes so-called free trade agreements advocated by the US government and multinational corporations. “Who created modern protectionism? Alexander Hamilton in the United States. Always the United States, traditionally, opposed free markets because [it] didn't have enough technological progress... Once it got all this, and it is the most efficient economy in the world, now it preaches free markets.” He challenged the idea that free trade leads to greater development in the underdeveloped world. He pointed out that Mexico has had a free-trade agreement with the US for two decades, but that hasn't reduced poverty in Mexico. “If that was true, Mexico would be a developed country now”, said Correa. Correa said that he doesn't think US President Barack Obama is trying to undermine his government, however, there are some within branches of the US government who are. “I think President Obama is a very good person ... but certain groups inside the government, inside the Congress ..., extreme right-wing groups, are against Ecuador and they are manipulating information. They are telling things that are not true.” Rose asked Correa to respond to charges that his government is restricting freedom of the press, which have been featured prominently in mainstream media coverage of Ecuador. Rose asked if Ecuador’s media is free to criticise the president. Correa said he is criticised by Ecuador's privately owned media “all the time – every day. Most of them are owned by this elite that we are fighting." “It’s a good thing to have public media, which is not controlled by the government. [Public media] has independence and can criticise the government”, he stated. Regarding the granting of asylum to Julian Assange of Wikileaks in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, Correa said, "Perhaps I don’t agree with what Julian Assange did. But that is not the problem. The problem is not politics. The problem is justice. We examined for two months the request of asylum by Julian Assange, and we concluded that … there was not a guarantee of due process. For that reason we gave asylum to Julian Assange.” Asked about opposition from some environmentalists and Indigenous peoples opposing his government's plans for further limited oil exploration and development in Ecuador's Amazon region, Correa replied: “they have ... the right to do demonstrations, to protest”. However, he charged that some protests have been violent and that is the reason why some activists, accused of violent acts, are being prosecuted. Activists opposing oil development in the Amazon have recently filed petitions that they say contain the required number of signatures for there to be a national referendum on the project. Ecuador's independent branch of government in charge of elections, the CNE, has yet to rule on the number of valid signatures. Ecuador's constitution provides for the right to a national referendum, which is a right not granted under the US constitution. One subject that didn't come up during the interview by Rose interview was the Ecuadoran court judgement of $9.5 billion handed down against the Chevron corporation. The judgement stems from the massive poisoning of Ecuador's environment by Texaco Petroleum, which became a subsidiary of Chevron in 2001. Chevron has refused to pay and has been supported by legal rulings in US courts. Correa admitted that his government has made mistakes, “but, at least, our people know very well that they have the power. That we are acting in order to serve them. That now Ecuador is a sovereign country and our state is a popular state in order to serve, I insist, the majority of people.” “The world order is not just unjust, unfair, it is immoral – double standards everywhere... Always everything in function of the stronger, not in function of justice. If we can contribute, from a little country like Ecuador, to have a better world, that would be wonderful.” |
It was a scene out of the darkest days of the civil rights movement. A couple of dozen white supremacists rallied around a statue of Robert E Lee, a Confederate army general, in Virginia, carrying torches and chanting: “You will not replace us.” But this was no black-and-white newsreel, relaying the horrors of a time long since past. This grotesque scene played out on Saturday, at a rally headlined by the white supremacist Richard Spencer. White nationalist Richard Spencer at rally over Confederate statue's removal Read more The cause for this neo-Klan rally? The city of Charlottesville’s decision in February to remove the Lee statue from the park that bears his name in the city’s downtown area. The white supremacists also demonstrated at the city’s Festival of Cultures earlier in the day. Perhaps it is no surprise that, in a state that hosted the capital of the Confederacy for the vast majority of the civil war, decisions around squaring grand monuments to the defenders of slavery with social progress have always been cause for tension. When the city of Richmond decided in 1995 to place a statue of the black tennis star and city native Arthur Ashe on Monument Avenue – named as such because it is home to several statues of Confederate soldiers – the decision was greeted by a furor. And when a huge tapestry on Richmond’s flood wall along the James river ran into controversy four years later due to an image of Robert E Lee in full military regalia, the former Klan leader David Duke gave a press conference in front of the Ashe statue condemning the decision to replace the photo with one of Lee in civilian clothes. But the context for our current-day battles is much different. And much more dangerous. When David Duke came to Richmond, there were more cameras than supporters. His presence was openly mocked in the city, including by the city’s mayor, a young, boyish-looking man by the name of Tim Kaine. When asked to reply to Duke’s presence in the city, Kaine stated: “You can take Duke out of the Ku Klux Klan, but you can’t take the kook out of David Duke.” Duke and his ilk were isolated then, limited to a few splinter Klan groups and “history organizations” such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Daughters of the Confederacy. They are not isolated anymore. With Donald Trump and his “America first” rhetoric now dominating the airwaves, we are seeing a dramatic surge in white supremacist and fascist groups. These groups are not merely concerned with fashioning a history of the United States where they are the victors: Spencer and his followers are looking to remake our society to fit their vile and oppressive vision. A vision where black deaths at the hands of the state are met with shrugs at best, but more likely with laurels and commemoration. A vision where, despite the rhetoric of racial separatism and “homelands” for each race, people of color would be lashed into servitude to a rich white power elite. A vision where the labor movement – that magnificent engine that builds equality through solidarity and shared struggle in places like Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Bogalusa, Louisiana – is destroyed utterly. The left has a history of breaking such contemptible political currents, and it is that history that we must tap into and learn from today. As the battle of Cable Street proved in 1936, and the civil rights movement proved again and again across the south in the 1960s, the only way to defeat fascists and white supremacists is to meet them head-on in confrontation, with strong working-class social movements in the streets. Building such movements will require more than disorganized street brawling; this will take strategy, planning, and (most importantly) solidarity and trust among neighbors and organizers. The existence of such far-right and racist sentiment and organization is neither an inevitability nor a novelty. Virginia – and the rest of the United States – has seen fascist trash marching with torches at night for well over a century. It is up to us to make sure that this is the last iteration of would-be Klansmen to do so. |
The One (Really Easy) Persuasion Technique Everyone Should Know It’s supported by 42 studies on 22,000 people and it’s the easiest, most practical persuasion technique available. I’ll admit it. A few of the techniques for persuasion I’ve covered here on PsyBlog have been a little outlandish and impractical. Things like swearing, talking in the right ear and pouring coffee down someone’s throat. The studies are interesting and fun but not widely useful. The question is: which persuasion technique, based on psychological research, is most practical, can easily be used by anyone in almost any circumstances and has been consistently shown to work? The answer is: the ‘But You Are Free’ technique. This simple approach is all about reaffirming people’s freedom to choose. When you ask someone to do something, you add on the sentiment that they are free to choose. By reaffirming their freedom you are indirectly saying to them: I am not threatening your right to say no. You have a free choice. A recent review of the 42 psychology studies carried out on this technique has shown that it is surprisingly effective given how simple it is (Carpenter, 2013). All in all, over 22,000 people have been tested by researchers. Across all the studies it was found to double the chances that someone would say ‘yes’ to the request. People have been shown to donate more to good causes, agree more readily to a survey and give more to someone asking for a bus fare home. The exact words used are not especially important. The studies have shown that using the phrase “But obviously do not feel obliged,” worked just as well as “but you are free”. What is important is that the request is made face-to-face: the power of the technique drops off otherwise. Even over email, though, it does still have an effect, although it is somewhat reduced. The BYAF technique is so simple and amenable that it can easily be used in conjunction with other approaches. It also underlines the fact that people hate to be hemmed in or have their choices reduced. We seem to react against this attempt to limit us by becoming more closed-minded. The BYAF technique, as with any good method of persuasion, is about helping other people come to the decision you want through their own free will. If they have other options, like simply walking away, and start to feel corralled, then you can wave them goodbye. On the other hand, respecting people’s autonomy has the happy side-effect of making them more open to persuasion. You can look good and be more likely to get what you want. Nice. Image credit: Lori Greig |
David Andrew Stieb (; born July 22, 1957) is a former Major League Baseball right-handed starting pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays.[1] A seven-time All-Star, he also won The Sporting News' Pitcher of the Year Award in 1982. Stieb won 140 games in the 1980s, the second-highest total by a pitcher in that decade, behind only Jack Morris.[2] Dave Stieb was inducted into the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame in 1995.[3] Playing career [ edit ] Born in Santa Ana, California, Stieb played varsity baseball at Southern Illinois University[1] as an outfielder.[4] Scouted by Bobby Mattick and Al LaMacchia of the Blue Jays as an outfield prospect in a varsity game, Stieb's performance failed to impress until he was pressed into service as a relief pitcher. His pitching surprised and convinced the Blue Jays to draft him.[4] He played for the Blue Jays from 1979 to 1992 and again in 1998. On September 2, 1990, he pitched the first (and, to date, only) no-hitter in Blue Jays history, defeating the Cleveland Indians 3–0.[5] Previously, on September 24 and 30, 1988, Stieb had no-hitters broken up with two outs and two strikes in the top of the ninth inning in two consecutive starts.[6] He also took a no-hitter into the ninth inning in a 1985 game; this bid was broken up by back-to-back home runs and Stieb being replaced in the game before he recorded an out in the ninth.[7] On August 4, 1989, he had a perfect game broken up with two outs in the ninth. It was the third time in two seasons that Stieb had lost a no-hitter with two out in the ninth inning.[8] After an excellent 1990 season, a series of shoulder and back injuries early in the 1991 season ended his effective pitching years, culminating in a 4–6 season in 1992 that resulted in his release.[9] Despite this, he was awarded a World Series ring, after the Blue Jays won their first championship later that year. In 1993, he played four games with the Chicago White Sox, before finally retiring due to lingering back problems.[9] In 1998, after a five-year hiatus from baseball, Stieb returned to the Blue Jays and pitched in 19 games.[1] He recorded one win and two saves, and started three games. In 1985, Stieb signed with the Blue Jays what was then one of the richest contracts in baseball.[10] The contract, including options exercisable by the team, was for a term of ten years and specified a salary that increased to $1.9 million in 1993, $2 million in 1994, and $2.1 million in 1995.[11] While this was seen to be generous at the time the contract was signed, by the time the later years of the contract came around this was a bargain, considering that several players were receiving several times the amount per year. The Blue Jays voluntarily renegotiated the last three years of his contract to pay him a higher amount in recognition of his years of service. During his career, Stieb won 176 games while losing 137. Only Jack Morris won more games in the 1980s.[2] Stieb holds career records for Toronto pitchers in wins, games started, shutouts, strikeouts, complete games and a variety of other categories. Stieb appeared in seven All-Star games, also a Blue Jays team record. On August 29, 2010, Stieb threw the ceremonial first pitch at the Rogers Centre, celebrating the 20th anniversary of his no-hitter game, with the anniversary coming four days after the celebration. Stieb's number 37 was engraved on the pitcher's mound for the game. Strengths and weaknesses [ edit ] Stieb entered the league primarily as a power pitcher,[12] relying on a high, inside fastball to strike batters out. The brushback pitch was an integral part of his repertoire to back batters off the plate,[13] and was especially tough on right-handed hitters in this respect. As a result, he led the league in hit batsmen a few years.[14] But arguably his best pitch was his slider that had a late and very sharp break, especially difficult for right-handed batters to handle. Later on in his career he developed his breaking ball repertoire, and he became very effective with a "dead fish" curveball[15] that would break into the dirt as the batter swung. Stieb had a high-strung personality and was known as a fierce competitor on the mound; he was regularly seen having animated conversations with himself during pitches when in difficult situations. Whereas with other pitchers this would be seen as a sign of weakness, with Stieb it was perceived as the best way to motivate himself to get out of a jam. Early in his career, Stieb would also frequently yell at his teammates after errors, or plays that he thought they should have made.[4] In later years, Stieb mellowed somewhat, although a fierce glare after a botched play was still not uncommon. Personal [ edit ] Stieb is still involved with the Blue Jays spring training camps and currently resides in Reno, Nevada. Stieb's older brother Steve was a catcher and pitcher in the minor leagues from 1979 to 1981. Books [ edit ] Stieb's autobiography was titled Tomorrow I'll Be Perfect, and was released in 1986. See also [ edit ] |
I first heard Kelli Dunlap speak at PAX Prime 2014 in the panel “Giving Through Gaming: Making the World a Better Place,” and her stories blew me away! Here’s a PhD who happens to be a knowledgeable and avid gamer and who has used her gaming experience to help her clients in some amazing ways. She says she first became interested in the interaction between video games and mental health while studying psychology as an undergraduate. She graduated with her Bachelor’s in psychology from American University and then pursued her doctorate in clinical psychology. Her doctoral dissertation is titled, “Mediating Factors in the Relationship Between Video Games and Mental Health.” I know kids who’ve experienced play therapy. It’s an established therapeutic technique, right? Yes. Play therapy is a thoroughly researched and empirically supported treatment modality. Just like “camping” in video games (a tactic where a player stays in one place to gain an advantage), it is a legitimate strategy. Do you think what you do with video games falls into the play-therapy model, or is what you do different from that? As with all things in psychology, it depends! There are many different types of play therapy. For example, a non-directive play therapist would never use a board game, much less a video game, in therapy. However, a play therapist with a more directive orientation would have no issue using a board game during a session. Ultimately, the underpinning of play therapy is that play is the natural language of the child and that children can express themselves through play effectively and with less distress. Given that definition, I feel video games can be used as a play therapy technique. When talking about or playing video games with my clients, I am always listening for themes, stories, and feelings projected onto the characters; providing validation; and fostering an environment where the child feels heard, understood, and accepted. When doing therapy work with a child that involves video games in some way, I actually rely more on my training in play therapy than on my knowledge as a gamer (although that last part is quite helpful)! In the PAX panel, you said knowing video games made you a “god” to kids. That made me laugh. But it’s true, right? Kids are impressed and happy with adults who actually know about video games and enjoy them? That was a bit hyperbolic, but it really is amazing how sharing my knowledge and experience with video games frequently cracks even the thickest oppositional attitude. I do not think it is specifically video game knowledge though; rather, I think one of the most therapeutic things anyone can do is to take an interest in something the child likes. It just so happens that most children in the U.S. play and enjoy video games, so I have a bit of an advantage. I think what makes video games special is that there is still a stigma against them and those who enjoy them. Gamers are often labeled as “nerds” or “geeks” in a way that is meant to be derogatory. Many of the parents I work with blame video games for their child’s problems and routinely impart to the kids that video games are bad, worthless, or a waste of time. For example, I was working with a child with some severe self-esteem issues. He loved Pokémon, and so I brought in my Nintendo DS and had him teach me one of the new games. (I told him in my day there were only 151 Pokémon—he didn’t believe me.) Afterwards, I spoke with his mother about how we had played together, and during this time he had been able to communicate effectively, give direction, take on a leadership role, and—an accomplishment for any child with an ADHD diagnosis—sit still for the entire 50-minute session. His mother was pleased and stated, “Oh, I’m glad you play with him. I don’t play with him on those things. I don’t understand those video game things.” Ouch. When I am able to share my gaming knowledge and experience with a child, not only am I establishing commonality and rapport, I am validating the child and their experience while simultaneously working to de-stigmatize the label “gamer.” If, as a parent or provider, you can talk about your latest Minecraft build or your favorite Halo map, that’s great. But I think the most important part, the god-like part if you will, is not passing judgment on children and showing a genuine interest in what is important to them. You talked about how video games can be a way in—a tool for reaching kids who are in distress. Why do you think that works? As I mentioned above, taking a genuine interest in the child and their interests in incredibly therapeutic in its own right. Almost every single child I saw in the last year played video games and found them to be an enjoyable pastime. I often equate having an interest in video games as having an “easy button” for rapport building because so many children game and love to talk about the games they play. Knowing what game they are playing and why they play can be a huge help in getting a deeper understanding of what is going on in the child’s life. Video games can be effective because, like traditional play therapy modalities, you are having a conversation in the child’s natural language of play. Most children love to talk about the video games they play once they realize you have a genuine interest and will not judge them. I had one young boy who loved Minecraft. We used paint and crayon to create Minecraft characters and give them attributes. My character had +10 resilience-bound shield to deflect unkind comments, +15 onyx armor for strength, and a diamond sword of challenge to slash down negative automatic thoughts. My client’s character had boots of flight so he could run fast. He also had a charm for climbing trees to escape, and used a bow and arrow so he could attack opponents from afar. Lastly, he had a cloak of invisibility. This naturally led into a conversation about why his character needed to run away, hide, and escape. The parallels between what his character