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Google's legal director Richard Salgado is due to testify before a committee at the House of Representatives this morning on reforming email privacy law to help both users and Google. In prepared remarks published on Google's Public Policy Blog today, Salgado says the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) was good when it was enacted, but that times have changed and so much user content is now cloud-based that the law has created "inconsistent, confusing, and uncertain standards" and that "the law fails to preserve the reasonable privacy expectations of Americans today." "The law fails to preserve the reasonable privacy expectations of Americans today." Other companies and privacy advocates have spent years calling for updates to ECPA. The law currently gives government agencies and law enforcement organizations the ability to request all user email older than 180 days with just a subpoena, while access to newer email requires a stricter search warrant. The law has also been used to enable the government to request other cloud-based user information and even mobile device location information. But Google and those calling for reform want to see search warrants required to access all stored web user info and emails, regardless of their freshness or whether users have opened them. Salgado's testimony says that the government should reform the law so that other companies will have less hesitation about trusting their employee's email and communications privacy to Google. He also makes an argument that Google Apps and cloud-based services are helpful to national security, writing "removing artificial and counterproductive legal standards that hinder movement to services offered by providers like Google will help strengthen our nation’s network security." Salgado notes that already, five million businesses have signed up for Google Apps, and argues that their privacy should be better protected from government requests. Whether Congress takes him up on that remains to be seen. A collection of House lawmakers introduced an ECPA reform bill earlier this month, but the Senate had the chance to move forward on an ECPA reform bill last year and never did so. |
Posted on Monday, May 12, 2014 at 12:00AM I don't really consider myself a "business person" despite the fact that I've owned and operated a relatively successful small business for almost seven years. As with so many others, I got into this profession because I love coaching movement and facilitating the positive impacts it has on peoples’ lives. I knew from very early on as a coach that I wanted to have my own gym, that I wanted it to be something special, and that having fun would be more important than making money. That being said, I didn't really have the money to start a "proper" business from Day One so I had to do it the old-fashioned way and grow it organically. Below are the two concepts that have essentially encompassed CFSBK’s entire business plan from the early days in the park up through today. Plant a Seed and Let it Grow Organically Back in 2007, when I wanted to start CFSBK, it didn’t seem like the smartest approach to find partners, take out a huge loan, and rent some ludicrously overpriced real estate in Brooklyn in order to start a gym based around a niche training concept that no one had heard of. My entire "financial plan" was to simply work to my best abilities within the resources I had and to never spend a single dollar I didn't already have available. My rule was that if I didn't have the funds to obtain something I needed, I would have to work harder with what I did have until I was able to afford it. So in late 2007 I found a playground near my apartment that had some pull-up bars. I purchased a set of gymnastics rings, one kettlebell, a few cheap jump ropes, and made some sand bags out of truck tire tubes and hose clamps (which we still have and use). My entire initial business investment was somewhere around $150 worth of equipment plus the then $500 CrossFit affiliation fee. While all this was happening, I continued to work six days a week at a commercial gym in Manhattan to support myself and saved every dollar I made from CrossFit so that I could plug it back into the business. Over time I had enough of a following that I could afford rented space a few times a week and offer a whopping three classes per week. I slowly grew the gym and transitioned myself away from coaching at the commercial facility until my business could sustain first myself, then a gradually growing number of employees. I've maintained that same exact business model and strategy up through today where we have over 600 members and about 20 employees. I take great pride in the fact that my staff and I have "earned" every single component related to our business, which makes every new piece of equipment or aspect of expansion that much more special, not just for me, but for everyone who’s been around long enough to see our growth. Of course, there are countless alternative approaches to starting an affiliate that could easily bear as much fruit. My point is that many of the financial obstacles which scare off potential gym owners can be completely circumvented as long as you understand the financial rules you're willing to play by, are prepared to take the long road of trading instant gratification for earned experience, and always focus growth on elevating your member experience, not your bottom line. Leverage your Coaching and Atmosphere There was recently a thread on the CrossFit message board that posed the question of whether it's possible for an affiliate to start in a park or garage and remain competitive enough to stay afloat, given the ever-growing number of affiliates opening their doors with massive spaces fully equipped to run huge classes and offer a variety of specialized programs. Suddenly the vision of your members throwing sand-filled basketballs at trees for wall balls seems less romantic and more deflating. I was very fortunate to have heard of CrossFit early on and been the only affiliate in Brooklyn for the first year or so I was around. But while the game has changed a bit, nothing will ever trump quality coaching and a commitment to your members. Without fancy amenities to woo your potential clientele, you'll have to again focus on the resources that you do have—which is you—by constantly working to expand your own experience and knowledge. While a fleet of rowing machines, daycare options, and an expansive class schedule certainly are desirable and can be things we should aspire toward, remember that what really stays with people are the interactions they have with the coaches and people around them. We’ve talked a lot on ITA about the importance of building community at affiliates and how to create a safe, positive training culture. Part of CFSBK’s business philosophy acknowledges that there is a psycho-social element of fitness, and doing CrossFit isn’t always just about getting fit, but about meeting people and doing things that make you the best version of yourself on all levels. These things are important for a tribe to build community and togetherness. Having an environment that encourages this creates a deeper connection to the program and a deeper relationship to one’s training. This kind of community engagement in turn encourages retention—the more people you know, the more people who will notice you’re not in class. Especially in New York, it’s easy to be alone in a crowd and though we have eight million-plus people, it’s often hard to meet each another. So if your members are clearly having fun and getting better, you're doing your job and should stay the course. There isn't a pro shop in the world that trumps the feeling of someone at your affiliate being accepted for who they are, and being challenged to get better. Concluding Thoughts The CrossFit affiliate model is a very rare business system and is not something to take for granted. While the explosive growth of CrossFit has quite expectedly led to some quality-control issues, I still completely appreciate the freedom I've been given to express and grow my business exactly as I see fit. Without the freedom to start small and grow organically, my life would have been completely different and I'm sure much less fulfilling. If you're interested in starting an affiliate, remember that you can still start small and pave your own road for success. The opportunities are out there; you just need to be dedicated and passionate enough to take advantage of them. |
Bill Maher got into the holiday spirit early on Friday’s broadcast of “Real Time.” To mark his last show until January, the comedian took inspiration from Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol to imagine how it could all have turned out so differently for President Donald Trump. “Since Donald Trump is truly the Ebenezer Scrooge of our time ― angry, rich, and hard to look at ― maybe tonight I could play the part of the ghost and show Trump an alternative reality of what his life could have been if he weren’t such a shit-head,” joked Maher. He then proceeded to play out old interviews in which Trump said he didn’t want to make “tremendous amounts of money,” that he wanted to enjoy his life, that he believed in luck and actually chose love over work. After speculating that Trump had changed due to “spending the last 20 years watching Fox News,” Maher concluded by asking: “Is it too late to bring back the old Trump?” |
Genius analytics provide an insight into which songs and what artists fans are searching for. While an artist may receive heavy radio play and millions of streams, Genius page views offer a fresh metric in a constantly evolving music industry. Below are the lyric driven trends for the second quarter of 2015. Most viewed songs: Q2 2015 The second quarter of 2015 continued hip-hop's great year with over twelve major artists dropping projects this quarter. The only problem is, none of those artist's songs are on the list below. Taking the crown was Wiz Khalifa's chart topping "See You Again" from the Furious 7 Soundtrack. The track has garnered close to 1,900,000 page views since its March 9 release and provides a unique insight into how music is being consumed. In an age where we consume media with such short attention spans, having your song reach as many people as possible feels more important than ever. This sentiment is echoed with songs that go viral. While the relatively unknown T-Wayne dropped his song "Nasty Freestyle" on February 28th, it didn't blow up until Vine's started appearing in April. What if it didn't get picked up on Vine, would we even know who T-Wayne is? Probably not. The even more bizarre "Sausage Rap" - a Vine original, has been searched more this quarter than Fetty Wap's Drake assisted "My Way (Remix)," bringing a whole new meaning to the saying "fifteen seconds of fame." 1. Wiz Khalifa feat. Charlie Puth - "See You Again" 2. Fetty Wap - "Trap Queen" 3. T-Wayne - "Nasty Freestyle" 4. The Weeknd - "The Hills" 5. Drake - "Know Yourself" 6. Kendrick Lamar - "King Kunta" 7. Fetty Wap - "My Way" 8. Unknown - "Sausage Rap" 9. Big Sean ft. Drake & Kanye West - "Blessings" 10. Fetty Wap feat. Drake - "My Way (Remix)" Most viewed artists: Q2 2015 While at least one artist who released a project this quarter appears below, the same name graces the top of the list for the third time in a row: Drake. Even though the '6 God' doesn't look like he's slowing down anytime soon, Fetty Wap jumped six places from last quarter, knocking off Kanye West at number 3. Without even releasing a project, Fetty Wap's pages have been viewed a combined 4,360,666 times in the last 91 days on Genius. The focus now turns to the third quarter and all eyes are on Fetty Wap. He's had great traction with the few songs he's released, but can he drop a project that can compete with rap's heavy weights? 1. Drake 2. Kendrick Lamar 3. Fetty Wap 4. The Weeknd 5. Kanye West 6. Eminem 7. A$AP Rocky 8. Wiz Khalifa 9. Big Sean 10. J. Cole Which lyrics have you searched for recently, surprised not to see something on the list? Let us know in the comments. |
Real Madrid midfielder Marcos Llorente officially signed his contract extension with the club this Sunday, barely 24 hours after coming off the bench to secure Real’s 1-2 win against Alaves. During the press conference, he revealed his idol as a player. “My footballing idol is Xabi Alonso and I hope to win as many titles as I can with Real Madrid,” said the player, who plays the same position as Alonso. He also said that he has not been discouraged by his early lack of minutes this season, which has been somewhat surprising considering how well he performed for Alaves last year. “It is difficult to get minutes here and I didn't come in with a preordained idea of how much I would play. I just came in wanting to grow and get to train with these players,” he added. “I am thrilled to extend my contract with Real Madrid. I dreamed of playing here when I was little and it is the club of my life and all of my family. I can’t wait to grow with this club but I must be patient. I am young and I know there is strong competition here, I'm hoping to learn as I go,” said Llorente about Real Madrid. |
Robots are threatening manual workers. This sounds like old news, but as robots take over all but the smallest parts of Royal Enfield motorbike production in India, Indian laborers face worse consequences than usual. Thanks the low quality of education, these displaced workers aren’t equipped to take on more complex jobs like they may be in other countries. This automation is good for companies like Royal Enfield, originally an English gun and bike manufacturer but now the Indian maker of the iconic Bullet motorbike. According to Bloomberg, one robot painter can do the work of 15 human workers over three shifts, and it can do it better, wasting less paint and never missing a spot. Robots are also faster to retrain than humans. You just switch out their programming. The robots themselves need looking after, and so as the unskilled workers on the production lines are laid off, computer engineers are hired. The problem is that the manual workers have nowhere to go. It’s hard to employ somebody in even the most basic office work if they can’t read or write. The automation of India’s manufacturing industry is also making politics difficult. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make In India scheme is designed to create jobs for the poor, but those unskilled jobs are disappearing. Education is the key, but this is a long-term plan that, even if implemented perfectly, does nothing to help the workers being laid off today. According to the UN, the average Indian adult has only spent 4.4 years in school, putting it way behind other countries that are also automating their factories. Also, even university graduates have such a poor level of language and cognitive skills, says Bloomberg, that they have to be completely retrained for engineering jobs. Worse, even migrant workers are less in demand as developing countries automate more and more jobs traditionally done by migrants. Time is running out. At a government conference in December, the IMF’s Tharman Shanmugaratnam estimated that India has just 10 years left before robots take over all labor-intensive manufacturing. |
Community PRESS RELEASE INCIDENT TYPE: Larceny/Unlawful Mischief DATE/TIME REPORTED: August 1, 2012 / 11:30pm INCIDENT NUMBER: 12BU019136 LOCATION: Burlington, VT INVESTIGATOR: Officer Belleville INVESTIGATOR CONTACT: Officer Belleville AUTHOR: Sergeant J. Lawson APPROVED BY: Deputy Chief A. Higbee VICTIM: Male AGE: VICTIM ADDRESS: St. Albans, VT SUSPECT: Jermee Slaughter AGE: 26 SUSPECT ADDRESS: St. George, VT SUSPECT DISPOSITION: Arrested and Lodged NARRATIVE: On August 1, 2012 at approximately 23:30 hours the Burlington Police Department received a report of suspicious activity occurring in one of the Downtown District parking garages. The caller was able to provide a description of an individual who appeared to be actively breaking into motor vehicles. The Burlington Police were able to locate a male subject, who matched the description, in the area of South Winooski Avenue and Bank Street. The male was identified as Jermee Slaughter, 26 yo, of St. George, Vermont. The investigation discovered that Slaughter was in possession of property that was reported stolen from a motor vehicle located in the above parking garage. Slaughter was arrested and lodged at the Chittenden County Correctional Facility on the charges of Unlawful Mischief and Petit Larceny from a Motor Vehicle. Bail was set at $750.00. |
This post first appeared in Opera Mundi According to the UN's World Health Organization, Cuba's health care system is an example for all countries of the world. The Cuban health system is recognized worldwide for its excellence and its efficiency. Despite extremely limited resources and the dramatic impact caused by the economic sanctions imposed by the United States for more than half a century, Cuba has managed to guarantee access to care for all segments of the population and obtain results similar to those of the most developed nations. During her recent visit to Havana in July of 2014, Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), impressed by the country's achievements in this field, praised the Cuban health care system: "Cuba is the only country that has a health care system closely linked to research and development. This is the way to go, because human health can only improve through innovation," She also praised "the efforts of the country's leadership for having made health an essential pillar of development" [1]. Cuba's health care system is based on preventive medicine and the results achieved are outstanding. According to Margaret Chan, the world should follow the example of the island in this arena and replace the curative model, inefficient and more expensive, with a prevention-based system. "We sincerely hope that all of the world's inhabitants will have access to quality medical services, as they do in Cuba," she said. [2] WHO notes that the lack of access to care in the world is by no means a foregone conclusion arising from a lack of resources. It reflects, instead, a lack of political will on the part of leaders to protect their most vulnerable populations. The organization cites the case of the Caribbean island as the perfect counter-example [3]. Moreover, in May 2014, in recognition of the excellence of its health care system, Cuba chaired the 67th World Health Assembly [4]. With an infant mortality rate of 4.2 per thousand births, the Caribbean island is the best performer on the continent and in the Third World generally. This is also demonstrated by the quality of its health care system and the impact it has on the well-being of children and pregnant women. The infant mortality rate in Cuba is lower than it is in the United States and is among the lowest in the world. [5] With a life expectancy of 78 years, Cuba is one of the best performers on the American continent and in the Third World, achieving results similar to those of most developed nations. On the average, Cubans live 30 years longer than their Haitian neighbors. In 2025, Cuba will have the highest proportion of its population over the age of 60 in all of Latin America. [6] A health system that serves the people of the Third World Cuban expertise in the field of health also benefits the people of the Third World. Indeed, since 1963, Cuba has sent doctors and other health workers throughout the Third World to treat the poor. Currently, nearly 30,000 Cuban medical staff are working in over 60 countries around the world. [7] The iconic example of this solidarity with the poorest of the earth is Operation Miracle, a major vision restoration program launched in 2004 by Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez. This humanitarian campaign, implemented at the continental level under the aegis of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), operates without charge on the Latin American poor who suffer from cataracts and other eye diseases [8]. In a decade, nearly 3.5 million people have had their vision restored through this example of Cuban internationalism. Initially created for Venezuela, this social program was extended to the entire continent with the objective of operating on a total of six million people. In addition to surgery, Mission Miracle, a strategy for improving the program's reach and performance, provides free eyeglasses and contact lenses for people with vision impairment. [9] In total, nearly 165 Cuban institutions participate in Operation Miracle, which maintains a network of 49 ophthalmological centers and 82 surgical units in 14 countries in Latin America: Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Grenada, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Venezuela and Uruguay. [10] Cuban medical solidarity also extends to Africa. In 2014, LABIOFAM, the Cuban chemical and biopharmaceutical research institute, launched a vaccination campaign against malaria in no fewer than 15 West African countries. [11] According to WHO, the virus, which affects mostly children, costs the lives of some 630,000 people a year, "most of them children under five living in Africa." The organization emphasizes that "This means that 1,000 young children die every day from malaria [12]." Similarly, Cuba trains young physicians worldwide in its Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM). Since its inception in 1998, ELAM has graduated more than 20,000 doctors from over 123 countries. Currently, 11,000 young people from over 120 nations follow a career in medicine at the Cuban institution. According to Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the UN, ELAM is "the world's most advanced medical school." He also praised the Cuban doctors working around the world, including those in Haiti: "They are always the first to arrive and the last to leave. They remain in place after the crises. Cuba can be proud of its health care system, a model for many countries [13]." In praising Cuba, the World Health Organization stresses that it is possible for Third-world countries with limited resources to implement an efficient health care system and provide all segments of the population with social protection worthy of the name. This is possible if the political will exists to put human beings at the center of the project. _______________ Translated from the French by Larry R. Oberg Doctor of Iberian and Latin American Studies at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, Salim Lamrani is a lecturer at the University of La Réunion, and a journalist specializing in relations between Cuba and the United States. His new book is The Economic War Against Cuba, New York, Monthly Review Press, 2013; prologue by Wayne S. Smith, foreword by Paul Estrade; translated by Larry R. Oberg. Contact: lamranisalim@yahoo.fr; Salim.Lamrani @ univ-reunion.fr Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/SalimLamraniOfficiel Notes |
Staples writes: I’d be interested in a Vornheim-style multi-column table of reasons why mega-dungeons were created or inhabited by new occupants. Thanks. ^__^ roll d100 The Dungeon is That was/is now By/For 01-02 a bank a hatchery for advertising executives 03-04 a boudoir a holy place for angels 05-06 a brewery a home for animals 07-08 a burrow a library for assassins 09-10 a cathedral a museum for bards 11-12 a cellar a zoo containing cannibals 13-14 a corpse a zoo to amuse criminals 15-16 a court abandoned by dead gods 17-18 a fetus all in the imagination of degenerates 19-20 a forge belongs to devils 21-22 a habit trail bought by dinosaurs 23-24 a hell built by dragons 25-26 a hunting grounds built for dwarves 27-28 a laboratory can be found on a treasure map elder gods 29-30 a lower plane claimed falsely by elementals 31-32 a market collateral for elves 33-34 a mating ground created for ettins 35-36 a memorial desecrated by eunuchs 37-38 a mine forgotten by faerie 39-40 a mode of transportation has baffled all attempts of explanation is commonly blamed on ghosts 41-42 a monastery in the shape of giant insects 43-44 a mortuary is claimed by giants 45-46 a natural cave is the holy land of gnomes 47-48 a natural formation lost in a dice game to goblins/orcs/etc. 49-50 a palace meant to lure gods 51-52 a pantry merely a map leading to (roll again) halflings 53-54 a paradise neutral ground for (roll 2) humankind 55-56 a parking garage protection for illusionists 57-58 a pocket dimension protection from living statues 59-60 a posh hotel recently remembered by lycanthropes 61-62 a prison redesigned by mages 63-64 a sanatorium shelter for medusae 65-66 a sewer shelter from monks 67-68 a ship sold to mushroom men 69-70 a skeleton taken from ninjas 71-72 a slave pit the ancestral homeland of people with animal heads 73-74 a small annex to (roll again) the basis for the stories of the pirates 75-76 a small box the boudoir of sadness elementals 77-78 a spawning place the city of sandworms 79-80 a stable the command center of sentient objects 81-82 a theater the garden of serpents 83-84 a training ground the home of snake men 85-86 a trap the nest of space aliens 87-88 a university the nursery of spiders 89-90 an abattoir the resting place of spooky children with psionics 91-92 an arena used to entertain the religious 93-94 an execution grounds used to train young titans 95-96 an imaginary place vacated by troglodytes 97-98 ruins where can be found the common ancestor of (roll 2 in column 3) undead 99-00 the homeland won in a dice game by vampires A PDF version is available. If you want to post a request, see this item. |
Human subjects This study was performed in epilepsy patients undergoing surgical evaluation with iEEG monitoring at New York University Medical Center (NYUMC). The protocol was approved by the NYUMC Institutional Review Board and the Clinical Trials Registration number was NCT02263274 (www.clinicaltrials.gov). Subjects were eligible according to pre-established criteria, including: (1) age over 18 years old; (2) undergoing invasive monitoring for seizure localization for epilepsy surgery; and (3) ability to provide informed consent or have a legal guardian who could consent. Exclusion criteria included (1) significant cognitive impairment (IQ < 70), (2) facial or forehead skin breakdown that would interfere with surface electrode placement, (3) contraindication to MRI, (4) known adhesive allergy, (5) space occupying lesion, and (6) subjects who had an electrographic seizure for 1 h prior to the stimulation procedure. All patients (n = 17) or their caregivers provided informed consent. Subjects were enrolled between December 2013 and May 2017. A table listing subject characteristics is included in Supplementary Table 1. Sleep staging Stimulation was performed after patients had entered at least 5 min of continuous NREM sleep, during a daytime nap or nocturnal sleep. Initial sleep staging was performed by visual online analysis, for the presence of a slow-wave and spindle activity as detected in the real-time iEEG seen at the bedside by a physician board-certified in clinical neurophysiology, as well as by direct clinical observation. As part of standard practice at NYU, an extradural lead is customarily placed near the vertex of the craniotomy to aid with spindle detection. When the patient aroused or drifted into a lighter stage of sleep, stimulation was stopped. The iEEG segments were later confirmed by a second board-certified physician to be consistent with N2 and N3 sleep. During offline processing, we selected segments of NREM sleep for analysis by comparing raw spectrograms of sleep (after artifact subtraction), to demonstrate that the depth of NREM sleep is similar across testing conditions (Supplementary Fig. 6). iEEG recordings iEEG was recorded from implanted subdural platinum-iridium electrodes embedded in silastic sheets (2.3 mm diameter contacts, 10 mm center–center spacing, Ad-Tech Medical Instrument, Racine, WI) or depth electrodes (1.1 mm diameter, 5–10 mm center–center spacing). The decision to implant, placement or recording electrodes, and the duration of invasive monitoring were determined solely on clinical grounds and without reference to this study. Electrodes were arranged as grid arrays (8 × 8 contacts, 10 or 5 mm center-to-center spacing), linear strips (1 × 4 to 12 contacts), or depth electrodes (1 × 8 or 12 contacts), or some combination thereof. Subdural electrodes covered extensive portions of lateral and medial frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal cortex of the left and/or right hemisphere. Within 24 h after surgical implantation of electrodes, patients underwent a post-operative brain MRI to confirm subdural electrode placement. Electrode were localized and mapped onto the pre-implant and post-implant MRI using geometric models of the electrode strips/girds and the cortical surface72. Here, we present an efficient method to accurately localize intracranial electrode arrays based on pre-implantation and post-implantation MR images that incorporates array geometry and the individual’s cortical surface. Clinical (macroelectrode) recording equipment Recordings from grid, strip, and depth electrode arrays were made using a NicoletOne C64 clinical amplifier (Natus Neurologics, Middleton, WI), bandpass filtered from 0.16–250 Hz and digitized at 512 Hz. ECoG signals were referenced to a two-contact subdural strip facing toward the skull near the craniotomy site. A similar two-contact strip screwed to the skull was used for the instrument ground. NeuroConn DC stimulator The DC-STIMULATOR PLUS (NeuroConn, Germany) is a CE-certified medical device for conducting noninvasive TES in humans. The stimulator is a micro-processor-controlled constant current source, which continuously monitors electrode impedance, and detect insufficient contact with the skin. The device is battery powered, and therefore electrically isolated from the clinical recording electrodes and equipment. Low-frequency tACS We performed 0.75 and 1 Hz sinusoidal tACS on 13 epileptic patients with implanted subdural and depth electrodes. Seven subjects were stimulated during NREM sleep (four daytime nap; three nocturnal sleep) and six subjects were stimulated during waking rest, eyes closed. Patients were over 18 years old and fluent in English. Subjects were excluded if they had frequent (>2) electroclinical seizures in the 24 h preceding stimulation. Patient characteristics and electrode coverage are summarized in Supplementary Table 1 and Fig. 1. All subjects tolerated scalp stimulation. All subjects who were stimulated during night-time sleep (N = 3, subjects 11–13) and most subjects during an afternoon