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Two years ago, we wrote: “The year 2014 was Earth’s warmest in 134 years of records.” Last year we wrote: “2015 was the warmest year ever recorded on Earth, and it was not even close.” This year, we are running out of ways to say it. In 2016, surface temperatures on Earth were the warmest that they have been since modern recordkeeping began in 1880, according to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This is the third year in a row that a new global temperature record has been set. The UK Met Office and Japan Meteorological Agency have announced similar findings. Globally-averaged temperatures in 2016 were 0.99 degrees Celsius (1.78 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the mid-20th century mean, according to an analysis by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). Because the location of weather stations and temperature measurement practices change over time, there can be uncertainties in the interpretation of specific year-to-year global mean temperature differences. However, even taking this into account, the NASA GISS analysis has greater than 95 percent certainty that 2016 was the warmest year on record. The map above depicts global temperature anomalies in 2016. It does not show absolute temperatures; instead, it shows how much warmer or cooler each region of Earth was compared to a baseline average from 1951 to 1980. “We don’t expect record years every year, but the ongoing long-term warming trend is clear,” said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt. The planet’s average surface temperature has risen about 1.1°C (2.0°F) since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other manmade emissions into the atmosphere. Much of the warming has occurred in the past 35 years. The animated figure above shows global temperature anomalies for every month since 1880, a result of the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, version 2 (MERRA-2) model run by NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office. Each line shows how much the global monthly temperature was above or below the annual global mean from 1980–2015. The column on the right lists each year when a new global record was set. Not only was 2016 the warmest year on record, but eight of the 12 months of the year—from January through September, with the exception of June—were the warmest on record for those respective months. October and November were the second warmest of those months, just behind records set in 2015. Phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña—which warm and cool the surface waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean and cause variations in global wind and weather patterns—contribute to short-term variations in global average temperature. An El Niño event spanned much of 2015 and the first third of 2016, and researchers estimate that it increased the annual global temperature anomaly for 2016 by 0.12°C (0.2°F). Weather dynamics often affect local temperatures, so not every region on Earth experienced record temperatures last year. Both NASA and NOAA found the 2016 annual mean temperature for the contiguous (“lower”) 48 United States was the second warmest on record. The Arctic experienced its warmest year ever, consistent with record low sea ice for most of the year. The NASA GISS team assembles its analysis from publicly available data acquired by roughly 6,300 meteorological stations around the world; from ship- and buoy-based instruments measuring sea surface temperature; and from Antarctic research stations. This raw data is analyzed using methods that account for the distribution of temperature stations around the globe and for urban heating effects that could skew the calculations. (For more explanation of how the analysis works, read World of Change: Global Temperatures.) Scientists from NOAA, JMA, and the UK Met Office use much of the same raw temperature data, but with different baseline periods or slightly different methods to analyze Earth’s polar regions and global temperatures. NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, based on data from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Caption by Kate Ramsayer, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, with Mike Carlowicz. |
Language Support › Python › Deploying Python Applications with Gunicorn Deploying Python Applications with Gunicorn Web applications that process incoming HTTP requests concurrently make much more efficient use of dyno resources than web applications that only process one request at a time. Because of this, we recommend using web servers that support concurrent request processing whenever developing and running production services. The Django and Flask web frameworks feature convenient built-in web servers, but these blocking servers only process a single request at a time. If you deploy with one of these servers on Heroku, your dyno resources will be underutilized and your application will feel unresponsive. Gunicorn is a pure-Python HTTP server for WSGI applications. It allows you to run any Python application concurrently by running multiple Python processes within a single dyno. It provides a perfect balance of performance, flexibility, and configuration simplicity. This guide will walk you through deploying a new Python application to Heroku using the Gunicorn web server. For basic setup and knowledge about Heroku, see Getting Started with Python. As always, test configuration changes in a staging environment before you deploy to your production application. Adding Gunicorn to your application First, install Gunicorn with pip : $ pip install gunicorn Be sure to add gunicorn to your requirements.txt file as well. Next, revise your application’s Procfile to use Gunicorn. Here’s an example Procfile for the Django application we created in Getting Started with Python on Heroku. Procfile web: gunicorn gettingstarted.wsgi Basic configuration Gunicorn forks multiple system processes within each dyno to allow a Python app to support multiple concurrent requests without requiring them to be thread-safe. In Gunicorn terminology, these are referred to as worker