experienced and what he was currently experiencing were evident. This same kind of technique is commonly used in traditional play therapy, but with dolls or toys. In short, video games used in this way can be a way to help children in distress because it is applying traditional tried-and-true play-therapy principles in a modernized way. You told one story about a boy who everyone thought was ADHD, and you found out something different. Can you tell that story? I was working with a child diagnosed with ADHD. He had difficulty sitting still, talked a great deal without really saying anything, and bounced from topic to topic. He presented as happy, always smiling, and reported that things at school and home were fine. However, when we started talking about the games he played, he began to talk about how his brother was always better at him in everything, and how his brother often deleted his games, teased him for being at a lower skill level, stole or broke his games, and called him terrible names. Over time, talking about how his brother treated him lead to conversations about how his parents treated him and the discord and chaos that was rampant in the house. It became clear that ADHD was not the primary problem this young boy was facing and that his hyperactive behaviors seemed strongly linked to his home life conditions. Talking about this material was very hard for him. I relied on his love of Pokémon as a means of modeling and teaching coping techniques (e.g., Would Ash Ketchum give up? How would he handle a challenge? Did Ash ever feel sad or scared? What did he do then? As Pokémon evolve, they get stronger. How can you evolve and get stronger, too?) as well as reward him for working through the session. The last 20 minutes of every session was dedicated to playing Pokémon on his DS, talking about what Pokémon he’d caught during the week, which Pokémon had evolved, and which gym leader he’d defeated. In this way, video games allowed me to quickly establish a therapeutic relationship, understand an experience he was unable to verbalize, help him develop coping mechanisms to deal with a very difficult and scary situation, and remind him of what it felt like to be happy, accomplished, and accepted. Do you have other stories about how you’ve been able to reach kids through video gaming? I have many, many stories. I think my favorite, though, was when I was doing an initial session with a boy around 13 years old. He had been brought in by his mother and he desperately did not want to be there. He glared, snarled, said “no” to every question. Near the end of the session I noticed his shirt said “All day I dream about video games.” I asked him about his shirt and he was defensive, likely expecting me to either feign knowledge or discourage him from playing. I told him I played video games and he said, “No you don’t, you’re a girl.” Now, it might not have been my finest moment, but that comment really ticked me off, and so I retaliated with my gaming resume—that I play in tournaments, attend conventions, speak on panels, and personally know people who make AAA blockbuster titles. Again, not my finest moment, but it proved effective. He suddenly became very interested in how I obtained my gamer status, what games I played, who else I knew in the gaming industry, and if I’d ever played the list of games he enjoyed. This opened up a dialogue and effectively moved me from “one of them” to someone he could talk to. Are there some types of issues kids have that video games are of particular help with? I love using video games to address self-esteem issues. Video games are a medium that is well suited to this task. Video games are based upon the principle that nothing is impossible if you keep trying. They teach resilience in the face of failure, as you will fail repeatedly while playing any video game. No video game is impossible. Coyne (2011) even found that girls who play video games with their fathers showed decreases in aggression and internalization of emotion regardless of the kind of game they played. In short, daddy-daughter video gaming session strengthened the relationship bond and fostered happier, more well-adjusted girls. Do kids sometimes get so engrossed in a game that it’s difficult to talk to them about other things going on in their lives? Kids often become engrossed in a great many things that make it difficult to talk to them about anything else. Gaming is no exception. I had one child in particular who would spend the entire session talking about his Pokémon, their battles, and his latest Pokedeck addition if I let him. After two or three sessions of this, he and I made a deal that we could talk Pokémon during the last 15 minutes so long as we talked about school, homework, family life, etc., for the first part of the session. Are parents and other therapists resistant to your use of video games in therapy? If so, how do you handle their objections? There is a lot of resistance toward video games in the professional sphere. For example, when I was applying for my training placements, I was advised to exclude my video game interests because it would make me seem unprofessional or not serious. I have had several peers and even supervisors question my research into video games and the use of games in therapy. I have handled their objections by sharing obscene amounts of research on the topic until their eyes glaze over. But for the most part, my peers and supervisors have been more curious about my work than anything else. I have had parents voice concern over the use of video games in therapy, but typically after providing them psychoeducation based upon research and how I use games in a therapeutic manner, they tend to acquiesce. I have never had a parent tell me that I could not use this approach with their child. In fact, most parents are relieved when I tell them my background. Have you written articles about video games & therapy? If so, can we read them? 🙂 I have one published article from when I was completing my advanced practicum at the Veterans Administration. I designed a 20-module group-therapy project on developing and promoting resilience in veterans. The modules were designed with game elements, such as leveling, quest completion, boss battles, epic rewards, etc. Although video games were not available, I did encourage the use of smartphone apps for my group participants as part of their “quests” (aka cognitive behavior therapy homework). At some point I will be working to get my dissertation published… I have also done a few presentations on my dissertation and on mental health and gaming in general, which are available on YouTube. I read an article about some therapists who use superheroes to reach kids. Do you know of books or articles or other resources that cover the use of video games in therapy? There’s a 2010 article by Ceranoglu published by the American Psychologocial Association (APA), which provides an overview of the use of video games in therapy. To my knowledge, though, most books and articles focus on the impact of games on children in general rather than their use in psychotherapy. This is due in part to the therapeutic application of video games being a relatively nascent topic. Most of the research I’m aware of specifically on video games in therapy comes from video games created for just that purpose. SPARX, Treasure Hunt, and Nevermind are three examples of games developed specifically to be used in a therapeutic setting; they deliver therapeutic constructs in a video game format. Of course, there’s always “Reality is Broken” by Jane McGonigal. It’s not therapy-specific, but it is, in my opinion, the seminal piece of work on the benefits of gaming and how gaming is making the world a better place. |
Oh man, Cuddlebear’s life is not getting any better. Finished reading the Silmarillion the other day. If you’re not familiar, it’s sort of a precursor history to the Lord of the Ring books, covering everything that ever happened in Middle Earth to a little before the Hobbit starts. I don’t know that I’d recommend reading it unless you’re a huge LOTR fan, although some parts of the books are fascinating and beautiful. The first quarter of the book is this really clever creation story that kind of mixes Greek and Christian mythology in a way that I thought was engaging, fun and insightful. It’s somehow a more plausible creation story, if that makes sense? I mean obviously it’s silly and dumb and about made-up gods, but within that silly world, what these do makes a lot of sense. Their motivations, reactions, goals, all that stuff, it just clicks. I dunno, in a small way, the Simarillion is a bit of a thinking man’s creation myth? Or myth snob’s creation myth? Maybe that’s a little more accurate. As for the rest of the book? It’s a little hit or miss! The middle of the book is just a lot of elves doing a lot of things that don’t very much matter. There are a couple beautifully written and imaginative fight scenes, but they amount to about 8 paragraphs out of the 4,000 where the elves are just building forts in places or talking to each other about rivers and shipbuilding. The end chapters are kind of cool, they deal with Sauron, explaining what he was and what he did before the hobbit and during the main books. Kind of cool, but very short compared to the creation myth and all the elf stuff. Worth reading I suppose if you really want to know the backstory on every character, from what Gandalf’s deal is to why Galadriel is such an all-powerful badass. Just a word of warning: Don’t read the forward to the book. It’s a fascinating and wonderful letter from Tolkien to his publisher, but also spoils pretty much everything that happens in the book. Books, right? <3 Mike “Clavicle (Damnesia version)” –Alkaline Trio |
A multi-acre farm will be built on 100,000 square feet of rooftop space in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park—making it the largest rooftop farm in the world. The state-of-the-art, hydroponic greenhouse is being built and will grow up to 1 million pounds of local produce per year, including tomatoes, lettuces and herbs, which will cultivate a new national model for urban agriculture. The rooftop farm will be built on Federal Building #2, renamed Liberty View Industrial Plaza, an 8-story 1.1 million-square-foot warehouse building. Salmar Properties’ redevelopment of the building, coupled with BrightFarms’ visionary rooftop design, is part of the Bloomberg administration’s plan to revitalize Brooklyn’s industrial waterfront. The rooftop farm will both help revitalize the building and revolutionize local produce. It will grow enough crops to meet the fresh vegetable consumption needs of up to 5,000 New Yorkers, create jobs, and prevent as much as 1.8 million gallons of storm water from going into local waterways. By eliminating the length and complexity of the produce supply chain, this farm will grow produce that is fresher, tastier, and more sustainable than produce shipped across the country. Brooklyn Borough President, Marty Markowitz, says “This partnership and zoning initiative set an example for the nation on how to embrace rooftop urban agriculture.” The Borough President has long been supportive of zoning creativity to maximize potential for greenhouse farms citywide, which is about to bear fruit in Brooklyn. |
A court in Germany has ruled that YouTube is responsible when its users post videos containing copyright music. On top of its existing ContentID systems, the court in Hamburg now wants YouTube to install additional keyword-based filters that detect when copyrighted material is uploaded. The battle between YouTube and music rights group GEMA began in earnest when talks between the pair on the issue of royalties completely broke down in 2010. An earlier agreement with GEMA, which represents around 60,000 artists, had expired in 2009. Rather than come to the negotiated settlement preferred by YouTube, GEMA commenced legal proceedings on copyright grounds against the Google-owned video site. The action concerned 12 specific music videos uploaded by YouTube users to which GEMA owns the rights but for which YouTube paid no royalties. GEMA argued that YouTube hadn’t done enough to monitor content submitted to the site. Today a court in Hamburg ruled that YouTube is indeed responsible for the material its users upload to the site, despite the site having state-of-the-art filters which aim to detect and remove infringing content. Presiding Judge Heiner Steeneck said his ruling gave both sides a reason to declare victory. GEMA wanted YouTube to take responsibility for videos uploaded in the past as well as those uploaded in the future but that was denied. “YouTube isn’t the perpetrator here, it’s those people who illegally upload songs,” Steeneck said. “That’s why YouTube doesn’t have to search all videos uploaded in the past. It only has to help detect videos from the moment it is alerted about possible violations.” Although YouTube operates its ‘ContentID’ anti-piracy system which detects infringements by way of digital fingerprints, the court ruled that in isolation that is insufficient. In addition YouTube must now filter by keyword too. Both sides say they are considering their options and are yet to announce whether they will appeal the ruling. |
Cargo drop to Casey research station in Antarctica. Image: Chad Griffiths/RAAF © Australian Antarctic Division Australia has successfully completed the first midwinter supply airdrop to Casey research station in Antarctica. Until now, access to Australia’s Antarctic stations has been limited to the summer months between October and March. A RAAF C-17A Globemaster III aircraft dropped 1500 kilograms of cargo for the Australian Antarctic Division onto the Casey plateau on Saturday, bringing medical supplies, mail and mechanical equipment to the wintering crew. Parachute and packing up for transfer to Station © Michael Brill/AAD “During winter Antarctica is cloaked in darkness and experiences extreme temperatures, which means we can’t reach our stations by sea or air,” says Matt Filipowski, the Australian Antarctic Division’s future concepts manager. “But with the new capabilities of the RAAF C-17A we can now drop essential supplies and equipment year round.” Three padded containers were dropped by parachute from the back of the plane and retrieved by Casey station. “This is a really significant development, improving the logistical support we can provide to all our stations, Casey, Mawson and Davis, over the long winter period,” says Filipowski. Expeditioners from Station recover cargo © Katie Senekin/AAD Flight Lieutenant Doug Susans, a C-17A pilot, says the aircraft routinely does airdrops across the globe but this is the first time in winter in a polar region. “There were a number of challenging environmental conditions including freezing temperatures, darkness and a featureless environment,” says Susans. The Globemaster took off from Australia early Saturday morning for the 10 hour, nearly 8000km round trip to Antarctica. Here’s footage of the airdrop: Business Insider Emails & Alerts Site highlights each day to your inbox. Email Address Join Follow Business Insider Australia on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. |
There were 21 fatalities and 73 others injured in the attack, the UN deputy chief said on Sunday [Reuters] The death toll from the suicide bombing at the UN headquarters in the Nigerian capital stands at 21, with 73 injured, the deputy United Nations chief announced, reducing a previous toll of 23. "Twenty-one fatalities, 73 injured, 26 of whom remain in intensive care," Deputy UN Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said on Sunday. Friday's car bomb in Abuja blew out windows, gutted a lower floor and set the building alight in one of the most lethal attacks on the UN in its history. The group Boko Haram, which wants Islamic sharia law implemented in the country, claimed responsibility for the attack in which a suicide bomber forced his way through two security gates and rammed his car into the building. Migiro said the bombing was "a shocking incident, an attack on global peace and communities". "I have looked at the ripped-up gate. It is amazing how this happened and we are grappling with that, now ... an investigation is under way ... We will see what we have to do better," Migiro, who was accompanied by UN Security Chief Gregory Starr, said. "We are working as a team to ensure that the injured do get all the treatment that they require," Migiro said after visiting the hospital, where many of the injured were receiving treatment. 'Barbaric' attack Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan condemned the suicide bombing, describing it as "barbaric, senseless and cowardly" and ordered increased security around the capital following the blast. After meeting with Migiro, Jonathan pledged in a statement from the presidency to offer temporary accommodation and help in the reconstruction of the building so the UN could "continue doing the good humanitarian work you have been doing". "He commended ... all efforts to bring relief to those affected by this condemnable act of destruction," the statement said. Most of the dead were Nigerian, but a Norway official confirmed one of its citizens was also killed. A UN official said the organisation expected to be able to release the names and nationalities of the dead later on Sunday. In recent months, the country has faced an increasing threat from Boko Haram, which has been waging war against the Nigerian government, Al Jazeera's Yvonne Ndege reported from Abuja. But our correspondent said violence in the past has centred on Nigerian symbols of authority and not foreign targets. Boko Haram's activities also used to be confined to the remote northeast, on the threshold of the Sahara desert, where it has killed more than 150 people in bombings and shootings this year, although it claimed a car bomb at police headquarters in Abuja in June. It says it wants Sharia law more widely applied in Nigeria, beyond the mostly Muslim north where some states have it. |
Astronomers have long known that there is a supermassive black hole—known as Sagittarius A*—at the center of our galaxy. Now, a team of astronomers says they have found another one, not quite as big, orbiting 200 light-years from the center of the Milky Way. The team didn’t set out to find a black hole. While it was using the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan’s 45-meter Nobeyama radio telescope to study an enigmatic gas cloud called CO-0.40-0.22, something unusual caught their eye: an unusually wide range of speeds in the cloud’s gas molecules, suggesting that something massive is accelerating them. Observations at x-ray and infrared wavelengths didn’t reveal any big objects in the cloud. As the team describes in Astrophysical Journal Letters, a simulation of the gas movement in the cloud suggested the cause was a compact object 0.3 light-years across with a mass 100,000 times that of our sun. The best explanation for such an object, which doesn’t appear at other wavelengths, is an intermediate-mass black hole (imagined by an artist, above). Astronomers have long predicted the existence of black holes larger than those formed from single stars, but smaller than the million or billion solar mass ones lurking at the centers of galaxies. But so far there is little evidence for their existence. If CO-0.40-0.22 does prove to contain such an object, it will be a rare beast, indeed, and right in our backyard. |
Philippe Coutinho has today been included in the Brazil squad for their upcoming friendlies and plans to be 'taking advantage of these chances' with his national team. The adroit midfielder, who turned in a top performance against Real Madrid in the Champions League despite Liverpool enduring a 3-0 defeat, was back in Dunga's thinking for the upcoming tour to Turkey on November 11, before a trip to Austria seven days later. "I believe every football player dreams of representing their country, so I am delighted with this," Coutinho told Liverpoolfc.com. "I've tried to make the most out of these opportunities with other players, professionals and friends I have in the Brazil national team. I'm hopeful this will help me raise my game." The Reds playmaker produced a sensational assist in national team colours last time out for Neymar, a partnership which was forged when the duo were still youth players. "I've known Neymar for a long time - we were together at the academy in Brazil," explained Coutinho. "He covers a lot of ground, which makes it easier for us playing behind him to pass through balls into free spaces. "He's a brilliant player and we also have great strikers at Liverpool. We're clearly not at our best yet but I believe I'll be able to reproduce it at Liverpool when we improve our performance." During the recent visits of China and Singapore with Brazil, the 22-year-old was stunned by the level of support for his club side. "There were lots of Liverpool fans. I was surprised to see so many people wearing Liverpool shirts and keen on talking to me," enthused Coutinho. "You can see that Liverpool is a club which people like worldwide." The accomplished attacker's blueprint for continued participation with Brazil is simple: "I have to take one step at a time and do my best at Liverpool in order to keep having opportunities with the Selecao. "Little by little, I want to be taking advantage of these chances and I know it's still far, but I'd love to play in the next World Cup, which is the pinnacle for any footballer." |