nap (N = 4, subjects 7–10) were able to sleep through trials at stimulation intensities between 0.5 and 2 mA. One subject (subject 13) woke from sleep and reported an itching sensation during one stimulation block with 2.5 mA current intensity. For the tACS experiments, we recorded and analyzed from 1700 electrodes without artifacts (mean of 131 electrodes per subject, example electrode in Fig. 3b). There were no complications from stimulation, and no induced electrographic seizures. One patient (subject 7) had a typical electroclinical seizure during stimulation. Because this patient had frequent spontaneous seizures, it was determined by the patient’s epileptologist that stimulation was unlikely to have caused the seizure. Furthermore, we enrolled one subject (S14) who had a bilateral subdural strip and depth survey, to perform a precise replication experiment of prior protocols. This patient had multiple target clinical events captured, which were non-epileptic in nature. He did not have any interictal or ictal activity captured during 1 week of monitoring, even while medications were being withdrawn. In other words, the patient did not demonstrate any epilepsy-related pathophysiology. We reviewed the hour of iEEG recording prior to stimulation to exclude recent seizures. We performed a pre-stimulation clinical assessment (including assessment of the stimulation skin site and neurologic examination). A physician (AL) was present at the bedside during the entire procedure to monitor for safety. The patient’s iEEG recording was monitored in real time at the bedside during stimulation for seizures. For patients S1–S13, two stimulating electrodes were placed medially over the frontal and occipital poles (2 cm × 2 cm rubber electrodes) for patients S1–S10. In patients S10–S13 the frontal electrode was offset from midline by 3 cm (S10 and S13 left frontal; S11 and S12 right frontal) to minimize distance from stimulating electrodes to recording electrodes. In one patient S10, the stimulation electrodes were placed at three additional locations to examine the effects of electrode placement on extracerebral and intracerebral current spread. Subjects were covered with a nickel-cadmium shroud to reduce environmental artifact during recording, and other sources of environmental noise (60 Hz) were minimized in the patient area. The stimulation protocol used the NeuroConn DC Stimulator Plus (NeuroConn, Germany), with a biphasic sinusoidal waveform at 0.75 and 1 Hz, at variable intensities between 0.3 and 2 mA, for 10 s (cycles) to determine the peak intensity at which amplifier saturation occurred. Thereafter, subjects were stimulated with TES at 0.75 and 1 Hz, at variable intensities up to the peak intensity, for a duration between 5 and 10 min (10 min for A1–A6 and 5 min for S1–S4). Up to four blocks of stimulation were applied, until subjects woke up. The more than ten-fold increase of the subdurally recorded iEEG amplitude, compared to the EEG signal73, allowed for simultaneous recording and stimulation (up to saturation levels of the amplifiers). Stimulation was immediately stopped in the event of an electrographic seizure (S7). A repeat clinical assessment (including assessment of stimulation skin site and neurologic examination) was performed after stimulation. For S14, who was enrolled to perform a replication experiment of prior protocols, we selected a surgical patient who had a bilateral strip and depth survey. There were two windows that were cut into the patient’s surgical bandage to allow electrode placement at the F3/F4 positions. Stimulation electrodes (8 mm Ag/Cl ring type) were applied bilaterally, with anodes at F3/F4 and cathodes on each mastoid. To test for acute effects, we utilized a stimulation protocol using trapezoidal waveform (0.33 s ramp up/0.33 s steady state/0.33 s ramp down/0.33 s zero current), 0.75 Hz, 0–0.26 mA, for 8 cycles on/8 cycles off (10.66 s ON/10.66 s OFF), for 80 cycles. Stimulation was started after the first 5 min of NREM sleep. Low-frequency noise-burst auditory stimulation Auditory stimulation consisted of 50 ms pink-noise bursts (1/f spectrum) repeated at a rate of 1 of 0.75 Hz to four patients (subjects A1–A4). Sound was delivered via flat-profile headphones (Bedphones, Millwood, NY), which were placed on the patient’s ears. Placement of the headphones required access under the surgical bandage and was administered by an epilepsy physician (AL), with patient verification of correct positioning. Acoustic pulses (50 ms, pink noise, 5 ms on/off ramps) were digitally generated and delivered via a laptop placed at the bedside. The sound level of the stimulation was manually adjusted for each patient to maximize comfort (e.g., ability to sleep with sound playing in the background). The volume was recorded and estimates of the sound level presented to each subject were assessed via an ear simulator (KEMAR Head and Torso simulator, Knowles Research, coupled to a B&K type 3134 Pressure microphone and B&K type 2230 Sound Level Meter, Bruel & Kjaer, Denmark). Resultant peak sound pressure level estimates for each subject are 72 dB SPL (subject A1), 68 dB SPL (subject A2), 46 dB SPL (subject A3), 70 dB SPL (subject A4). Similar to the procedure used during tACS stimulation, acoustic stimulation was presented at repetition rates of 0.75 and 1 Hz, in blocks of 5 min during NREM sleep. For each subject, we collected a block at each stimulation rate during NREM sleep, which was visually confirmed offline. The order of the presentation blocks was randomized across subjects. An awake control condition was performed for each patient, to verify the presence of acoustic ERPs. Additional time-locked TTL triggers were generated for each stimulus presentation and recorded by the EEG amplifier’s DC input to aid in offline analysis. iEEG data preprocessing All electrodes were inspected for signal quality by plotting spectrogram, raw voltage, and the power spectrum. We recorded from a total of 1700 electrodes for this analysis. Electrodes were discarded based on high 60 Hz noise (likely due to poor contact impedance), amplifier saturation (clipping), or poor removal of the tACS artifact (due to non-stationarity of stimulation artefact, typically resulting from patient movement). Example of artefact-free recording electrodes are shown in Supplementary Figs. 2 and 3. The electrodes remaining for each subject during tACS were: 122/126 (S1), 112/126 (S2), 117/126 (S3), 78/84 (S4), 111/124 (S5), 155/254 (S6), 80/128 (S7), 116/122 (S8), 89/100 (S9, 1 Hz tACS), 93/100 (S9, 0.75 Hz), 83/124 (S10), 49/98 (S11), 79/102 (S12), 88/188 (S13, 1 Hz tACS), 93/188 (S13, 0.75 Hz tACS). During endogenous sleep the electrodes remaining for each subject during night 1 were: 123/126 (S7), 103/122 (S8), 96/100 (S9), 91/124 (S10), 70/98 (S11), 94/102 (S12), 170/188 (S13). During night 2: 121/126 (S7), 113/122 (S8), 89/100 (S9), 96/124 (S10), 82/98 (S11), 93/102 (S12), 164/188 (S13). Measurement and modeling of electric fields During tACS, the current alternates in directionality between two stimulating electrodes. This alternation results in a sinusoidal signal that can be used to determine the magnitude of the stimulation voltages. Magnitude was estimated by fitting a sinusoid to the signal at each electrode location and estimating the magnitude of the fitted signal. The output of this processing was plotted and manually inspected electrode by electrode. The measured voltage in each location is then used to derive the projected electric field, by subtracting potential values between adjacent electrode pairs and dividing by their distance, resulting in V/m. The adjacent electrode was defined as the closest electrode within a 10 mm vicinity for cortical electrodes on the same grid array and linear strip, and 5 mm vicinity for depth electrodes on the same strip, to reflect the different inter-electrode distance. It is important to realize that this only captures a fraction of the field magnitude at any given location as the field orientation may not be parallel to the direction of two neighboring electrodes. The distant stimulating electrodes were expected to generate the strongest field intensities on the cortical surface directly under the scalp electrodes40. However, recording electrodes lay predominantly orthogonal to field direction (parallel to the cortical surface). Thus, the measured field projections will not capture maximal intensities, except in the rare circumstance that a depth array is precisely underneath one of the stimulating electrode and oriented toward a second, distant stimulating electrode. The computational models were built following our previous work74. Briefly, the MRI for each patient was automatically segmented by the New Segment toolbox75 in Statistical Parametric Mapping 8 (Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, London, UK) in Matlab (R2013a, MathWorks, Natick, MA). Segmentation errors were corrected first by a customized Matlab script74 and then by hand in ScanIP software (v4.2, Simpleware Ltd., Exeter, UK). The field of view of the clinical MRI scans was extended down to the neck by co-registering a standard head74, and pasting the lower portion of the standard head to the model. The 2 × 2 cm stimulation electrodes were positioned on the model using CAD software. For each patient, a finite element model was generated from the segmentation data and then the electric potential distribution was computed assuming 1 mA current through the stimulation electrodes. Tissue conductivities were adjusted to minimize the mean-square difference between predicted and measured potentials. With these calibrated models, we then computed electric fields throughout the brain. Electric potentials of model and measurements corresponded closely, with correlation values of r = 0.95 ± 0.04 (mean ± Std across patients, N = 1545 electrodes across 10 subjects). Electric field is the spatial derivative of these potentials. They are estimated as the difference in electric potential between neighboring electrodes, divided by the distance. This is the electric field projected on the orientation of the electrode pair40. Phase-amplitude coupling PAC measures the degree to which the amplitude of a high-frequency oscillations, A HF (t), is aligned with the phase of a lower frequency, ϕ HF (t). We were interested in the interaction between the amplitude of spindle activity band at 14 Hz with the phase of endogenous slow oscillations at 1 Hz (or 0.75 Hz) during sleep as well as entrainment to the applied stimulation (tACS and acoustic). This section refers to 14 Hz activity, but the identical analysis was done for power amplitudes in the theta, alpha, and gamma bands (see next paragraph). To measure entrainment of spindle oscillations during endogenous sleep, we compared spindle power against the phase of the endogenous slow oscillation activity (ϕ LFE (t), low-frequency endogenous). To measure entrainment to tACS, we used the phase of the electrical stimulation artifact (ϕ LFS (t), low-frequency stimulation; Supplementary Fig. 1). To obtain the phase during acoustic stimulation we used the delay from the onset of each noise burst. To obtain the phase during tACS and remove the stimulation artifact, we first modeled the 1 Hz artifact as a linear superposition of sines and cosines at multiples of a base frequency (harmonics up to 40 Hz) by fitting the amplitude of each sine/cosine and the base frequency. An example of this fitting procedure is shown in Supplementary Fig. 4 with the top row indicating the raw signals and the bottom row showing the signals after the fitted harmonic artifact has been subtracted. The resulting harmonic fit captures the 1 Hz stimulation artifact including any harmonic distortion that may have resulted from amplifier nonlinearities. We calculated the stimulation phase from the harmonic fit (Supplementary Fig. 1D). To obtain the phase during endogenous sleep, first we applied a complex-valued Morlet wavelet filter centered at 1 Hz (or 0.75 Hz) with a bandwidth of 1 Hz (or 0.75 Hz; in humans, the center frequency of slow-wave activity is often assumed to be <1 Hz)48. The instantaneous phase can be directly extracted from the complex-valued filtered signal. Peak and trough of the slow oscillation are indicated by 0° and 180°, respectively, which represent the cortical upstate and downstate as discussed in the main text. To obtain the instantaneous amplitude of the high-frequency rhythm during tACS we subtract the harmonic fit (Supplementary Fig. 4) and filtered the residual iEEG signal with a complex-valued Morlet bandpass for spindle activity (fc = 14 Hz, bandwidth = 7 Hz), for alpha activity (fc = 10 Hz, 5 Hz bandwidth) and for gamma activity (fc = 90 Hz, bandwidth = 40 Hz, Supplementary Fig. 1C). The instantaneous HF power was obtained by taking the absolute value of the filtered signal (Supplementary Fig. 1E). Patient movement and other artifacts resulted in outliers in the HF amplitude estimates. We removed these by removing cycles with excessive power as follows. For each electrode and each LF cycle we compute the mean power of the HF band (square amplitude averaged over one LF cycle). Cycles are removed as outliers if their mean power exceeds two times the interquartile range across all cycles in an electrode. To obtain the amplitude of the high-frequency rhythm during endogenous sleep and auditory stimulation we used the same procedures starting with the raw iEEG signal (no harmonic fit is needed). Outlier rejection was done as before based on the mean power in the high-frequency band. In addition, for endogenous slow wave we excluded cycles for which the slow oscillation amplitude was below 50 µV. For the analysis of the acoustic stimulation we used the same procedures as with the endogenous sleep except that the phase was defined based on the time since the onset of the noise burst, and cycle duration determined from the average inter-stimulus interval (TTL pulse) for each subject. PAC is measured here using the modulation index r, which is defined as the absolute value of the time average, r = | < z(t)> |, of the complex-valued quantity, \(z(t) = {A_{HF}}(t){e^{i{\phi _{LF}}(t)}}\) (Supplementary Fig. 1F). Time average < z(t) > is computed over cycles and time within a cycle. If z(t) does not have a radially symmetric distribution this will cause the time average r (modulation index) to be different from zero. This can be a result of (1) the amplitude A HF (t) is consistently higher at a certain phase, or (2) ϕ LF (t) is not uniformly distributed in time. The phase is uniformly distributed in the case of tACS and acoustic stimulation. However, during endogenous sleep, phase is extracted from the slow oscillations, which is not sinusoidal resulting in non-uniform phase distributions. Consequently, we applied a histogram equalization to the phase distribution, ensuring that non-zero modulation index is only a result of modulated amplitude coupling, which we confirmed by testing for significance using surrogate data with constant HF amplitude. Randomized surrogate data to estimate statistical significance of PAC Significance was determined by randomizing the phase of each LF cycle and thus creating the distribution of the modulation index r, under the null hypothesis of no PAC. Phase randomization makes no assumptions on the distribution of the data, except that the phase is uniform, which has been addressed in the paragraph above. For each slow oscillation cycle the low-frequency phase, ϕ LF (t), was incremented by a random value uniformly distributed between 0° and 180°. The phase was shifted by the same random phase for all electrodes but independently for different cycles. The randomizing procedure was repeated 10,000 times and the p-value was measured as the rate of a random phase having a modulation index higher than the original data. The minimum numerical p-value possible, given the number of randomizations, was 10−4 (1/number of shuffles). All the p-values were corrected for multiple comparisons across electrodes using FDR correction76 with q < 0.05. No correction was performed across segments (as we use segments to determine how reliable a potential entrainment is over longer periods of time) or frequency bands (as these were planned comparison). Uncorrected p-values for electrodes that had p < 0.05 in at least one stimulation block are shown in Supplementary Figs. 7–9 for tACS, endogenous slow-wave (no stimulation), and acoustic stimulation, respectively. Note that we examine the acute effects of modulation within a single cycle, thus permitting many single “trials” (N = 300 cycles for 1 Hz and N = 225 for 0.75 Hz within each 5-min block, repeated 2–6 times for each stimulation intensity; see number of blocks tested for each subject in Supplementary Table 1). This large number of trials permits, in principle, detection of small changes in power within a cycle, on the order of a few percent (e.g., assuming independent noise: sqrt(1/300) = 5.6%). See Supplementary Note 3 for an extended discussion on statistical power. To aid comparison with endogenous sleep and tACS stimulation condition, we analyzed entrainment for different sleep duration segments. The longer the recordings (approximately 20 min), the more accurate the mean vector strength technique is at measuring entrainment (approximately 50% of electrodes entrained). For shorter durations of endogenous sleep (5 min of iEEG) comparable to the duration of tACS blocks, there is still modulation of spindle activity but in only 10% of the electrodes. Spindle event detection Spindle detection follows existing methods50. Briefly, the signal is bandpass filtered in the spindle band as above, and instantaneous power is obtained as the square amplitude of the filtered signal. For each channel a detection threshold is defined as six times the median of the instantaneous power. For segments that cross this threshold a lower threshold (1 standard deviation of the power) is applied to detect onset and offset of the spindle event. Only spindles whose duration was between 0.2 and 2 s were considered for further analysis50, 77. To avoid false positive detections due to patient movements or high-frequency artifacts spindle events that coincide with increases in broadband power were discarded. Events exhibiting broadband power increases (p > 0.10, comparing the maximum broadband power in that event vs. the distribution of broadband power during the whole recording) were excluded. Slow-wave detection during auditory stimulation Additional analyses were performed on the acoustic stimulation data to assess the physiological origin of the PAC entrainment. First, a slow-wave detection algorithm was applied during stimulation segments to assess whether underlying slow-wave activity was altered during stimulation. In contrast to tACS, this is possible for auditory stimulation as there are no electric stimulation artefacts in the iEEG signal. Following previous literature61, 78, slow-wave detection consisted of bandpass filtering the waveform (fc = 0.75 Hz, bandwidth = 0.75 Hz) and using a zero-crossing algorithm to identify events where two subsequent negative zero-crossing (e.g., from positive to negative) were within the range of 0.5–2 s (2–0.5 Hz, bandwidth = 1.5 Hz). Subsequently, once a slow-wave event was identified, the down-state was identified as the minimum voltage within this event. Second, time-frequency response (TFR) functions were calculated to assess whether stimulation trials consisted of physiological sleep spindles. TFRs were computed using a 6-cycle Morlet wavelets between 5 and 25 Hz and averaging the resulting spectrograms (locked to stimulation onset) across all noise bursts (Fig. 6). Significance between conditions (sleep vs. baseline) was assessed via paired sample t-test (one-tailed, p < 0.05) compared across all stimulation trials (n = 300). Analysis of changes in power before and after stimulation Qualitative comparison between the NREM during the two nights without stimulation and the stimulation period show no evident changes in the power spectrum (Supplementary Fig. 6). To determine if there were significant changes in power at the different frequency bands before vs. after stimulation we used the Chronux toolbox79 (http://chronux.org/; version 2.12). Briefly, for each electrode, 30 s immediately after each 5-min stimulation block were compared against 30 s preceding the first block. Differences in power in the slow oscillation (0.5–1 Hz) and spindle bands (10 and 14 Hz) are shown in Supplementary Fig. 12. Statistical significance of power changes is computed with the Chronux toolbox for the fast spindle band and slow oscillation band and FDR corrected (q < 0.05). Entrainment with electric stimulation assessed after stimulation block In subject S14 we collected enough stimulation blocks to evaluate slow-wave entrainment in the intervals immediately following tACS. For this, slow-wave entrainment was tested following previous reports37. Briefly, the 10-s stimulation-free interval immediately after stimulation was fit with a sinusoid (0.5–1.5 Hz) and phase coherence was calculated across all trials. Statistical significance was calculated using a circular test statistic (Rayleigh test for non-uniformity). In addition, to test for after-effects, we utilized the same trapezoidal waveform, frequency, and intensity in five separate 5-min blocks during NREM sleep (5 min ON/5 min OFF). We compared these sessions against two control periods of endogenous NREM sleep for spindle (10, 14 Hz) entrainment. The power in the stimulation-free intervals was calculated for slow oscillations (0.5–1 Hz), slow spindle activity (8–12 Hz), and fast spindle activity (12–15 Hz). This quantity was then compared to the power during a different night, when the subject was in an equal sleep state. Slow oscillations and slow spindle activity were averaged across locations close to Fz. And fast spindle activity was determined across parietal locations. Code availability The code used to generate the main findings of the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Data availability The data sets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. |
Years before the rise of the freeways, the Southland's framework was formed by the largest network of urban rail the world has ever known, the Pacific Electric Railway. It was only one of several railways that served the area, which was also criss-crossed by the Los Angeles Railway, the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway, the Southern Pacific, among others. Signs of Southern California's rail-heavy past are still in evidence in the depots, substations, and right-of-ways, which are still found throughout the region. The fate of the decommissioned rail cars varies, with most having been scrapped, but some repurposed and still around to visit today. For decades, the main passenger rail services in Los Angeles were the Los Angeles Railway (LARy) and Pacific Electric (PE). LARy's last Yellow Car left the station in 1945. PE's last Red Car reached the end of the line in 1961. The routes of both were mostly replaced with buses or simply abandoned. In some PE cases, the routes were occasionally repurposed into bike trails, like the Bellflower Bike Trail, Metro Orange Line bicycle path, Pacific Electric Trail, and Whittier Greenway Trail. The cars experienced a variety of fates, often doing time on Terminal Island (where they appeared in the 1951 film, "Hell Bound"), in Vernon Yard, or in the abandoned tunnels of the Hollywood-Glendale-Valley Subway before they were moved elsewhere. Some were shipped to cities like Buenos Aires, Busan, Cairo, Portland, Seoul, and Veracruz, where they continued to carry passengers until their retirement. In Chile, a company used old yellow cars to transport miners to and from work. Many went to museums, especially the Orange Empire Railway Museum in Perris, but also the Lomita Railroad Museum in Lomita, the Travel Town Museum in Griffith Park, the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum in Exposition Park, the Nethercutt Museum in Sylmar. One Red Car went to Seal Beach and itself became the museum. Old Pacific Electric cars piled up in Wilmington in April 1959 | Security Pacific National Bank Collection, Los Angeles Public Library. Most of the trains were scrapped, usually by Terminal Island's National Metal and Steel Corporation. Because the scrap value was mostly in the trucks and motors, most of the gutted husks were left intact. Many of those were ultimately used to create a couple of artificial reefs -- one off the coast of Redondo Beach and the other Huntington Beach, which is how the popular surf spot "Trolleycars" got its name. Fewer, but a still significant number, found another fate, being converted into restaurants (as have many depots). The practice of turning old train cars into restaurants is probably almost as old as the train itself, and there are dining car restaurants around the world. Perhaps it's because dining on trains has an almost universally acknowledged romantic charm, especially compared to the miserable experience of "dining" on an airplane (which is probably why I've only been able to find one restaurant that attempts to recreate the experience of dining on one -- A380 in Chóngqìng). Dining on trains is generally such a pleasant experience that it has even inspired some restauranteurs to build replica train restaurants, like Phil's Diner (currently not in operation) in North Hollywood, and the best known, Pacific Dining Car in Westlake. In the 1970s train-themed dining became nationally popular, as evidenced by the then-expansive Victoria Station and the still popular Old Spaghetti Factory, the locations of which still are centered around replica train cars. Southern California is still home to at least seven authentic dining car restaurants. A couple of the train cars are currently empty and some, like Mullen's Dining Cars, which once operated in Buellton, are no longer here (in Muellen's case a victim of a the automobile -- specifically the re-alignment of the 101). Here are those that I know of which remain. Barstow Station McDonald's Seating inside the Barstow Station McDonald's | Photo: Derek Bruff/Flickr/Creative Commons Three red-and-yellow-detailed (and golden arch-emblazoned) train cars are permanently parked at Barstow Station, maintained by an independent franchisee of the biggest global fast food chain. Barstow Station, whilst served by Greyhound and several shuttles and resembling a functioning train station, is more of a gift shop and fast food court than actual station. Harvey House Railroad Depot (fka Casa del Desierto), where Amtrak's Southwest Chief stops, is located not too far away. Barstow Station, on the other hand, is served by Barstow Area Transit's 1 and 2 bus lines. Carney's Radio advertising executive John M. Wolfe and his wife Pat opened the first Carney's on West Hollywood's Sunset Strip in 1975, utilizing two retired Union Pacific passenger train cars (Southern Pacific, Union Pacific's predecessor, first arrived in Los Angeles in 1877). A second Carney's opened on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City in 1981 and also occupies a train car. A third Glendale location, again located inside of a train car, didn't stand the test of time. The original Carney's is 3.5 km from the closest train station (Hollywood/Highland), but is served by Metro's 2/302 bus. The Studio City location is located even further from a functioning train station, (Universal City/Studio City Station) but is served by Metro's 150/240,167, and 750 as well as LA DOT's DASH Van Nuys/Studio City bus lines. The DeLuxe Diner A 1906 Pullman dining car (and later a "pie car" for the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus) resides near the Five Points intersection of Ventura. It first opened as a restaurant in 1933, although at various times sense has served as an antique shop, a hobby shop, a motorcycle dealership, and most unlikely of all, a dance hall. The last tenant was the Sidecar Restaurant, which closed in 2013. Currently empty, it is nonetheless located very near Gold Coast Transit's Ventura Transfer Center. Formosa Cafe Prizefighter Jimmy Bernstein bought a 1902 Pacific Electric streetcar (No. 913) and began operating it as a restaurant in 1925. The famed West Hollywood eatery, located on Formosa (hence the name), was expanded to include more space -- or perhaps just to create more room to hang celebrity portraits. The closest train station to the Red Car-incorporating cafe is somewhat distant (Hollywood/Highland), but the restaurant is served by West Hollywood's free CityLine bus and Metro's 4 and 212/312 bus lines. Red Wagon Cafe The Red Wagon Cafe in Shafter specializes in the exotic cuisine of Oklahoma. The train in question is an old Pacific Electric Car (No. 00197) that was turned into a restaurant in 1943. It opens every day (except Sundays) at 4:00 a.m. Though situated near freight rail tracks along the future route of California High-Speed Rail, the closest public transit currently gets is quite a ways away at Frontier High School in Bakersfield, courtesy of that city's Golden Empire Transit District 84 bus line. Il Treno Il Treno in Vernon | Photo: lizziee.wordpress.com Il Treno was an Italian restaurant in Vernon operated by Peacock Cheese. The cheese company was established in 1946, but Il Treno operated between 1988 and 2010. The property is currently empty, although the train cars remain. Further away, the owners of Peacock Cheese operated a dining car restaurant in Paso Robles called Le Vigne. Vintage Steakhouse Restored 1927 Pullman car at the Vintage Steakhouse (in its previous incarnation as the Rendezvous) | Photo: Loco Steve/Flickr/Creative Commons The Vintage Steakhouse is located in the San Juan Capistrano Depot which was built as station for the Atchison, Topeka, Santa Fe Railroad station in 1894, and located in San Juan Capistrano's Los Rios Street Historic District. The restaurant is located inside of a refurbished 1927 Pullman car, whereas the bar is in an adjacent freight house built in 1887. The San Juan Capistrano Depot is served by Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner and Metrolink's Inland Empire-Orange County Line and Orange County Lines. |