processes (not to be confused with Heroku worker processes, which run in their own dynos). Each forked system process consumes additional memory. This limits how many processes you can run in a single dyno. With a typical Django application memory footprint, you can expect to run 2–4 Gunicorn worker processes on a free , hobby or standard-1x dyno. Your application may allow for a variation of this, depending on your application’s specific memory requirements. We recommend setting a configuration variable for this setting. Gunicorn automatically honors the WEB_CONCURRENCY environment variable, if set. $ heroku config:set WEB_CONCURRENCY=3 The WEB_CONCURRENCY environment variable is automatically set by Heroku, based on the processes’ Dyno size. This feature is intended to be a sane starting point for your application. We recommend knowing the memory requirements of your processes and setting this configuration variable accordingly. Procfile web: gunicorn hello:app The Heroku Labs log-runtime-metrics feature adds support for enabling visibility into load and memory usage for running dynos. Once enabled, your can monitor application memory usage with the heroku logs command. Advanced configuration App preloading If you are constrained for memory or experiencing slow app boot time, you might want to consider enabling the preload option. This loads the application code before the worker processes are forked. web: gunicorn hello:app --preload See the Gunicorn Docs on Preloading for more information. Worker timeouts By default, Gunicorn gracefully restarts a worker if hasn’t completed any work within the last 30 seconds. If you expect your application to respond quickly to constant incoming flow of requests, try experimenting with a lower timeout configuration. $ gunicorn hello:app --timeout 10 See the Gunicorn Docs on Worker Timeouts for more information. Max request recycling If your application suffers from memory leaks, you can configure Gunicorn to gracefully restart a worker after it has processed a given number of requests. This can be a convenient way to help limit the effects of the memory leak. $ gunicorn hello:app --max-requests 1200 See the Gunicorn Docs on Max Requests for more information. Further reading |
Digg co-founder Kevin Rose has accidentally broken the embargo on the Tesla Model S Sedan concept set to be revealed in Los Angeles in mere hours on his flickr account. Developing! UPDATE: We now have all the details and a slew of live shots of the Tesla Model S concept. Read the full story here! What these first shots reveal is a rear 3/4 shot of the new concept, a side look and an interior filled to the brim with wires, looking like it's still being put together. Makes sense, as it appears the shots were taken three days ago, probably as they were still putting together this hand-built concept. Other than those details, we guess we'll just have to wait a few more hours to find out more information — like, for instance, what car platform they're planning to build it off of. Advertisement Because here's the problem. If Tesla claim they've built their own chassis, then this car is vaporware. Because in order to get a new chassis on the road, they'll need much more capital than what they've already asked for to do the necessary safety testing and durability testing. So it has to be another automaker's chassis. But which one? Even without details there's a lot we can learn from these pictures. For starters, Tesla already has a deal worked out with Mercedes for providing electric drives for a small batch of Smart cars. Assuming they continue that relationship with Mercedes, and given the wheels, for instance, appear to be a version of this Lorinser wheel and seems to carry the 5-112 bolt pattern, means if it's a Mercedes, it's likely based on a Mercedes C, E, or CLS chassis. If those are 20-inch wheels it's unlikely it's a C-class platform and more likely to be E-series or CLS-based. Of course this is just our stretch-of-a-guess, no matter how educated they may be. We really will have to wait until later today to find out for sure how Tesla built this concept. Also, that's one seriously sweet full-screen dashboard. UPDATE: For some odd reason, Tesla's asked Kevin Rose to pull his pictures down off Flickr. We echo Kevin's comment of "not sure if the company knows how the 'ol web works." Advertisement (Hat tip to Noah!) [via Flickr] |
Calgary police have cordoned off a scene on the city’s north end after officers found two people dead and two others badly hurt. Emergency crews were called to the 100 block of Panamount Common N.W. just after 5 a.m. on Saturday. Paramedics and firefighters were first called out to the home, but when they got there they found a violent scene and called police for help. Officers arrived and cordoned off the scene, taking at least one person from the home in handcuffs, with blood on his face and feet. The two men injured were taken from the home, one in serious and one in critical condition. “”It’s a terrible thing. It’s upsetting for everybody to wake up to this, whether you’re a neighbour that’s directly next door to this residence, or anybody in Calgary.”” -Duty Insp. Tom Hanson — 660 NEWS Calgary (@660NEWS) June 10, 2017 A fifth person in the home was not injured and is being interviewed by investigators. The homicide unit is trying to determine what happened but it says it is not looking for any suspects and the incident was not random. CPS Duty Insp. Tom Hanson said officers are trying to determine the relationships between those inside the residence. “The best we can determine at this point is that the individuals were all known to each other, so we know that it wasn’t a random act or any other type of incident that would lead us to believe otherwise,” said Hanson. Hanson says all those involved in the incident were adults. There are no details available yet about the victims who died. Anyone in the area at the time who might have seen something out of the ordinary is asked to call police or Crime Stoppers. |