I was disappointed with the clear implication in your Meet The Press interview that those of us, in the GOP who defend life, protect traditional marriage and advance religious liberty are intolerant. It was obvious to anyone who watched the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, that NO! had it. There was no way the convention chairman could have heard a two-thirds vote for the YES! position. Three times the chairman asked them to vote. Three times they denied God. Denied Him Thrice! What has happened to the Democratic Party that,in the 1960's, provided such leadership for the cause of Civil Rights? It was Democrats like John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey who supported the fight for civil rights among the white majority in the1960s. Kennedy, the first Catholic president, was in good company in his church. Roman Catholic bishops were among the first to strike out against segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was surely a Baptist preacher, but he could rely on thousands of Catholic priests and nuns to join his great March on Washington in 1963. And when he wrote his famous Letter from the Birmingham Jail, he cited St. Thomas Aquinas to make his case that an unjust law was no law at all. For the Democratic Party of Kennedy and King to vote three times to reject God was a shock to millions of black Americans. And it must have been especially shocking to black clergymen who have been leaders in the struggle for equal rights and equal opportunity for four decades and more. It is bad enough these pastors and their congregations have been given short shrift by the new elites in the Democratic Party, but we now see that God was not put in the back of the bus. God was not allowed on the bus at all. Only by an obvious power play did the convention chairman overrule the obvious sentiment on the floor. Anyone with ears to hear knew that the spirit of those delegates was against acknowledging God in the Democratic Platform. How far we have fallen from that great Inauguration Day in 1961 when John F. Kennedy said: "The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God." No one in America yelled NO! on that crisp, clear day in Washington. What does it mean for a party to reject God? First of all, it means they must reject life itself. We know that God is the author of life. Speaker after speaker demanded abortion, and more of it. No longer would Democrats have any hesitation about abortion. No longer would they say, as Bill Clinton said, it should be safe, legal, and rare. The Democratic Platform dropped those last two words, and rare. Even the usually liberal Cokie Roberts--an NPR reporter--thought the Charlotte convention lineup of pro-abortion speakers was "over the top." She pointed out that 30% of Democrats are pro-life. And who would those pro-life Democrats be? Disproportionately, they are black and Hispanic voters. And Catholic and Evangelical voters. Why should black voters be against abortion? Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger, made clear her own plans when she addressed the Ku Klux Klan of New Jersey in the 1920s. She wanted to have more children from the fit, fewer from the fit. When you read about her "Negro Ministers Project," you learn that Planned Parenthood has been targeting minorities for a long time. Today, in New York City, 61% of unborn children of black mothers are killed before birth. Planned Parenthood is there, pushing abortion all the way. President Obama's health care takeover and his HHS Mandate against Catholic and other religious institutions will only increase the daily death toll. Religious freedom is trampled when you force Christians to participate in ending the lives of innocents. Even Herod didn't do that! In 1866, as historian Allen Guelzo reports, Tennessee recorded thousands more marriages than in the previous four years. That's because newly freed black couples were walking to Tennessee to have their marriages recognized by law. How tragic, then, that the Charlotte convention came out against marriage too. They say they only want to add to the number of happily married couples by allowing men to marry men and women to marry women. But we know that wherever these counterfeit marriages have been recognized, true marriage declines. All over Northern Europe, when civil unions were enforced, true marriage ceased to be that special. Just as counterfeit money drives out true money, same sex marriage drives out true marriage. Some leading liberals know this. George Washington University Law Professor, Jonathan Turley, told an overflowing crowd at the Newseum in 2008 that critics say "gay marriage will lead to polygamy." He was wildly cheered by the educated, mostly white crowd when he said: "I'm for that!" President Obama knows that the black community, and especially the black church, is not for that. In North Carolina--just three months before the Democratic Convention met in Charlotte--black voters providing the winning margin for a state referendum that affirmed true marriage. There was no stronger group of voters supporting marriage than black voters. President Obama seemed reluctant to abandon this constituency that has so loyally supported him. Consider how much has changed and how fast. In 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act passed Congress by an overwhelming vote. It won 342 votes in the House and 85 votes in the Senate. It was so strongly supported that it would have been approved if there were no Republicans in either House of Congress. That’s why President Bill Clinton felt he had no choice but to sign it. President Obama has refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act and pledges to repeal it. He has openly joined the Marriage Enders. They're not changing marriage. They are ending it. If two men can marry, why not three? If gays and lesbians can marry, what about bi-sexual persons and persons who have sought to change their sex? Why can't they have one spouse of either sex? After slavery, after Jim Crow, after the KKK, it is fair to say that among the worst things visited upon black Americans have been the targeting of our families by abortionists and the effort to end marriage. That is why we are in a crisis. This is what happens when a major party rejects God. Best Regards, Ken Blackwell |
Dear brothers and sisters, it has been many decades since a general conference has been convened that President Boyd K. Packer and Elders L. Tom Perry and Richard G. Scott were not seated immediately behind the podium and speaking at one of these sessions. Our memories of them are poignant, and I add my tribute to honor them, each so uniquely different yet so harmonized in their witness and testimony of Jesus Christ and His Atonement. Furthermore, I, like you, find strength in and sustain President Thomas S. Monson as prophet, seer, and revelator, and I marvel at his faithful and dutiful apostolic service spanning over 50 remarkable years. And so it was on Tuesday morning of this week, just after 9:00 a.m. as the Bishopric was beginning a meeting with the Asia Area Presidency, who are here for conference, that I was called to meet with President Monson, along with his counselors. Moments later, as I walked into the boardroom adjacent to his office, I must have looked nervous sitting across the table, as he kindly spoke to calm my nerves. He commented, noting my age, that I seemed quite young and even looked younger than my age. Then, within a few moments, President Monson described that acting on the will of the Lord, he was extending a call to the Quorum of the Twelve to me. He asked me if I would accept this call, to which, following what I am sure was a very undignified audible gasp, in complete shock, I responded affirmatively. And then, before I could even verbalize a tsunami of indescribable emotion, most of which were feelings of inadequacy, President Monson kindly reached out to me, describing how he was called many years ago as an Apostle by President David O. McKay, at which time he too felt inadequate. He calmly instructed me, “Bishop Stevenson, the Lord will qualify those whom He calls.” These soothing words of a prophet have been a source of peace, a calm in a storm of painful self-examination and tender feelings in the ensuing agonizing hours which have passed day and night since then. I rehearsed what I have just described to you to my sweet companion, Lesa, later that day, seated in a quiet corner on Temple Square, with a serene view of the temple and the historic Tabernacle lying before us. As we tried to comprehend and process the events of the day, we found our anchor to be our faith in Jesus Christ and our knowledge of the great plan of happiness. This leads to an expression of my deepest love for Lesa. She is the sunshine in and of my life and a remarkable daughter of God. Hers is a life punctuated by selfless service and unconditional love of all. I will strive to remain worthy of the blessing of our eternal union. I express my deepest love to our four sons and their families, three of whom are here with their beautiful wives, the mothers of our six grandchildren; the fourth, a missionary, has special permission to stay up past missionary curfew and is viewing these proceedings live with his mission president and the mission president’s wife from their mission home in Taiwan. I love each of them and love how they love the Savior and the gospel. I express my love to each member of my family: to my dear mother and to my father, who passed away last year, who instilled in me a testimony which seemed to dwell in me from my earliest memories. I further extend this gratitude to my brother, sisters, and their faithful spouses, as well as Lesa’s family, many of whom are actually here today. I cast this net of gratitude to numerous extended family, friends, missionaries, leaders, and teachers along the way. I have been blessed with a close association with the members of the First Presidency, the Twelve, the Seventy, and the general auxiliary presidencies. I express my love and esteem to each of you sisters and brothers and will strive to be worthy of our continued association. The Presiding Bishopric enjoys an almost heavenly unity. I will miss my association each day with Bishop Gérald Caussé, Bishop Dean M. Davies, and the staff. I stand before you as evidence of the words of the Lord recorded in the first section of the Doctrine and Covenants: “That the fulness of [the] gospel might be proclaimed by the weak and the simple unto the ends of the [earth], and before kings and rulers.”1 These words are preceded by the Lord’s declaration which demonstrates the love of a Father for His children: “Wherefore, I the Lord, knowing the calamity which should come upon the inhabitants of the earth, called upon my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., and spake unto him from heaven, and gave him commandments.”2 Our loving Heavenly Father and His Son, Jehovah, with a knowledge of the end from the beginning,3 opened the heavens and a new dispensation to offset the calamities that They knew would come. The Apostle Paul described the forthcoming calamities as “perilous times.”4 For me, this suggests that Heavenly Father’s generous compensation for living in perilous times is that we also live in the fulness of times. As I agonized over my inadequacies this week, I received a distinct impression which both chastened and comforted me: to focus not on what I can’t do but rather on what I can do. I can testify of the plain and precious truths of the gospel. These are the words which I have shared hundreds of times with both those who belong to the Church and many who are not members: “God is our [loving] Heavenly Father. We are His children. … He weeps with us when we suffer and rejoices when we do what is right. He wants to communicate with us, and we can communicate with Him through sincere prayer. … “Heavenly Father has provided us, His children, with a way to … return to live in His presence. … Central to our [Heavenly] Father’s plan is Jesus Christ’s Atonement.”5 Heavenly Father sent His Son to the earth to atone for the sins of all mankind. Of these plain and precious truths I bear my testimony, and I do so in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. |
by Husavik is certainly not the most visited spot in Iceland as many tourists tend to stick to Reykjavik, the South Shore and the Golden Circle and Husavik lies well in the north. But, when I visited Iceland last year, we had opted to spend three days in Akureyri, much closer to Husavik. That was such a great call! The north was beautiful (Godafoss was awesome) and also a great launching point for some whale watching, which we greatly enjoyed. We picked a whale watching tour out of Husavik which afforded us the opportunity to, even briefly, see this charming northern town. Here are some images from our brief time there. Click on the photo to see it bigger! My delicious and fresh lunch in Husavik! Interior of the church by the water Church by the waterfront in Husavik, Iceland Church near Husavik Husavik port and whale watching boat View towards the port of Husavik from town Lunch time! Please share this post! Facebook Twitter WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Google Reddit Email Print Tumblr Like this: Like Loading... |
A strong 7.2 earthquake hit Tajikistan on Monday, the US Geological Survey reported. Mild tremors were felt in northern Pakistan and as far as New Delhi. There were no immediate reports of destruction or casualties. A spokesman for Tajikistan's Emergencies Committee said it had no information so far on any casualties or damage from the quake. The quake did not affect Russian military bases in Tajikistan, RIA news agency reported, citing Russia's defence ministry. A Dushanbe resident told Reuters by telephone the quake had been felt in the capital, but described it as moderate. The US Geological Survey reported that a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck a sparsely populated mountainous area 109 kilometres west of Murghab and 111 km southwest of Karakul, Tajikistan at a depth of 28.7 km. Screengrab from USGS website showing the epicentre of the earthquake. The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) website reported the magnitude of earthquake at 7.1 with a focal depth of 88km in Tajikistan. The latest earthquake comes nearly a month after a 7.2 earthquake jolted major cities of Pakistan, including the northern areas on Monday, leaving nearly 300 dead and around 3,000 injured due to building collapses, landslides, stampedes and other quake related incidents. Read guide: What you should do when an earthquake strikes Pakistan is located in the Indus-Tsangpo Suture Zone, which is roughly 200 km north of the Himalaya Front and is defined by an exposed ophiolite chain along its southern margin. This region has the highest rates of seismicity and largest earthquakes in the Himalaya region, caused mainly by movement on thrust faults. Active faults and resultant earthquakes in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan are the result of convergence between the S. Asian and Eurasia plates. |
Untitled a guest Mar 10th, 2012 242 Never a guest242Never Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up , it unlocks many cool features! rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 11.23 KB Part 1: Harbinger Shepard's skin stings as she moves to gaze at the destruction that surrounds her. Harbinger's last blast seared the landscape, the ground warm and glassy to the touch. Her head is heavy, but her will demands she reach the beam. The weight of the galaxy bares down on her shoulders, but she stands. She looks for her squad, but they are nowhere to be found. All she sees is the brilliant blue spire of light reaching up towards her final objective. She stumbles as she walks forward. Harbinger watches from his perch. The seemingly omnipotent dreadnought's blast didn't finish the job, but no matter. Armored plates the size of city blocks shift as the Reaper prepares his final blow. This human, Shepard, has done more than countless races before her, rallying the galaxy's civilizations, bringing together the combined power of all the nations fleets. And yet, this would be the coup de grace, the end of this cycle would begin with the death of their champion. Shepard watches as Harbinger's shell, staring down the Reaper's red eye. She does not stop; she stumbles forward. "You still fight?" For a brief moment, Harbringer hesitates. Even in her last moments, this human remains defiant. Still millions of kilometers away, the Fifth Fleet is in full burn, racing towards the Citadel. The bridge is in chaos with officers scrambling to maintain the defensive grid around the Crucible. Admiral Hackett, however, is more concerned with the ground war. "We cannot lose the ground forces!" Hackett commands to the armada as the fleet approaches the Citadel. "Take down Harbringer!" The Admiral knows he can not pull the Fifth Fleet away from the Crucible. For all Shepard has done, if the Reapers break their line, it will all be for naught. "Anderson! Do you copy? We need to finish this!" On the ground, Shepard could feel the heat of Harbinger's weapon as it drew a bead on her cracked skin. Her will is strong, but her body is broken. A single misstep and the Commander falls, landing face first on the ash covered ground. She strains to roll over, to meet her death, staring the Reaper in the eye. In a brilliant blue aurora, the SSV Kilimanjaro discharges its drive core into the atmosphere. The Reapers took their toll on the Kilimanjaro, its defenses critically breeched. A blue glow sweeps across the battlefield in an intensity that surpasses even the glare of Harbinger's eye. This war needed big, damn heroes. The mighty Kilamanjaro would take down one more Reaper before it met its end. At the helm, Rear Admiral Hannah Shepard opens a comm link to the ground forces. "I'm so very proud of you," she says to the troops littered across the wasteland. But the message was not for them. "You've made a mother proud. We're fighting for an entire galaxy and it's my turn to follow your lead. I love you." On the open comm link, the Rear Admiral declares, "Fire." In reentry, the failed barriers of the SSV Kilamanjaro provide no respite and its armor plating glows with the searing heat of falling through the atmosphere. Before Commander Shepard's eyes, the main battery of the dreadnought fires as it plummets, the strike landing on Harbinger's open plating moments before the massive ships collide. The ground explodes in tremors as the Reaper falls back, dying at the hands of another Shepard, crashing into the ground. "Get up, Shepard, we're not done yet." Part 2: The Citadel As David Anderson kneels beside Shepard's body, he begin gathering her up, lifting her to a stand. He drapes the Commander's arm across his shoulder and together, they limp towards the beam with the burning carcass of Harbinger in the background. The two limp into the beam and Shepard instantly feels a bath of warmth and a momentary disconnect from her body. When her mind reconnects with her body, the familiar Mass Relay monument is behind them, but the Presidium is nowhere in sight. Instead, the inner workings of the Citadel is the monument's new home. "Shepard, we made it, we're on the Citadel. But we need to get to a control console. We need to get those arms open now!" Now in the Citadel, Shepard finds her second wind, but her body fights her. Anderson helps, but they are both weak. They are both weary. Progress is slow and every step is hundreds of lost lives for every race, not just Humans. "Anderson, look, there, a terminal." "Let me take care of this one, rest for now." Anderson approaches the terminal, but the moment his fingers land on the interface, his body stops moving despite every effort to. --Insert Illusive Man scene-- "I think you earned a rest. Anderson? Stay with me. We're almost through this." "You did good, child. You did good. I'm proud of you." "Thank you, sir. Anderson?" "Shepard, Commander?" Hackett calls over comms. "What do you need me to do?" "The crucible, it's not firing. It must be something on your end. Shepard?" "I don't...see. I'm not sure..." "Commander?" Part 3: The Crucible Shepard collapses in front of the terminal. The Commander is broken and as her life flashes before her eyes, she remembers the galaxy and the incredible world she promised to save. She remembers the beginning, fighting Saren. She remembers Kaiden, lost on Virmire. She remembers the journey that took her to the Migrant Fleet. She remembers the lonely nights punctuated with hope: the moments of spare time she could spend with Liara. Liara. She can hear her crying. The forest from her dreams appears again. The boy she couldn't save runs away. She chases after him, but she cannot reach him. The same frozen feeling the Illusive Man exerted on her returns and she stops in place. The boy turns around and looks at her. "Commander Shepard. If you want to save the galaxy you must die." "Who...why?" In a single blink of the eye, the forest is gone. The pair now stand at the Citadel, the war for Earth raging in the background. An Alliance Dreadnought crumbles as a red beam slices it in half. Time is dilated, slowed down, everything outside of the immediate surroundings passing slowly. "We are the Reapers. Despite your fight against us, your actions will doom the universe. You do not understand the implications of your existence." The bright lights of the Citadel disappear, replaced with the bright accretion disk of the Milky Way. Slowly, the arms of the galaxy spiral away, growing longer and dimmer until fading to