ATLANTA, GA — The Atlanta Braves announced this morning the team would be handing out free Tomahawk cruise missiles to its fans in uniform during Military Appreciation Night on Thursday, while playing at home against the Cleveland Indians. The Braves, who will be giving away one free $1.5 million, 3,000-pound Tomahawk Block IV Cruise Missile and accompanying 1,000-pound warhead to the first 18,000 fans who either show up in uniform or produce an active duty military ID, are offering the promotion as a means of “saluting the troops” on the eve of what appears to be inevitable U.S.-led missile strikes against Syria, according to a spokesman from Raytheon Company, which is sponsoring the $27 billion promotion. “We figured that everybody knows about the ‘Tomahawk Chop,’” said Evan Keegler, Raytheon’s director of marketing, in reference to the one-armed rallying gesture made famous by the team’s fans over the years. “So we decided this would be a great tie-in that not only lets the brave men and women overseas know that we’re thinking about them, but also gives people here at home a hands-on education as to all of the awesome capabilities possessed by the very missiles that are about to rain down hellfire on Damascus.” Early buzz about the giveaway has been mostly positive amongst Atlanta fans. “Free Tomahawk night is gonna be awesome. I’ve been waiting forever to get my hands on the Block IV,” said Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Nick Cuevas, a self-described “missile-phile” who plans to make a grueling, 650-mile trek all the way from Naval Support Activity Bethesda, Md., just to get his hands on one of the must-have subsonic cruise missiles. Cuevas said that the Tomahawk was “going to go nicely” alongside the RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile and RUR-5 Anti-Submarine Rocket that are both currently on display in his living room above the fireplace. “Of course, I won’t be taking the Tomahawk out of its crate,” Cuevas added. “That totally cuts from the resale value.” At least one Soldier and parent, however, had her reservations about the missile promotion. “I don’t know about having a missile in the house, not with our own little Chipper Jones here,” chuckled Army Sgt. Lena Duckett, in reference to her rambunctious seven-year-old, Ricky. “We tried bringing home that Dale Murphy Bobblehead last month, and Ricky was crushing it with his father’s softball bat within three minutes,” Duckett added. “So, ‘fingers crossed’ once we bring that armed missile into the garage, right?” At press time, the Braves front office announced that all sales of alcohol for Thursday’s game would cease after the fourth inning, so as to keep any rowdy fans from throwing their Tomahawks onto the field. |
Next month, the second chapter of the “Gotham Academy” saga wraps up. “Gotham Academy: Second Semester” has been a sort of ‘tweener’ book, not quite ‘Rebirth,’ but something of its own island – albeit one that touches the greater Gotham world. While this iteration is ending, there have been assurances from the creators – Becky Cloonan, Brenden Fletcher, and Karl Kesrchl – that the “Gotham Academy” saga will continue on (third semester? sophomore year?) in the future. Until then, we are thrilled to share an exclusive first look at the series’ penultimate issue, part three of ‘The Ballad of Olive Silverlock,’ which hits stores on July 12. Plotted by Brenden Fletcher, Becky Cloonan, and Karl Kerschl Scripted by Brenden Fletcher Laid Out by Rob Haynes Penciled by Adam Archer Inked by Sandra Hope Colored and Backgrounds Painted by Msassyk Lettered by Steve Wands “The Ballad of Olive Silverlock” part three! A terrible revelation sends Maps on a quest for answers at Wayne Manor! With Two-Face hot on their trail, Maps and Damian Wayne must work together to stop Olive’s rampage of destruction across Gotham City. Thanks to DC for the preview, and make sure to pick up the book on Wednesday! |
It's been the official mantra of pesticide companies for decades: "The dose makes the poison." While it makes intuitive sense — you'd think that the more of a chemical you're exposed to, the sicker you'll get — the science has, in fact, been saying otherwise for years. A team of 12 scientists recently released a report calling on EPA to completely revamp the way they evaluate chemicals, to better reflect this now fully understood reality: Tiny amounts of certain chemicals can have devastating effects on human health. It’s all about the hormones. Our systems are largely regulated by these powerful chemical messengers, and the intricate process of fetal development is all but completely orchestrated by them. The bad news is, some synthetic chemicals look a lot like our natural hormones to the “hormone receptor” trigger cells that turn many functions on and off in our bodies. Particularly for the developing systems of infants and children, it’s often the timing — not the dose — that matters most. Antiquated testing doesn't cut it For decades, this has been our approach to testing how new chemicals might affect human health: expose lab animals to high levels of the chemical, and use the results to predict how humans will respond to exposure under real world conditions. This approach, as the scientists make quite clear, simply doesn't work: The effects of low doses cannot be predicted by the effects observed at high doses. Thus, fundamental changes in chemical testing and safety determination are needed to protect human health. The report, published in the scientific journal Endocrine Reviews, also takes a careful look at what's now known about the human health effects of “hormone-mimicking” chemicals. The scientists reviewed hundreds of studies and found clear links to a gaggle of diseases and disorders, including cancer, obesity, infertility, cardiovascular disease and other disorders. The science “clearly indicates that low doses can no longer be ignored,” conclude the report authors. Common pesticides are on the list The widely-used herbicide atrazine is one of the pervasive chemicals scientists have linked with low-dose effects. According to USDA data, atrazine — used mostly to kill weeds on row crops like corn — is found in 94% of the drinking water sampled across the country. Chlorpyrifos, a common insecticide, is also on the list. The impact of these findings on regulatory science could be far-reaching. As Dr. Laura Vandenberg, a postdoctoral fellow at Tufts University’s Levin Lab Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology and one of the report's authors, told reporter Marla Cone of Environmental Health News: There truly are no safe doses for chemicals that act like hormones, because the endocrine system is designed to act at very low levels. The authors of this study bring a not-so-subtle urgency to their reporting. It is, quite simply, time to fundamentally change the way we think about how chemicals can affect our health. I hope policymakers in Washington DC — and in state capitols across the country — are paying close attention. |
Australia through to World T20 final after beating England The Commonwealth Bank Southern Stars will play for a fourth-straight World T20 title after a brilliant fightback with the ball saw them claim a thrilling five-run semi-final victory over England in Delhi. Set 133 to win thanks to a superb half-century from Southern Stars skipper Meg Lanning, England appeared to be cruising at 0-67 after 9.5 overs in pursuit of 133. Then, an exceptional performance led by Megan Schutt saw Australia take 7-50 to snatch a spot in Sunday's final. Australia had spoken pre-game of the need to begin strongly with the ball, but their trend of disappointing starts continued against England, as Charlotte Edwards and Tammy Beaumont raced to 67 inside 10 overs before Kristen Beams finally struck, removing Edwards for 31. It gave Australia a sniff, and the scent became stronger when Beaumont departed for 32, before Natalie Sciver was bowled around her legs by Ellyse Perry for a duck, leaving England 3-91. It then became 5-103 when Heather Knight holed out to Elyse Villani, who just held on to a juggled catch, before the dangerous Sarah Taylor was caught behind for 21 having softly paddled an attempted switch-hit for an easy catch by wicketkeeper Alyssa Healy. Big-hitting Katherine Brunt struck a huge six and a boundary to keep England in the hunt, but when she was bowled by Schutt, who then removed Jenny Gunn with a direct-hit run out one ball later. England's bench contemplate their batting collapse // Getty With 13 runs needed off the final over, Rene Farrell executed the role of finisher perfectly, allowing seven runs as Australia kept their hopes of a history-making 'four-peat' alive. Schutt finished with 2-15 and Perry was impressive with her 1-20, while Lanning was a deserved player of the match for her half-century which guided the Southern Stars to 6-132, their biggest total of the tournament to date. Openers Healy and Villani made their most positive start of the tournament, attacking the dangerous England new-ball pair of Brunt and Anya Shrubsole as they raced to 0-41 after five overs. The start of medium-pacer Sciver's spell was an inauspicious one – the allrounder attended to by medical staff after copping a Katherine Brunt return throw on the temple – but given the all clear, she struck two balls later to have Villani trapped in front for 19 off 20 balls. WATCH: Natalie Sciver bounces back from friendly fire Healy followed an over later, trapped in front attempting to reverse sweep Marsh, bringing to an end what had been by far her best knock of the tournament to date, a 15-ball 25. While Lanning was as brilliant as ever in her 55 from 50 balls, the Southern Stars could not fully capitalise on the strong start, with Perry dismissed for 10 and Alex Blackwell run out pushing for a second for 11. WATCH: Classy Lanning leads Stars Marsh (1-18) was tidy, justifying the decision to retain her in the XI in place of Rebecca Grundy, while Sciver took 2-22 from three. Australia's opponent in Sunday night's final will be decided on Thursday, when New Zealand meet the West Indies in Mumbai. Australia XI: Elyse Villani, Alyssa Healy (wk), Meg Lanning (c), Ellyse Perry, Alex Blackwell, Jess Jonassen, Beth Mooney, Erin Osborne, Rene Farrell, Megan Schutt, Kristen Beams. England XI: Charlotte Edwards (c), Tammy Beaumont, Sarah Taylor, Heather Knight, Natalie Sciver, Lydia Greenway, Danni Wyatt, Katherine Brunt, Jenny Gunn, Anya Shrubsole, Laura Marsh. |
Venturing outdoors may become deadly across wide swaths of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh by the end of the century as climate change drives heat and humidity to new extremes, according to a new study.These conditions could affect up to a third of the people living throughout the Indo-Gangetic Plain unless the global community ramps up efforts to rein in climate-warming carbon emissions.Today, this vast region is home to some 1.5 billion people."The most intense hazard from extreme future heat waves is concentrated around the densely populated agricultural regions of the Ganges and Indus river basins," wrote the authors of the study, led by former MIT research scientist Eun-Soon Im, now an assistant professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.While most climate studies have been based on temperature projections, this one — published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances — is somewhat unique in also considering humidity as well as the body's ability to cool down in response.Those three factors together make up what is called a "wet-bulb temperature," which is the air temperature taken when a wet cloth is wrapped around the thermometer.It is always lower than the dry-bulb temperature — how much so depends on the humidity. It can help estimate how easy it is for water to evaporate.It can also offer a gauge for where climate change might become dangerous.Scientists say humans can survive up to a wet-bulb temperature of about 35 degree Celsius (95 degree Fahrenheit), beyond which the human body has difficulty sweating to cool down, or sweat doesn't evaporate, leading to heat stroke and ultimately death within just a few hours — even in shaded, ventilated conditions.So far, wet bulb temperatures have rarely exceeded 31°C (88-90° F), a level that is already considered extremely hazardous."It is hard to imagine conditions that are too hot for people to survive for a more than a few minutes, but that is exactly what is being discussed in this paper," said Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, who was not involved in the study."And of course, the danger threshold for punishing heat and humidity is lower for people who are ill or elderly."Most of those at risk in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are poor farmworkers or outdoor construction laborers.They are unlikely to have air conditioners — up to 25 percent in of India's population still has no access to electricity.In some areas that have been deforested for industry or agriculture, they may not even have very much shade."What we see in this study is a convergence of intense weather projections and acute vulnerability," co-author and MIT environmental engineering professor Elfatih AB Eltahir said.For the study, the researchers carried out computer simulations using global atmospheric circulation models under two scenarios — one in which the world comes close to meeting its goal of curbing emissions to limit Earth's average temperature rise to 2°C (3.6° F) above pre-industrial levels, and one in it continues emitting at current levels.Both scenarios play out dangerously for South Asia.But with no limit on global warming, about 30 percent of the region could see dangerous wet bulb temperatures above 31 degree C (88 degree F) on a regular basis within just a few decades.That's nearly half a billion people by today's population levels, though the full scale could change as the population grows.Meanwhile, 4 percent of the population — or 60 million in today's population — would face deadly highs at or above 35 degree C (95 degree F) by 2100.But if the world can limit global warming, that risk exposure declines drastically. About 2 percent of the population would face average wet bulb temperatures of 31 degree C (88 degree F) or higher."This is an avoidable, preventable problem," Eltahir said. "There is a significant difference between these two scenarios, which people need to understand."Experts say countries must work toward meeting the Paris agreement goals to limit average global warming to 2 degree C (3.6 degree F), especially since the world has already warmed by 1 degree C (1.8 degree F). That average will play out differently across the planet, and South Asia is expected to be hit harder than other regions."It is important to base heat mitigation strategies on not only temperature extremes, but rather the compound effects of extreme temperatures and humidity," said climatologist Omid Mazdiyasni of the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved in the study.He co-authored another paper published last month with complimentary findings that showed how increased temperatures alone were already leading to more deadly heat waves in India."The impacts of wet bulb temperatures are far greater than temperature alone," he said.But while scientists have warned for years that climate change will exacerbate the risks faced by South Asia's poor, including storms, droughts and heat waves, humidity hasn't always been considered.For India, it's a key factor. The country is a peninsula that experiences seasonal monsoon rains, which can make a day outdoors in July seem like a suffocating steam room.Infections fester. Mosquitoes flourish. People lie sprawled atop woven cots for hours a day, moving as little as possible as they wait out the heat.Deadly heat is already common. In 2015, a heat wave across India and Pakistan killed 3,500 people. Disaster management officials already have urged India's cities and states to create heat action plans, after recording 13 of the country's hottest 15 years on record since 2002.The programs, designed with experts from the National Resources Defense Council to help people cope with extreme temperatures, include measures such as offering air-conditioned shelter during heat waves, and training for both children and medical professionals to recognise the symptoms of heat stroke.Dozens of cities have signed on, while weather forecasts have been expanded to include new areas and longer-term projections. |
Bill Nye is accustomed to explaining complicated concepts to children, but even he has struggled with the byzantine mess that is studio accounting. According to a lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Nye has spent much of the last decade trying to audit Disney’s profit statements for “Bill Nye the Science Guy.” The result is shocking: Nye alleges that Disney has withheld $28 million in profits from distribution of the show. According to the suit, Nye became suspicious in 2008, when Disney informed him that he owed the company nearly $500,000 due to an “accounting error.” Nye and two producers launched the show in 1992, in partnership with KCTS, the Seattle PBS affiliate. According to the suit, the show’s costs were substantially underwritten by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. The following year, Nye and his partners entered into a distribution agreement with Disney subsidiary Buena Vista Television. Under the agreement, the owners of the show would receive half of the show’s net profits, with one-sixth of the total going to Nye. Disney distributed the show on VHS and DVD, and in many other formats, now including Netflix and iTunes. Related Bill Nye Q&A: Solar Eclipse Offers Chance to ‘Appreciate the Cosmos’ In 2008, Disney sent Nye his annual profit participation, which amounted to $585,123. A few months later, the company said it had made an accounting error, and requested that he return $496,111, according to the suit. “The disturbing size of the supposed ‘accounting error,’ coupled with the seeming indifference of both (Buena Vista Television) and (the Walt Disney Company), left Mr. Nye suspicious of the veracity of the accounting statements he had been receiving from BVT over the years,” the suit states. According to the suit, Disney reported gross revenues of $26 million, but also reported costs of $20 million — for a show largely underwritten by federal grants. Nye engaged an attorney and began what would become a drawn-out and largely fruitless effort to audit Disney’s statements, according to the lawsuit. At one point, the company said it was experiencing a backlog of audits and would not be able to begin the process for three or four years. Once the audit commenced, the company withheld documents, or said it would produce documents and then failed to follow through, the lawsuit alleges. The auditor was not given access to the Netflix and iTunes licensing agreements, among many other records, Nye alleges. The auditor ultimately concluded that Nye is owed $9.3 million. According to the suit, Disney had taken a number of steps to skew the profits calculation in its favor, including applying the wrong rates for distribution fees, improperly deducting foreign taxes, and mischaracterizing revenues. The suit alleges that, in total, Disney has deprived Nye and the other owners of the show of $28 million. Disney did not respond to a request for comment. |
Freedom To Ride, a manifesto by the Bristol Cycling Campaign, (sign the petition!) calls for a comprehensive cycling network across Bristol. As part of that, and to start a discussion, I’ve designed a plan that will pedestrianise Bristol’s Clifton Triangle. Currently there are many problems in the area when walking. It’s loud, unpleasant, with narrow crowded pavement and a wide road full of roaring traffic. When cycling it’s even worse, a junction only for the bold! Can you imagine a child cycling to school from Whiteladies Road all the way around to Jacob’s Well Road? A grandparent cycling from Park Row to the museum? There’s so many problems I made another map! My aims were Pedestrianise the road from Victoria Rooms to Wills Memorial Building Modify the existing roads to necessitate a minimum of work so that it can be created and tested easily and cheaply, so if it doesn’t work it can be reversed. Improve overall traffic by creating decent cycling and pedestrian routes through a difficult and unpleasant part of Bristol. I was inspired by a recent TED talk by Janette Sadik-Khan who describes how she pedestrianised Times Square in New York in a similar plan to mine. As you can see this was done cheaply and easily as a trial, using paint, bollards, and even folding garden chairs! It’s motor vehicle junctions like the Triangle that cause congestion in Bristol. By bending over backwards to accommodate large volumes of vehicles through our living spaces it means alternatives are made unpleasant, inconvenient and even unsafe, rather than real alternatives and part of an integrated solution. What does this mean? More cars. What causes traffic? Too many cars! It’s been said that traffic in Bristol is on a knife edge, something I’ve witnessed when lorries block lanes in Queen’s avenue as the loading bays are full, and when recently Wessex Water undertook road works. These cause massive tailbacks, but what these road narrowings don’t do is allow for drivers to choose alternatives, instead the resulting traffic jams instead make it more unpleasant for cycling and walking, and the problems to public transport are evident. The primary cause of traffic still remains: too many cars! So let’s tackle the problem, head on. Where a majority of space is given to motor traffic, share it out. Create places where people can walk and live, eat and shop. Meet the Bristol Cycling Manifesto’s demands and created a cycling network to a high standard, so all aged from 8 to 80 can cycle around the city. We must stop making the flow of motor traffic Bristol’s the priority, but instead craft transport suit the needs of all it’s people, fairly. If you agree, talk about it, tell your friends, ask the Bristol Cycle Campaign to fix a junction you know, and sign the petition. This post is the start of a new vision of a Bristol for people, your voice can make it happen. More plans will come, follow Bristol Cycling Campaign for news. Advertisements |
Professor Richard Dawkins has drawn an angry response from women’s campaigners after he referred to “mild date rape” and stated that date rape is not as bad as being raped by a stranger. The academic and author also differentiated between “mild pedophilia” [sic] and “violent pedophilia” in a Twitter row about language and logic. But it was his comments about rape that proved the most controversial. The End Violence Against Women Coalition said his words were “not merely ignorant but extremely offensive”. Shami Chakrabarti of the human rights group Liberty said there was “no such thing as mild rape”. Prof Dawkins began his Twitter musings by lecturing his 987,000 followers on syllogisms. “X is bad. Y is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of X, go away and don’t come back until you’ve learned how to think logically.” At that point, he chose to illustrate his point by using rape and paedophilia as subject matter. “Mild pedophilia [sic] is bad. Violent pedophilia is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of mild pedophilia, go away and learn how to think,” he wrote. “Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think. “If you prefer to think date rape is worse than knifepoint, simply reverse my syllogism. To say Y is worse than X is not an endorsement of Y. “Whether X or Y is worse is a matter of opinion. But it is a matter of LOGIC that to express that opinion doesn’t mean you approve of either.” He refused to abandon the controversial language, going on to write: “’Mild date rape is bad. Violent date rape is worse.’ Is it really so hard to understand that that doesn’t constitute endorsement of either? “Yes, I can imagine circumstances where rape by a friend is worse than by a stranger. The logic remains. It doesn’t imply approval of either.” After facing condemnation from other Twitter users, Prof Dawkins withdrew from the argument by saying: “What I have learned today is that there are people on Twitter who think in absolutist terms, to an extent I wouldn’t have believed possible.” "Mild date rape is bad. Violent date rape is worse." Is it really so hard to understand that that doesn't constitute endorsement of either? — Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 29, 2014 Holly Dustin, Co-Director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, said his comments were an insult to survivors of rape. "Richard Dawkins' comments about 'mild paedophilia' and 'mild date rape' are not merely ignorant but extremely offensive and damaging,” she said. “Minimising abuse - what is 'mild rape' after all? - is not a clever, philosophical discussion but has a real impact on the many, many survivors of rape, sexual violence and child sexual abuse who are coping and living with the legacy of their abuse. "At a time when abuse scandals are rarely out of the headlines, what public figures such as Dawkins should be doing with their power and privilege is calling for proper funding for specialist services for survivors of abuse, and for public education campaigns to tackle the very prejudicial attitudes that are still prevalent throughout society." Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty said her “jaw dropped” when she heard of Prof Dawkins’ comments. “I know there are men of a certain generation who just clunk around on this subject but it’s really not good enough. It sends a very bad signal. “There’s no such thing as a little bit of rape or a mild rape. Let’s just get that clear once and for all. “I’m not saying this to castigate and I’m not saying this to ridicule, it just needs to be said and we all need to come to a consensus about this,” she said. “Of course rapes can be aggravated by abuses of trust including what they call ‘date rape’, which is a profound abuse of trust. And of course rape can be aggravated by all sorts of factors by kidnap and violence and torture, which is reflected in sentencing but not in what makes a rape per se. “There is no mild rape, there is no mild paedophilia. These are terrible, terrible crimes that can be aggravated by additional cruelty. Shami Chakrabarti “Language is important. Even great minds need editing. There are very clever people who are experts in their own subject and write books, but when they write books they are edited. Some very clever people who ought to know better occasionally let themselves down online and on Twitter in particular. “People should sometimes put their smartphones down and count to 250 before entering into such important and sensitive topics on Twitter. Last month, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, said society needed to “change the discourse on rape” and bust the myth that rape is most often perpetrated by a stranger. “Despite efforts to raise awareness, many people still believe a rapist is a man in a balaclava in a dark alley, and a victim is a woman who shows her fear through fight. “That is very rarely the case; most rapists know their victim, many victims do not physically fight and the trauma of being raped will affect each victim differently. “There is an urgent need to change the discourse on rape,” Saunders said. Prof Dawkins has previously claimed that he was the victim of "mild paedophilia" during his childhood, when he and other boys were molested by a prep school teacher, but insisted: "I don't think he did any of us any lasting damage." |
The administration of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is being criticized for taking money from a trust dedicated to legally blind vendors to pay attorney fees in a lawsuit brought against the commission responsible for hiring independent contractors. In 1936, Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Randolph-Sheppard Act into law, which stated that, “in authorizing the operation of vending facilities on Federal property, priority shall be given to blind persons licensed by a State agency.” In Louisiana, a trust fund for blind vendors was also established, covering both the vendors’ health care costs and for the maintenance of vending machines. The most lucrative contract for blind vendors in Louisiana is for the military base at Fort Polk, in Leesville, Louisiana. Until his death in 2011, a legally blind vendor named Eugene Breaud had managed the operation with the assistance of Cantu Services. After his death, another blind vendor, Melvin Lee Frazier, was put in charge of the facility. Frazier initially selected Cantu Services to assist him, but the state intervened, claiming the decision was not Frazier’s to make. With the assistance of a Louisiana Workforce Commission, Frazier eventually selected a Cantu Services competitor, Blackstone Consulting, as his partner. Cantu Services claims that the state had no right to intervene, and successfully sought a restraining order. According to the lawsuit, “[t]he process was unfair, according to Cantu, because the State Officials interfered with its agreement with Frazier and forced Blackstone on Frazier when Blackstone surreptitiously offered a sweet deal to the [Louisiana Workforce] Commission.” “We may assume arguendo that this constitutes a sufficient pleading of a federal law violation.” The courts agreed, and now the Louisiana Workforce Commission must defend its decision, and has hired independent legal counsel to do so. The Baton Rouge firm of Shows, Cali, Berthelot and Walsh is now representing the Commission against Cantu, and is drawing funds from the trust of blind vendors to do so. Initially, the ceiling on Shows, Cali, Berthelot and Walsh’s fees was $15,000, but it has now risen to over $500,000. Terry Camardelle, the chairman of the Elected Blind Vendors Committee, told The Advocate that “it’s going to hurt us. We had it up to $1.7 million [in the trust fund], and we tried to run it responsibly.” A managing consultant for Randolph-Sheppard Vendors of Louisiana, Rocky Marchiano, put it more succinctly, saying the state is “stealing from the blind.” [“Louisiana Governor Piyush ‘Bobby’ Jindal Speaks To Louisiana Residents At A Ribbon Cutting For A Large Construction Project On Interstate” on Shutterstock] |