Washington (CNN) Donald Trump continues to be the top choice of Republican voters in the race for their party's nomination, according to a new CNN/ORC poll. The poll finds little appetite for replacing the delegate leader and front-runner with another candidate at the convention or through a third-party run, but most of those opposed to Trump's candidacy continue to pine for another option. With the field whittled to just three candidates, 47% of Republicans say they'd most like to see Trump win their party's nomination, about the same as the 49% who said they would be most likely to support him in February. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz follows at 31%, with Ohio Gov. John Kasich the preferred choice of 17% of GOP voters. Trump tops the enthusiasm race as well, with 40% saying they would be enthusiastic about a Trump candidacy compared with 28% who would be that excited about Cruz and 19% about Kasich. All three, along with the remaining two Democratic candidates -- Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders -- will get a chance to make their case to the nation in a CNN forum dubbed "The Final Five" set to air at 8:00 p.m. ET Monday. The race for the Democratic nomination also remains fairly steady, according to the poll, with Clinton topping Sanders in that contest. The Republican race has been more volatile, as the field of candidates vying to be the GOP's main Trump alternative has shrunk. Some, including 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, have called for anti-Trump voters within the party to coalesce around whichever candidate offers the best chance to beat Trump in their home state, in the hopes of preventing Trump from gathering the 1,237 delegates necessary to win the nomination. That would leave the nomination unsettled heading in to the Republican Party's national convention in July. While the overall findings suggest few Republicans want to replace their party's delegate leader with someone else, those views vary widely based on whether a voter prefers Trump or not. Six-in-10 Republican voters overall say that if no candidate wins a majority of delegates to the Republican convention through the primaries and caucuses, delegates should vote for the candidate who had the most support through those votes. That figure stands at 82% among Trump backers, but just 40% among those who do not back Trump. Most Republicans say Kasich should end his run for the nomination now that he cannot win a majority of delegates in the primaries (70% overall say so), but that sentiment is even stronger among Trump's backers. More than 8-in-10 Trump supporters, 84%, say Kasich should drop out of the race, but among those who aren't backing Trump, that figure dips to 58%. Just 35% overall say they want to see another Republican run as a third party candidate if Trump wins the Republican nomination. Among non-Trump backers, however, 51% want to see another Republican get in the ring as a third party candidate. The non-Trump supporters opposed to such a move say they feel that way more because it would lead to a Democratic win (38%) than because they would be comfortable with Trump leading the Republican ticket (10%). One thing Trump's supporters and those who support other candidates can agree on: Broad majorities in both groups say the party's nominee should be one of the three remaining candidates, even if none of them capture those 1,237 delegates. Still, few see the road ahead as an easy one for the eventual nominee. Just 8% see the Republican Party as united. That's lower than the 22% of Democrats who felt that way in June 2008 after a long fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for that party's nomination. Nearly half of Republicans now -- 46% -- say the party is currently divided and will remain so in November, including 52% of those Republicans who are not backing Donald Trump. Democrats are more apt to see their own party as united, 38% say so, while 44% say it's divided now but will unite by November and just 15% feel the party won't be united come November. Clinton continues to top Sanders in the race for the Democratic nomination, with 51% saying they'd most like to see the former secretary of state atop the party's ticket in November compared with 44% who want to see Sanders lead the Democrats into November. That's narrower than the 55% Clinton to 38% Sanders margin in late-February, when voters were asked who they would be most likely to support. On most of the key demographic divides, the findings of this poll mirror those of most exit polling thus far in the contest, with Clinton faring better among older Democrats and Sanders carrying those under age 50, the two running about evenly among white Democrats while Clinton holds a solid edge among non-whites, and Clinton tops among moderates while Sanders wins the backing of most liberals. But the poll also finds Clinton and Sanders about even among women, with Clinton ahead among men. That's different than most other polling on the race. Beyond the sampling error that can affect any representative survey, the Democratic women interviewed in this poll were a bit younger and more white than Democratic women in previous CNN/ORC surveys, which could be the reason that finding seems out-of-step with most other polling on the race. Overall, though, Sanders prompts greater enthusiasm among the Democratic electorate than does Clinton at this point. About 4-in-10 say they would be enthusiastic if he were to win the Democratic nomination, compared with 34% who say they would feel that way about Clinton. That difference is driven largely by greater enthusiasm among Sanders own supporters: 72% of Sanders' backers say they would feel enthusiastic if he won the nomination, just 55% of Clinton's backers say the same about her potential nomination. Both of the remaining Democratic nominees top Trump by a wide margin in hypothetical general election matchups, Sanders over Trump by 20 points and Clinton over Trump by 12 points. Sanders fares better than Clinton against each of the three remaining Republicans, topping Cruz by 13 points and Kasich by 6. Clinton runs even with Cruz and trails Kasich by 6 points. The CNN/ORC Poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone March 17-20 among a random national sample of 1,001 adults. The results include interviews with 478 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who are registered to vote, as well as 397 Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters. The results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, it is 4.5 points for the Democratic voters' sample and 5 points for the Republican voter sample. |