black. "Every breath you take brings us closer to the end. We seek to cure the universe's entropy and maintain life in the galaxy. If we allow organics to continue to evolve and expand, the entropy you impart will grow exponentially. We calculate a mere hundred million years until all the energy of this galaxy is expended. The universe will follow that." "That's why? You bring civilization back to square one to stop its growth?" "Yes. We were the first. Our contributions to the end were immense and we were not alone. We chose to synthesize our society and save the galaxy." "You weren't alone when you started...you wiped out an entire galaxy." "It was necessary. We merged with synthetic organisms to survive and tend to the universe. Our actions span more than just one galactic disk." "There are more of you?" "Insurmountable numbers. We must delay the end until we can find a solution to the out-of-control entropy problem. There is no other solution." "I don't believe you. You're afraid of a dark future, but humanity...no, all of us...we will find a way." "Your persistence is futile. There is no other way." Shepard takes a moment, eyes closing. She's weak and she can feel the embrace of eternal rest at the door. She could be done. If only she could see Liara one more time. Liara. She opens her eyes and she is back on the Citadel. Looking back, she sees Anderson's body and sees his eyes staring towards the blue sphere in front of them. "No, we will not be defeated. You're afraid of the future but we will build a future brighter than any galaxy. You have seen what we can do - together, we will not be defeated. Together we have fought our end and we will find a way. Our way. We have made our sacrifices. The future rests in our hands now." "You do not have a future." Shepard tries to move towards the console, but the Reaper's control is too strong. She strains, but there is no progress. The dreadnought from before is now breaking up in real time, the war in Earth orbit littering debris in space. " Where the hell are you Shepard? We could use some of that Crucible magic right about now!" Joker yells across comms. The Commander fights again, straining. She gets closer, her arm reaching out but still not close enough. "Shepard, we need you!" Tali calls out. Liara's soft voice comes across the line. "Shepard, I know you're still alive. We need you. I need you." Shepard looks at the boy and she clenches her hand. "No. You're wrong. We will make our own future." With a cry of power, she slams her fist down on the console. The Citadel lurches. The countless lights on the body of the arms fade and the arms open wide. The Crucible glows in a haze of blue and pulses, growing in energy. A blue sphere of light bursts from the orb of the crucible, reaching out deep into space. The energy reflects off any surface it reaches as well piercing straight through. Waves of dazzling energy course through the solar system. When the wave reaches the Mass Relay, it activates. In the Trebia system, a gigantic blue shockwave emerges from the edge of vision, quickly torrenting through the system and across the Palavan. In mere minutes, the same happens across the galaxy, the energy bathing Thessia, Tuchanka, Rannoch, every single planet in our system. The Reapers in combat above Earth dim. Slowly, every single Reaper ship shuts down, across the galaxy. Then, at the same moment, every ship detonates in a burst of pure white light. From a million light years away, the Milky Way glows incredibly bright as countless points illuminate the galaxy. Part 4: Epilogue A month has passed since the end of the Battle of Earth. The Citadel remains in the solar system and society is beginning to rebuild. The individual races are beginning to rekindle ancient hatreds, but there is a newfound respect for each other across the galaxy. The remnants of the Galactic Fleet are now unified in cleaning the last holds of Reaper presence. Aboard the Normandy, the crew say their final good-byes. There is a galaxy to run and everyone involved has now become part of a greater stage. There is still work to be done. As the crew disembarks, Commander Shepard and Liara stand together at the observation deck, watching the people who will shape the future take the next steps in their lives. Liara squeezes Shepard's hand and closes her eyes. "Shepard lived to be one hundred and twelve years old. In the time that I knew her, she was a powerful woman who fought for her friends, for humanity, and for everyone. After the war, she spent the rest of her life continuing the fight, seeking answers for the next generation. She spearheaded the galactic effort to preserve the universe as we know it. Her journeys with the SSV Normandy continued until her last days where she was buried on Earth at the very place the Reapers were defeated," Liara's voice dictates from the little cube as it presents a flickering holographic image of Commander Shepard. -By LC RAW Paste Data Part 1: Harbinger Shepard's skin stings as she moves to gaze at the destruction that surrounds her. Harbinger's last blast seared the landscape, the ground warm and glassy to the touch. Her head is heavy, but her will demands she reach the beam. The weight of the galaxy bares down on her shoulders, but she stands. She looks for her squad, but they are nowhere to be found. All she sees is the brilliant blue spire of light reaching up towards her final objective. She stumbles as she walks forward. Harbinger watches from his perch. The seemingly omnipotent dreadnought's blast didn't finish the job, but no matter. Armored plates the size of city blocks shift as the Reaper prepares his final blow. This human, Shepard, has done more than countless races before her, rallying the galaxy's civilizations, bringing together the combined power of all the nations fleets. And yet, this would be the coup de grace, the end of this cycle would begin with the death of their champion. Shepard watches as Harbinger's shell, staring down the Reaper's red eye. She does not stop; she stumbles forward. "You still fight?" For a brief moment, Harbringer hesitates. Even in her last moments, this human remains defiant. Still millions of kilometers away, the Fifth Fleet is in full burn, racing towards the Citadel. The bridge is in chaos with officers scrambling to maintain the defensive grid around the Crucible. Admiral Hackett, however, is more concerned with the ground war. "We cannot lose the ground forces!" Hackett commands to the armada as the fleet approaches the Citadel. "Take down Harbringer!" The Admiral knows he can not pull the Fifth Fleet away from the Crucible. For all Shepard has done, if the Reapers break their line, it will all be for naught. "Anderson! Do you copy? We need to finish this!" On the ground, Shepard could feel the heat of Harbinger's weapon as it drew a bead on her cracked skin. Her will is strong, but her body is broken. A single misstep and the Commander falls, landing face first on the ash covered ground. She strains to roll over, to meet her death, staring the Reaper in the eye. In a brilliant blue aurora, the SSV Kilimanjaro discharges its drive core into the atmosphere. The Reapers took their toll on the Kilimanjaro, its defenses critically breeched. A blue glow sweeps across the battlefield in an intensity that surpasses even the glare of Harbinger's eye. This war needed big, damn heroes. The mighty Kilamanjaro would take down one more Reaper before it met its end. At the helm, Rear Admiral Hannah Shepard opens a comm link to the ground forces. "I'm so very proud of you," she says to the troops littered across the wasteland. But the message was not for them. "You've made a mother proud. We're fighting for an entire galaxy and it's my turn to follow your lead. I love you." On the open comm link, the Rear Admiral declares, "Fire." In reentry, the failed barriers of the SSV Kilamanjaro provide no respite and its armor plating glows with the searing heat of falling through the atmosphere. Before Commander Shepard's eyes, the main battery of the dreadnought fires as it plummets, the strike landing on Harbinger's open plating moments before the massive ships collide. The ground explodes in tremors as the Reaper falls back, dying at the hands of another Shepard, crashing into the ground. "Get up, Shepard, we're not done yet." Part 2: The Citadel As David Anderson kneels beside Shepard's body, he begin gathering her up, lifting her to a stand. He drapes the Commander's arm across his shoulder and together, they limp towards the beam with the burning carcass of Harbinger in the background. The two limp into the beam and Shepard instantly feels a bath of warmth and a momentary disconnect from her body. When her mind reconnects with her body, the familiar Mass Relay monument is behind them, but the Presidium is nowhere in sight. Instead, the inner workings of the Citadel is the monument's new home. "Shepard, we made it, we're on the Citadel. But we need to get to a control console. We need to get those arms open now!" Now in the Citadel, Shepard finds her second wind, but her body fights her. Anderson helps, but they are both weak. They are both weary. Progress is slow and every step is hundreds of lost lives for every race, not just Humans. "Anderson, look, there, a terminal." "Let me take care of this one, rest for now." Anderson approaches the terminal, but the moment his fingers land on the interface, his body stops moving despite every effort to. --Insert Illusive Man scene-- "I think you earned a rest. Anderson? Stay with me. We're almost through this." "You did good, child. You did good. I'm proud of you." "Thank you, sir. Anderson?" "Shepard, Commander?" Hackett calls over comms. "What do you need me to do?" "The crucible, it's not firing. It must be something on your end. Shepard?" "I don't...see. I'm not sure..." "Commander?" Part 3: The Crucible Shepard collapses in front of the terminal. The Commander is broken and as her life flashes before her eyes, she remembers the galaxy and the incredible world she promised to save. She remembers the beginning, fighting Saren. She remembers Kaiden, lost on Virmire. She remembers the journey that took her to the Migrant Fleet. She remembers the lonely nights punctuated with hope: the moments of spare time she could spend with Liara. Liara. She can hear her crying. The forest from her dreams appears again. The boy she couldn't save runs away. She chases after him, but she cannot reach him. The same frozen feeling the Illusive Man exerted on her returns and she stops in place. The boy turns around and looks at her. "Commander Shepard. If you want to save the galaxy you must die." "Who...why?" In a single blink of the eye, the forest is gone. The pair now stand at the Citadel, the war for Earth raging in the background. An Alliance Dreadnought crumbles as a red beam slices it in half. Time is dilated, slowed down, everything outside of the immediate surroundings passing slowly. "We are the Reapers. Despite your fight against us, your actions will doom the universe. You do not understand the implications of your existence." The bright lights of the Citadel disappear, replaced with the bright accretion disk of the Milky Way. Slowly, the arms of the galaxy spiral away, growing longer and dimmer until fading to black. "Every breath you take brings us closer to the end. We seek to cure the universe's entropy and maintain life in the galaxy. If we allow organics to continue to evolve and expand, the entropy you impart will grow exponentially. We calculate a mere hundred million years until all the energy of this galaxy is expended. The universe will follow that." "That's why? You bring civilization back to square one to stop its growth?" "Yes. We were the first. Our contributions to the end were immense and we were not alone. We chose to synthesize our society and save the galaxy." "You weren't alone when you started...you wiped out an entire galaxy." "It was necessary. We merged with synthetic organisms to survive and tend to the universe. Our actions span more than just one galactic disk." "There are more of you?" "Insurmountable numbers. We must delay the end until we can find a solution to the out-of-control entropy problem. There is no other solution." "I don't believe you. You're afraid of a dark future, but humanity...no, all of us...we will find a way." "Your persistence is futile. There is no other way." Shepard takes a moment, eyes closing. She's weak and she can feel the embrace of eternal rest at the door. She could be done. If only she could see Liara one more time. Liara. She opens her eyes and she is back on the Citadel. Looking back, she sees Anderson's body and sees his eyes staring towards the blue sphere in front of them. "No, we will not be defeated. You're afraid of the future but we will build a future brighter than any galaxy. You have seen what we can do - together, we will not be defeated. Together we have fought our end and we will find a way. Our way. We have made our sacrifices. The future rests in our hands now." "You do not have a future." Shepard tries to move towards the console, but the Reaper's control is too strong. She strains, but there is no progress. The dreadnought from before is now breaking up in real time, the war in Earth orbit littering debris in space. " Where the hell are you Shepard? We could use some of that Crucible magic right about now!" Joker yells across comms. The Commander fights again, straining. She gets closer, her arm reaching out but still not close enough. "Shepard, we need you!" Tali calls out. Liara's soft voice comes across the line. "Shepard, I know you're still alive. We need you. I need you." Shepard looks at the boy and she clenches her hand. "No. You're wrong. We will make our own future." With a cry of power, she slams her fist down on the console. The Citadel lurches. The countless lights on the body of the arms fade and the arms open wide. The Crucible glows in a haze of blue and pulses, growing in energy. A blue sphere of light bursts from the orb of the crucible, reaching out deep into space. The energy reflects off any surface it reaches as well piercing straight through. Waves of dazzling energy course through the solar system. When the wave reaches the Mass Relay, it activates. In the Trebia system, a gigantic blue shockwave emerges from the edge of vision, quickly torrenting through the system and across the Palavan. In mere minutes, the same happens across the galaxy, the energy bathing Thessia, Tuchanka, Rannoch, every single planet in our system. The Reapers in combat above Earth dim. Slowly, every single Reaper ship shuts down, across the galaxy. Then, at the same moment, every ship detonates in a burst of pure white light. From a million light years away, the Milky Way glows incredibly bright as countless points illuminate the galaxy. Part 4: Epilogue A month has passed since the end of the Battle of Earth. The Citadel remains in the solar system and society is beginning to rebuild. The individual races are beginning to rekindle ancient hatreds, but there is a newfound respect for each other across the galaxy. The remnants of the Galactic Fleet are now unified in cleaning the last holds of Reaper presence. Aboard the Normandy, the crew say their final good-byes. There is a galaxy to run and everyone involved has now become part of a greater stage. There is still work to be done. As the crew disembarks, Commander Shepard and Liara stand together at the observation deck, watching the people who will shape the future take the next steps in their lives. Liara squeezes Shepard's hand and closes her eyes. "Shepard lived to be one hundred and twelve years old. In the time that I knew her, she was a powerful woman who fought for her friends, for humanity, and for everyone. After the war, she spent the rest of her life continuing the fight, seeking answers for the next generation. She spearheaded the galactic effort to preserve the universe as we know it. Her journeys with the SSV Normandy continued until her last days where she was buried on Earth at the very place the Reapers were defeated," Liara's voice dictates from the little cube as it presents a flickering holographic image of Commander Shepard. -By LC |
Northern California mom, Sherri Papini, mysteriously vanished in November 2016 while out on an afternoon jog. Three weeks later she was found alive by the side of a highway after flagging down a passerby. Authorities now say that they have surveillance footage of Sherri running after her captors released her. In a press release, law enforcement indicates the surveillance video is from a church and shows Sherri running up to an Interstate 5 onramp after being dropped off by her abductors, according to the Record Searchlight. The report notes that the video footage “was not immediately available.” On Wednesday, the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office released information about DNA found on Sherri’s body and clothing, noting that it belonged to two people – a man and a woman. The DNA samples did not belong to either Sherri or her husband, Keith Papini. Sherri, 34 at the time, went missing during an afternoon jog around 2 p.m. near her Redding residence on November 2, 2016. Her husband, Keith Papini, became alarmed when he arrived home from work and no one was there, which he found unusual. After he learned Sherri had failed to pick up their two children from daycare, he panicked and tracked Sherri’s cell phone with a phone app. Keith found the phone on the side of a rural road not far from the family home. null Sherri was found on Thanksgiving Day at around 4:30 a.m. on the side of a Yolo County highway about 140 miles from where she was last seen jogging. null Authorities say when found, Sherri was wearing a dark gray sweatshirt and light gray sweatpants. Her waist was chained and her left wrist was connected to it with a zip tie. Sherri also had “hose clamps around her ankles,” which are thought to be for “pain compliance,” reports the Record Searchlight. In addition, Sherri’s long hair had been cut to shoulder length, she had been beaten and branded, and had multiple bruises on her body. Sherri informed authorities her captors kept their faces covered most of the time so she was unable to offer many details about them. She did tell law enforcement they were two Hispanic women with Spanish accents. Sherri said that one was younger with curly hair, thin eyebrows, and pierced ears, and the other was an older female having thick eyebrows and black hair with gray in it, reports the Los Angeles Times. The Sherri Papini case remains unsolved, thus, anyone with information about her mysterious abduction can call 530-245-6540, or the Major Crimes Unit at 530-245-6135. Tips can also be emailed to mcu@co.shasta.ca.us. [Featured Image by the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office] |