After six seasons at the center of Once Upon a Time, Jennifer Morrison will exit the drama ahead of a potential seventh season, EW has learned. Though Once Upon a Time has not yet been renewed — EW has heard it is a near-lock to return, with ABC expected to announce renewals and cancellations this week ahead of its upfront presentation — Morrison will not return as a series regular. “As I reached the end of my 6 year contract on ONCE UPON A TIME, I was faced with a significant decision. ABC, Eddy Kitsis, and Adam Horowitz very generously invited me to continue as a series regular. After very careful consideration, I have decided that creatively and personally, it is time for me to move on,” Morrison wrote in an announcement on Instagram. “Emma Swan is one my favorite characters that I have ever played. My 6 years on ONCE UPON A TIME has changed my life in the most beautiful ways. I am absolutely blown away by the passion and commitment of the Oncer fans. I am so honored to have been a central part of such a special show.” Executive producers Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis released a joint statement on Morrison’s exit, which provides a bit of hope about the future: “The past six years of collaborating with Jennifer as Emma Swan have been truly magical. Watching her breathe life into Emma, she accomplished more than we could have dreamed possible — she gave life to a brand-new Disney Princess, filled with strength and intelligence and an incredible closet full of red leather jackets. We’ll miss seeing her every day, but her imprint upon Once Upon a Time is indelible. She will always be a part of the show and its heart and soul. That said, just because Jennifer won’t be back every week doesn’t mean we won’t see our savior again.” Hot off a long stint on House and a short turn on How I Met Your Mother, Morrison originated the role of Emma Swan, the daughter of Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Prince Charming (Josh Dallas), and the Savior who was prophesied to save the residents of Storybrooke in the Final Battle. Morrison’s exit raises the question of what will actually happen to Emma in the Final Battle after being predicted to die earlier this season. Emma got her happy ending (technically beginning) during Sunday’s musical hour, in which she wed Hook (Colin O’Donoghue), but the Black Fairy (Jaime Murray) unleashed a curse that was meant to separate the Savior from her loved ones for the Final Battle, which will take place in the two-part season finale. Earlier this year, ABC chief Channing Dungey seemed to indicate there could be possible exits should the show be renewed, noting that OUAT bosses Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis were looking at the potential seventh season as a springboard in a new direction. “Which doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re not bringing cast back. It’s just: How do you kind of hit the reset button in a way that gives you an opportunity to expand the stories that we’re telling?” Dungey said. Thus, Morrison’s exit comes as Horowitz and Kitsis face a big shakeup heading into the potential seventh season. The finale will therefore provide a sense of closure should it end up being the series ender, while also launching a new chapter should the show get renewed. “We understand that this could be the last year,” Kitsis recently said. “We feel like we completed this story and the next chapter of Once Upon a Time will be completely different.” “By the end of the season finale, a lot of what we’ve been doing for the last six years is wrapped up, and we hope in a very satisfying way,” Horowitz added. “Then, we move forward in a way that, at the end of it, hopefully, you’ll see what we’re hoping to do in season 7.” Teeing up a possible seventh season, which would feature both old and new characters, includes introducing new faces like The Walking Dead alum Andrew J. West and Jane the Virgin star Alison Fernandez, who will both appear in the season 6 finale, with the potential for more episodes should the show get renewed. Check out our theory on that here. When EW hit the set of the ABC fairy tale drama in February, Morrison seemed optimistic about the show returning, even if that meant seeing a whole new cast of characters in their place. “We all want what’s best for the potential future of the show, letting the show have some kind of franchise legs in the future, and letting it be something that lives on as long as possible for the fans, and so whatever incarnation makes that possible is something that I think we’re all going to support,” Morrison said. Even though Morrison will no longer be a series regular, the actress was previously open to the idea of returning in some capacity in the future. “I will never walk away entirely, but I have been owned for the last 13 years of my life so it will be a variation of me being here because I want to be here, because I will always be there for Eddy and Adam, but probably without being owned,” Morrison told EW in February. “I love them and I owe such a wonderful part of my life to them, and I love Emma and I love the show, so I will find a way to be here — it just needs to be in a way where I also have a life.” Once Upon a Time‘s two-hour season finale airs Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC. |
So I have been learning about Git this weekend. It has some really nice-looking features for sure — some things Mercurial doesn’t have. I was getting interested in switching, until I found what I consider a big problem. Many projects that use git require you to submit things using git-format-patch instead of pushing/pulling from you. They don’t want your merge history. git-format-patch, though, doesn’t preserve SHA1s, nor does it preserve merges. Now, say we started from a common base where line 10 of file X said “hi”, I locally changed it to “foo”, upstream changed it to “bar”, and at merge time I decide that we were both wrong and change it to “baz”. I don’t want to lose the fact that I once had it at “foo”, in case it turns out later that really was the right decision. When we track upstream changes, and submit with git format-patch, the canonical way to merge upstream appears to be: git fetch; get rebase origin/master Now, problem with that is it loses your original pre-conflict code on a case like this. There appears to be no clean way around that whatsoever. I tried a separate “submission” branch, that rebases a local development-with-merge branch, but it requires a ton of git rebase –skip during the rebase process. Thoughts? |
Jessica Valenti – Guardian columnist, Feministing founder, non-man-hating feminist – has been fending off an unending torrent of harassment and abuse since she tweeted a picture of herself wearing an ironic t-shirt a couple of weeks ago. Last weekend, a seemingly innocent tweet from her– asking her readers if they knew any countries that provided free tampons – set off yet another wave of abuse. Her question, and the cogent column she ultimately wrote on the subject, arguing that there are legitimate health concerns that justify government subsidies for tampons, inspired countless thoughtful comments from her critics. Like these: @JessicaValenti If you're so worried abt tampon availability, maybe U need 2 stick a few fingers in UR you-know-what to stem the bleeding. — #s k z d a l i m i t (@skzdalimit) August 8, 2014 https://twitter.com/adam_mcphee/statuses/497892354331000832 These sorts of comments (and there were many more along these lines) are sadly typical of the sorts of things feminists – particularly those of the female variety – get whenever they happen to state their opinion about anything online. (If you click on the second one you can see the Tweeter defending his vagina remarks against assorted critics.) But a reader pointed me to something, well, interesting about that second tweet: It came from a fellow named Adam McPhee, a self-professed “egalitarian” who just happens to be a board member, and the official spokesperson, for a group we’ve discussed here before: the Canadian Association For Equality (CAFE). CAFE has won itself a certain notoriety in recent months. In May, you might recall, the group’s planned E-Day festival fell apart after its sponsors and some of the musicians scheduled to perform at it discovered that they had unwittingly signed on to a Men’s Rights event. The group has also organized talks by antifeminist speakers, including the now-notorious appearance of Warren Farrell at the University of Toronto, which inspired some, well, let’s just call them counterproductive protests that we’ve been hearing about endlessly ever since. But CAFE has been working hard to gain itself a bit of respectability. It somehow managed to win itself charity status from the Candadian government, and has raised money to start up some sort of men’s center. And it has been trying to distance itself from one formerly close ally, A Voice for Men. Indeed, McPhee himself recently gave an interview to the Toronto Star in which he described AVFM’s harassment of some of those who protested Warren Farrell’s talk as “completely wrong.” So it seems just a tad ironic, to say the least, to see McPhee happily harassing Jessica Valenti on Twitter. PS: Adam, I agree with Jessica on that whole tampon thing. So feel free to Tweet me your thoughts about my gaping vagina. Share this: Facebook Twitter Reddit Tumblr Email More Google Pinterest LinkedIn Pocket Print Like this: Like Loading... |
From guest writer, Phillip Geurtz Some people can change. For the first 15 plus years of adulthood I was a staunch Republican supporter. Even as far back as the ’92 election, when I wasn’t old enough to vote, I voted for Bush 41 in my high school mock elections. I voted for Dole in ’96, Bush 43 twice in ’00 & ’04, and McCain in ’08. I’ve typically voted Republican in most off-year elections. I am the son of a retired army Colonel. I was baptised by my Catholic uncle priest and raised going to church every Sunday. I am a 36-year-old hard-working white father of 3 from the south. I was the heart of the GOP base for the last 15 years. I will be voting for Barack Obama this coming November. Not long after the Occupy Wall Street protests began, and 15 months into my unemployment, I started to really pay attention to politics. I did my own research, checked out sources when I had questions, and paid attention to the news. I even went to my local Occupy demonstration, brought my wife & kids, and listened to what they had to say. I realized something in those early days of questioning my political leanings. I realized that the ‘Trickle Down’ financial model our country has used is fundamentally flawed and has been for nearly my entire life. I’m not an economics major so I can’t tell you how its flawed, but it is flawed. I look at most everyone I know and I see how hard they are struggling just to live week to week, like me. I see friends remaining unemployed for months trying to find something that pays better than their unemployment benefits. My last two vacations were in 2007 & 2008 to take the kids to see the grandparents. I was more of a fiscal conservative. I never subscribed to the social conservative aspects of the GOP. I referred to them as those right-wing nut jobs, even while I was pulling the same lever in the voting booth. Now that I have renounced the party I’ve identified with for 15 years, I find those same right-wing nut jobs horribly offensive to anything Christian or even just decent in the world. I used to say civil unions were good enough for the LGBT community. All of the advantages of marriage without calling it ‘marriage.’ I had no reason why I felt this way. I never considered myself a discriminatory person, but I couldn’t bring myself to share the word ‘marriage’ with them. Then my wife and I made close friends with one of her childhood friends, and his boyfriend. Over the last two years, this couple has become our best friends. I see them make each other dinner, go out together, and watch a horror movie together (not my cup of tea). I see them hold hands, hug each other, and say “I love you, boo” more than I tell my wife. I realized being gay isn’t a choice, it’s how my friends just are. I also see how they pretty much love anyone they meet, and whatever life issues you bring with you are perfectly acceptable. If they can accept a middle-aged catholic republican army brat, I can certainly accept them. I see the Republicans blocking any move to improve the economy and doing everything possible to rescind the rights of everyone other than me. Abortion bill this, birth control bill that, voter disenfranchisement, and the absolute destruction of LGBT rights. THIS IS NOT WHY I VOTED FOR YOU! After losing one job to some guy in Mumbai, India, losing another to the Great Recession, I’ve come to realize that the Republican vision for the country is geared toward one group of Americans, the 1% that has all the money. The time of them feeding lies, discontent, and of vilifying many of the freedoms this country should guarantee ALL of its citizens is over. I DON’T BELIEVE YOU ANYMORE, REPUBLICANS and if I have my way, no one I know will believe you either. Now who can show me how to change my voter registration? |
Early life Edit Boswell was born in Blair's Land on the east side of Parliament Close behind St Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh on 29 October 1740. He was the eldest son of a judge, Alexander Boswell, Lord Auchinleck, and his wife Euphemia Erskine. As the eldest son, he was heir to his family's estate of Auchinleck in Ayrshire. Boswell's mother was a strict Calvinist, and he felt that his father was cold to him. As a child, he was delicate. Kay Jamison, Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, in her book Touched by Fire, believes that Boswell may have suffered from bipolar disorder,[4] and this condition would afflict him sporadically all through his life. At the age of five, he was sent to James Mundell's academy, an advanced institution by the standards of the time, where he was instructed in English, Latin, writing and arithmetic. The eight-year-old Boswell was unhappy there, and suffered from nightmares and extreme shyness. Consequently, he was removed from the academy and educated by a string of private tutors. The most notable and supportive of these, John Dunn, exposed Boswell to modern literature, such as the Spectator essays, and religion. Dunn was also present during Boswell's serious affliction of 1752, when he was confined to the town of Moffat in northern Dumfriesshire. This afforded Boswell his first experience of genuine society. His recovery was rapid and complete, and Boswell may have decided that travel and entertainment exerted a calming therapeutic effect on him. Boswell's Edinburgh. In his journals he often mentions using the "Back Stairs" behind Parliament Close. His birthplace was the family's town house on the east side of the close, just around the corner at the top of the steps. At thirteen, Boswell was enrolled into the arts course at the University of Edinburgh, studying there from 1753 to 1758. Midway through his studies, he suffered an episode of serious depression but recovered fully. Boswell had swarthy skin, black hair and dark eyes; he was of average height, and he tended to plumpness. His appearance was alert and masculine, and he had an ingratiating sense of humour. Upon turning nineteen, he was sent to continue his studies at the University of Glasgow, where he attended the lectures of Adam Smith. While at Glasgow, Boswell decided to convert to Catholicism and become a monk. Upon learning of this, his father ordered him home. Instead of obeying, though, Boswell ran away to London, where he spent three months, living the life of a libertine, before he was taken back to Scotland by his father. Upon returning, he was re-enrolled at Edinburgh University and forced by his father to sign away most of his inheritance in return for an allowance of £100 a year. On 30 July 1762, Boswell passed his oral law exam, after which his father decided to raise his allowance to £200 a year and permitted him to return to London. In this period, Boswell wrote his London Journal and, on 16 May 1763, met Johnson for the first time. The pair became friends almost immediately. Johnson eventually nicknamed him "Bozzy". The first conversation between Johnson and Boswell is quoted in Life of Samuel Johnson as follows: [Boswell:] "Mr. Johnson, I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it." [Johnson:] "That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help."[5] European travels Edit It was around three months after this first encounter with Johnson that Boswell departed for Europe with the initial goal of continuing his law studies at Utrecht University. He spent a year there and although desperately unhappy the first few months, eventually quite enjoyed his time in Utrecht. He befriended and fell in love with Isabelle de Charrière, also known as Belle van Zuylen, a vivacious young Dutchwoman of unorthodox opinions, his social and intellectual superior. Boswell admired the young widow Geelvinck who refused to marry him. After this, Boswell spent most of the next two years travelling around the continent, his Grand Tour. During this time he met Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire with a recommendation letter of Constant d'Hermenches, and made a pilgrimage to Rome, where his portrait was painted by George Willison. Boswell also travelled to Corsica to meet one of his heroes, the independence leader Pasquale Paoli. His well-observed diaries and correspondence of this time have been compiled into two books, Boswell in Holland and Boswell on the Grand Tour. Mature life Edit Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson Edit Main article: Life of Samuel Johnson A literary party at Sir Joshua Reynolds' – 1781. The painting shows the friends of Reynolds including Boswell at left. When the Life of Samuel Johnson was published in 1791 it at once commanded the admiration that Boswell had sought for so long, and it has since suffered no diminution. Its style was unique in that, unlike other biographies of that era, it directly incorporated conversations that Boswell had noted down at the time for his journals. He also included far more personal and human details than those to which contemporary readers were accustomed. Instead of writing a respectful and dry record of Johnson's public life in the style of the time, he painted a vivid portrait of the complete man, brought to life through a "dramatic" style of dialogue. It has often been described as the greatest biography ever written. It has often been asked how a man such as Boswell could have produced so remarkable a work as the Life of Johnson. Among those who attempted an answer were Macaulay and Carlyle: the former argued that Boswell's uninhibited folly and candour were his greatest qualifications; the latter replied that beneath such traits was a mind to discern excellence and a heart to appreciate it, aided by the power of accurate observation and considerable dramatic ability.[13] Slavery Edit Boswell was present at the meeting of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in May 1787 set up to persuade William Wilberforce to lead the abolition movement in Parliament. However, the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson records that by 1788 Boswell "after having supported the cause ... became inimical to it".[14] Boswell's most prominent display of support for slavery was his 1791 poem "No Abolition of Slavery; or the Universal Empire of Love", which lampooned Clarkson, Wilberforce and Pitt. The poem also supports the common suggestion of the pro-slavery movement, that the slaves actually enjoyed their lot: "The cheerful gang! – the negroes see / Perform the task of industry." Discovery of papers Edit In the 1920s a great part of Boswell's private papers, including intimate journals for much of his life, were discovered at Malahide Castle, north of Dublin. These provide a hugely revealing insight into the life and thoughts of the man. They were sold to the American collector Ralph H. Isham and have since passed to Yale University, which has published general and scholarly editions of his journals and correspondence. A second cache was discovered soon after and also purchased by Isham. A substantially longer edition of The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides was published in 1936 based on his original manuscript, edited by L. F. Powell. His London Journal 1762–63, the first of the Yale journal publications, appeared in 1950. The last, The Great Biographer, 1789–1795, was published in 1989. These detailed and frank journals include voluminous notes on the Grand Tour of Europe that he took as a young man and, subsequently, of his tour of Scotland with Johnson. His journals also record meetings and conversations with eminent individuals belonging to The Club, including Lord Monboddo, David Garrick, Edmund Burke, Joshua Reynolds and Oliver Goldsmith. Freemasonry Edit Boswell was initiated to the Scottish Rite Masonry[15] till the 33rd and highest degree, becoming Master of Canongate Kilwinning Lodge in Edinburgh for two terms,[16][17] and Depute Grand Master of Scotland from 1776 to 1778,[18] having relationships with many intellectuals of his time. Literary depictions Edit The comedy Young Auchinleck (1962) by Scottish playwright Robert McLellan depicts Boswell's various courtships and troubled relations with his father in the period after his return to Scotland in 1766, culminating in his eventual marriage to his cousin Margaret Montgomery (Peggy) in 1769 on the same day as his father's second marriage in a different part of the country. The play was first produced at the Edinburgh International Festival in 1962 and adapted for BBC Television in 1965. In February and March 2015, BBC Radio 4 broadcast three episodes of "Boswell's Lives", writer Jon Canter's comedic take on Boswell meeting later historical figures (Sigmund Freud, Maria Callas and Harold Pinter, respectively) for the purposes of biographing them.[19] Boswell was played by Miles Jupp. American novelist Philip Baruth wrote a fictional account of James Boswell's early life in The Brothers Boswell (Soho Press 2009). The novel, which includes scenes that feature Samuel Johnson, is a thriller that focuses on the tense relationship between James and his younger brother John. Major works Edit Published journals Edit References Edit Further reading Edit |
BOSTON – The Celtics are a legitimate threat to win the Eastern Conference next season, and if you don’t believe that you haven’t watched enough Boston games – and you haven’t seen enough of Gordon Hayward. Putting aside Tuesday’s optics – and it sure looked like Hayward’s camp, panicking after word leaked that Hayward intended to sign with the Celtics, spent the day trying to make people believe he was still on the fence until his 2,000-word Players Tribune piece was ready to be posted – this is a flawless fit, a springy, scoring small forward joining forces with a 53-win team that sorely needs one. For months, Boston hunted Hayward. It liked Jimmy Butler, it wanted Paul George, but it needed Hayward. Jae Crowder is a sturdy defender, but his offense comes and goes, and the Celtics desperately needed a wing player who could take some of the pressure off Isaiah Thomas. That’s Hayward, an efficient scorer (47.1 percent) who knocked down nearly 40 percent of his threes last season. Scroll to continue with content Ad Hayward averaged a career-high 21.9 points, and there is no reason to believe he can’t duplicate, or exceed, that production next season. He’ll benefit from playing faster – the Jazz played at the slowest pace in the league last season; Boston was in the middle of the pack – and his open looks will multiply with all the attention Thomas draws on the floor. Finding clear paths to the basket could be difficult in Utah with Rudy Gobert and Derrick Favors out there; the Celtics’ floor-spacing bigs will open up the court. Gordon Hayward shot 47.1 percent from the floor last season. (AP) Story continues Hayward developed rapidly the last three seasons, but there are facets of his game that are still untapped. Boston loves to play through its wing players in the post – Evan Turner and Marcus Smart are recent examples – and Hayward has the size and athleticism to become a double-team-drawing weapon on the block. Hayward was light on the details when it came to explaining his reasons for leaving Utah – he wants to win a championship and he wants to play for Celtics coach Brad Stevens – but it’s easy to see why. For one, the Western Conference is an arms race, with the reorganization of talent (Chris Paul to Houston) and the influx of others (Paul George, Jimmy Butler and Paul Millsap) making the West as tough as it’s ever been. Utah was a 51-win No. 5 seed last season, but it might take that many wins just to get into the playoffs next season. Another thing: Hayward was a first-time All-Star last season, and you can’t underestimate the importance of that honor on a young player. In the West, Hayward’s path back to All-Star status was keyhole narrow; in the East, barring injury, he’ll be a frontrunner to make the team every year. Now, about that conference contender stuff: Skeptics will say Boston needed a monster game from Smart in Game 3 of the conference finals to avoid getting swept by Cleveland. But there’s a flip side to that – a horrendous performance by Smart in Game 4 contributed to the Celtics blowing a 16-point lead. Boston wins that, reclaims home court … and, yeah, the Cavs probably still take the series. But the gap is closer than you think. And Boston just added an All-Star while Cleveland, terrified at the thought of LeBron James bolting after next season, missed on George and has a “Help Wanted” sign outside its general manager’s office. Is Boston the favorite? No. Is a Cavs-Celtics series competitive? Absolutely. Isaiah Thomas should form a potent combo with Hayward. (AP) And remember: Boston probably isn’t done dealing. Celtics president Danny Ainge is effectively operating two teams, one with a core built to win now (Thomas, Hayward, Al Horford) and another (Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum and as many as seven first-round picks over the next three seasons) in development. Figuring the Hayward/Brown/Tatum mix could be the most challenging. Would Ainge be willing to part with one of his prized forward prospects now that the 27-year-old Hayward is locked in for at least the next three seasons? That probably depends on who is available. The trade market for stars has momentarily dried up. One player worth keeping an eye on, two league executives told The Vertical: Memphis’ Marc Gasol. The Grizzlies lost Zach Randolph, Tony Allen could be next out the door, and if you were filling out your Western Conference playoff bracket today, Memphis probably wouldn’t be in it. Would the Grizz move the 32-year-old Gasol for a ready-made rebuilding package of players and picks? Would Boston – which has to be wary of putting together a team that would beat Cleveland but still get pulverized by Golden State – be interested? Again, worth watching. (An aside: What must Indiana be thinking right now? Boston was dodgy during George trade talks last week, but the Celtics were determined to see the Hayward situation through before committing to a package of players to offer Indy. But what about now? Surely Boston would be more confident of its ability to sign George next summer with Hayward committed – and therefore more willing to go deeper into its well of assets to get him. Makes the Pacers decision to jump on Oklahoma City’s Victor Oladipo/Domantas Sabonis offer – a package that figured to always be there – that much more perplexing.) Regardless, it’s good to be Boston right now. For the second year in a row the Celtics landed a top free agent, and just like Horford, Hayward looks like a perfect fit. The talent drain has made the East a shell of the West, but the competition at the top of the conference figures to be as fierce as it’s been since James returned to Cleveland. Ainge got his star, Stevens got back his favorite player and the Celtics are true contenders once again. Popular video from Yahoo Sports: |
The apatosaurine sauropods — Apatosaurus, Brontosaurus and possibly others — resemble their diplodocine relatives, but are generally more robust. Apatosaur necks are much thicker than in other sauropods: cervical ribs and their supports are uniquely robust, and the ribs are strongly displaced ventrally. The diapophyseal and parapophyseal rami therefore project ventrolaterally, so that the neck would have been subtriangular in cross-section, not tubular. Why did apatosaurines evolve necks that were apomorphically expensive to build, maintain, and operate? While sexual selection is not a convincing explanation for the evolution of sauropod necks in general, several features of apatosaurine necks suggest adaptation for combat: 1. Ventral displacement of cervical ribs improved the lever arms of the hypaxial muscles, strengthening ventral neck movements. 2. Ventrolaterally directed parapophyseal rami were oriented to resist ventral impacts. 3. The ventral trough between the cervical ribs provided soft-tissue protection for the trachea, oesophagus, and major blood vessels. 4. The ventrolateral processes on the cervical ribs may have been bony clubs, bearing thickened pads of connective tissue or keratinous knobs or spikes. These adaptations suggest a style of combat in which the neck itself was crashed down or sideways into the opponent, rather than giraffe-style combat in which the head is the weapon. The closest extant analogue may be the elephant seal Mirounga: males fight by crashing their necks and anterior thoraxes together. As with apatosaurs, their cervical vertebrae are more robust than in relatives, and their ventral processes more pronounced; but enormous soft-tissue padding makes the analogy very inexact. |
Belfast's first poet laureate joins the ranks of Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott as winner of prestigious £15,000 award Sinéad Morrissey's "many-angled … any-angled" poetry collection Parallax has won the Northern Irish poet the prestigious TS Eliot prize for the first time. Opening with a definition of parallax as "apparent displacement, or difference in the apparent position, of an object, caused by actual change (or difference) of position of the point of observation", Belfast's first poet laureate's fifth collection explores the word from all angles, looking at what is caught, and lost, when a moment in time is fixed by a photograph, a map, a painting – or even a jigsaw. In Home Birth, she writes of "the night your sister was born in the living-room … this black-haired, / tiny, yellow person who'd happened while you slept"; in The Doctors, she evokes the history of Soviet Russia, how "the camera's / inherent generosity of outlook" is countered "by scissors, / nail files, ink and sellotape". With her image of David Niven on an escalator to heaven in 1946, and one of LS Lowry's studio after his death, Morrissey's Parallax beat collections from major names in poetry, including George Szirtes, Michael Symmons Roberts and Anne Carson to win the prestigious £15,000 award. Parallax had lost out to Symmons Roberts's metaphysical collection Drysalter in the Forward prize last year. Morrissey, who is currently reader in creative writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre in Belfast, was shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize on three previous occasions; her win puts her alongside former winners Paul Muldoon, Alice Oswald, Derek Walcott and Heaney. The chair of judges, Ian Duhig, said he and his fellow judges, Imtiaz Dharker and Vicki Feaver, had been unanimous in choosing Morrissey's collection from among the 10 titles shortlisted. "Politically, historically and personally ambitious, expressed in beautifully turned language, her book is as many-angled and any-angled as its title suggests," said Duhig, who is himself an award-winning poet. In A Matter of Life and Death, Morrissey writes about the moment of going into labour as the Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger romantic fantasy from the 1940s plays on television, going beyond childbirth to explore "the incomprehensible machinery of life and death" In another poem she looks at the first ever jigsaw, given to "Royal children in 1766": "Staring and exclaiming, clicking together / … a continent – / Their own unlikely island on a slant / by its farthest edge, and in their trance ignore / what will no longer fit: Aortearoa, America". "It is a meditation on this idea of parallax, looking at things from different angles. This speaks through the whole book," said Feaver. The prize is run by the Poetry Book Society and supported by the TS Eliot estate and the investment firm Aurum. |