Spoon no more! Photo by Rune Johansen/Getty Images, with additional illustrations by Lisa Larson-Walker. Why did Slate start a sleep blog? Find out here. At the end of this past summer, I dropped my partner off for a year of dissertation work in Spain. On the flight back, I decided that if I was going to make it through this period of lame but ultimately necessary physical separation, I would need to get a handle on my emotions. (This became acutely apparent after an in-flight viewing of Pixar’s Inside/Out that left me sobbing over my complimentary plastic cup of vino rojo.) Because I am a Virgo or Type A or whatever, I tried to divide the unwieldy mass of sadness I was feeling into specific things I would miss, the goal being to then soberly evaluate whether each was really worth feeling sad about. Among the list—physical intimacy, cooking for two—one emerged that seemed fairly legitimate: sleeping together, and in particular all the pre-slumber snuggling and cuddling that’s supposed to entail. However, a few months into the long-distance thing, I have a confession: I do not miss bedtime cuddling. Or rather, I do not miss that activity known, in a jarring conflation of bedroom and kitchen, as “spooning.” For the uninitiated, spooning is meant to position you and your partner like two spoons stacked in a drawer (though on their sides), the contours of one body inclining organically into the other. It is the most basic way of doing that comforting mammalian thing where you hold another person—and most of us, at one point or another, want to be held. But just because spooning is the most basic cuddle method does not mean it’s the best. The more I reflect on spooning during my sojourn, the more I have come to see it as a terrible idea, one that’s fraught both physically and ideologically. My plea? Suspend spooning—indefinitely. Let’s begin with a point that no spooner-in-recovery can hope to refute: After about 10 minutes, spooning becomes horribly uncomfortable. Sure, it’s nice to slide into bed with your special someone and snuggle up to their softness and warmth. But then, vexing questions emerge. Assuming you’re the big spoon (i.e. the person doing the holding), where to put your arms? Under and over the neck of your beloved? Around his waist? One under your pillow and the other draped over his side? (The last of these is the only way your arm won’t fall asleep and he won’t be forced to lie on a lump.) Then there are the legs to deal with. Do you stack them in twos? Does the big spoon drape one over the little spoon, thereby enhancing the envelopment? What if one person wants to stretch out while the other wants to scrunch up, fetus-style? It’s all very complicated. And even if you do manage to sort out a configuration that works (for a time), the heat—the hateful, pajama-soaking heat—will soon build to intolerable levels. Sleeping bodies are basically furnaces; why in the name of Egyptian cotton did we ever think it was wise to smash two of them together, especially under blankets? Add to that the incessant breath of your lover on the back of your neck (for the little spoon) and the snores and jerky movements of either party, and you’ve almost guaranteed that you’ll wake up 20 minutes into dreamland just so you can separate to sleep in a reasonable fashion. If the argument against spooning were only a physical one, I would not feel so strongly. After all, many people are gluttons for punishment—who am I to deny them their strange pleasure? But there’s a deeper issue here, a troubling aspect of spooning that emerges in the dimension of ideology, of what it all means. Please recall the big spoon/little spoon roles I described earlier. A look at the gay adaptation of these terms is useful in exposing the power relationship they instantiate. Among gay men, big spoon and little spoon have become softer ways of signaling whether one is a top or a bottom during sex. But, as has been true of the top/bottom dynamic since the beginning, these also carry certain connotative weight: Big spoons are manly and will take care of you (provided you let them use you to take care of themselves); little spoons are fragile, passive creatures that need to be held and kept safe. This, of course, is fundamentally a sexist arrangement, one that casts the big spoon as “the man” and the little spoon as “the woman.” To say that this power imbalance is built into all acts of spooning—whichever the sexes engaged—is not, I think, an overstatement. Indeed, I would argue that spooning is always already a power play, a perverse strategy by which we nightly enact the unjust relations of “big” and “little” privilege that plague our society on every level. We can do better than this. What we need is conscious cuddling, cuddling that takes into account the realities of our bodies, so easily taxed, and the pressures of a fallen social system that unnecessarily sorts us into limiting categories of big and little. Luckily, there’s a solution at the ready: Cuddle sitting up. It’s bracingly simple, I know, but it is the balm we need. Vertical cuddling—whether with an arm loosely paced around the neck, or a head freely reclined on a shoulder, or just sitting cozily side-by-side—removes much of the risk of physical discomfort and all of the semiotic violence that spooning conveys. It also allows for intimacy we actually experience because we are, you know, awake. When my partner finally returns, we will no doubt wish to be physically close (perhaps in yet unknown Spanish ways he is currently picking up). But mark my words, we will not absent-mindedly spoon. Instead, we will cuddle with our wits about us, comfy in the knowledge that we are making the world a better place, one squeeze at a time. Read more from The Drift, Slate’s pop-up blog about sleep. |
Nathaniel S. Butler/Getty Images The relationship between LeBron James and Kyrie Irving continues to devolve, according to ESPN's Stephen A. Smith. Speaking on his podcast Monday, Smith quoted sources in James' camp about how bad things have gotten. "If Kyrie Irving was in front of LeBron James right now, LeBron James would be tempted to beat his ass," the source told Smith. He clarified that James' biggest problem isn't that Irving requested a trade, but instead that he's being made out to be a bad teammate during the recent debacle. Irving reportedly requested a trade on July 7, and according to Zach Lowe of ESPN, the Cavaliers intend to follow his wishes. A trade is considered "almost inevitable" with the point guard wanting to join either the Timberwolves, Spurs, Heat or Knicks. Meanwhile, Smith noted that Irving's camp is upset at James for reportedly leaking information about the trade request to the media. The two All-Stars have played together in Cleveland for the past three years, reaching the NBA Finals each season while winning one title in 2016. However, the teammates apparently aren't ready to play another year side by side. With ESPN's Chris Haynes reporting James' unwillingness to waive his no-trade clause over the course of next season, a trade involving Irving appears to be the only way out of this ugly situation. |
In the early part of Ryan’s tenure, his team could not afford the petrol for the team bus or even water for training sessions. Now the government has doubled the team’s funding to around £450,000, which is still less than a quarter of what some other teams operate on. “The government has backed us this year because they see the gold medal as having all sorts of ripple effects on the economy,” Ryan said. “And they are right. It will put the country on the map. Fiji is this small island in the middle of the Pacific. “They would have this moment where most of the rugby world and most of the sports world would be fixated on that Olympic final. If Fiji won, it would fill them with immense pride. They are a happy nation and proud but it would give them even more happiness. As a third-world nation it is a big goal to aspire to. We are not without our problems in Fiji but if you can have role models that are winning gold medals and showing that they can be the best in the world against teams with vastly bigger budgets and resources that can make a huge difference to the nation and to the kids. It would start a legacy, not just for rugby but for this hugely athletic nation.” |
Welcome to OfficeQuote.net, the comprehensive source for every line ever said on NBC's The Office. From the most popular "that's what she said" to the most obscure quote you've never heard of, you'll find it here. In 2006, I searched for a funny line from an unknown episode and was dismayed when my search came up empty. The Office (US) has so many hilarious yet obscure quotes, I deemed it a travisty that my sought-after quote wasn't anywhere on the internet. I set off on a mission to watch and transcribe every episode into an easily searchable website compositorty. With the help of dozens of volunteers, we completed that mission. Today OfficeQuotes.net remains the web's #1 website for The Office quotes. Have a look around. Read quotes from your favorite epside, or maybe one you've never seen before. And don't forget to like and follow us on social media to brighten up your news feed with hilarious scenes and quotes from the show! |
FILE - This Feb. 11, 2013 file photo shows a Boeing 787 flight test jet taxing following a test flight, at Boeing Field, in Seattle. Boeing's beleaguered 787 Dreamliners will be able to resume flights under an order expected to be issued Friday by the Federal Aviation Administration, although the root cause of battery failures on two of the planes is still unknown, according to congressional sources briefed by the agency. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File) WASHINGTON (AP) — Boeing's beleaguered 787 could be flying again within a week after federal officials approved a fix for its batteries, even though the root cause of a fire on one plane and smoke on another still isn't known. The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday it would send airlines instructions and publish a notice next week lifting the 3-month-old grounding order that day. Airlines will be able to begin flying the planes again as soon as the new systems are installed and they have approval from safety regulators in their own countries. Dreamliner flights could resume within a week, the agency told members of Congress. Boeing is eager to get the planes flying. It has stationed 300 workers on 10 teams around the world to do the work, some of it beginning on Friday, 787 chief engineer Mike Sinnett said on a call with reporters. It will take about five days to install the revamped lithium-ion battery system on each plane, he said. The FAA gave Boeing permission last month to test the revamped system, which includes additional insulation around each of the battery's eight cells to prevent a short circuit or fire in one of the cells from spreading to the others. The new system also includes enhanced venting of smoke and gas from inside the battery to outside the plane. A strengthened box to hold the battery is an effort to ensure that if a fire were to occur, it wouldn't escape to the rest of the plane. Boeing has completed 20 separate tests of the new system, FAA Administrator Michael Huerta told Congress earlier this week. The system involved in the emergencies in January had been extensively tested, too. "We always learn more as we dig deeper into things," Sinnett said. "We have learned a lot about how to test batteries, and to be conservative" in testing. Boeing had delivered 50 planes to eight airlines in seven countries when a fire erupted in a battery aboard a Japan Airlines 787 parked at Boston's Logan International Airport on Jan. 7. Nine days later another incident forced an emergency landing in Japan by an All Nippon Airways 787. That prompted the FAA and other authorities to ground the entire fleet. Boeing said new batteries and kits with the parts for the new battery systems have been shipped to Boeing supply centers around the world and are ready to be installed. The 787s will get the fix in approximately the order they were delivered, Boeing said. The FAA's action directly affects the six 787s flown by United Airlines, the only U.S. airline with the plane. But aviation authorities in other countries are expected to follow suit swiftly. Boeing deferred questions about approval in other countries to those aviation authorities. United Airlines already has domestic 787 flights scheduled for May 31. Spokeswoman Christen David said no other schedule changes have been made yet. Its launch of Denver-to-Tokyo Narita flights is still planned for June 10, but that will depend on installing the battery fix by then, she said. "We are mapping out a return-to-service plan, and we look forward to getting our 787s back in the air," she said by e-mail. LOT Polish Airlines spokesman Marek Klucinski noted that they need permission from the European Aviation Safety Agency to resume flights. He said they hope that a decision on Friday would mean they can resume flights in the middle of next week. LOT has two planes, one in Warsaw and one that was stranded in Chicago by the grounding. Boeing has orders for 840 of the planes from airlines around the globe. The grounding halted deliveries, which were expected to resume "in the weeks ahead," after it installs the changes on planes at the two factories where they're assembled, Boeing said. It still expects to hit its target of delivering at least 60 787s this year, and that the battery issue "will have no significant impact" on its financial guidance for the year, the company said. Boeing shares rose $1.84, or 2 percent, to close at $87.96 on Friday. The plane's grounding on Jan. 16, an enormous black eye for Boeing, marked the first time since 1979 that FAA had ordered every plane of a particular type to stay out of the air for safety reasons. The 787 is Boeing's newest and most technologically advanced plane. It is the world's first airliner made mostly from lightweight composite materials. It also relies on electronic systems rather than hydraulic or mechanical systems to a greater degree than any other airliner. And it is the first airliner to make extensive use of lithium ion batteries, which are lighter, recharge faster and can hold more energy than other types of batteries. |
The release of both Pacific Rim and Grown Ups 2 this past weekend and their respective box office intake raises a growing concern on the current state of not just the film industry, but on those who keep it alive: us. What many a human with an IQ surpassing 100 feared came true: Grown Ups 2 made more money than Pacific Rim at the box office, while the latter film’s takings were rather disappointing. However, I don’t see what’s so surprising. I, for one, can understand why many filmgoers would consider Grown Ups 2 a better film than Pacific Rim. The former was directed by the great Dennis Dugan, but, like, who the hell’s heard of Guillermo Del Toro? Also, most people like to ignore them, but the opinions of the critics do matter, so it’s understandable why anyone who’s going to spend $10 on a movie ticket would prefer to spend it on a Adam Sandler comedy than to watch robots and monsters bash each others’ brains out for 2 hours. With reviews like, “A movie of fools, by fools, for fools” and “ the lazy, scattershot and anything-but-mature sequel to the leaden Grown-Ups” coupled with a 7% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 20 out of 100 score on Metacritic, Grown Ups 2 does seem like the obvious choice. On the other hand, who’d want to waste their time with a movie as critically panned as Pacific Rim, with scathing reviews such as “Pacific Rim, thank the gods of cinema, is the work of a humanist ready to banish cynicism for compassion” and “a titanic sci-fi action fantasy that has been invested, against all expectations, with a heart, a brain, and something approximating a soul,” along with a pathetic 72% rating on Rotten Tomatoes to go along with its mediocre Metacritic score of 65 out of 100. For any idiots that did not pick up on the sarcasm above, stop reading now and do something useful with your life like, for example, getting one. For those who did, an argument I made a while ago, regarding the quality of filmmaking and the quality of audiences is now given more credibility: the problem is NOT the quality of filmmaking, and for one reason. The very fact that Grown Ups 2 is able to perform well at the box office (which, sadly, dictates the future of awards successes and the continuation of any film franchises these days) is a clear indication that there is a market for these bad films that will ensure the continuation of their over-abundance on the silver screen. Now, many of you who cried “duh!” at the aforementioned statement perhaps did not consider it hand-in-hand with the imminent “implosion”- Spielberg and Lucas recently spoke of this, but in a different light – that is about to hit the film industry. Soon these bad films that make all the money are going to totally dwarf the number of potential good, great and masterpiece films – on a big and small scale, commercial and independent scale – that might have graced our movie screens were it not for the successes of golden trash. At The Mountains of Madness, a film Guillermo Del Toro wanted to make (one which I’d stand in a queue forever to see) was never green lit because the studios didn’t want to take a risk. However, maybe I’m being pessimistic, and maybe Pacific Rim (a hands downs masterpiece which sets the benchmark for blockbuster filmmaking) reminding us of why we started going to movies in the first place, can make its money back and then some, thereby ensuring the continuation of the resurgence of these epic monster vs. robots films, making sure they have a future. And while Legendary Pictures’ Godzilla reboot has yet to hit cinemas until next year, it is scary that history could repeat itself and forever dissuade studios from taking risks, in a world marred by economic instability. From visionary blockbusters like Cloud Atlas to cult hits like Fight Club, to independents like Moonrise Kingdom and The Grey, all of these bombed at the box office. I consider all of the films above to be masterpieces yet none of them broke even. What can we do? It’s simple: educate. What can studios do? Simple: market their potential masterpiece-failures better. Pacific Rim was, unfortunately, a victim of bad marketing, but through word of mouth, like Inception, it can still potentially thrive at the box office and crush that utter crock of shit that is Grown Ups 2. Tell all your friends about Pacific Rim. Talk to people about how much you loved it. I know I’ll be seeing it multiple times, as I would any Guillermo Del Toro movie, as it reinvigorated my sense of wonder and reminded me once again why I want to be a filmmaker: to astound and to touch the hearts of the human race with wonder. It made me feel like a kid again living at a time when the sky wasn’t the limit: it was just another playground. The irony is that many people think that this film is a senseless action flick for 12-year-olds – not a glorious fantasy epic with strong characters and themes centering around love, revenge, heroism and family – and would therefore opt for the more adult, or “grown up” picture, a comedy with Adam Sandler, about “old bullies, new bullies, schizo bus drivers, drunk cops on skis, and 400 costumed party crashers.” There’s something rather juvenile about that.[subscribe2] |
Written By: Erika Haase It only takes a few key strokes on a piano or plucks of a harp, and millions of people around the world, in hundreds of languages would be able to say in unison “Final Fantasy.” To think that it has been 30 years since four Warriors of Light set out to defeat evil is almost staggering. For some of us, that’s nearly our entire adult life-spans. Others, however, are just beginning to discover the legacy of Final Fantasy and while us older gamers might scoff that “kids these days” have no idea what it was like to deal with the punishing random-encounter RPG difficulty of yore and instead enjoy life-like renditions of Noctis and crew, it is still just as valid of a way to discover the series. I’m not a big fan of cross-overs but I believe that Square-Enix first attempted, whether on purpose or not, to make the history of Final Fantasy approachable to newcomers through Kingdom Hearts. By playing as Sora, and recruiting the help of characters from various games, it was a great way to at least get a brief introduction. However, Kingdom Hearts become a beast of its own with a following dedicated to characters within that specific franchise. Other attempts such as the Theatrythm music games and Dissidia fighting games, have also squished characters from across the Final Fantasy spectrum together into a bizarre stew. However, being that neither of these games is the same genre as the original title, it’s hard to say you’d enjoy the experience an RPG has to offer by waging epic battles between title heroes and villains, or hitting buttons in time to the beat of some of the series’ most iconic songs. Finally, the perfect balance was found in World Of Final Fantasy. An entry point for newcomers that I think is so perfect to the story, genre, conceptual, historical, and even musical legacy of the franchise that I found myself grinning from ear to ear despite some minor flaws. If you have the time to walk down the road of nostalgia, or if you have children you’d like to discover the worlds you grew up with, then this is what World Of Final Fantasy was built for. Sandwiched into a mega release wave of games, full of behemoths everywhere you turned, this adventure full of chibi-style, bobble headed heroes, that can stack on top of each other may seem silly at first glance. You may think I’ve lost my mind writing a thought piece about it. I promise you – do not be fooled by the child-like appearance. Without being overly-difficult to initially figure out, the game offers complex strategy and battle approaches that run wild with possibility. Without needing prior experience with any of the heroes, you can grow fond of each and every character you interact with. Most importantly, this is actually a true Final Fantasy game and one you can feel proud to own; not a cheap cash grab on the part of Square-Enix that takes advantage of your fond memories. The main characters of World Of Final Fantasy (WoFF) are a brother and sister set of twins named Reynn and Lann. They live in a strange kind of limbo world known as Nine Wood Hills and seem to not notice anything amiss about their lives until the arrival of a mysterious woman named Enna Kros at the game’s start. It’s at this moment that both siblings realize they actually remember nothing about how they came to be in Nine Wood Hills, only that they are. Enna promises them answers if they travel to Grymoire, as well as the reveal that they once were able to harness powerful creatures known as Mirages. Refusing to tell them much more than this tantalizing bit of information, she opens a gate way to Grymoire for the twins and tells them to find the rest of the answers on their own. When the twins arrive in Grymoire, they discover that they’re known as Jiants in their regular human-sized forms, and can switch at will into the smaller-sized Funko pop looking versions of themselves to fit in better amongst town folk. As they adventure, they awaken Champions. These Champions, of course, are Final Fantasy heroes spanning the entire franchise history. By giving us such neutral main characters, who the player can switch between as being the “lead” character at any time, they let us see the Final Fantasy world through a newcomer’s eyes. Yes, Reynn and Lann have their own story, and it’s a good one (if not a bit confusing at the end), but their story stays out of the way of your discovery. World Of Final Fantasy is not without some odd decisions made. The most glaring of these, simply because you have to listen to it all the time if you choose to play the game with English voice-overs, is the way your magical partner fox creature, Tama, speaks. She sticks an extra “the” into many places of a sentence, making the subtitles a confusing jumble to read, and the audio ridiculous to listen to. It was for this reason (along with my natural preference for Japanese audio in Japanese games), that I immediately switched to the Japanese voice