Budapest (MTI) – Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann fails to see that allowing hundreds of thousands or millions of people to enter Europe unchecked is “not an act of solidarity but an act of stupidity,” Hungary’s foreign minister told MTI on Sunday. Peter Szijjarto responded to comments the Austrian chancellor made to Austrian public service television channel ORF and the daily Oesterreich about the Visegrad Four countries’ proposed solutions to Europe’s migrant crisis. Faymann told Oesterreich that while the “coalition of the willing” seeks to find a solution to the crisis, the Visegrad Four countries have dismissed all of their proposals. The chancellor told ORF that in the future, migrants should be registered in external reception centres and people eligible for asylum should be distributed among EU member states. This, however, will only work if every member state adopts the same migrant registration procedures. Szijjarto responded by saying that real solidarity means helping people fleeing conflict take refuge somewhere close to their homes in humane conditions, so that when the conflict ends they can return to their home countries. Stupidity, on the other hand, is admitting hundreds of thousands or millions of people into Europe when everyone can see that “neither the European people nor the migrants have got what they wanted”. Szijjarto said that “as usual”, the Austrian chancellor is “lying about Hungary” and trying to bring even more migrants into Europe and distribute them by blackmailing EU member states. Photo: MTI Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters |
Copyright by WOWK - All rights reserved CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - A man is accused of using his seven-year-old son as a human shield when a West Virginia State Trooper had him at gunpoint. Media outlets report a criminal complaint says 45-year-old Philip Spurlock was arrested and charged with kidnapping and child neglect in Thursday's incident. The complaint says a trooper tried to conduct a traffic stop on Spurlock when he sped off, leading authorities on a chase. He eventually stopped. The trooper was ordering Spurlock to the ground, at gunpoint, when Spurlock pulled his child out of the vehicle, using him a human shield. Spurlock then ran, dragging his son with him. A trooper tried to arrest Spurlock but he kept resisting. The trooper used pepper spray on Spurlock, who again used his son as a shield. It's unclear if Spurlock has an attorney. (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.) |
Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded. The American Civil War was a conflict that sat astride two phases in military history: It began with generals on both sides employing timeworn Napoleonic-era strategies and ended with horrific trench warfare and violence against civilian populations that foreshadowed World War I. It was also a crucible in which new combat technologies were tested, among them ironclads, machine guns and submarines. And while scientists had not yet fully grasped the germ theory of disease, it was also one of the first conflicts to see chemical and biological agents tested, and even used, as weapons. Disease was everywhere during the Civil War. By far, the biggest killer during the conflict were communicable illnesses caused by unsanitary conditions at camp and in the field. As Andrew M. Bell of the University of Virginia has documented, early in the fighting military leaders on both sides of the war began to grasp the concept of disease vectors, as weapons. Union planners knew that among other things, the blockade against Southern ports would exacerbate the spread of disease in the South by restricting access to food, clothing and medical supplies. Malaria was still rampant across the Deep South, and quinine was in high demand before the war. “Some parts of the South experienced shortages of quinine as early as the first summer of the war, and prices climbed each year thereafter,” Bell said. “Southern civilians suffered most of all from the quinine shortage because the Confederate government requisitioned whatever little bit made it through the blockade.” Others sought to turn disease into an offensive weapon. One Southern planner proposed shipping clothing worn by yellow fever patients to Union military units, hoping to cause an epidemic. In 1862, R.R. Barrow, a Southern farmer, suggested taking bodies of yellow fever victims, along with contaminated clothing, to New Orleans, which was occupied by Union forces. There is no evidence that either plan was put in action. In 1863, Dr. Luke Blackburn, a Southern sympathizer and later governor of Kentucky, plotted to infect clothing with the smallpox virus and sell it to Union troops in Washington. There may have been one Union victim of the scheme, a lieutenant in the 17th Vermont named Charles W. Randall, who believed he became ill after purchasing some undergarments from a store. Later, the store was identified as a possible recipient of an infected clothing consignment. Another approach to biological warfare was the contamination of drinking water by retreating soldiers. Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman reported that Confederate troops retreating from Vicksburg, Va., had driven animals into ponds and then shot them. In response, the Union War Department issued General Orders No. 100, on April 24, 1863, stating: “The use of poison in any manner, be it to poison wells, or food, or arms, is wholly excluded from modern warfare.” The Civil War also saw significant use of chemical weapons, at least in an incipient form. Union forces used variants of Greek fire, essentially incendiary mixtures that were hard to extinguish and could, in some cases, float on water. “I classify Greek fire as a chemical weapon because the formulations, when ignited, released large volumes of noxious fumes, and this was considered a useful collateral effect,” said Guy R. Hasegawa, a Civil War researcher. Greek fire was used most notably during the sieges of Vicksburg, Miss., and Charleston, S.C. Long-range artillery shells were used as the delivery system for the incendiary compounds. There were technical problems, such as the projectiles exploding too early or not at all, doing little damage. The South also developed Greek fire weapons, but how extensively they were used in the field is unclear. Confederates had their own ideas about chemical warfare, though none were actually employed. In one case, a commando team was given chloroform for a planned raid on the Monitor ironclad, which they would use to overwhelm sleeping sailors, but the raid never took place. The South tested a shell laden with a chemical agent that would release intense noxious gases, to be fired into Union positions. The Confederates also developed another fume-producing device to be fired into tunnels. A June 4, 1861, article in The Richmond Daily Dispatch noted: “It is well known that there are some chemicals so poisonous that an atmosphere impregnated with them, makes it impossible to remain where they are by filling larges shells of extraordinary capacity with poisonous gases and throwing them very rapidly into” an enemy position (in this case Fort Pickens, a holdout Union post along the Gulf Coast). But the most rapid innovation took place in the North. President Lincoln exhibited great interest in the development of new weapons technology. During the war, the president would often visit the Navy Yard and consult with John A. Dahlgren, head of the ordnance department of the Navy. Yet because there was no coordinated, systematic effort to take advantage of such innovations, many ideas remained undeveloped. Nowhere was this more true than in the realm of chemical and biological weapons, where thinking got far ahead of actual doing, and the horrific implementation of things like germ warfare and chemical agents had to wait for a later, even more barbaric conflict. Follow Disunion at twitter.com/NYTcivilwar or join us on Facebook. Sources: Guy R. Hasegawa, “Proposals for Chemical Weapons During the American Civil War”; Jeffrey K. Smart, “Chemical and Biological Warfare Research and Development During the Civil War”; James M. Schmidt: “The Arts of Death,” The Civil War News, November 2010. Jeffrey B. Roth is a freelance writer. |
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Cheryl Boone Isaacs, who hasn’t yet seen The Birth of a Nation, has said that it is “important” that people “enjoy the film” and be “impressed” by it. Boone Isaacs, who is trying to bring more diversity to the Oscars though many see it as an industry rather than award ceremony problem, was probably hoping that the slave rebellion drama would pick up several awards at the 2017 ceremony, but its chances were damaged earlier this month after details emerged of a rape trial writer, director and star Nate Parker was involved in. Parker was acquitted in 1999 while the film’s co-writer Jean Celestin was found guilty. The accuser killed herself in 2012. Join Independent Minds For exclusive articles, events and an advertising-free read for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent With an Independent Minds subscription for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent Without the ads – for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Boone Isaacs told TMZ she hadn’t yet seen The Birth of a Nation, but "I know just by the conversation that has gone on at Sundance that it's clearly a movie that filmgoers should go and see." Asked about Parker’s “presumed guilt”, she replied: "That's one issue, that's his personal issue. And then there's the issue of the movie." "The important thing is for people to see it and enjoy the film, be impressed by the film. And I think that is what is very important. People need to see this movie." The Birth of a Nation received a standing ovation before it screened at Sundance, and went on to be bought by Fox Searchlight for a record $17.5 million. |
Bastiaan Slabbers / Getty Images More LGBT people have been killed in what advocacy groups categorize as hate-violence-related homicides so far in 2017 than in all of 2016, according to data from an LGBT rights organization. As of August 2017, there have been 33 hate-violence-related homicides of LGBT people, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs' count. In 2016, there were 28 — that number excludes the 49 people killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. The numbers translate to roughly one hate-violence-related death every 13 days in 2016. So far in 2017, the pace of those deaths is at about one every six days. Fifteen of those who were killed in 2017 were transgender women of color, and at least 12 were cisgender gay men. The reports came from all over the US, from Texas to New York to Wisconsin. The NCAVP said that there’s no one clear explanation for the increase, but that it could be driven by a combination of increased media reporting, more accurate identification of victims by law enforcement, and a possible increase in violence. Increased media attention to LGBT rights — and particularly transgender rights — in recent months could also be part of the explanation. "I think whether it’s an increase in reporting, an increase in violence, or some combination thereof, it should be a wake-up call for us across our communities that hate violence is not going away, it’s certainly not decreasing, and it’s symptomatic of larger and deeper problems in our society that we still haven’t addressed," Beverly Tillery, executive director at the New York City Anti-Violence Project, told BuzzFeed News. Her group coordinates with the NCAVP and is the lead agency that puts together the violence report. “It should be a wake-up call for us across our communities that hate violence is not going away." The NCAVP's tally is not definitive, but it's the most comprehensive yearly indicator — in the absence of reliable nationwide government data — of how many homicides of LGBT people are being reported around the country. The organization gathers data from media reports, friends and family members of victims, and member organizations across the country. They categorize homicides as "hate violence" if it appears that the victim was targeted because of their gender identity or sexual orientation. That doesn't necessarily mean the cases were classified as hate crimes by law enforcement, which has a different set of legal standards. Dallas Drake, senior researcher at the Center for Homicide Research, says that the rate of homicides of trans women and gay men are worth studying, but that there's no way of knowing if these figures represent an actual increase in violence. Either way, he said, the NCAVP is likely undercounting the real number. "There are a lot more homicides of LGBT people than what they report," Drake said. "They don't report generally from communities that are smaller or where cases are not easily identifiable as LGBT homicides." Vanessa Panfil, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at Old Dominion University in Virginia, said that an increase in violence is in line with a real backlash against progress made on LGBT rights in recent years. That backlash, she says, has been encouraged in part by the Trump administration walking back Obama-era guidances and policies that were LGBT-inclusive, such as supporting trans students' rights and signaling a ban on allowing trans people to serve in the military. As a result, transgender people across the country are relying on courts to decide if they’re allowed to access bathrooms in line with their gender identities — a decision the Supreme Court decided not to weigh in on when it sent a landmark trans rights case back to a lower court earlier this year. On the state level, transgender “bathroom bills” aren’t gaining much traction since the defeat of North Carolina’s HB2 — but some state legislatures are now considering bills that would prevent cities and local councils from having nondiscrimination ordinances. The increase in violence could be "influenced by heterosexism, transphobia, and homophobia that have always existed but now partly fueled by backlash,” said Panfil, who studies hate crimes against LGBT people. Facebook Chyna Gibson Two of the trans women of color killed this year were in New Orleans. Chyna Gibson, 31, was shot and killed outside a shopping mall, and Ciara McElveen, 25, was stabbed to death in the city's 7th Ward. The incidents were unrelated. Gibson, who grew up in New Orleans but lived in Sacramento, was in the city to celebrate Mardi Gras, friends told the Times-Picayune in March. She was gunned down on a Saturday in February outside the Bella Plaza shopping center, where she’d gone to pick up a dress for a party that night. Facebook Ciara McElveen She was a well-known performer on the drag scene nationally, where she went by the stage name Chyna Doll Dupree. "It's a shocker to everyone because she didn't have any drama with anyone, and I've never heard her say she was into something,” Dayshawn Brown, a friend of Dupree’s, told the paper. The following Monday morning, Ciara McElveen was stabbed several times and found on a sidewalk. The Times-Picayune reported that a witness told police he saw a man driving a black car, with McElveen riding in the passenger seat, pull over to the side of the road. The man then took something out of the trunk of the car, went around to the passenger’s side, and stabbed McElveen, before dragging her out of the car and slamming her head into the pavement. He then drove away. “She was outgoing... and she had a good head on her shoulders," a friend of McElveen’s, named Ayrielle, told the paper at a vigil a few days later. "Justice needs to be served." The New Orleans Police Department said they are investigating Gibson's murder as a hate crime, but not McElveen's. They say the determination is ultimately made by the FBI after local authorities refer the case to them (hate crime laws in Louisiana and 12 other states cover sexual orientation, but not gender identity). The Orleans Parish District Attorney’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Sgt. Frank Robertson, the New Orleans Police Department's LGBT liaison, said that in the two years he's been in his role, he feels he's made progress on improving the relationship between police and LGBT residents of the city. "The challenges that we do face with members of the trans and gay community is that members are reluctant to come and speak to us for obvious reasons that they’re either afraid or they don't trust the police," Robertson said. CoBella Monroe, 20, an advocate at the New Orleans trans activist group BreakOUT, told BuzzFeed News that without antidiscrimination protections, many trans and gender-nonconforming people nationally are left without the protections that come with having a steady income and place to live. "We have to make sure that our community has resources so those numbers go down so that people aren’t being harassed and attacked on the streets," she said. Across the US, 28 states have no housing or employment laws specifically protecting LGBT people from discrimination. Two other states, Wisconsin and New Hampshire, have those protections, but only for sexual orientation, not gender identity. Facebook Andrew Nesbitt |
Let me just get this out of the way first: I love being a mother. When people say they never knew what true love was until they became a parent, they aren’t exaggerating. It’s the single best thing that has ever happened in my life. But I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t sometimes miss my old life, pre-motherhood. I once heard that a mom described this feeling as “mourning her pre-mom self” and to be honest that’s exactly how I’ve felt these last 8 months. Mainly, I miss my alone time. I miss going for walks and not having to worry about when I’ll return. I miss not worrying. I hate that I look at my old self and wish I could still look that rested, that I could still enjoy a yoga class and a long run in the same day. I hate feeling less interesting. I hate being a bad listener because one of my ears is always for my daughter. I hate never having two hands. I hate that I don’t know if I’m doing a good job every day. But I love being a mother. They say that in order for us to move on in life we must let our old selves go first. So today, I feel it’s time to say goodbye... Dear Pre-Mom Self, I love you, I truly do, but it’s time for me to let you go. But first, I want to tell you how proud I am of you. In 31 years you grew more than I ever could have imagined. You never gave up, you kept evolving, changing and trying your best to be the best person you could. Thanks for knowing that you don’t have to be dragged down by your past, your bravery to push forward is inspiring. Thanks for following your dreams. You could have done what you thought you should by society standards, but instead you followed your heart. It wasn’t always a smooth ride, but thanks for learning from the bumps even when they hit you so hard that you felt like you couldn’t see the ground anymore. You built yourself back up every time and you did it by looking at your own faults, not by blaming others (even though sometimes you did for a while). Thanks for taking responsibility. For finding humbleness and for learning that it’s ok to say “I don’t know.” And pre-mom self, have I ever told you how good you look? Seriously, when I look at pictures of you I see so much energy, so much excitement and inspiration. You’re beautiful and I wish I told you that a long time ago. But, pre-mom self, you should see how good I look as a mom now. I have bags under my eyes, a few extra pounds around my body, messy hair, last night’s make-up and unbrushed teeth… I am radiant. You should see how strong I am now, and I’m not talking about my muscles (those have softened a bit). I’m talking about the strength of my heart. I cry constantly because I’ve never felt this alive and connected. It’s beautiful to feel everything this wholeheartedly. I don’t get much sleep now, but somehow my mind is also stronger than ever. I’m a modern day superwomen. I accomplish more in a day than you did in a week. But it’s not a competition, you prepped me for this. You set me up with my best self before I made this leap into motherhood. Thank you for that. But pre-mom self, I’m going to have to leave you behind. You see, I’ve changed and as much as I hate to admit it, I’m a different person now. I’m a mom. But, don’t worry. You’ve prepared me to love my mom self, to have more compassion for her and to let her find her own way. |
Overhead view of DataHand units that provide full computer keyboard and mouse functionality The DataHand keyboard was introduced in 1995 by DataHand Systems, Inc. It was invented by Dale J. Retter and was produced by Industrial Innovations as early as 1992. The keyboard consists of two completely separate "keyboards", one for the left hand and one for the right, that are molded to rest the user's hands on. This allows the user to place each hand wherever it is most comfortable to them. Each finger activates five buttons, the four compass directions as well as down. The thumbs also have five buttons, one inside and two outside as well as up and down. The button modules in which the fingers rest are adjustable to best fit the user's hands—each side can be independently moved up and down, towards the palm or farther away. This ergonomic layout allows for all typing to occur without any wrist motion, as well as without any finger extension. The keyboard layout is initially similar to a QWERTY keyboard, but the middle two columns of keys (i.e. H,Y,G...) have been delegated to sideways finger movements, and all of the keys outside of the main three rows are accessed through two additional modes, including a mode for mousing. There are three primary modes all together: letters, number and symbols, and function / mouse mode. Some practice is required. However, eventual typing speedups are possible. The right-hand of a Professional II keyboard Also of note is the button design—instead of being spring-loaded, the buttons are held in place with magnets and are activated using optical sensors. This was done in order to dramatically reduce the finger workload while optimizing tactile feedback. This unconventional keyboard was seen in the Jodie Foster movie Contact (1997) as the pilot's controls for the futuristic spaceship; and the spy movie Stormbreaker (2006). The Industrial Innovations version was featured on the television series Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. After the initial prototype was released in 1995, DataHand has released the Professional and Professional II with new bodies. The Professional II also has extended programming capabilities over the Professional, being able to record macros of keystrokes for convenient use. DataHand Systems, Inc. announced in early 2008 that it was ceasing to market and sell its keyboards. The company web site states that due to supplier issues, the company will not sell the DataHand keyboard "until a new manufacturer can be identified". However, the company plans a final, limited production run to satisfy existing customers. In January 2009, the company's website started taking orders for a "limited number of new DataHand Pro II units". |
ADVERTISEMENT The trainwreck presidency of Donald J. Trump continues, as it must. Most recently, the president is preparing to ban transgender soldiers from the military, and has picked a big fight with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for no reason. With all the failure, bigotry, infighting, and Trump's crashing popularity, Democrats are anticipating big pickups in the 2018 midterms — possibly big enough to overcome Republican electoral shenanigans. But they are running into a money problem, and from an unexpected source: small donors. Overall, the Republican National Committee is out-raising the Democratic National Committee by roughly 2-1. Some of that is probably to be expected, given the Republican advantage among the ultra-rich — but the RNC is also winning among small donors by nearly 50 percent. It's a problem driven by the blinkered elitism of the Democratic establishment. Still, it is particularly odd given the fact that Bernie Sanders — who has effectively become the party's main figurehead through lack of competition, if nothing else — got tremendous amounts of small dollar fundraising during his primary campaign. At the time, Democratic Party officials were slavering over that fact, figuring that if he would just give up his email list, they could get in on the party (and keep those consultant contracts flowing). But they failed to understand the reason why Sanders got so much small donor cash. The reason is trust. The fundamental political characteristic of the moment is overwhelming backlash to the status quo. People hate both parties, they hate the leadership of both parties, and they hate the sitting president — whoever it may be. Some of this is pure racism, misogyny, or xenophobia, especially in reaction to the first black president. But at least an equal portion is due to the abysmal economic performance of the last eight years. Wall Street banks wrecked the economy and got hundreds of billions in free cash and trillions in cheap loans; ordinary homeowners got nine million illegal foreclosures and a lousy job market. To this day the Great Recession has not ended. Growth since the crisis has been the worst in postwar history, inequality and corporate profits remain at or near record highs, while wages are growing slightly if at all. Somewhat akin to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, much of America is seized with an epidemic of "diseases of despair" — alcoholism, opioid addiction, suicide, and concomitant increasing mortality. That sort of abysmal situation is highly risky to an incumbent party. (Witness the 2010 Democratic wipeout, or any of a dozen European parties in power during the eurozone crisis.) President Obama managed to skate over the backlash and win re-election through a few key policies, an easy opponent, and the fact that he is the greatest American political talent in generations. By contrast, Sanders (who is not so talented) actually validated the backlash and ran a campaign promising to overturn the status quo — and backed it up with a highly unusual voting history that was just as heterodox as his promises. As a result, he is by most measures the most popular working politician today. Therefore, one major factor hurting the DNC fundraising is how Democratic Party elites, especially President Obama, connived behind the scenes to keep Sanders' ally Keith Ellison out of the DNC chair. That frankly dirty and underhanded maneuvering signaled to Sanders' left-wing supporters that elite Democrats were only interested in them insofar as they were an obedient source of votes and cash. So they took their money elsewhere. Democrats' strategic blindness is perhaps even more visible in the cynical contempt that saturates their fundraising emails and mailers, as Michael Whitney (who helped with Sanders' primary fundraising) argues. Democrats' elitism combined with their fetish worship of empiricism has produced the most obnoxious fundraising asks in American history, with endless histrionic declarations of MAJOR COLLAPSE and WE'RE DOOMED, because that gets people to open the mailing and donate. Recently, they've taken it even further, by sending emails and letters at the end of the month that are marked to look like late bills. .@TheDemocrats proving how disconnected from the working class they truly are: sending out donation pleas that look like collection letters. pic.twitter.com/cx929v9nKl — Andrew Saturn (@andsat) August 21, 2017 Apparently this kind of horrifying stuff works pretty well on an individual basis. But it is an overtly manipulative strategy that signals contempt for the donor as a witless chump to be pumped for cash and then ignored, instead of a fellow citizen deserving of an honest argument. Using fear tactics for quick cash also tends to foreclose putting forth a positive vision for what Democrats will do to fix the country's problems. Republicans have tried such manipulation before, but as Whitney demonstrates, under Trump they have mostly ditched such tactics and copied from the Sanders playbook, to their manifest benefit. (And in any case, Republicans rarely struggle to raise money.) If Democrats want small donors to join up en masse (let alone vote or volunteer for campaigns), they must earn their trust. The Democratic leadership is among the all-time greatest political failures in American history, and the Democratic Party brand remains in the toilet. Recognizing that toxic association with the despised status quo, and giving American citizens the dignity of an honest argument about how they will fix it — instead of treating them like sheep to be sheared — is a good place to begin. |