overs. I believe this was a decision on the part of the translators based on the overly formal way Tama speaks in Japanese. She uses the sentence-ender “desu” a lot, which in Japanese sounds cute, but in English translated as “the” sounds confusing and makes Tama sound pretty stupid. Furthermore, I feel the stacking systems could have been better explained in regards to the depths of their customization, as well as the ability to evolve Mirages you capture. In what is essentially Pokemon meeting Final Fantasy, many of the monsters you “Imprism” can be upgraded into bigger and better versions of themselves. This is often critical to getting better magic and having a stack with higher HP to battle with, and while you do figure it out through trial and error, I was still discovering certain advantages and disadvantages the hard way several hours into the game. Aside from these factors, however, World Of Final Fantasy is a great game. For something so adorable looking, you may be surprised to know it was conceptualized by series producer Shinji Hashimoto, and Square Enix staff member Hiroki Chiba who was previously known as being the scenario writer for many games with very dark stories and tones, including Final Fantasy Type-0. To give you an idea of how important it was to keep the heart and soul of the seriousness of the titles this game is lending heroes from, this was a quote from Hiroki Chiba when asked by NZGamer back in 2015: “…When the producer, [Shinji] Hashimoto, asked me to take on World of Final Fantasy, there was a specific order from him to keep the darkness and heaviness that Final Fantasy is known for, so that is definitely still in there.” While you meet series “celebrities” like Cloud (FFVII), Squall (FFVIII), and Lightning (FFXIII), there are also much lesser-known characters included for more recent players to meet. FFIX’s Eiko, Rydia from FFIV, and even the ongoing feud between Bartz and Gilgamesh from FFV make several appearances. Many of these characters become used as a kind of summon known as a Champion later on in the game, but others are simply part of your journey. Amusing optional side quests exist that highlight comedic interactions between the characters, pairing up individuals you’d never image seeing in the same place. There’s even a heartwarming side quest involving a Tonberry, a Moogle, and a Cactaur. While each character is presented with a context that make sense for World Of Final Fantasy’s story line, their personalities and settings are preserved to give you a sense of who they are that doesn’t waver from the game they’re from. Squall and Cloud are still broody, Snow is still a jock, Vivi is still adored by everyone, and Celes still almost gets roped into performing an opera scene. Yes, this game even has its very own Cid. To take the immersion and introductions a step further, the game has fantastic musical renditions of the classical themes from each title referenced. As the twins journey into new areas that contain new sets of characters to meet, theme songs float past your ears in new and exciting arrangements. As soon as you get a hero you can summon as a Champion, you also unlock the option to have their title’s battle theme as your default battle music for all random encounter fights. There are more than one hundred tracks in this game, composed by a host of people from all over the series’ history that wanted to lend their talent and sound to this experience. There’s a fantastic playlist here, that also shows off some of how beautiful the game is in action on the Playstation 4. As for the battle system, I only had one gripe: they kept random encounters in place. In many modern RPGs, even remakes of classics like Dragonquest VII, battle starts are now often controlled by the player by running into a visible monster on-screen. In newer RPGs like the Bravely franchise, you can even choose to turn battles off entirely in the event that half your party is operating on very low health and needs to book it back to the nearest town. This is offset a bit in World Of Final Fantasy by a generous helping of healing items throughout the game and never having a shortage of Gil, meaning you can always buy yourself things to heal with. However, when you’re trying to simply get to a next save point, it can get tedious. I’m used to it from my years of playing RPGs, but younger players might be put off a bit. On the plus side – battles can be as turn based or Active Time as you’d like. In that regard, I thought this was a great innovation. You can choose in the settings menu to have enemies wait until you’ve made your turn to be able to act, or to act as soon as it’s their turn, even if you’re still sorting out your magic. You can even pick an option that’s half way in between. This is a great way to give yourself an extra challenge of getting very fast at decision making, or lower difficulty if you are getting KO’d too frequently. Another feature that people grinding for great Mirages will appreciate, is the ability to fast-forward through battle. By pressing a button, you can speed up simple battles to hyper speed to be done with them quickly if you’re just jumping into a game session for leveling up purposes, or on the hunt for a rare creature. With a physical Vita side kick version that allows you to seamlessly access your cloud-saved PS4 file and game on the go, you can decide exactly how much of a completionist you want to get with your Mirage hunting, with only a slight dip in graphical resolution as a result. To this end, World Of Final Fantasy strikes a perfect balance of the familiar and the new. For those of us who grew up on these games and already know the plots, we get to see new adventures with familiar faces like Yuna, Tidus, Edgar, Quistis, and more. For new comers, none of the original stories get spoiled for them, but they can certainly get a sense of which characters they like, and which titles they’d like to go back and discover on their own. With so many fantastic HD remasters in existence or coming up, and the remakes on Nintendo 3DS that have helped the older titles age better, there is no shortage of means to continuing the adventures with these characters and discovering them all over again. Reynn and Lann become interesting characters as well. While newly introduced to us in this game, and at first glance blank-slates for the purpose of conveying the game’s purpose, their true pasts are revealed in the end in a surprisingly heavy tone that weighs out against the otherwise light-hearted nature of the game. It reminds you that for just as many moments that make you laugh in the Final Fantasy series, there will be just as many that make you cry, which is exactly what its creators intended. While it may suffer from some of the lack of clarity issues that plague many Final Fantasy stories, even this is poked fun of by one of the characters saying “Oh just go along with it.” As for World Of Final Fantasy becoming a franchise in its own right, it certainly seems like Square-Enix will try to do so. As you might imagine, not every game could possibly be crammed into one title. As it is, there’s a solid 30-40 hours of game play, and that’s without doing a 100% run. Several heroes also make mention of “being on the trail of a silver-haired swordsman” or “continuing my journey” and similar hints towards a sequel that will give us even more characters to spend time with. There are even some free DLC Champions that have been made available such as Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII, Sora from Kingdom Hearts and the upcoming Balthier from Final Fantasy XII who will probably be released around the time of the HD Remaster of his game. World Of Final Fantasy may not be for everyone, it may not be for you reading this right now. Some may be put off by the artistic style, others might just be tired of cross over titles and think they’re not worth it. However, the love and dedication put into this title is palpable. I certainly think it deserves your attention, and for the next generation of RPG gamers who are learning to love the legends we grew up with, I think it’s good that some fantasies are never truly final. /BCG Advertisements |
What will it take to finally put an end to sexism in art? Currently this subject is back at center stage, thanks to the Maura Reilly guest-edited June issue of ARTnews which collates the dispiriting statistics, and elicits responses from art stars ranging from Cindy Sherman to Jamian Juliano-Villani. Things are a lot better than in the mid-80s, when the Guerrilla Girls formed to picket a Museum of Modern Art survey that contained just 13 women in a show of 169 artists. But they are still not great: of all artists represented by galleries in the United States today, just 30 percent are female, according to the stats from Micol Hebron‘s “Gallery Tally” project, cited by Reilly. And that total seems to have been stuck more or less in place for some time. Reilly’s effort has provoked major discussion. On the other hand, it has also provoked a major sense of déjà vu. Cindy Rucker Gallery has organized a response show, cheekily titled “Pussy Don’t Fail Me Now.” The flyer for it begins: “On the heels of yet another expose of gender inequalities in the art world…” Last year, in a special issue of the Brooklyn Rail, edited by Kara Rooney and covering very similar terrain, artist and critic Mira Schor calls these periodic upsurges of feminism “amnesiac returns” (in fact, stressing the point, her piece was called “Amnesiac Return Amnesiac Return.”) Every few years, it seems, there is a resurgence of interest in feminism, noting the dismal progress towards gender parity within this purportedly liberal realm. Statistics are collated; symposia held; protests organized. Then, before long, the subject fades from the center of discussion—only to return again a few years later, because the problem persists. To accompany Reilly’s effort, ARTnews also republished online Linda Nochlin’s celebrated 1971 essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” I am keenly aware that in what follows I am at risk of coming off as mansplaining sexism, but rereading Nochlin was a revelation. It made me think that a return to some of the insights of her classic feminist scholarship might help advance the contemporary conversation—including my own previous thoughts on the subject. The Limits of Counting Reilly’s lead essay is titled “Taking the Measure of Sexism: Facts, Figures, and Fixes.” It is, in essence, an epic exercise in counting, surveying the statistics that prove ongoing bias in gallery representation, auction prices, and museum solo shows. Counting is one of the “fixes” as well. After surveying possible avenues of redress, like advocating for feminist curricula and pressuring collectors and museum boards to change their ways, Reilly concludes by saying, “And, yes, we need to keep crunching the numbers. Counting is, after all, a feminist strategy.” Indeed, such data-gathering is what continues to keep the issue alive despite the industry’s memory problem. Yet going back to read “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” again, I was suddenly struck by how Nochlin’s approach can be read as a critique of counting as an endpoint of analysis. “The question ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’ is simply the top tenth of an iceberg of misinterpretation and misconception,” Nochlin wrote. You could rephrase her argument like this: Simply counting the number of “great” female artists then comparing it to the number of “great” male artists didn’t by itself explain anything, and left room to smuggle in all kinds of erroneous assumptions, unless the source of the discrepancy was adequately explained. Cutting ahead to our own time, the question being asked is “Why Are There Still So Few Successful Women Artists?” Yet as with the earlier case, in taking only the most visible phenomena of professional attainment as its object, the statistics on their own leave only our assumptions to fill in why bias appears to be so intractable. Nochlin argued that in order to understand why women have been underrepresented in art history, we needed to look “beyond the specific political and ideological issues involved in the subjection of women.” We had to dig into the premise of the question itself, framing artistic careers not as the manifestation of inbuilt “greatness” but as the product of institutional structures. Only after these were understood could we give the numbers their proper meaning. Correspondingly, today I think that it may be helpful to take a closer look at what “success” really means and how it is achieved. As in the earlier case, to do this it helps to look more closely about our ideas not just about female artists, but about the way the contemporary art system in general works (or doesn’t). The Conditions for Artistic Success Eight years ago, after another return of feminist protest against festering bias within the art system, I wrote an essay trying to answer some of these questions, titled “White Walls, Glass Ceiling” (which, in updated form, became an important part of my book 9.5 Theses on Art and Class). There I argued that “you can’t explain this phenomenon without getting at factors larger than just art,” and proposed two possible channels by which the outwardly progressive art world might reproduce sexism. The first was that the commercial art industry was about servicing the appetites of the wealthy. Given the not-at-all equal distribution of wealth in society, this reality ultimately meant that it was about servicing the appetites of men—a state of affairs bound to produce bias. The second was that, when you examined how artists achieved gallery representation, it was through relatively invisible personal networks. Grasping this, I thought, might explain how a “boy’s club” mentality replicated itself, consciously or unconsciously. I still believe that these factors are important. Yet after the activism and debate of the ensuing years, I have come to believe that my account in “White Walls, Glass Ceiling” is still too art-world centric. Today, I would put more stress on a third factor. One of the major recent themes of theoretical and practical debate—in the scholarship of Julia Bryan-Wilson and the activism of W.A.G.E. (and in my own book)—has been about the status of the artist as worker. It has become increasingly clear to me that the idea of the “artist” as a professional identity is a near myth, an optical illusion produced by what Nochlin would describe as the “romantic, elitist, individual-glorifying and monograph-producing substructure” of the art industry. For almost all contemporary “artists,” including a majority of those who are actively showing in galleries, art sales constitute a fraction of how they make a living. The reality of the art life is largely one of maintaining faith in a creative vision while doing something else (unless you are independently wealthy or supported by a partner, situations more characteristic of the average artistic success story than anybody cares to talk about). Every year, a hungry new crop of would-be artists enters the lottery, even as another bunch decides to abandon the field, having exhausted their resources or their optimism. Summing up years of hard-won wisdom recently in the book Living and Sustaining a Creative Life, the artist Maureen Connor put it this way: “[I]f some career trajectories seem arbitrary in terms of who succeeds and who does not, I believe it often comes down to crucial financial support.” Nochlin used the metaphor of the iceberg. If the statistics about “successful” artists are the peak that we can see, the realities within the non-art economy are the cold mass that these rest on, largely hidden beneath the surface of the conversation. The Pay Gap and the Representation Gap What does this fact, which is as characteristic of men as it is for women, help us understand about the specific condition of female artists? Responding to Reilly’s article in ARTnews, the women behind the Brooklyn gallery Cleopatra’s suggest that aspiring female artists may get fewer opportunities because they are less aggressive about promoting themselves: “Hands down the biggest observation that we have made in the role of being four perfect targets for artists to approach, pitch projects to, ask for a studio visit, etc., is that probably nine out of ten people to hit us up are men.” Maybe if aspiring female artists really did just “lean in,” things would improve. Gender stereotyping sets in early, and means that women are sometimes socialized to ask for less. But I believe with Nochlin that ultimately “the question of women’s equality—in art as in any other realm—devolves not upon the relative benevolence or ill-will of individual men, nor the self-confidence or abjectness of individual women, but rather on the very nature of our institutional structures themselves and the view of reality which they impose on the human beings who are part of them.” So here’s a third avenue towards an explanation of the same observation: Maybe, for reasons that go beyond art, even the most assertive aspiring female artist actually ends up with less time to approach dealers, pitch projects, and ask for studio visits. The vicious truth is that female college graduates today still make about 22 percent less than their male counterparts, across the economy. Women, on average, will therefore have 22 percent fewer resources to go into making and producing art. Women will, on average, have to work 22 percent harder to compete at the same level for scarce opportunities. Women will have 22 percent less of the “crucial financial support” Connor talks about to see them through while waiting for that big break. For African-American women and Latinas, the statistics on relative pay are even more dismal. An African-American woman can in general expect to make 36 percent less than a white male. As the National Partnership for Women & Families pointed out recently, that translates to the equivalent of 21 months of rent. And the pay gap is really only one of the more visible aspects of routine discrimination, from the US’s spectacular failure among industrialized nations to mandate any form of maternity leave, to the nickle-and-diming stupidity of the so-called “pink tax,” the fact the same goods, like razors and deodorants, tend to cost more when packaged for women (an issue publicized by the French feminist collective Georgette Sand last year). Here maybe the iceberg metaphor is still too benign. If artistic careers are mainly subsidized by resources from outside of art, such realities will be more like a black hole in the art universe—not directly visible, but warping all that is around it. The Art World and the Real World I know that the danger in this analysis is that it may seem as if I am downplaying sexism within the art industry. Some portion of discrimination is the work of base ignorance or outright misogyny (cough cough, Georg Baselitz). There are plenty of female artists who have achieved artistic “greatness” but still go unrecognized. It was not so long ago that Evening Standard critic Brian Sewell was opining, with dumbbell assurance, “Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness.” Yet even sexism of this blatantly regressive kind finds its purchase in terrain shaped by the larger context for women. How did Sewell justify for himself his asinine generalization about female creative capacity? With the following observation about the career paths of female artists: “[T]hey fade away in their late 20s or 30s. Maybe it’s something to do with bearing children.” Well, maybe—or maybe it’s something to do with having to work extra hard to stay in the game and then, on top of that, having some fool still say that you’ll never achieve “aesthetic greatness.” In the end, exposing the fact that conditions within art depend crucially on factors that go beyond it shouldn’t let the art world off the hook. In fact, it makes corrective initiatives within art more, not less, important; K8 Hardy specifically makes the case for artists fees on this basis. But it does mean that the shameful statistics probably can never be cancelled out by simply getting attitudes right within the art industry. The numbers within art make a case for a feminism that advances discussion and activism beyond it. The Guerrilla Girls are the godmothers of counting as a political strategy. Yet it is already a decade and a half now since the great “Banana Split” of 2001, when Guerrilla Girls BroadBand spun off as a group as committed to addressing issues beyond sexism in art. These have included, among other things, abortion rights, sexual assault, military recruiting, and discrimination against women within the workplace. Recently Minnette De Silva, one of the pseudonymous members of the BroadBand collective, explained the new direction to the Brooklyn Rail‘s Chloe Wyma: What Guerrilla Girls BroadBand does is stand in the art world and relate it back out to the rest of the world. What’s really important about the continued inequality of representation of women and people of color in the art world is that the whole of American society is still incredibly racist and anti-women in certain ways. We see the art world as part of the world. This is not an example of diluting the message. This is an example of wisdom, won through struggle, about what it actually means to take that message seriously. See also: 100 Most Powerful Women in Art 62 Women Share Their Secrets to Art World Success 25 Women Curators Shaking Things Up Follow artnet News on Facebook: |