One thing that rarely, if ever, happens in Sprint Car racing is drivers and owners getting together to affect change. Until now. Teams and some speedway promoters haven't been pleased with the All Star Circuit of Champions lately. The crux of the problem has been series promoter Guy Webb and his financial dealings. It came to a head during Ohio Speed Week. Drivers and owners had a dispute with Webb at Wayne County after heavy rain hit the speedway. Shane Helms, father and car owner of driver Caleb Helms, had heard enough. So, Helms decided to do something about it. He formulated a plan to put together a rival series, and with the help of other interested parties, the project has picked up steam and is in the final stages of becoming a reality. "When you talk to drivers and owners, there is an [perceived] arrogance and disrespect towards the guys that work hard," Helms said of the All Star Circuit of Champions. "[These drivers] are good for Sprint Car racing, and they are being taken advantage of. We don't know when we are going to get our point money or if we are going to get it." Continued Helms, "At Wayne County, I was told there was one All Star. I can't race for people that don't respect what we do. There has been a lot of complaining, but I'm the type of guy that wants to do something about it." Helms, a successful businessman who specializes in highway construction, asphalt and underground work, and his group have talked to track promoters, sponsors and drivers from Ohio to central Pennsylvania. The support they have received has been overwhelming. Retired drivers, current drivers and owners are involved. The series will have a board of directors and is in the final stages of tying up such loose ends as getting verbal commitments from drivers and inking a name to the series. "We are going to do what we say we are going to do," Helms, 47, said of the new series. "We want to make it better for the owners, the drivers and put on the best show we can for fans. "This isn't about making money for me. I think time will prove that. I just think owners and drivers have worked too hard not to have a say." There are still plenty of questions to answer, which Helms, a former driver in the late '80s and '90s, said he would do in time. But one thing for sure, this is a serious venture. Some current All Star Circuit of Champions drivers have verbally committed to run the new series. Now it's about structure and putting a schedule together. Helms wants to debut the series by holding a couple shows in Ohio to close the 2014 season. Then, it's full tilt in 2015. "We are hoping to have an awesome schedule put together next year," Helms said. "We are planning a big announcement soon. "The guys I'm with now, they want something in place of the All Stars. We want to take more control. I'm the type of guy that just got sick of the complaining and was going to do whatever it takes to have a successful [series]." |
On April 14, 1986, the United States launches air strikes against Libya in retaliation for the Libyan sponsorship of terrorism against American troops and citizens. The raid, which began shortly before 7 p.m. EST (2 a.m., April 15 in Libya), involved more than 100 U.S. Air Force and Navy aircraft, and was over within an hour. Five military targets and “terrorism centers” were hit, including the headquarters of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi. During the 1970s and ’80s, Qaddafi’s government financed a wide variety of Muslim and anti-U.S. and anti-British terrorist groups worldwide, from Palestinian guerrillas and Philippine Muslim rebels to the Irish Republican Army and the Black Panthers. In response, the U.S. imposed sanctions against Libya, and relations between the two nations steadily deteriorated. In 1981, Libya fired at a U.S. aircraft that passed into the Gulf of Sidra, which Qaddafi had claimed in 1973 as Libyan territorial waters. That year, the U.S. uncovered evidence of Libyan-sponsored terrorist plots against the United States, including planned assassination attempts against U.S. officials and the bombing of a U.S. embassy-sponsored dance in Khartoum, Sudan. ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website In December 1985, five American citizens were killed in simultaneous terrorist attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports. Libya was blamed, and U.S. President Ronald Reagan ordered expanded sanctions and froze Libyan assets in the United States. On March 24, 1986, U.S. and Libyan forces clashed in the Gulf of Sidra, and four Libyan attack boats were sunk. Then, on April 5, terrorists bombed a West Berlin dance hall known to be frequented by U.S. servicemen. One U.S. serviceman and a Turkish woman were killed, and more than 200 people were wounded, including 50 other U.S. servicemen. U.S. intelligence reportedly intercepted radio messages sent from Libya to its diplomats in East Berlin ordering the April 5 attack on the LaBelle discotheque. ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website On April 14, the United States struck back with dramatic air strikes against Tripoli and Banghazi. The attacks were mounted by 14 A-6E navy attack jets based in the Mediterranean and 18 FB-111 bombers from bases in England. Numerous other support aircraft were also involved. France refused to allow the F-111Fs to fly over French territory, which added 2,600 total nautical miles to the journey from England and back. Three military barracks were hit, along with the military facilities at Tripoli’s main airport and the Benina air base southeast of Benghazi. All targets except one were reportedly chosen because of their direct connection to terrorist activity. The Benina military airfield was hit to preempt Libyan interceptors from taking off and attacking the incoming U.S. bombers. Even before the operation had ended, President Reagan went on national television to discuss the air strikes. “When our citizens are abused or attacked anywhere in the world,” he said, “we will respond in self-defense. Today we have done what we had to do. If necessary, we shall do it again.” Operation El Dorado Canyon, as it was code-named, was called a success by U.S. officials. Qaddafi’s 15-month-old adopted daughter was killed in the attack on his residence, and two of his young sons were injured. Although he has never admitted it publicly, there is speculation that Qaddafi was also wounded in the bombing. Fire from Libyan surface-to-air missiles and conventional anti-aircraft artillery was heavy during the attack, and one F-111, along with its two-member crew, were lost in unknown circumstances. Several residential buildings were inadvertently bombed during the raid, and 15 Libyan civilians were reported killed. The French embassy in Tripoli was also accidentally hit, but no one was injured. On April 15, Libyan patrol boats fired missiles at a U.S. Navy communications station on the Italian island of Lamedusa, but the missiles fell short. There was no other major terrorist attack linked to Libya until the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland. All 259 passengers and crew of that flight were killed, and 11 people on the ground perished. In the early 1990s, investigators identified Libyan intelligence agents Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah as suspects in the bombing, but Libya refused to turn them over to be tried in the United States. But in 1999–in an effort to ease United Nations sanctions against Libya–Colonel Moammar Gadhafi agreed to turn the suspects over to Scotland for trial in the Netherlands using Scottish law and prosecutors. In early 2001, al-Megrahi was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, although he continues to profess his innocence and work to overturn his conviction. Fhimah was acquitted. In accordance with United Nations and American demands, Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing, though it did not express remorse. The U.N. and U.S. lifted sanctions against Libya; the country then paid each victim’s family approximately $8 million in compensation. In 2004, Libya’s prime minister said that the deal was the “price for peace,” implying that his country only accepted responsibility to get the sanctions lifted, angering the survivors’ families. He also admitted that Libya had not really accepted guilt for the bombing. Pan Am Airlines, which went bankrupt as a result of the bombing, is still seeking $4.5 billion in compensation from Libya in civil court. Qaddafi surprised many around the world when he became one of the first Muslim heads of state to denounce al-Qaida after the attacks of September 11, 2001. In 2003, he gained favor with the administration of George W. Bush when he announced the existence of a program to build weapons of mass destruction in Libya and that he would allow an international agency to inspect and dismantle them. Though some in the U.S. government pointed to this as a direct and positive consequence of the ongoing war in Iraq, others pointed out that Qaddafi had essentially been making the same offer since 1999, but had been ignored. In 2004, U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Libya, one of the first western heads of state to do so in recent memory; he praised Libya during the visit as a strong ally in the international war on terror. In February 2011, as unrest spread through much of the Arab world, massive political protests against the Qaddafi regime sparked a civil war between revolutionaries and loyalists. In March, an international coalition began conducting airstrikes against Qaddafi strongholds under the auspices of a U.N. Security Council resolution. On October 20, Libya’s interim government announced that Qaddafi had died after being captured near his hometown of Sirte. |
Having promised that a professional-grade iMac would arrive in 2017 back at a briefing in April, Apple now launched the iMac Pro, a Space Grey beast of a machine, as promised, just days before the end of 2017. The company started shipping the iMac Pro on 14 December 2017. In this article we gather all the information available about this powerful new machine, from its clever cooling design and impressive tech specs to its UK price and release date. Read on to find out more! If you want to find out what to expect from the next generation iMac Pro, read our latest news about the iMac Pro 2 here. iMac Pro release date The iMac Pro went on sale on 14 December 2017. There was a staggered launch of the various models: the 8- and 10-core configurations were available to order right away, while the 14- and 18-core machines were added to the roster at the end of January. The latter have been showing longer delivery times - as of 5 Feb we're seeing an estimate of "20 Feb - 6 Mar" on the 18-core - so check the times before ordering. How much will the iMac Pro cost? The iMac Pro starts at $4,999/£4,899. That may sound a lot (and is!), but Apple claims that if you built a PC equivalent it would cost $7,000 - and that's without the display. You can buy the iMac Pro now from this link. You'll also find the base model available with £147 off at KRCS here. That's a special price of £4,752.04. The maximum configuration available is a 2.3GHz 18-Core Xeon W processor (Turbo Boost up to 4.3GHz), Vega 64 Graphics, 128GB memory, 2TB Storage, and 4TB storage for £12,279. Earlier in 2017, ZDNet estimated that a full-spec build-to-order iMac Pro with an 18-core CPU, 128GB RAM, 4TB SSD and Radeon Pro Vega graphics with 16GB HBM2 memory could cost more than £17,000! Luckily it's come in below that number. Who is the iMac Pro for? Following criticism that the company had been neglecting the creative pro audience, Apple revealed that it was working on an iMac Pro back in April 2017. Talking to a small group of journalists, Apple VPs Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi and John Ternus acknowledged that the Mac Pro in its current form hadn't been meeting the needs of many pro users, and revealed that the company planned to update the iMac to suit them. Apple also intends to redesign the Mac Pro - we have information about the 2018 launch of the new Mac Pro here. Despite the fact that the Mac Pro wasn't answering the needs of its users, not all creative pros were leaving the platform, it seems. Instead some were adopting the iMac as a solution. Federighi revealed that Apple had found that: "So many of our customers were moving to iMac that we saw a path to address many, many more of those that were finding themselves limited by Mac Pro through a next-generation iMac". Apple revealed more information at WWDC, and then gave Final Cut Pro users a look at the new iMac Pro when the company showcased the new Mac at the Final Cut Pro X Creative Summit in October 2017. The iMac Pro units were used to demonstrate new features coming in Final Cut Pro X 10.4, such as 360-degree VR. Final Cut Pro X 10.4 launching alongside the iMac Pro. The company seeded units to a few creative pros, who have given the iMac Pro glowing reviews following the short time they have had with the unit. Director and photographer Vincent Laforet said that if you are "editing 8K RED video, H.264 4K Drone footage, 6K 3D VR content or 50 Megapixel RAW stills you can expect a 200-300% increase in performance in almost every industry leading software with the iMac Pro…" He added: "The iMacPRO tears through footage and images, allowing me to spend less time behind a computer, and more time shooting." Aerospace software developer Craig A. Hunter said he "Saw reductions in compile time of between 30-60% while working on apps when I compared the iMac Pro to my 2016 MacBook Pro and 2013 iMac…" He added that "When developing for the Mac this makes a pretty noticeable improvement in repetitive code-compile-test cycles." He also noted that: "I'm used to choosing between performance or detail when visualizing complex 3D datasets, and the iMac Pro gives both." YouTuber Marques Brownlee, who's YouTube video can be found below, said: that although the iMac Pro is very expensive and not upgradeable "It's actually a fairly well-priced machine". We have our own full review of the iMac Pro, including benchmarks. We also have this comparison of the iMac Pro with the 27in iMac. iMac Pro design The new iMac Pro will have a new, darker look, shrouded in a Space Grey case. But it's not just the outward appearance that's changed: on the inside, Apple has had to completely rethink the thermal architecture in order to house the new components. The result is a new fan system that offers a claimed 80 percent increase in cooling capacity. Apple says the new system "allows for upgraded internals without making more noise". A company spokesperson added: "We reengineered the whole system and designed an entirely new thermal architecture to pack extraordinary performance into the elegant, quiet iMac enclosure our customers love. iMac Pro is a huge step forward and there's never been anything like it." It seems that the cooling works well. Our US collegue Roman Loyola has seen the machine, and wrote in his First Look, that: "In the software demos I mentioned previously, not once did I notice any fan noise. Not a whirl or the white noise of air blasting through the vents. During the Xcode demo we were encouraged to feel the back of the iMac Pro for a heat check, and it was warm to the touch, but I think I've felt more heat from my MacBook Pro." "In the software demos I mentioned previously, not once did I notice any fan noise. Not a whirl or the white noise of air blasting through the vents. During the Xcode demo we were encouraged to feel the back of the iMac Pro for a heat check, and it was warm to the touch, but I think I've felt more heat from my MacBook Pro." Writes our US colleague iMac Pro tech specs Let's take a look under the hood. Here are the tech specs of the 2017 iMac Pro. Display The 27in iMac Pro will offer the same 5,120x2,880 resolution 5K Retina display as its non-Pro cousin. That means 500 nits brightness and P3 wide colour, as well as 10-bit colour support. It is not an HDR display. As for whether the iMac display will double up as a touchscreen, the answer is no. Back at the April briefing, Phil Schiller was asked about whether Apple would consider adding a touchscreen display to the iMac. His response was simple: "No". His colleague Craig Federighi suggested that the iPad Pro offers a far better drawing experience. The company has revealed that it is intending to launch a new display to sell alongside it's Mac Pro which is expected to launch in 2018. This new display could be even better than the Retina displays on the iMac, perhaps even offering 8K. Read more about the new Apple Display here. Processor Apple revealed the specs of the iMac Pro at WWDC in June 2017, confirming that the new iMac Pro will ship with 8-, 10- or 18-core Xeon processors making it the "most powerful Mac ever made". Apple describes this as "workstation-class performance", noting the 22 teraflops of GPU performance, fast storage and Advanced I/O. We now know that Apple will also ship a 14-core iMac Pro model, although these 14-core and 18-core models aren't going to be available until 2018. We also know that these are Xeon W chips. These are workstation grade hardware and they support the AVX-512 instruction set. This instruction set enables the system to process twice as much data in same clock cycle - doubling the throughput. Xeon chips are better suited to applications involving complex data - such as large, multi-layered Photoshop files, 4K video or 3D scenes with huge textures - as they are generally more robust and reliable than Core chips. One YouTube video has appeared that looks at a 3GHz 10-core Intel Xeon W iMac Pro with 128GB DDR4 Ram and the Radeon Pro Vega 6416GB. That Intel Xeon W is . Watch the video below. Benchmarks for what was assumed to be the iMac Pro had already appeared in late October 2017. Those benchmarks related to a 3.2GHz 8-core Xeon W-2140B and a 3.0GHz 10-core Xeon W-2150B chip. The Xeon chips that appear to be being used in the new professional 10-core iMac offer a Multi-Core Score of 35917 in Geekbench 4.1. The single-core score is 5345. This score is faster than the current 12-core Mac Pro. The 8-core iMac Pro's average Multi-Core score was 23536 (assuming those processors benchmarked are indeed those of the new iMacs). The 18-core iMac Pro hadn't been benchmarked. This compares to our tests of the 3.4GHz 27in iMac which scores 14017 in Multi-Core and 4833 in Single-Core, while the 2.9GHz quad-core i7 15in MacBook Pro scored 15731 in Multi-Core and 4739 in Single-Core. T2 chip Where the MacBook Pro has a T1 chip to power the Touch Bar and provides the secure enclave for Touch ID, the iMac has a T2 chip which controls components and tasks like the FaceTime camera, LEDs, and storage devices. This will free up the CPU from these menial tasks so it can focus on the processing. It will also provide the secure enclave for file encryption (FileVault) and a new startup security feature. It is thought that this chip could also be used to handle an always-on Hey Siri feature, although this hasn't been confirmed. Siri is standard on Macs, but rumours suggest the iMac Pro will take this one step further and offer Hey Siri. This means the machine will always be listening out for the trigger phrase, and is not a trivial feature to include. (Hey Siri's demands on battery life, for example, are well known. For some time Apple only allowed Hey Siri to work on iPhones and iPads that were plugged into a power source.) Confirmed: "Hey, Siri" is coming to the Mac pic.twitter.com/Dw9bRAzbxD — Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) November 18, 2017 RAM The iMac Pro will offer 32GB ECC memory as standard, but will be configurable to 64GB or 128GB. This is the first time Apple will use EEC memory. EEC memory will protect against memory data corruption, which should minimise crashes and data loss. However, EEC memory is very expensive When Apple showed off some iMac Pro units at the Final Cut Pro X Creative Summit it was possible to get a closer look at the back of the screen, which revealed the fact that there was no RAM door. We can now confirm that the RAM is not user upgradable - at least not officially. Apple says it can be upgraded but a service provider will need to do it. The RAM is not soldered onto the motherboard though, so hopefully it won't be a difficult job for someone used to getting their hands dirty. Storage The iMac Pro will offer a 1TB SSD as standard, but is configurable to up to 4TB SSD. The SSD will be capable of transfer speeds of 3GB/s. Graphics The iMac Pro will offer "advanced graphics editing", according to Apple, mentioning such uses as virtual reality content creation and real-time 3D rendering. Apple's Final Cut Pro X is also likely to benefit from the fast GPU. The iMac Pro will use the Radeon Pro Vega 64 and Radeon Pro Vega 56 graphics cards and will offer up to 16GB on-package high-bandwidth memory. This will be the most advanced graphics ever in a Mac and it will deliver up to an 11 teraflops of single-precision compute power for real-time 3D rendering and immersive, high-framerate VR, says Apple. Interestingly, it sounds like the Radeon Vega 64 can be configured for 16GB while if you were to purchase the same card as a standalone unit it would only be configurable to 8GB. Apple's new iMac Pro has an option for a Radeon Vega 64 with 16GB of HBM2. The Vega graphics cards you and I can (theoretically) buy top out at 8GB https://t.co/cIzJAkoBxg pic.twitter.com/DaSyx30CBY — Brad Chacos ? (@BradChacos) 14 December 2017 This is HBM memory rather than the typical VRAM and it sits with the GPU for faster throughput. In comparison, the top-of-the-range 27in iMac offers 8GB video memory with the Radeon Pro 580. AMD is already rolling out some of its Radeon Vega graphics cards - so far the two cards have been released for the desktop PC gaming market - the Radeon RX Vega 64, and the Radeon RX Vega 56. The Radeon RX Vega 64 offers a Base speed of 1,247MHz (air) or 1,406MHz (liquid) while the Radeon RX Vega 56 offers 1,156MHz and 1,471MHz. Those cards have 8GB memory, while the Radeon Pro Vega 64 will have 16GB, so you can expect even better stats from the iMac Pro. During the keynote at WWDC, Apple went to lengths to demonstrate its eagerness to join the VR revolution. Read more: How to use VR on a Mac Ports & peripherals The iMac Pro will boast 10Gb Ethernet, available on a Mac for the first time, and offering up to 10 times faster networking. This will support Nbase-T 1Gb, 2.5Gb, and 5Gb. Essential for those transferring big data over a local network. You'll also find four Thunderbolt 3.0 ports, which support USB-Type C too. The latter will enable the iMac Pro to power two additional 5K displays or connect to up to two high-performance RAID arrays. The Xeon CPU will also allow for 48 PCIe lanes. There will also be an SDXC slot offering UHS-II (that's Ultra High Speed) for even faster data transfer rates. Keyboard & Mouse The new iMac Pro will ship with a Space Grey keyboard and trackpad to match its darker design. There had been suggestions that the new keyboard could include a Touch Bar, but as yet none of the prototypes or early models has shown up with this feature. You can buy a Magic Trackpad for an additional £50/$50, or pay £149/$129 to get both. It's not clear if these devices will be sold separately. Audio According to Apple, the two speakers will deliver "broad frequency response, rich bass, and more volume". There will also be four microphones (the iMac normally has a single built-in mic). It is thought that these mics may be there to facilitate Siri. The iMac Pro's FaceTime HD camera is Full HD 1080p. The other area where audio matters is the sound the iMac Pro makes - and the good news is that operation is quiet. Our colleague Neil Bennett, who was one of a few reporters to be briefed prior to launch remarked that: "I've sat next to iMac Pros doing demos of everything from Cinema 4D and Adobe Dimension to VR to medical imaging, and haven't heard a fan noise yet." Want to read more about Apple's pro-class Mac line-up? Take a look at our Mac Pro 2018 preview. And if you're thinking of buying a new Mac, read our Mac buying guide 2017 and our Which Pro Mac guide. |
Fictional character that appears on multiple U.S television shows. John Munch is a fictional character played by actor Richard Belzer. Munch first appeared on the American crime drama television series Homicide: Life on the Street on NBC.[2] A regular through the entire run of the series from 1993 to 1999, Munch is a cynical detective in the Baltimore Police Department's Homicide unit, and a firm believer in conspiracy theories. He is originally partnered with Det. Stanley Bolander (Ned Beatty). Munch is based on Jay Landsman, a central figure in David Simon's true crime book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets.[3] On the cancellation of Homicide in 1999, Belzer was offered a regular role as Munch on the Law & Order spinoff Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He appeared in the first fifteen seasons of that series from 1999 to 2014, and occasionally as a guest thereafter. On SVU, Munch becomes a senior detective in the New York Police Department's Special Victims Unit, and is first partnered with Brian Cassidy (Dean Winters), followed by Monique Jeffries (Michelle Hurd), and Fin Tutuola (Ice-T). In the ninth season premiere, Munch is promoted to the rank of Sergeant and occasionally takes on supervisory functions within the department. In season 14, Munch is temporarily reassigned to the Cold Case Unit, after solving a decade-old child abduction case in the episode "Manhattan Vigil." He returns to the squad in "Secrets Exhumed", in which he brings back a 1980s rape-homicide cold case for the squad to investigate. In the season 15 episode, "Internal Affairs", SVU Captain Donald Cragen (Dann Florek) informs Detective Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) that Munch has submitted his retirement papers, stating that a recent case (portrayed in the episode "American Tragedy") had "hit him hard". In the following episode, "Wonderland Story", Cragen and the squad throw Munch a retirement party, where past and present colleagues and family members celebrate his career. At the conclusion of the episode, Munch returns to the precinct to gather his belongings, where he and Cragen shake hands as Cragen remarks, "you had one hell of a run, Sergeant Munch." Munch has returned, post-retirement, to help his colleagues in the fifteenth-season finale "Spring Awakening" and the seventeenth-season episode "Fashionable Crimes". The character of Munch has appeared in a total of ten series on five networks since the character's debut in 1993. Apart from Homicide and SVU, however, Belzer's performances as Munch were guest appearances or crossovers rather than regular or recurring appearances. With Munch's retirement in the character's 22nd season on television, he was a regular character on U.S television longer than Marshal Matt Dillon (Gunsmoke) and Frasier Crane (Cheers and Frasier), both of whom were on television for 20 seasons. Munch's return to help his friends in the SVU seventeenth-season episode "Fashionable Crimes" marks the 23rd season that the character has appeared on television in any capacity. Character progression [ edit ] Munch first appeared as a central character in the TV series Homicide: Life on the Street, as a homicide detective in the Baltimore Police Department's fictionalized homicide unit, which debuted January 31, 1993. The character was primarily based on Jay Landsman, a central figure in David Simon's true crime book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, a documentary account of the homicide unit's operation over one year.[4] However, Munch's storyline also touched on the book's depiction of the relationship between real-life detectives Donald Worden and David Brown, in which Worden was relentless in his tutelage/hazing of the younger detective but also genuinely wanted him to succeed and was impressed when the younger cop did excellent work. A storyline in the book involving Brown's cracking a very difficult hit-and-run homicide was included almost verbatim in the show's pilot. Barry Levinson, co-creator and executive producer of Homicide, said Belzer was a "lousy actor" during his audition when he first read lines from the script for "Gone for Goode", the first episode in the series.[5] Levinson asked Belzer to take some time to reread and practice the material, then come back and read it again. During his second reading, Levinson said Belzer was "still terrible", but that the actor eventually found confidence in his performance.[6] Munch appeared as a regular character in every season, and in almost every episode, of Homicide. After Homicide: Life on the Street concluded its seventh season in May 1999, the character transferred into the Law & Order universe as a regular character on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (both Homicide and the original Law & Order had crossed-over numerous times before, and Munch had featured centrally in each crossover). It is explained that Munch had retired from the Baltimore Police Department, taken his pension as a Maryland state employee, and moved to New York to join a sex crimes investigation unit, where he was eventually given a promotion to sergeant. Munch joined the BPD's homicide unit in 1983.[7] During the fourth-season premiere of Homicide: Life on the Street, he signed up to take a promotion exam in hopes of becoming a sergeant, but a "comedy of errors" prevented him from showing up for it. In the first episode of the ninth season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, it is revealed that he passed the NYPD sergeant's exam, having taken it on a bar bet, and earned his promotion. In that scene, his shield number is clearly visible: 0231.[8] He is temporarily promoted to commanding officer of the Special Victims' Unit following Cragen's temporary reassignment, but is depicted as happily relinquishing control back to him, commenting upon Cragen's return, "This job sucks." He has, however, kept his rank, as he is still referred to as Sergeant in later episodes.[9] He is temporarily put in charge again when Cragen is suspended after the detectives mishandle a case.[10] Munch makes a cameo appearance on a fifth season episode of The Wire.[11] Munch can be seen at Kavanaugh's Bar arguing with the bartender over his tab by referencing his experience running a bar (he opened The Waterfront Bar in Homicide). He appears in "Unusual Suspects", the third episode of the fifth season of The X-Files—the episode is set in 1989, when Munch was still at Baltimore Police Department.[12] Character biography [ edit ] Though his age is never directly stated on Homicide, a few clues are presented pointing to it. In the episode "Kaddish", Munch talks about his high school years and looks at a yearbook from 1961. In the episode "Full Court Press", Munch says: "Going to high school was no day at the beach for a teenage Jew in the '50s". Because first grade began at age six and high school ended in 12th[13] grade in Maryland during this time, it is likely Munch was born in 1944, the same year as Belzer. Munch is described, however, as being 48 years old in the 2000 SVU episode "Chat Room". To be 48 at the time this episode took place, Munch would have been born circa 1951, depending on when his birthday falls. Also noteworthy is a seventh season episode of Homicide in which the ongoing conflict between Munch and Det. Stuart Gharty (Peter Gerety) culminates. After a confrontation inside the Waterfront bar, Gharty asks Munch how old he was in 1970, during the Vietnam War, to which Munch responds "Eighteen", putting the year of his birth circa 1951. SVU and Homicide have Munch growing up in different places. In Homicide, he is a native of Maryland and attended high school in Pikesville, which has a large Jewish community. Munch said that he took many field trips to Ft. McHenry as a child, which would likely only happen were he to live in the area.[14] In SVU, however, Munch tells Det. Olivia Benson that he grew up on the "Lower East Side".[15] Munch also tells Det. Fin Tutuola that he "came back from Baltimore" after his fourth marriage broke up.[16] In Homicide, he says he attended Pikesville High School for four years.[1] His grandfather worked in the garment business. Munch worked with him in the early 1960s.[17] Munch's childhood was not a happy one. He and his brother were physically abused by their father, who had bipolar disorder. One night, after getting a beating "for being a wiseass", Munch told his father that he hated his guts. That was the last thing he ever said to his father before his father committed suicide; for years afterward, he believes that his father's death was his fault.[18] Munch has an uncle, Andrew (played by Jerry Lewis), who suffers from depressive pseudodementia. Andrew is found by Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) living as a transient in Manhattan, and is subsequently reunited with his nephew. Andrew, however, reacts badly to his antidepressant medication, which triggers a mania that results in his taking a personal vendetta against a suspected rapist/murderer SVU is investigating, eventually killing the man by pushing him in front of a subway train. Andrew refuses to plead insanity and take further medication, and says goodbye to his nephew one last time before being sent to prison.[19] In a deleted scene from the third season of Homicide, Munch mentions to both Meldrick Lewis and Tim Bayliss that he had an uncle who lived up north but was unsure of what became of him—this is presumably Andrew. Munch is affected by the death of a young girl who lived near him when he was a teenager; he feels guilty for not noticing that she was being abused by her mother, who eventually killed her, despite seeing the girl every day when he came home from school.[15] In the 14th-season SVU episode "Twenty-Five Acts", it is mentioned that Munch's mother is living in a retirement community.[20] During the late 1960s and the early 1970s, he was an occasional reporter and music reviewer for the alternative magazine The Paper. Although he considered himself to be a "dangerous radical" due to his left-wing views, conspiracy theories and involvement with anti-Vietnam War protests, the FBI believed that he was a dilettante and posed no threat.[21] Munch's partner at the start of Homicide is Stanley Bolander (played by Ned Beatty), an experienced police detective with more than 20 years under his belt. The two are partners through the show's first three seasons until Bolander is first suspended and then retires. Despite the tremendous amount of grief the two give each other, Munch respects him and counts him as a dear friend. In SVU, Munch is first partnered with Brian Cassidy (Dean Winters), whom he thinks of as a kind of younger brother, alternately poking fun at him and imparting (often questionable) advice on life and women. When Cassidy leaves the precinct in 2000,[22] Munch is briefly partnered with Monique Jeffries (played by Michelle Hurd),[23] but when she too leaves the precinct he is paired with her replacement, Odafin Tutuola (Ice-T).[24] He and Tutuola get off to a rough start, but gradually come to like and respect each other. After Munch is shot by a suspect during a trial,[25] the dialogue he shares with Tutuola in the hospital demonstrates the regard and respect the characters have gained for one another. When Tutuola gets frustrated over a potential witness being unable to testify due to relapsing on heroin, Munch mentions a former partner who took cases that personally—and who eventually committed suicide as a result.[26] In Homicide, along with Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor) and Meldrick Lewis (Clark Johnson), Munch is co-owner of "The Waterfront", a bar located across the street from their Baltimore police station. This is referenced in season 5 of The Wire, in episode 7, titled "Took". Munch is speaking to a bartender at Kavanaugh's as journalist Gus Haynes walks in. The camera pans by him as he says the lines, "Rodney, you can't press a regular for his whole tab. It just isn't done. I used to run a bar, I know how these things work, remember?" Haynes is portrayed by Clark Johnson. Even during the severe recession of the late 2000s, Munch talks about wanting to buy a bar again in New York.[27] In SVU, Munch takes the Sergeant's exam on a bar bet, passes, and is promoted to that rank.[8] As sergeant, he is called upon to take charge of the unit on a number of occasions when Cragen is relieved of duty. Following the events of the season 15 episode "Internal Affairs", Cragen informs Benson that Munch has submitted his retirement papers.[28] Munch officially retires in the episode "Wonderland Story", showing up to his retirement party in a white tuxedo as his friends bid him goodbye (it is announced that he will become a special investigator in the DA's office). As the episode concludes, Munch is at his desk in the squad room, packing his personal items into a box. He has a brief flashback to "Gone for Goode", the Homicide series premiere, in which he sat at his desk to go through a pile of mug shots. The phone rings, and he answers it "Homicide, I mean SVU"; he then puts the caller on hold and leaves with his box.[29] List of assignments [ edit ] Detective, Baltimore PD Homicide (1983–May 5, 1995) Senior Detective, Baltimore PD Homicide (October 20, 1995 – May 21, 1999) Senior Detective, NYPD 16th Precinct (Special Victims Unit) (September 20, 1999 – May 22, 2007) Sergeant–Detective Squad, NYPD 16th Precinct (Special Victims Unit) (September 25, 2007 – October 16, 2013) Special Investigator, New York County District Attorney's Office (October 16, 2013–Present) Temporary assignments [ edit ] Acting Commanding Officer, NYPD 16th Precinct (Special Victims Unit) (September 25, 2007) Acting Commanding Officer, NYPD 16th Precinct (Special Victims Unit) (November 11, 2009) Sergeant–Detective Squad, NYPD Cold Case Squad (October 31, 2012 – February 13, 2013) Ranks [ edit ] Officer Detective (Baltimore PD) Detective 1st Grade (NYPD) [30] Sergeant [8] Sergeant DA Investigator (NYCDA)[8] Partners [ edit ] Homicide: Life on the Street: Law & Order: SVU: Awards and decorations [ edit ] The following are the medals and service awards worn by NYPD Detective Munch, as seen in "Alternate". Characteristics [ edit ] Munch is Jewish, but once commented that the only thing he and Judaism had in common was that he "didn't like to work on Saturdays." He indicates that he is familiar with Jewish prayers, and eventually says Kaddish at the end of an episode of Homicide of the same name in memory of a Jewish murder victim.[1] He is familiar with common Yiddish words and phrases. Munch interacts with an Orthodox Jewish witness, using one Yiddish word, farshteyn ("understand"), and referring to the twelve Israelite tribes from the Bible. The man remarks that Munch must be Jewish and, consequently, agrees to help him out of a fraternal connection. After the interaction, Munch reciprocates by offering the man a ride back to the Riverdale neighborhood in The Bronx.[31] He identifies his ethnic background as Romanian.[15] He has a younger brother named Bernie who owns a funeral parlor; he at one point jokes that he occasionally "throws him some business". He mentioned another brother who is in the drywall business.[7] His brother David attended his farewell roast.[29] His cousin, Lee, acts as his accountant—and the accountant for The Waterfront—when he lives in Baltimore. Munch has been described as a stubborn man who can "smell a conspiracy at a five-year-old's lemonade stand".[32] Munch can often be seen lecturing his co-workers on a variety of conspiracy theories, which he views as obvious truths. In the SVU pilot episode, he rants about a supposed government cover-up in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.[30] However, Munch does not seem to believe all conspiracy theories; in The X-Files episode "Unusual Suspects"—a cross-over episode with Homicide—Munch dismisses the Lone Gunmen's claims of a government plot to expose Baltimore residents to a hallucinogenic gas.[12] At the onset of Homicide, he had been divorced twice, but by the seventh season he had had a total of three ex-wives, until marrying Waterfront bartender Billie Lou Hatfield;[33] each one of the previous three is "beautiful, spoiled, and none of them matched John Munch intellectually". Before leaving Baltimore, Munch had divorced Billie Lou, having discovered, after less than one day of marriage, that she has been having an affair with a member of his own precinct.[30] In one episode, a police psychiatrist notes that despite his cynicism regarding marriage, Munch still believes in true love, and is pained by the fact he has not found it.[32] He once stated that he and his first wife, Gwen, had sex once after their divorce. Her first on screen appearance is the Homicide episode "All Is Bright", in which she is played by Carol Kane. Gwen shows up at The Waterfront bar to inform Munch her mother has died. As the two catch up, he agrees to arrange for the funeral of Gwen's mother despite the fact that his ex-mother-in-law loathed him and did everything in her power to disrupt her daughter's marriage to him. Near the end of the episode, Munch performs a touching toast to his former mother in law in one of the few times his cynical facade slips. Kane next returns as Gwen in "Zebras", the season 10 finale of SVU, and is portrayed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. While working with Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) in the season four episode of Homicide, "For God and Country", a crossover with Law and Order, Munch loses badly to Briscoe in a pool game and learns Briscoe had briefly dated, and had sex with, Gwen. Distraught, he gets drunk and proclaims that he forgives Gwen and still loves her.[34] Despite this, he and Briscoe become quite good friends—their interaction in the two following crossovers between Homicide and Law & Order, as well as in a crossover between Law & Order and SVU, is generally friendly (Belzer originally pitched to Dick Wolf that Munch join Law and Order as Briscoe's new partner, but the role had already been filled by Ed Green, played by Jesse L. Martin). While Munch could never be accused of being sentimental, his cynical façade has occasionally slipped, revealing a deep compassion—especially for children—born from his unhappy childhood. When Munch emerges unscathed from an ambush shooting during a third season episode of Homicide that left three of his colleagues in the hospital, he tries to laugh it off, but he later breaks down in tears.[35] In the second season of SVU, after solving a case dealing with an abusive mother who put her daughter in a coma, Munch tells Benson that when he was in high school, one of his neighbors killed her daughter, and that for years he felt guilty for failing to recognize that the girl needed help.[15] Munch is a staunch believer in individual rights and occasionally finds that something he has to do in the line of duty goes against his sense of morality. A particularly disturbing experience for him was having to see patients on dialysis have their kidney transplants denied.[36] In the third season episode of Homicide, "Law and Disorder", Munch is suspected by Detective Tim Bayliss of having murdered Gordon Pratt (Steve Buscemi), the suspect in the shooting of three homicide detectives, including Munch's partner Stanley Bolander. Munch had motive, opportunity, an unconfirmed alibi, and never actually denies killing Pratt, but Bayliss refuses to question Munch further or test his service weapon to determine if it has been fired recently. He closes the case, informing his shift commander that there is insufficient evidence to charge anyone.[37] Munch is fluent in French.[38] He also has some conversational ability in Russian,[39] Hebrew, Yiddish, Spanish, Greek, and Hungarian. Diminished role [ edit ] A 2007 news item notes that the character of Munch "has slowly disappeared from [SVU's] plotlines", and quotes Belzer as saying "[i]t's mystifying to me," admitting his feelings to be "slightly hurt".[40] Following season nine, in which Munch appeared in just over half of the episodes, Belzer reiterated his mystification at the development, but also seemed to want to tone it down: "It's like yanking the tonsils out of the gift horse if I complain too much. I've been lucky over the years [...] c'est la vie: I'm not starving."[41] Continuity [ edit ] Although Homicide and Law & Order: SVU officially share the same continuity, they provide conflicting accounts of Munch's childhood, and SVU rarely mentions Munch's past as a Baltimore detective. Four regular actors from Homicide (Peter Gerety, Callie Thorne, Michael Michele, Andre Braugher) and two recurring ones (Clayton LeBouef, Željko Ivanek), whose characters regularly interacted with Munch on that series, have appeared as different, unrelated characters on SVU, sometimes sharing scenes with Munch. In Braugher's first appearance on SVU as Attorney Bayard Ellis, however, there is an implicit nod towards the shared continuity between the shows when Munch greets Braugher's character as if he knows him. "There's a glimmer of [recognition]," as Braugher described the meeting.[42] There were three specific examples of consistent continuity between the two shows, all related to Munch's personal life. One is Munch's amicable divorce from Gwen, who has appeared in episodes of both Homicide and SVU as portrayed by actress Carol Kane. Homicide: The Movie features Munch's temporary return to assist the Baltimore Homicide Unit when his friend and BPD boss – former BPD Lieutenant Al Giardello – has been shot, with dialogue acknowledging that Munch is currently assigned to the Special Victims Unit in New York. The two shows come together for Munch's retirement, when his SVU party is attended by Homicide BPD Detective Meldrick Lewis (Clark Johnson) and two ex-Mrs. Munch-es, Gwen and Billie Lou Hatfield (Ellen McElduff), who were both introduced as characters on Homicide.[43] Appearances and crossovers [ edit ] The character has spanned over 20 years and 23 seasons of network television. Along with his main cast roles on Homicide and SVU, Munch has also appeared as a character in other TV series, movies, talk shows, albums and comic books: Munch has become the only fictional character, played by a single actor, to physically appear on 10 different television series. These shows were on five different networks: NBC (Homicide: Life on the Street, Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Trial by Jury, and 30 Rock); Fox (The X-Files and Arrested Development); UPN (The Beat); HBO (The Wire) and ABC (Jimmy Kimmel Live!). Munch has been one of the few television characters to cross genres, appearing not only in crime drama series, but sitcom (Arrested Development), late night comedy (Jimmy Kimmel Live!) and horror and science fiction (The X-Files). See also [ edit ] |
There are only so many ways to say that Duke desperately needs more than one post player to be effective in the ACC. It was clear in the loss at Clemson. It was clear in the loss against Notre Dame, and it was still clear when Duke lost 64-62 to Syracuse. Forward Amile Jefferson is on the bench with his broken foot, return date unknown. Marshall Plumlee is playing the best basketball of his life by a factor of approximately 1 million, but he can’t do it alone. After the Fighting Irish were able to grab all of the timely rebounds, the Orange grabbed nearly every offensive rebound in the second half. In the first eight minutes of the second half, the Orange missed 15 shots – and grabbed 12 offensive rebounds. With each passing one, Krzyzewski grew more and more frustrated. He was as demonstratively angry as he has been all year. With Syracuse up 43-41 at the media timeout with 10:27 left in the game, Krzyzewski’s fire and brimstone speech in the huddle brought the people behind Duke’s bench to their feet. But when Malachi Richardson missed a jump shot and yet another offensive rebound turned into a Trevor Cooney 3-pointer Krzyzewski stayed on the bench this time with his arms crossed. Syracuse led 53-48, and there was nothing more he could say. Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to The News & Observer And after the game, Krzyzewski didn’t have much to say. “I’ll take your questions,” he said, skipping the opening statement he makes after every game. By that point in the night, Krzyzewski was furious with a no-call in a rebounding scrum with 7 seconds left in the game. Grayson Allen drove to the basket with a chance to take the lead, but the tough shot wouldn’t drop. Matt Jones and Malachi Richardson went after the ball – Krzyzewski adamantly believes that Jones had it and Richardson fouled him to get it loose. But the officials clearly disagreed, and there was no call. Syracuse was up 63-62 and would make one more free throw. “Amazing,” Krzyzewski kept saying about the no call. In fact, he said it 10 times in his 6:17 at the dais. In a one-possession game, plenty of moments and factors can be isolated and analyzed. Take the fact that the Blue Devils did exactly what Syracuse’s 2-3 zone wants opponents to do – jack up a bunch of 3s. Duke went 10-for-37 (27 percent) from beyond the arc. That won’t win many games. Players said after the game that they wanted to drive more, but that’s exactly what the 2-3 zone takes away. And then there was Syracuse’s offensive rebounding and Duke’s corresponding lack of defensive rebounding. Tyler Roberson entered the game averaging 8.5 rebounds for the Orange (13-7, 3-4 ACC). Monday night, he had 20 – 20! – with 12 coming on the offensive glass. “Anytime they beat us to a board, it’s gotta hurt,” Plumlee said. “It’s gotta be a collective hurt so that you don’t let it happen. It can’t be tolerated. That’s something we need to work on, and that’s something Coach preaches that we need to listen more to.” Plumlee finished with 19 points and 17 rebounds, yeoman’s work in 38 minutes (after playing 39 against Notre Dame three days prior). But he can’t do it alone. “When you look at Duke and without Jefferson, they need that one guy,” Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said. “It would be the same as if we lost Roberson, it would be impossible to get where you want to go.” And that’s where Duke is, in an impossible position. The No. 20 Blue Devils (14-5, 3-3) are limited without Jefferson and have no depth behind Plumlee. Duke is on its first three-game losing streak since the end 2006-07 season. And its streak of 166 consecutive weeks in the AP poll, also dating back to then, will end with this week. And it won’t get any easier for Duke. Krzyzewski didn’t have much to say to his players after the game, Derryck Thornton said. “Another tough loss, but as men we have to bounce back,” Thornton said, summing up the message. “We’re playing our hearts out,” Krzyzewski said. “That hasn’t been rewarded.” |
For many, the topic of transportation funding evokes a dry wasteland of charts, graphs and acronyms. On Friday, it found new expression: a large jar of seed corn. The 2018 Regional Transportation Plan update Transportation shapes our communities and our everyday lives. Metro, the elected regional government for the Portland metropoltian area, is working with the public and local, regional and state partners to update a shared transportation vision and priorities for the next 25 years. Learn more and subscribe to updates Metro Councilor Craig Dirksen scooped cup after cup of kernels out of that jar before scores of elected officials, community advocates and business leaders at the Oregon Convention Center. While Dirksen scooped, Metro planning and development director Elissa Gertler explained what the disappearing seed corn represents: Transportation funds that have already been committed or targeted for road and maintenance operations, transit service increases as part of the strategy to address climate change, and several other major projects, including the Southwest Corridor light rail project, Division Street bus rapid transit and three freeway bottlenecks. Finally, with a once-full jar reduced to a few paltry inches of corn, Dirksen stopped scooping. That, Gertler said, represents what the region has left to allocate – maybe $3 billion for transportation projects over the next 25 years. That’s $120 million a year, less than half the cost of the new Sellwood Bridge. The demonstration was part of Metro’s third regional leadership forum in support of a major update of the region’s 25-year transportation plan, which is expected to be complete in 2018. At previous forums, leaders from around the region have discussed big visions, emerging technologies and lessons from other places. On Friday, the gathered leaders plowed into hard facts of paying for growing needs in an increasingly bleak funding outlook. The $120 million estimate is far short of what leaders think the region needs to keep pace with growing demands for congestion relief, seismically sound bridges, safer walking and biking connections and new light rail and rapid bus lines. His scooping complete, Dirksen raised the nearly empty jar of corn to the room. "My question is, who in this room is satisfied that this is what we've got to work with for the next 25 years?" he asked. No hands were raised. The outlook gets worse: There’s a drought underway. Much of the $31 billion leaders counted on in the last 25-year plan depends on revenue assumptions that either haven't happened or have very questionable futures. These include regular small increases in the gas tax and vehicle registration fees at the state level and federal funding continuing at current levels. Instead, the gas tax is basically flat at both the state and federal levels – and because of inflation and more-efficient vehicles, it's actually worth less and less each year. ODOT leader: Don’t count on Uncle Sam Oregon Dept. of Transportation assistant director Travis Brouwer laid out the facts about transportation revenue from the state and federal government: At best, it's flat as a cornfield with a hazy future. The federal government doesn’t look likely to rain the same amount of transportation funding most metropolitan areas have come to rely on over the years, Oregon Department of Transportation assistant director told the forum a few minutes before the corn scooping. The current federal transportation bill expires in 2020, and its future is murky at best. On the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump suggested that infrastructure would be a priority for his administration, Brouwer noted, but it may not be the kind Oregon is used to. "So far we have not seen that the administration is planning to come in with additional transportation funding. What we have seen is that the incoming Trump administration is talking a lot about transportation financing," Brouwer said. "There's a very important distinction between the two." Here’s the difference: Funding is like a grant, though it’s often at least partially matched with local or state funds. Financing has to be paid back, often with interest. That means the region and state should be prepared to raise a lot more money here, or take a new leap into toll roads and other pricing mechanisms. Also, financing tends to work only for big projects, not more mundane but vital things like maintenance, transit operations or walking and biking projects. "Don't expect salvation from the federal government," Brouwer said. "I think for the most part, states and metropolitan regions are going to have to try to chart their own course and raise their own revenues to backfill this loss of federal transportation revenue." More from this forum See materials from this forum, including agenda, discussion guides and the transportation funding presentation, on the Metro event page. Go Can the Legislature fill the gap? One option: The Legislature could simply raise the gas tax or pass another funding mechanism. But that's never as simple as it seems. Major transportation packages are never a sure bet. A $344 million package in 2015 was the most recent to go down in defeat. The last major state transportation package passed in 2009. There's reason for optimism in the 2017 legislative session, said Drew Hagedorn, president of the Oregon Transportation Forum, a coalition pushing for more state transportation revenue. His group, which includes business, environmental, transportation and labor groups, is proposing an as-yet unspecified gas tax increase in the Legislature next year. Hagedorn said both the governor and legislators have held recent listening tours that revealed transportation is a major concern all over the state. Congestion and transit service are top priorities in both urban and rural areas. It isn’t a partisan or urban versus rural issue, either. Congestion in the Portland metropolitan region vexes even Oregon's most rural corners, Hagedorn noted, because they depend on reliable freight movement through the state's economic center. Legislators pay attention to that, he said. "I think we've got an awful lot of momentum toward a package," Hagedorn said. "This is our session to get it done." But there are also reasons for pessimism about how much the state can help fill the Portland region's transportation gap. A draft budget unveiled last week by Gov. Kate Brown included transportation as a top priority, but also revealed a $1.7 billion hole in the state budget, in part because of voters' rejection of Measure 97 last month. And legislators might be inclined to focus on education, housing and health care in raising new revenue. Another reason for concern, at least for some: Automobile and freight advocates aren't comfortable with raising the gas tax too much. They can support a cap of around $300 million on a statewide transportation package, Hagedorn said, with the possibility of referral to voters if it tries to raise more from a gas tax or other user fee. A call for more seed corn That wasn’t sitting well with Oregon State Treasurer Ted Wheeler, who will be sworn in as Portland’s mayor in January. “I’d like to stop us just kowtowing to all these organizations that say, ‘You know, you have a dramatic thoughtful reasonable vision – we’re not interested in that.’ Well, to hell with them,” Wheeler said. “We’ve got a state to run. We’ve got a region that is on its knees as far as transportation funding. Let’s go big. Let’s go to the public and talk about something that’s actually inspiring.” Wheeler said the $300 million idea was business as usual, and neither he nor legislators would find it sufficient. "I think we should go big and stop playing small ball, stop being cautious, stop being risk averse and acknowledge that actually we have real transportation funding needs in this state and region that are not being met and will not be met with a $300 million package," Wheeler said. "Frankly, it's a waste of our legislators' precious time and resources to be talking about a $300 million package." Wheeler urged leaders in the room to develop a bigger transportation vision and organize a coalition that can push it to victory, whether at the ballot box or the Legislature, even if some traditionally powerful groups oppose it. Metro Council President Tom Hughes shared Wheeler's impatience for small visions, but added that more work needs to be done to prepare a bigger vision and create momentum to pass it with voters. "It's not a question of how much money it is. It's a question of how persuasive the vision is," Hughes said. "I don't think that happens overnight. That requires a lot of groundwork that we have yet to do. Because we've been doing groundwork on small ball. We haven't been doing groundwork on a bigger vision." Priorities intertwined, discussions reveal Several people called for developing an inclusive transportation vision. "As an Oregon resident, I would more likely want to pay for something if someone asked me what I needed," said Gloria Pinzon, representing Momentum Alliance. How to do that groundwork – and apply it to the right priorities – consumed much of the rest of the morning's discussions. Elected officials, community advocates and business representatives shared tables for two rounds of frank small-group discussion. County commissioners talked with college students, active transportation boosters spoke with mayors, and businesspeople dug into tough topics with equity advocates. They dug into which of the region's transportation challenges are most urgent, and which funding mechanisms would be most effective to address them – seeking more federal or state revenue, or looking to potential new regional or local funding sources. Reporting back, table representatives expressed a common difficulty isolating any one transportation challenge as most pressing, because they all are intertwined. Congestion relief can't be achieved without safer streets, better transit and fixing aging infrastructure. "It's not aging, it's old," quipped Metro Councilor Sam Chase. Creating a more equitable system isn't possible without better bus and train service, cleaner air, reducing crashes and linking housing to transportation planning. Reducing fatalities means safer biking and walking connections but also better transit service, fixing aging infrastructure and improved vehicle technology. And so on. "You can use any one of these as a lens to look at the others," noted Columbia Corridor Association executive director Corky Collier. Collier, along with several others, suggested equity might be the best place to start. Kelly Haines, senior project manager at workforce development nonprofit Worksystems, Inc., suggested focusing on the opportunities a better transportation system can bring, as it's built and for years to come. "What type of opportunity will be made available with that funding?" Haines said, pointing out that building a better transportation system means many construction and operations jobs, training opportunities and more. She noted that can improve equity as well. "It could be something that benefits women and people of color getting into construction, getting good-paying jobs and having training opportunities and career pathways. So not just transportation benefits, but the economic opportunity that results from this activity that then goes back to the community." Several attendees noted that a big vision with specific projects that serve specific populations – so that as many people as possible see benefit to themselves or their community – has been a common theme of transportation packages that have been successful in other places, including Los Angeles, Seattle and Alameda County, Calif. But Beaverton City Councilor Marc San Soucie suggested while a good vision is specific and bold, it begins with an inclusive process to see what's important to all communities. "Specificity is important but how you get to that specificity is also important," San Soucie said. "Engaging people that are not normally part of the conversation is going to be really crucial...If you want to go big, you need a big vision. And a big vision is going to have to come from a lot of people." Momentum Alliance representative Gloria Pinzon agreed. "As an Oregon resident, I would more likely want to pay for something if someone asked me what I needed," Pinzon said. And while not committing to any specific transportation funding approach going forward, several people urged the room to remember that accountability matters. "We need to make sure our constituents trust that we're going to act properly with the funds we're given," said Vancouver City Councilmember Ty Stober. "Say what we're going to do and then do what we say we're going to do to maintain that trust." In other words, perhaps, you reap what you sow. Learn more about the 2018 Regional Transportation Plan update |