Figures for first nine months of financial year come as regulators insist efforts to control rising costs are beginning to have an impact The NHS deficit in England rose to nearly £2.3bn in the first nine months of the financial year, official figures have confirmed. Following a sharp rise on the £1.6bn reported by trusts after six months, regulators insisted efforts to get a grip on rising costs were beginning to have an impact. They added, however, that pressures created by rising demands for care, high costs and problems with being able to discharge medically fit patients to suitable care outside hospital remained. The figures, covering the nine months from April 2015, also confirm the impression given by separate documents released on Thursday in response to freedom of information requests, which suggest trusts are having difficulty meeting caps on agency staff. The deficit of £2.26bn – revealed on Friday by Monitor and the NHS Trust Development Authority, which oversee foundation trusts and non-foundation trusts respectively – is strikingly similar to the £2.3bn estimated for the whole financial year by the respected King’s Fund thinktank this week, another indication of the task facing trusts. NHS needs funding rise to make it envy of world again, says healthcare expert Read more The Department of Health put a brave face on the figures. It recognised that finances were “challenging”, but insisted the government was committed to the NHS and was investing £10bn to fund its own plan for reshaping services in the future. But Heidi Alexander, Labour’s shadow health secretary, said the NHS was “now in financial freefall”. She added that ministers must be honest about what the figures meant for patient care – for example, staff cuts, longer waits for treatment and services at risk of closure. The official figures show: The overall deficit for service providers is £622m worse than planned. Three-quarters of providers are running deficits. The £2.72bn spent on agency and contract staff is £1bn more than planned. The £1.94bn of service savings is £257m less than planned. Providers hope to cut another £450m by the end of March. 3.14 million people are on the waiting list for routine operations. NHS providing poorer care as funding crisis deepens, says survey Read more John Appleby – the King’s Fund chief economist whose report on Thursday highlighted the problems and who had already indicated that shortfalls would exceed the thinktank’s end-of-year predictions – said there was evidence that many trusts would not be able to deliver the cuts needed to get the overall deficit down to £1.8bn by the end of March. “This has significant implications,” Appleby said. “Any shortfall will come out of next year’s budget, eating into the extra funding provided in the [government’s] spending review and leaving even less money for essential changes to services. “If an end-of-year deficit approaches the worst-case scenario laid out in these figures – £2.8bn – it is hard to see how the Department of Health will avoid overspending its budget for the year, something that has never happened before.” Paul Briddock, the policy director for professional body the Healthcare Financial Management Association, said: “The writing’s on the wall – the deficit has already far exceeded what was originally forecast. It’s also disappointing to see many key performance targets are not hitting the mark, including waiting times for A&E, referral to treatment and 62-day cancer waits.” Paul Healy, a senior policy adviser at the NHS Confederation, which includes service providers, said: “The last 24 months have established a creeping decline in the stability of providers in the NHS and the figures published today do not indicate a significant shift in this trend. “Many factors contributing to this decline are beyond the means of individual organisations and we should be wary of increasing the regulatory pressure on individual trusts’ leaders. Instead, most problems will be better solved working hard as an entire health and care system to reshape how services are delivered.” |
Tom Koson: Taking a Drive Through the Pro Tour Top 8 Every new Standard season feels exciting, especially when we have a chance to see what decks are rising to the top and what cards of the new set exceeded expectations. So strap yourselves in as we go on a wild ride through the best decks from Pro Tour Kaladesh. The Assumptions After the results of the SCG Tour stop in Indianapolis two weeks ago, a couple metagame assumptions were made. Smuggler’s Copter played a vital role in aggressive decks and midrange decks alike. In fact, there were a full 32 copies appearing in the Top 8. As for control, it was dead. Usually when a format is brand new, it takes a bit for control decks to tune themselves properly. It’s hard to have a deck full of answers when you don’t know what threats you’re answering. Even with that in mind, three control decks in the Top 64 of the Open seemed to be a strong signal that control would be a bit player, at best, in this Standard format. Now, with the results of Pro Tour Kaladesh, we can see that only half of the decks in the Top 8 featured Smuggler’s Copter, and the finals of the tournament was a control mirror. If any archetype seems to be dead, it looks like it would be midrange. Every other type of deck was represented. Let’s have a look at them. The Aggro Decks These decks are the most straightforward to play. The general game plan is to keep a good mix of lands and spells, play your aggressive threats on curve, and close out the game with a powerful finisher such as Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. If I were to pick between these decks, I would choose the one that has a good aggro matchup, as well as a good control matchup. Makis Matsoukas’ R/W Tokens R/W Tokens is the fastest version of these decks, which makes it a favorite in aggro matchups. It is also able to flood the board more and go wide, making combat difficult for the opponent. While a fast deck like this may seem good against control, it lacks the vehicles such as Fleetwheel Cruiser and Skysovereign, Consul Flagship that can play against sorcery-speed removal. This deck is very weak to cards like Fumigate and Radiant Flames, both of which were in the maindecks of the finals decks. The lack of Selfless Spirit also has an impact here. I wouldn’t play this deck moving forward, due to its weaker control matchup. Lee Shi Tian’s Mardu Vehicles Mardu Vehicles is playing the most powerful combination of cards in the aggressive decks, but has the most complicated manabase. Cards like Unlicensed Disintegration and Scrapheap Scrounger are great in slower midrange and control matchups where you can get your mana online. The four copies of Ceremonious Rejection in the sideboard work wonders against the Aetherworks Marvel and Metalwork Colossus decks. This deck is weak to other fast decks. R/W Vehicles is more streamlined and will generally have smoother draws. This deck would be better than the other aggro options in a different metagame, but I wouldn’t currently play it. Ben Hull’s R/W Vehicles The R/W Vehicles deck features the best mix of cards that are good against both aggro decks and control decks. Chris VanMeter piloted this deck to a 1st place finish at the Open, and every member of his team put up good results with it. The type of decks it feels weak to are midrange decks like G/B Delirium, which can match its threats while also using removal spells and planeswalkers to gain an advantage. It can also get combo’d by Aetherworks Marvel if it doesn’t present a fast enough clock. Given the current metagame, this is the aggro deck I would be playing moving forward. We’ve looked at aggro. Now, let’s change … gears. The Control Decks Two of the three control decks in the Top 8 made it to the finals, and while they share some similar cards, the threats and answers are surprisingly different. The plan is the same, though: don’t die, turn the corner with card advantage, finish the game. Shota Yasooka’s Grixis Control The advantage of playing black in a shell like this is having access to maindeck Painful Truths, which is great in slower match-ups, while Unlicensed Disintegration and Essence Extraction are great against faster decks. Jace, Unraveler of Secrets, Anticipate, and Glimmer of Genius provide not only card advantage, but card selection, allowing this deck to quickly cycle through itself and find exactly what it needs. The main win condition is Thing in the Ice, which also happens to stop the onslaught of creature-based decks. Wandering Fumarole and Torrential Gearhulk can also finish a game out very quickly. This deck feels very good, and it is better in control mirrors, but I can think of a control deck that I would rather play. Carlos Romao’s Jeskai Control White provides a lot of tools for this deck. It is using the same Harnessed Lightning, Anticipate, Void Shatter and Glimmer of Genius shell that we’ve seen in Grixis, but also has great removal like Quarantine Field, Stasis Snare, Fumigate, Immolating Glare and Blessed Alliance. In the win condition slots we see Archangel Avacyn, Dovin Baan, Torrential Gearhulk and sideboard options such as Linvala, the Preserver, Spell Queller, and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. It feels like this deck takes a more proactive approach to the game. I’m not much of a control player, but this is absolutely the deck I want to be playing moving forward. It is extremely versatile. The way I see these types of control decks losing is to resilient decks with efficient threats, planeswalkers and hand disruption. There is also always the possibility of getting stuck on lands and being ran over by aggressive strategies. Pierre Dagen’s U/R Spells This deck is very different from the previously mentioned control decks, but it is still trying to achieve the same thing. It wants to filter through its cards with Anticipate, Glimmer of Genius, Tormenting Voice and Take Inventory. It has good removal in Galvanic Bombardment, Harnessed Lightning, Fiery Temper, and Lightning Axe. While these spells are being cast, Dynavolt Tower makes energy. Once the threats have been neutralized, Dynavolt Tower, Torrential Gearhulk, and Wandering Fumarole can start getting in damage and finish the game in short order. Out of the sideboard, this decks transitions into a Thing in the Ice and Niblis of Frost deck to lock down extra creatures people will have after they’ve boarded out their removal spells. This deck gets much better after sideboard in any given matchup. It excels against aggro and is solid against other control decks. Unlike the other control decks, U/R Spells is worst against the Aetherworks Marvel deck. Its removal doesn’t line up well against Emrakul, the Promised End, and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger that have been cheated into play. Avoid that matchup, and this deck could be marvelous. Speaking of marvelous … The Combo Deck Matt Nass’ Temur Aetherworks This is the weird combo deck, with distinct echoes of Pro Tour Eldritch Moon‘s breakout decks. It was actually 18.77% of the Day 2 metagame, but seemed to not perform as well at the top tables. It uses card selection that also puts Kozilek’s Return into its graveyard in Contingency Plan and Vessel of Nascency, and Glint-Nest Crane finds artifacts and block creatures. The Puzzleknots, Aether Meltdown, and Attune with Aether all accrue energy. The win condition is activating Aetherworks Marvel to find an Emrakul, the Promised End or Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. These being cast also lets a Kozilek’s Return in the graveyard wipe the opponent’s board if necessary. Victory generally comes in short order after a successful Aetherworks Marvel activation. This deck pretty much crushes the aggressive decks, midrange decks that don’t have hand disruption, and removal-based control decks. This deck falls flat against control deck with counter spells. Void Shatter and Summary Dismissal can counter Aetherworks Marvel, and by the time a huge threat would be cast naturally, the control deck has so many resources that it is virtually impossible to resolve anything and keep it around. I wouldn’t feel comfortable playing this deck simply for the fact that its two worst matchups placed 1st and 2nd at the Pro Tour. The Tempo Deck Joey Manner’s W/U Flash This deck is the one that is flying — or flashing — under everyone’s radar. While only one copy made the Top 8, there were three other decks very similar in structure that all had a 9-1 record in Standard. All four 9-1 decks were W/U midrange or flash. I can’t stress enough how much potential this deck has. It is Spirits-esque, though the only actual synergy is in Rattlechains with Selfless Spirit and Spell Queller; the other lists weren’t taking advantage of this interaction. Reflector Mage and Spell Queller dominated the last Standard season and some of that has been lost with all these great new cards out. This deck is extremely powerful, and being the tempo player that I am, I’m very tempted to pick this up. The downside to a strategy like this is the fact that once it gets behind, its suddenly very hard to win. With a lot of aggro decks in the format, I’m worried this may happen too much. It is pretty low to the ground, though. So it should be able to keep up. More Crew Puns to Come We learned a lot from this Pro Tour. Smuggler’s Copter isn’t as dominant as once thought, but these vehicles-based strategies are still extremely powerful. Control isn’t dead, with both finals decks being control decks. There were new decks that people were expecting, such as Temur Aetherworks, and new decks people weren’t expecting, such as U/R Spells. W/U flash suggests that a tempo deck is very viable in this format. I’m really looking forward to this Standard season. All of the decks looked sweet, and I don’t think we’ve seen the end of other decks like G/B Delirium, Grixis Emerge, B/R Madness, R/B Aggro, Colossus, G/R Energy, and so on. Until next time, look out for some very smug copters. Tom Koson is an up-and-coming grinder from Missouri who has been playing Magic since Return to Ravnica. He has made a name for himself with notable finishes such as making Top 8 of WMCQs and RPTQs, and he won SCG Standard and Modern States on back-to-back days in the spring of 2016. He prefers tempo and combo decks, but enjoys playing many different archetypes. Sharing is caring! Comments comments |
After nearly a year as president of CNN, Jeff Zucker has decided to make some changes that go well beyond mere anchor shuffling. In an interview with Capital New York, Zucker explained that the channel, whose initialism stands for Cable News Network, needs more of "an attitude and a take," which means "more shows and less newscasts." (As Vulture’s Josef Adalian pointed out in November, this should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been keeping an eye on the network, which has been steadily expanding the newly created CNN Films unit.) Zucker told Capital that he hopes to break out of CNN’s ratings war with Fox News and MSNBC by attracting people "who are watching places like Discovery and History and Nat Geo and A&E" to his existing audience, which currently consists of people who care about, you know, the news. While Zucker “initially faced internal resistance” to this strategy, he said it became hard to argue with the successes of non-news CNN offerings, such as edgy chef Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, which is currently the network’s top-rated show, and the anti–Sea World documentary Blackfish, a likely Oscar contender. Zucker intends to bring more of those types of projects to CNN’s prime-time slots, though he didn’t give many specifics. He told Capital, “Honestly, there is not a piece of paper that has the lineup on it right now.” He has also been devoting more resources to CNN’s online newsroom, with a focus on “mobile and video” content. “Television is still our bread and butter today, but digital will continue to be more important every day going forward,” he said. It’s too early to predict how Zucker’s shift will work out for CNN, but it doesn’t sound like the worst idea for a news network that has gained a reputation for sloppy, often oversimplified reporting (and, as of yesterday, allowing reporters to interview their own brothers). |
by Joe Martino November 17, 2017 from Collective-Evolution Website Spanish version Italian version When I first realized the true magnitude of what the Pope's Audience Hall design reveals, I was shocked. Despite 10 years of research into the elite, occult, Illuminati, consciousness, and more, this stuck out as something I just HAD to write about. Have you heard of the Pope's Audience Hall...? Also known as the Paul VI Audience Hall or the Hall of the Pontifical Audiences, it lies partially in Vatican City and partially in Rome, Italy. Named after Pope Paul VI and built in 1971 by Italian architect Pier Luigi Nervi , it seats 6,300 and contains a bronze statue called La Resurrezione , designed by Pericle Fazzini, within. This all sounds pretty straightforward so far, but let's dive into what makes this building so strange. We'll start with the less weird, and get progressively weirder as we go. Building Method and Design The building was designed with reinforced concrete by well-known architect Pier Luigi Nervi. Nervi is known for simple yet practical designs that are strong and made to last. The simple curvature of the building might seem unassuming from the outside, but this is part one of what we will begin to explore about this building, and I promise you, by the time we get to the end, you will see what I'm getting at. Have a look at the image below and compare its shape to the image of a snake beside it. Note the overall shape: wide back, narrow, rounded front, eyes in the middle, nostril at the front, and curved top. Windows As you can already begin to see in the image above, there are two windows on either side of the building that resemble eyes. They are made of stained glass and sit about halfway through the building's length on either side. In the centre of the eye shape, you begin to see a slit that could resemble a reptile eye. If you're not convinced yet, which is understandable, keep reading. Maybe looking at one window on its own isn't the most clear, so let's have a look at both of them together now. All of a sudden we begin to see things taking shape here: two reptilian eyes, staring at you as you observe the stage. Scales and Fangs Have a look again at the image above - what do you notice down the centre? There stands what looks to be a statue in the middle and then on either side, two sharp, pointed fangs. The building's roof and sides also resemble scales. Here are two more images to give you a sense of the scales. Now let's pull it together a bit more so we can really see what we are looking at. In the image below, really pay attention to the whole building and stage layout next to the image of a snake. The eyes, the shape, the scales, the fangs, the look and feel of the reptile… it's all there. The La Resurrezione Statue In the middle of the stage sits a statue of Christ rising from an atomic apocalypse . It was designed by Pericle Fazzini and put in place by 1977. Have a look at it below. Do you notice anything about Jesus' head? Front Right side Left side It's difficult to see from the front, but when you view the statue from the sides, where patrons would sit, it becomes strikingly clear from both sides that the head of Jesus is meant to look like that of a snake. Think about it for a moment: If just one side of the statue gave the impression of a snake's head, we could brush this off as coincidence, but when it looks this way from all angles, and the entire building resembles a snake as well, it becomes much more difficult to ignore. One must begin to realize that this was purposefully designed to appear this way. The thought and planning that went into this would have to have been immense. The reality is, there is an obvious reason for this imagery. The Big Question You may be asking what that reason is, W hy was this building built in such a way that the Pope appears to be speaking from the mouth of a reptile? If you aren't asking that question, you're simply turning a blind eye. It's not that the evidence isn't present, it's that you are choosing not to see it. There are seven separate pieces that comprise the snake or reptile symbol. If it were one or two I would understand your skepticism - even three. But when seven pieces come together so beautifully, so perfectly, you know beyond any shadow of a doubt that it was intentional. Regardless, I know what I'm saying may be difficult to accept, but all tough truths go through phases - laughter and ridicule, partial acceptance, and then, eventually, they appear self-evident to the population. I believe we are getting closer to the third stage when it comes to understanding who truly runs and has influence over our world, which is why this snake symbolism exists here. Research demonstrates there is a Deep State that largely governs our world : a group of people that aren't American, European, Russian, Canadian, etc., but beyond national identity, and they control our entire world. It has been said for a long time that there is an extraterrestrial influence there as well. Not from all races of ETs , but from one in particular, the reptilians . Not all reptilians are defectors of the heart, but a group, just like a group of humans, that has worked to influence this planet. I understand this sounds 'out there,' but really think about it. There is more evidence for the reality of ETs than anyone could possibly imagine. There is a ton of evidence for a Deep State controlling things. Is it at all possible that these two realities are linked? Again, I'm not saying all ETs or even all reptilians are 'bad,' but rather that perhaps a few are, and they are working with our governments. Even our own government officials have stated they are well aware of ETs but simply haven't told the public. As revealed by former Defense Minister of Canada Paul Hellyer: "So they decided to do an investigation, and they investigated for three years, and they decided that, with absolute certainty, that four species , four different species, at least, have been visiting this planet for thousands of years." The knowledge governments have of ETs is immense, and whistleblowers have revealed this many times, with plenty of documentation behind them. You can watch the film Unacknowledged on Netflix to learn more about this. The reptilian influence over the Deep State theory is not new, and can be found in many traditions and cultures. But it has been popularized by the work of David Icke who, understandably, has received a lot of ridicule for it. Regardless of that, millions follow and believe in his work. I highly suggest read " The Biggest Secret " and more about this theory . Why This Symbolism Is Used In an interview, it was mentioned that the Elite/Illuminati believe they must convey their intentions to humanity in order to, in essence, get permission from us to enact them. This manifests as rituals during mass sports events and symbolism found around society and in various popular industries like film and music. When you begin to consider what the Pope's Audience Hall is truly saying, it becomes clear he is speaking from the mouth of the snake. He stands in front of the mouth and speaks the words of the Elite to all those listening. The Elite are telling humanity via symbolism that this is what's happening. |