Amsterdam is one of the most well-known cities in the world, rich in historical events and intensive culture life. Particular here, for instance, the Hermitage, a famous Russian museum, founded its filial. But in spite of all the cultural and educational efforts, we associate Amsterdam not only with the museums and tulips. Amsterdam owes the dam its foundation in XIII century which protected the place from the inundations. The city built "with scale" looks like a toy from the bird-eye flight, the toy made of meccano: everything is accurate, clean and cozy here. But this tranquility is ostentatious: the reality is Amsterdam sucked in different kind of sins which, by the way, managed to live in harmony with its decent townspeople. It's forbidden to smoke indoors in order to save the Netherlanders' health. That is why people smoke outdoors or in the special smoking-rooms. At the same time, there is no restriction for grass smoking indoors. Yes, the drugs are legalized here, but the sellers of numerous coffee-shops kindly advise you a sort of grass less dangerous for your health. Don't you smoke grass? You can walk along Red-Light District where the seminude joy therapists of different nationalities and ages are standing in the shop-windows and offering to amuse leisure for 100 Euros. And in the neighboring "erotic theatres", right on the stage within sight of live audience the clean-limbed men and women are actively making love. And where can ordinary townspeople make love? Don't worry, Amsterdam's authorities allowed the couples in love to make sex in one of the most popular parks of the city - in Vondelpark, which is visited by 10 million of people every year, but they forbid to air the unleashed dogs there. Generally, come! Amsterdam will offer you impressions suited to every fancy: ancient architecture and arts, emotional night life and wonderful charming of local inhabitants. |
0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard The Guttmacher Institute released frightening numbers Monday morning. These numbers are a real slap in the face to those who stayed home from midterm elections but have an interest or stake in women’s freedom and liberty. All in all, they have determined that 231 new abortion restrictions were put into place since the 2010 midterm elections brought us a wave of the Republican extremists. Via a Guttmacher press release Monday morning: During the 2014 state legislative session, lawmakers introduced 335 provisions aimed at restricting access to abortion. By the end of the year, 15 states had enacted 26 new abortion restrictions. Including these new provisions, states have adopted 231 new abortion restrictions since the 2010 midterm elections swept abortion opponents into power in state capitals across the country. One cost of staying home is that “The large number of recently enacted abortion restrictions has dramatically reshaped the landscape for women seeking an abortion,” according to Guttmacher. Indeed, “The entire South is now considered hostile to abortion rights, and much of the South, along with much of the Midwest, is extremely hostile to abortion rights.” We are going backward. “In 2000, 31% of women of reproductive age lived in a state hostile to abortion rights, with no women living in a state with enough restrictions to be considered extremely hostile. By 2014, 57% of women lived in a state that is either hostile or extremely hostile to abortion rights.” To those who oppose abortion this might seem like good news, but taken in tandem with the Republican push to restrict access to birth control — the single best way to prevent abortion — what this amounts to is restrictions on women’s rights. It amounts to back alley abortions by desperate women and a resulting the threat to their lives. Over and over again, attempts to legislate morality or impose morality from an external source fail to provide the same results as stressing internalizing morality. But Republicans prefer instead to use false claims of divine authority in order to limit and steal women’s freedom in efforts to perpetuate and sustain the patriarchal system that benefits them. If Republicans really cared about abortion, they would do everything in their power to push birth control and to incentivize choosing giving birth, including government funded food and health care for infants. Instead, Republicans punish women who give birth, while restricting their access to birth control and abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. This isn’t a pro-life agenda, it’s a pro-patriarchy agenda. Image: Guttmacher Institute If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human: |
Time Out Chicago Presents a Food Truck Social By Samantha Abernethy in Food on Aug 19, 2011 7:20PM Photo by Flickr user kaitlyn sullivan. The Gaztro-Wagon will morph from food truck to pop-up restaurant. Other participating food trucks include Bergstein's Deli, Flirty Cupcakes, Haute Sausage, Hummingbird Kitchen, La Isla Café, Southern Mac, Starfruit Café, Sweet Miss Giving’s, Sweet Ride Chicago and Tamalespaceship. Soon-to-launch food truck Bridgeport Pasty Company also announced via their twitter feed they'll be at the social. The Empty Bottle put together the musical entertainment: Only Children will perform a DJ set (hear their Chicagoist mixtape). Other musical acts include Stephen Paul Smoker, Sanctified Gamblers, Ornery Little Darlings and Lawrence Peters Outfit. As for the rest of the food lineup, Chicago chefs of the stationary variety will show their take on street food: Bill Kim of Urbanbelly and Belly Shack (noon-2 p.m.), Michael Carlson of Schwa (2:30-4:30 p.m.), Justin Large of Big Star (5-7 p.m.) and Stephanie Izard of Girl & the Goat (7:30-9:30 p.m.). There is a $5 suggested donation for the event. Proceeds benefit the hunger fighting nonprofit Share Our Strength, along with Wells Community High School, Peabody Elementary School and Noble Square Cooperative. |
We’ve got a team. A lot of the stuff is planned out ahead of time, and we’ll look at things and say, "Hey, let’s do a cool post for this," or "Let’s reference this." Holidays and big things coming up we plan stuff around. And then there’s also the reactive side of things, too, which is where we try to adapt to things that are currently going on in internet culture, or things that are happening in the moment. And that’s, in my opinion, equally important because a lot of that stuff is really key, you can never plan for it, you can never know what to expect. Sonic was kind of like the sarcastic character, but still the hero, and it was pretty easy to adapt that to today’s stuff. But whereas they might’ve used really interesting ads back then, today we might reference memes or things in internet culture that you wouldn’t expect a company or a corporate brand to use. For me, it was really about letting [fans] know that we’re not some faceless, big-name company out here. We’re people, and on the other end here are more people that get you and appreciate your concerns and your comments, and who are really striving to improve this and make it as good as we can. I wanted to make that come across. Hopefully it has a little bit since then. I decided to test the waters a bit by posting some funny stuff, as opposed to just trying to promote products or trying push marketing things — just have some fun with it and engage with fans in ways that maybe they weren’t expecting. I didn’t know what the response would be, I was a little bit nervous at first about it. But the reaction that we ended up getting was very good, and so that ended up growing the direction that we went in, and the signature attitude that Sonic has had came back a little bit. I actually left Sega in 2014. Then, when Sega decided to downsize and move to Los Angeles and Sega of America kind of restarted and made a new Sonic team, they asked me if I would come back to manage the social media side of things. So I had a look at it, and to be honest, it was kind of boring. A lot of the posts were very comfortable, very corporate, very bland marketing. Buy this, support this, check this out. I felt like Sonic’s attitude wasn’t there. Sonic and Sega, especially in the ‘90s, had such a signature attitude, and that’s what made them stand out so much. They were the antithesis of the safe Mario brand. What was your initial vision for the Twitter account when you first started working on it? Did you see it like it is today? I was definitely a Sonic fan, too. I played a ton of Sonic stuff — Adventure was the only game I had on my Dreamcast for a little while when I first got it. Everything Sega for me was key. I loved the marketing that they did, I loved all of the consoles that they had, and I had pretty much every Sonic game on the main consoles. Not as many of the Game Gear titles. Was it Sega in general that you were a fan of, or were you into Sonic specifically as well? I played a lot of a game called Phantasy Star Online, which was really key for me growing up, and through that game I ended up becoming a volunteer moderator for Sega when I was in my early teens. I did that pro bono for them for two years, but it helped introduce me to some people at Sega, and through that, eventually there was a job opportunity. I decided I might as well apply for it and see what happens, and one thing led to another and that’s really how I got started. Aaron Webber : I was a big Sega fan growing up — I had a Genesis, a Saturn, a Dreamcast — and when you’re a kid, you kind of have those dreams of what you want to do. For me that dream was: I wanted to go work at Sega some day. I had no idea what that actually meant, I didn’t really know what position that would be, but it was [my] childhood dream. What’s the process like? I know at big companies there are usually layers of approval even for a tweet, but this seems much looser. That’s true. Thankfully at Sega it has been relatively loose as far as the approvals have gone. But we do have different people that also check in on things. It’s a case where, for the most part, they trust our team to keep it within bounds and to not go too far, and then we try to find that fine line where we can give people something that’s really funny and really entertaining, but also doesn’t push it too far at the same time. Congrats on the launch, @MightyNo9! It's better than nothing. pic.twitter.com/WsXHWtAlaX — Sonic the Hedgehog (@sonic_hedgehog) June 21, 2016 Have you ever done that in retrospect? Do you think any of the stuff you’ve done has gone too far? I think [Tuesday’s Mighty No. 9 tweet] was a case where we’re trying to be funny and entertain a bit, but we certainly aren’t meaning to offend anyone or to try to belittle any of the work that the developers, in this case for Mighty No. 9, have done. That for me was a really good case; a lot of people didn’t understand that the line that was used was actually a quote, that it was said by that team. So we don’t want to bully anybody, we don’t want to come off as bullies. I feel like that tweet in particular was one where some people got it, but there were some people that didn’t get it, and in particular some of the developers. And so that was an area where we don’t want to hurt any feelings, we just want to focus on doing stuff that’s fun and entertains people. Why does Sonic have an account in the first place? You usually see companies or studios or maybe brands with official Twitter accounts, but not individual characters. That had started before I came back. It was focused around Sega’s pillar strategy from a few years back. Certain companies and certain brands will have a publisher account, and then for really key [intellectual property] they’ll make a dedicated account for that. If you look at a Battlefield or a Call of Duty or really any major IP will typically get their own. Sonic was very much the same way. Sonic had an account created and there’s a whole team that focuses on Sonic and the games, the TV show, the movie, and everything that is happening with Sonic. Does the fact that the account is positioned as being from a character as opposed to a company give you more freedom to try weird or different things? I think so. It kind of fits naturally with Sonic. Sonic really embodies that idea of a character that surprises you and delights you in ways that you’re like, "Oh that’s kind of refreshing. I didn’t expect that kind of response." It really does fit perfectly for Sonic to be the character that does that kind of stuff. It’s interesting actually because I’ve noticed even Nintendo’s started posting memes over the last six months or so. I don’t know at all whether that’s because of any of the success that Sonic has seen, but it’s fun to see the industry changing a little bit, and becoming a little more lighthearted and getting away from "Buy this product, promote, promote, promote" marketing, and a little more into the fun, entertaining stuff that celebrates their fans and celebrates internet culture at the same time. Fav for Slippy, RT for dat boi. #HappyFriday pic.twitter.com/J0SoYvP6Sp — Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) May 13, 2016 Why do you think that’s a good thing for companies to do? It makes them more human. This is a key conceit of the industry, that fans feel unheard. And if anyone knows that, we here at Sega know that. We’ve been through some tough times, we’ve been through good times, we’ve seen it all. We really have. And speaking as someone who was a fan, who is now at Sega, I’ve seen it from both sides. It’s really important to let people know 1) that you’re listening, and then 2) with social media it’s important to respond. A lot of companies forget that social media is a two-way street. It’s not a place for you to go out there and just post an advertisement or a trailer. It’s a spot where you listen, and you take that feedback and you stuff with it, whether it’s changing your game or responding to consumers. All of that it extremely valuable, and it’s an area that’s slowly getting better on social media, but there are still a lot of companies in the industry that haven’t fully adapted and evolved. Are you able to actually do that? Take feedback and bring it back to the team? I’m really honored that we’re able to do that and that people listen. There are probably a lot of companies out there where the social media manager maybe doesn’t have a lot of clout. Maybe they go to people internally and say "Fans feel this, they’re really concerned about this," and it would never go anywhere. But it’s really nice that Sega people are listening. Especially with Sonic. It’s not only important for us to listen just in general, but with Sonic it’s crucial, because of the past that Sonic has had, and the ups and downs. So it’s really important for us to listen to that, and take what happens and what is said on social media seriously. Speaking of those ups and downs, one of the interesting things about Sonic’s Twitter is that it’s sort of self-aware, and recognizes those bad times. Was that important for you? "They have to know that you understand where things went wrong." The answer is very much yes. I felt it was important because a lot of companies will have highs and lows, release good games and bad games, and what they’ll try to do with the bad games is brush it under the rug and say, "Ehh, it never happened" or "We don’t talk about that." They try to downplay it. With Sonic, there have been those key moments like Sonic 2006, which is infamous out there. And everyone at Sega knows that. It’s not like people here don’t get it. I thought it would be really important to help the fans understand that we appreciate that, too. We understand the challenges of our past. I think if anyone is going to trust you to fix things, they have to know that you understand where things went wrong. I was a little nervous about some pushback, because I can’t think of many companies that have done that historically, that would poke fun at their own missteps. But thankfully because we got such a great reaction from people and from fans and really everyone on the internet, a lot of that stuff ended up going over just fine and I didn’t get in too much trouble for it. Dear Anime Fans: On Prom Night, at least we'll still be there for you. pic.twitter.com/y5p6BPHHi1 — Sonic the Hedgehog (@sonic_hedgehog) May 26, 2016 What do you think it is about the character and the franchise that inspires such a devoted fanbase? Speaking as a fan, there’s something about Sonic’s design that makes him really universally appealing. There’s really something about it that kids today love just as much as probably you and I loved it when we were kids. The second thing for me, is that because it was such a big part of my childhood, it has this special status. Not only to me as a big part of my life, but also as a video game icon. I feel like Generations is a good example of a high point, where people go, "This is great, we really love it." And then you’ve got other moments, like Sonic ‘06, where people criticize it and say they have all of these issues with it. It’s really important not to dismiss those criticisms and to understand that they come from a really good place, and that’s a place of passion. A lot of the reason that he is so iconic is because there’s all of this love for Sonic that exists out there. When people criticize a Sonic game I don’t see it as them doing it to be mean, I see it as them saying "I want to see Sonic back to the glory days he had in the ‘90s. I want to see the quality we used to see again." That’s a really good distinction to make. |
The tight-rope walk of using historical settings in games, and the enemies that exist inside those settings, is a tricky one. One Joystiq writer, while watching game play from Call of Duty: World at War, was unable to continue viewing the game because of his feelings about the racial makeup of the enemy. The writer describes his experience viewing the game as such: "It made me think about my grandmother, who as a little girl was shipped with her family from their farm in California to an internment camp in Arizona. It made me think of her brother and brothers-in-law who were drafted into the United States military and fought, with pride, in the war in Europe. It reminded me of the shame I felt as a child when teased. An inheritance of lingering hatred." He then says he won't view any more from the game, or play it. That's a very personal thing based on someone's life experiences, and I have no problem with it. Then I read this, and my draw dropped. "I have a very personal problem with demonizing the Japanese. I don't feel that way about the Nazis. I draw a disconnect between Nazis and Germans as large as the divide between 'alien' and human. The Nazis have been transformed into monsters, which does not need to be justified in my gaming," he wrote. That's an amazing sentence, and made me really think about how often the German people have been used as the bad guys in games. The Nazi party was just that, a political party. Saying there is a huge gulf between the German people and the Nazi characters would would be like saying it's okay to kill Republicans in a game, but you have issues with Americans being the bad guys. These two groups were never mutually exclusive, although they're also not interchangeable. The Nazis weren't monsters, they were people who did terrible things. The party was huge, participation was nearly compulsory, and people tend to forget that not every German serving in the army worked in the camps. They were people, and they were not unique; studies show that more people than you think would be more than willing to kill if they were told it was okay by someone in authority. As with most noteworthy instances of history being made, it was normal people in extraordinary circumstances; there was nothing inherently evil about the way many German soldiers served. Unfortunately, the German people are now always portrayed as monsters, killers, empty-eyed targets in game after game. My son goes to a German language school, and it's not a rare thing for someone to crack a joke about World War II when they hear him speak the language. We shudder at Nazi iconography because of the images we carry with us of the Holocaust and persecution from that time period, but even that reaction is limited and simplified. Germans and Catholics were sent to the camps too, remember. As were homosexuals and Romani. The issue of creating bad guys in video games is an important one, and it's sad that conversations about World War II, the issues of responsibility and duty, and even the nature of evil get lost because we're all so comfortable turning the very human people who fought on both sides of that war into either heroes or villains. The one-note portrayal of German people isn't okay just because in your mind they're alien, and having a gut reaction when you see a people you more readily identify with act monstrously should give you more of an understanding that just because someone doesn't look like you, doesn't mean that they are any less human, or that they don't deserve to be placed in the proper place, within the proper context, of history. |
SILK, BRYANT SCOTT Date of Birth: 01/6/1992 Negligent Homicide (Photo: Courtesy opso.net) A Rayville man is facing one charge of negligent homicide after a reported accidental shooting of his cousin. According to an Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office warrant, OPSO received a call from Bryant Silk, 34, 820 Allie Silk Road, Rayville, on Wednesday. He said he had just shot his cousin at 101 Lighthouse Lane in Sterlington. READ MORE: Farmerville man accused of two robbery attempts Upon arrival, deputies located a deceased white male with a gunshot wound to the head. Deputies made contact with two other people at the address, Silk and a woman who was present when the shooting occurred. The witness said the three were drinking alcohol and smoking weed when Silk began pointing his handgun at the victim in a joking manner, according to the report. The witness said the gun went off, and the bullet went in the victim's head. Silk said the victim started joking with him with a knife, at which time he began to point his handgun at the victim to joke back, the report states. He said this was when the gun went off by accident and the bullet hit the victim in the head. Bond was set at $25,000 on one count of negligent homicide. Read or Share this story: http://tnsne.ws/2iJNC4W |
A 6.1 magnitude earthquake yesterday rocked T&T, with aftershocks being experienced as far as St Vincent and the Grenadines. The earthquake, which took place at 5.42 pm, was felt by citizens in Arima, Chaguanas, Port-of-Spain, Matelot, Chaguaramas, San Fernando, Penal and even neighbouring Tobago. Although no one was reported injured, nor was there any infrastructural damage, food items on the shelves of several supermarkets across the country, including Xtra Foods and West Bees in Diego Martin, toppled over with the earthquake's prolonged vibrations. According to a Facebook post on the UWI Seismic Research Centre page, the earthquake's location was 11.04 north latitude with 60.70 west longitude at a depth of 29 km. Yesterday, many people took to Facebook afterwards, saying they were surprised by the magnitude of the earthquake. Others admitted that the aftershocks felt even stronger. A female employee of West Bees, who gave her name as Ms Johnson, said they had to close the supermarket after a large quantity of goods feel off shelves and scattered onto the isles. "The supermarket is in a mess with items all over... some of them which were broken. "We had to close our doors. Our staff are in the process of repacking the shelves, which would take a while. This was the last thing we were expecting," Johnson said. Customer service representative at Xtra Foods Grand Bazaar Sandra Khan said the entire supermarket shook, while a few items skated off the shelves. "For a long time I had not experienced such a powerful earthquake. It was really frightening." She said some customers remained calm while others left in fear. But Khan said they did not see the need to close the supermarket. "A few of our workers picked up the goods that fell on the ground and place them back on the shelves. We continued with business as usual," Khan said. Last night, seismologist Dr Joan Latchman said the magnitude we experienced was felt in Tobago back in 1997. Asked if the earthquake could have been predicted, Latchman said that was a big discussion which she preferred not to engage in. However, she said she was not surprised by the occurrence of the earthquake and its magnitude. In the coming days and weeks, Latchman said T&T should brace for several aftershocks. |
This post is part of a series about Webaudiox.js. Check It Out Webaudiox.js is a bunch of helpers for WebAudio API. I wrote them a while back. Now I would like to make a series of posts about it. This post is the first. I plan to publish one post per week explaining WebAudiox the marvels you can do with WebAudio API. I hope we will enjoy yourselves in the process :) What is a DRY library ? Webaudiox.js is a DRY library, as in Dont Repeat Yourself library. It isn’t a library per se. I took the tasks I kept repeating when doing Web Audio API and put each of them in its own little helper file. WebAudiox has more than 10 of them. Each of them got a single pupose and try to do it well. Most of them are very small, 50 lines on average, so you can easily look at the code. Additionaly, they have no dependancies so it is easier and faster to understand. You can use any of them independantly. It makes it very light to include these in your own code. There is a webaudiox build which bundles them though. This is provided for convenience. It is just the concatenation of all the helpers. Let’s get Started We will start by a short intro of the library, followed by 2 basic helpers, webaudiox.shim.js to handle vendor prefix for you , and webaudiox.loadbuffer.js to load and decode sounds. Here is a simple example which loads a sound and plays it. It initializes the AudioContext, downloads a sound with WebAudiox.loadBuffer() and plays it with .start(0) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 // create WebAudio API context var context = new AudioContext () // load a sound and play it immediatly WebAudiox . loadBuffer ( context , 'sound.wav' , function ( buffer ){ // init AudioBufferSourceNode var source = context . createBufferSource (); source . buffer = buffer source . connect ( context . destination ) // start the sound now source . start ( 0 ); }); How To Install It ? You can download the build with a usual <script> . The easiest is to get webaudiox.js in /build directory. 1 <script src= 'webaudiox.js' ></script> bower is supported if you want. Just use 1 bower install webaudiox webaudiox.shim.js This helper does a shim which handles the vendor prefix, so you don’t have to. Typically it contains code like 1 window . AudioContext = window . AudioContext || window . webkitAudioContext ; Show Don’t Tell webaudiox.shim.js the source itself. examples/jsfx.html [view source] : It shows a basic usage of this helper. webaudiox.loadbuffer.js This helper loads sound. It is a function which loads the sound from an url and decodes it. Show Don’t Tell webaudiox.loadbuffer.js the source itself. examples/lineout.html [view source] : It shows a basic usage of this helper. Usage 1 2 3 4 5 WebAudiox . loadBuffer ( context , url , function ( buffer ){ // notified when the url has been downloaded and the sound decoded. }, function (){ // notified if an error occurs }); Scheduling Download In real-life cases, like games, you want to be sure all your sounds are ready to play before the user starts playing. So here is a way to schedule your sound downloads simply. There is global onLoad callback WebAudiox.loadBuffer.onLoad This function is notified everytime .loadBuffer() load something. You can overload it to fit your need. Go here for an usage example. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 // context is the webaudio API context // url is where to download the sound // buffer is the just loaded buffer WebAudiox . loadBuffer . onLoad = function ( context , url , buffer ){ // put your own stuff here // ... } Additionally there is WebAudiox.loadBuffer.inProgressCount . It is counter of all the .loadBuffer in progress. It is useful to know that all your sounds have been loaded. Conclusion So, now we know how to easily load sounds for web audio api. We can even schedule the download. We got rid of the interoperativity issues with the shim. Rather cool for a first post. Next post will be about webaudiox.jsfx.js, a helper to use jsfx.js with Web Audio API. jsfx.js is a very fun library which generates retro games sounds. The type of sounds heard in 80’s arcades :) That’s all folk, have fun! |
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