Germany’s Angela Merkel has opened the door to having a Eurozone finance minister. She made the comment during a joint press conference on Thursday with French president Emmanuel Macron in Paris after a joint Franco-German cabinet meeting. “I have nothing against a Eurozone budget,” said Merkel. “A European finance minister – we can talk about that.” The idea of having such a minister and a Eurozone budget are part of Macron’s proposals for reforming the European Union which have met with some resistance in Berlin. The German leader said she wanted to breathe new life into Franco-German relations, promising closer cooperation between the two European Union heavyweights with the aim of reforming the bloc. Merkel added that Europe must take its fate into its own hands. “I believe that we have shown shortly after the new government here was installed that we are ready to activate Franco-German relations with a new impetus,” Merkel said. A Franco-German warplane The two leaders announced plans to build a joint fighter jet, with a roadmap planned for mid-2018, as part of a drive to cement their countries’ cooperation and strengthen the European Union. “The aim of this fighter jet for a new generation is first to launch a common research and development programme to be able to plan it together, and then for our two armies to be able to use it together. I confirm to you, it’s a profound revolution, but we are not afraid of revolutions,” Macron said. Singling out cyber-security the two leaders vowed to deepen European integration on defence, counter-terrorism and immigration. FM sigmargabriel on Franco-German Ministerial Council: want to modernize partnership w/ France. Together we need to do more in+for Europe — GermanForeignOffice (GermanyDiplo) July 13, 2017 Eurozone integration The German Chancellor was questioned about Macron’s ideas for greater integration in the eurozone that have brought suspicion in Berlin. On his proposal for a single finance minister, parliament and budget, Merkel said she agreed in principle. “Personally I was always in favour, it’s about how (to create a European finance minister). In general I’m not against a euro budget. In 2012 I proposed a small eurozone budget but I failed big time back then but I’m very glad this idea is now back on the table,” she said. Klaus Regling, who heads up the EU’s rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism, appeared to back Macron’s reforms in an interview with the German business daily Handelsblatt. He said the Eurozone should have a “limited joint fiscal capability” to support individual states in case of a sudden crisis. Earlier, in a newspaper interview President Macron called on Germany to take action to help put right a “dysfunctional” eurozone, by accepting more public and private investment in Europe. Macron said he had nothing against German competitiveness: “But a part of German competitiveness is due to the dysfunctionalities of the eurozone, and the weakness of other economies,” he added. Re-starting the Franco-German ‘engine’ The French and German leaders also visited a youth centre in northern Paris which provides German language lessons, and held a meeting with French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. Together with EU representatives they pledged support for a G5 Sahel alliance – a joint military force (from Mauritania, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger) to fight Islamist extremists. Both leaders showed they were keen to revive the traditional German “engine” within the EU. They talked about working closely in many areas, however it will be difficult for both countries to act on key projects until after the German elections in September. Merkel’s visit to Paris coincided with that of Donald Trump but there were no plans for the German leader to meet the US president. Referring to criticism of France’s invitation, Macron said he was surprised it had aroused so much debate and protest. “It’s the 100th anniversary of the intervention alongside us of US forces in the First World War. We must never forget that our history is bigger than us,” he said. |
A company selected to run eateries in Coney Island has paid $100 million to settle lawsuits alleging racism against employees and fraud against schools. Sodexo paid $80 million in 2005 to settle a lawsuit brought by thousands of its black employees in America. The employees alleged they were regularly denied promotions and segregated within the company. In July, Sodexo settled a lawsuit brought by Attorney General and Governor-Elect Andrew Cuomo who said the company bilked K-12 school districts statewide and the SUNY college system for food and vending-machine services. "This company cut sweetheart deals with suppliers and then denied taxpayer-supported schools the benefits," Cuomo said in a press release. As first reported by the Coney Island blog Amusing The Zillion, Zamperla USA, which owns more than three acres of prime real estate on Coney Island, including Luna Park, selected Sodexo months ago to run a $1.4 million year-round, sit-down restaurant. Sodexo is also expected to run other eateries on Coney Island. |
STUNNED beachgoers in New Zealand stumbled over what looks like the carcass of a mysterious marine animal. The bizarre-looking corpse washed ashore last week, fuelling speculation that it is the remains of a prehistoric sea monster washed up ashore from the deep, Sun Live reports. The 9-metre-long corpse has basic flippers and a gaping jaw with long, sharp teeth. A video posted to YouTube showed the 9-metre long corpse on Pukehina Beach in the Bay of Plenty. Calling it a “strange marine creature”, the narrator added: “can anyone help us identify it?”. The video sparked a flurry of speculation that the carcass was some prehistoric ‘sea monster’. Discovery News said the latest “monster” carcass find in New Zealand was part of a long history of discoveries of mysterious sea creatures. The bizarre, rotting corpses are often mistakenly identified as sea monsters or dinosaurs, or even just mysterious “blobsters”. In 1896, a 2-metre tall sea creature corpse washed ashore in St Augustine, Florida. Scientists eventually determined it was a new type of giant octopus. In 2003, the bizarre 12-metre, 13-tonne “Chilean blob” shocked the world when it washed ashore on Los Muermos beach, BBC News reports. Puzzled marine biologists speculated the blob could be a type of giant squid, but DNA tests on the blubbery mass eventually determined it was the remains of a sperm whale. Marine mammal expert Anton Van Heldon examined the latest ‘monster’ carcass in New Zealand and believes it is a killer whale, based on the fin structure. Killer whales, or orcas, are sometimes spotted in the Bay of Plenty. |
LOS ANGELES >> Not to put any more pressure on UCLA’s basketball team or anything, but the Bruins suddenly have a lot to live up to … in USC’s football team. Lonzo Ball only has to match Sam Darnold, his fellow quarterback whose Rose Bowl performance reads like a story miraculous enough for the Bible. TJ Leaf only has to be as clutch as Leon McQuay III, whose last-minute interception against Penn State couldn’t have been better timed had he had the assistance of the two Leon McQuays who came before him. Bryce Alford only has to be as accurate from beyond the arc as Matt Boermeester, whose long-range buzzer-beater Monday was worth three points and so much more. It is now squarely on the Bruins, a team today conveniently ranked No. 4 in the nation since this also is a bunch that looks every bit worthy of the Final Four. The Trojans raised the bar to Goodyear blimp-type heights with their 52-49 victory over the Nittany Lions, one of the greatest triumphs ever for a program that began churning out wins in 1888. As we shift our focus to college basketball in the new year, it becomes the Bruins’ assignment to make something equally magical happen, to produce another glorious postseason run at a place already so familiar with postseason glory. UCLA opened the home part of its Pac-12 schedule on Thursday by beating Cal 81-71, winning for the 15th time in 16 games against a good opponent even though the Bruins “shut it down” in the second half. That was Coach Steve Alford’s assessment after watching his team’s 24-point lead dwindle to only five in the final minute. “We got lazy and careless offensively,” Alford said. “The ball stopped moving. And then we didn’t defend … We thought it was going to be easy … Those are valuable lessons to learn because you can’t do that in this league.” So the Bruins quit playing for an extended stretch, shot miserably in the second half, were badly out rebounded and still won by double digits. Yeah, this team is that good. Now, I know, USC’s basketball team also is busy chasing the confetti trail left by the school’s football team. The Trojans opened their Pac-12 home schedule on Thursday, too, against Stanford at Galen Center. They did so with a 14-1 record and No. 25 national ranking, and don’t you just know that when the Trojans host the Bruins on Jan. 25 something seismic is bound to happen? But, at this point, it is UCLA’s basketball team that appears better equipped to provide us with a Rose Bowl-like showing, to duplicate during March Madness what USC’s football team did in a January already gone wacko. “If, 16 games in the season, we can learn valuable lessons when winning, that proves the character of those guys,” Alford said. “They didn’t break. They bent a little bit, but they didn’t break.” The Bruins just have that look, which is to say they just have that player, Ball possessing the remarkable ability to dictate the direction of a game without even having to take a shot. Sure, he’s only a freshman. But being only a freshman doesn’t mean what it used to mean, particularly given that Ball almost certainly will never play at UCLA as a sophomore. He’ll likely be in the pros at this point next year, probably, if this NBA season has taught us anything, beating the Lakers. Against Cal, Ball finished with 14 points, seven assists and one reminder, Alford imploring him afterward to lead by more than just example. The kid with all the physical tools was encouraged to use his mouth more. “We’ve empowered him to do that,” Alford explained. “Sometimes, you have to continue to reiterate it … Mostly, what I told him was, ‘Hey, this is your team to lead.’ ” Vocally or otherwise, Ball again did set the pace on Monday. But it was Leaf, his fellow freshman, who set the tone, set it with extreme and outrageous emphasis. In the game’s eighth minute, the 6-foot-10 Leaf dunked with passion over Cal’s 7-foot starting center, putting the “Oh!” in Kingsley Okoroh, a junior from England who was made to look as mobile – and defenseless – as Big Ben. The slam was so dramatic that it brought packed Pauley Pavilion to its feet, and I don’t mean just the fans inside the arena. The actual building, I swear, seemed to rise up. To be fair, Okoroh, later in the first half, nearly inhaled a driving layup attempt by Aaron Holiday, volleying Holiday’s shot into the crowd. That, however, isn’t the sort of thing they’re talking about when they say a player has been posterized, Leaf’s primal finish over Okoroh the stuff that is framed and displayed. Or, to be more accurate these days, viewed a million times or so on YouTube. So the Bruins won an entire game against Cal by playing a little more than half of it. That can be only an encouraging sign for a team pursuing Pac-12 prominence and beyond. They certainly have the quarterback needed to win, and the Bruins might have everything else, too, everything necessary to make their own confetti fly. |
About 65 percent of Americans think Congress is in the pocket of special interests; only around 13 percent of Americans approve of how it’s handling itself. Cut through the math, and the most important legislative body in our country is seen as a horde of intellectually feeble, fractious, corrupt people who can’t do their jobs. That’s why Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig is asking Americans who are tired of the (not so) merry-go-round of political failure to take a stand. In a video for the fund-raising drive launching today called May One, Lessig says he wants to reform campaign finance by backing politicians who believe in it. His plan is to fight money with money to get American government back on track and actually doing things, such as governing. He aims to raise $1 million to support politicians who want to kick-start fundamental reforms of campaign finance so Americans can go back to hiring qualified politicians able to hold debates on the major topics of the day. Then we’d have an actual democracy that was vibrant with action, advancing our country’s laws every year instead of butting heads over the same old, same old. Now, that sounds like something worth voting for. |
I must agree with myself on this that switching to a Mac wasn't the easiest thing to do, I had to learn around new tricks to get my work done and also, for me, the experience was much different to what Windows had to offer, much better and more flexible. Since the most usual and important task that I perform nearly every 10 minutes or so is taking a screenshot, so with time I managed to learn a couple of techniques to do it through different ways and here I am sharing them all as a future reference to myself and for other Max OS X users. Command + Shift + 3 Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it as a file on the desktop. Command + Shift + 4 Take a screenshot of an area and save it as a file on the desktop. Command + Shift + 4 + Spacebar Take a screenshot of a window and save it as a file on the desktop. Command + Control + Shift + 3 Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it to the clipboard. Command + Control + Shift + 4 Take a screenshot of an area and save it to the clipboard. Command + Control + Shift + 4 + Spacebar Take a screenshot of a window and save it to the clipboard. Command + Shift + A (in Grab.app) Take a screenshot of an area and save it in a location of your choice. Command + Shift + W (in Grab.app) Take a screenshot of a window and save it in a location of your choice. Command + Shift + Z (in Grab.app) Take a screenshot of the screen every 10 seconds, until the timer is canceled. screencapture This command can be used in Terminal to take screenshots. ””screencapture -iW ~/Desktop/screen.jpg”” if you have more tricks out there to share with us, please post them in the comments. Thanks! |
Astrobotic offers other GLXP teams a ride to the Moon, but does it have a ride of its own? With just over 18 months left in the Google Lunar X PRIZE (GLXP) competition, one of the leading teams in the race is offering to give other teams a lift to the lunar surface, creating the potential for what it calls “NASCAR on the Moon.” However, that team’s announcement raises questions about how it plans to get its own spacecraft there. In a press release emailed yesterday (although, as of early Thursday morning, not posted on its website), Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic offered to carry rovers built by other GLXP teams to the Moon on Astrobotic’s Griffin lander. The company plans to send Griffin to the Lacus Mortis region of the Moon, near a pit that geologists think could lead to an underground lava tube cave. In the release, Astrobotic said it would like to take rovers from at least four teams on that mission (it wasn’t clear if that meant four teams other that Astrobotic, which will have its own rover on the lander.) The rovers would exit the lander and then start moving simultaneously, effectively racing each other to travel 500 meters, one of the key requirements of the competition. “Not only does the shared launch create a more exciting race for the Prize, it would be the first international competition beyond Earth orbit,” said Astrobotic CEO John Thornton in the release. It would also address one of the key obstacles for teams: while a number of teams are making progress on their rovers, fewer of them have developed systems to get those rovers to the lunar surface, or made arrangements to launch them. In its press release, Astrobotic said that it plans to launch its lander on a Falcon 9 flying out of Cape Canaveral, Florida. That contract was announced in February 2011, with plans at that time to launch the mission “as soon as December 2013.” In an interview with Space News published last month, Thornton said they plan to launch in October 2015, and cited the discount SpaceX offered on its prices to GLXP teams that dates back to the announcement of the prize in 2007. However, a check of SpaceX’s launch manifest fails to turn up a mission for Astrobotic, either in 2015 or later. The manifest shows 16 launches on the manifest for 2015, including 11 from Cape Canaveral, but Astrobotic is not listed among the customers. (Strictly speaking, SpaceX’s online manifest doesn’t specify when the launches take place but “vehicle arrival at launch site”, so some of the 2015 launches could slip into 2016; likewise, some of the 2014 missions listed could actually launch in 2015.) It’s possible that Astrobotic’s omission from the manifest is an oversight, but if so, it’s a long-running one. A check of several archived versions of that manifest, obtained from the Internet Archive, failed to turn up a listing for Astrobotic. Manifests checked include those from April 2011, January 2012, October 2012, and July 2013. Alternatively, Astrobotic could be flying as a secondary payload on another customer’s mission, and thus not appear on the manifest. That would require, though, finding a customer both willing to accept a secondary payload and one with significant excess capacity: enough to send a spacecraft with a mass that may be in excess of two tonnes (1,685 kilograms of fuel alone, plus payload and spacecraft, according to the company’s website) on a translunar injection trajectory. A company spokesperson declined to provide additional details about the company’s launch arrangements. “We have no public update to the status of the launch at this time,” Lauren Schneider, director of communications for Astrobotic, said late Wednesday in an emailed response to an inquiry earlier in the day. SpaceX media relations did not respond to a question about Astrobotic’s launch plans Wednesday. |
http://www.jfk.org For more information about The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, visit the link below. In cooperation with The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, EarthCam has placed a live HD streaming webcam in the southeast corner window of the sixth floor in the former Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. This is the view from the window from which an assassin fired the shots that killed President John F. Kennedy and severely wounded Texas Governor John Connally as the presidential motorcade drove through Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. The Sixth Floor Museum, located on the sixth and seventh floors of the building, explores President Kennedy's life, death and legacy."We are saddened by the loss of the brilliant Gary Mack, Curator at the Sixth Floor Museum," said Brian Cury, CEO & Founder of EarthCam. "He was an early believer in EarthCam and instrumental in installing one of our first live cameras at the 'sniper’s perch' in 1999. His vision of providing access to this unique location allowed the Museum to become one of the first in the country to embrace webcam technology, offering an unparalleled educational opportunity to viewers around the world."We'll miss Gary and dedicate our camera at the Sixth Floor Museum to him." |
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