The federal NDP, First Nations and environmental groups are calling the Trudeau government's imminent decision on a $11.4-billion liquefied natural gas project proposed in northwest B.C. a "watershed" moment for Liberal promises on climate change, coastlines and First Nations relations. LNG Project Would Affect 'Grand Central Station' for Salmon, Researchers Say read more Announcements, Events & more from Tyee and select partners ‘Punch to the Gut’ Musical on Residential Schools Returns to Vancouver Children of God has been shaped by intense audience reactions, says director Corey Payette. "On three incredibly important levels, this is a true litmus test for the government," said the NDP's environment critic, Skeena-Bulkley Valley MP Nathan Cullen, from Ottawa on Wednesday. "I think it's time to find out which Liberal party we're dealing with -- the one who campaigned with some important promises, or the one that's governing and breaking them," Cullen said. On Wednesday, a letter signed by 130 Canadian and international scientists urged the Trudeau government to reject a recent Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) report that concluded the Petronas-backed Pacific NorthWest LNG project could be built safely for the environment. The scientists jointly called the report "flawed" and showed "inadequate consideration" of the project's cumulative effects, particularly on salmon. "The letter was not directed at us, so we’re not going to comment," said Pacific NorthWest LNG spokesperson Spencer Sproule. Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna is currently reviewing the CEAA report and is expected to rule in two weeks if the LNG facility can go forward. If built, the CEAA states the LNG terminal would produce 5.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, making it the largest greenhouse gas facility in B.C. When upstream emissions -- from the natural gas frack sites in northeast B.C. -- are included, the regulator estimates emissions could rise another maximum 6.5 to 8.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. Greenhouse gas emissions are of pointed national interest at the moment. Today marks the 90-day point from the end of the Paris COP21 summit -- the date Trudeau promised to usher in a new Canadian climate plan and greenhouse gas reduction target. "This is Trudeau's watershed moment," said Shannon McPhail, director of the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition in Hazelton, B.C. "This is where we will see if McKenna and Trudeau will side with climate action or climate disaster." Last week in Vancouver, the prime minister did not reach immediate agreement with all 13 premiers to immediately implement a national carbon price -- a key piece of Canada's climate plan. They pledged instead to study it further, and meet again in the fall. As for Canada's national climate target, Trudeau confirmed, it would remain the same as the previous Harper government's -- to curb emissions by 30 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030. Industry boosters, including Premier Christy Clark, have long said LNG exports displace dirtier coal power emissions in Asia. Questions about salmon The Liberals also promised in their election platform to increase the protection of Canada's marine and coastal areas from 1.3 to 10 per cent by 2020. McPhail said protecting the Lelu Island aquatic habitat where the LNG terminal is proposed is a "great place to start." The Pacific NorthWest LNG would require a trestle and suspension bridge to pump natural gas to LNG tankers. The structure crosses the edge of Flora and Agnew Banks --an aquatic area teeming with eelgrass grass considered crucial for the rearing of salmon fry. "The location is horrible in terms of risks to salmon and other fish," said Simon Fraser University aquatic biologist Jonathan Moore, who also led the effort to rally 130 scientists against the project. Moore said he recently conducted research in the water around the proposed LNG plant -- catching, counting and releasing more than 200,000 fish -- and concluded the facility could "threaten the whole" Skeena salmon run, the second largest in Canada. "You have a massive project such as this -- and whether it's the removal of vegetation on Lelu Island, the bridge trestle* structure, the dredging for the pipe, or the 690,000 cubic metres of sediment and rock that need to be dredged and blasted [to build it] -- cumulatively, there's all these different pathways of risk," he says. "It's like a surgeon telling you it's a minor procedure, when in reality, it's open heart surgery," the scientist added, whose SFU study was a collaborative research effort with the Skeena Fisheries Commission and the Lax Kw'alaams Fisheries Program. Promise to First Nations at stake: chief First Nations engagement is another major promise by Trudeau that could be affected by the LNG project, says UBCIC Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, who travelled this week to Ottawa to urge federal officials to nix it. Many Canadian and U.S. Tsimshian bands in the region -- including the Lax Kw'alaams who voted against a $1-billion offer to support Pacific NorthWest LNG last year -- oppose it, he said. But not all indigenous leaders oppose the project. Gitxaala Nation hereditary and elected chief Clifford White has said his band has completed two independent scientific studies on the project's environmental impacts. "As it stands, we find that there's nothing paramount that's standing in the way in terms of moving forward," Chief White recently told a Prince Rupert business crowd. Environment Minister McKenna was not available to comment on the scientists' letter, as she was en route to Washington for a state dinner with the U.S. President, alongside Trudeau. The office of Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr also declined to comment. The Prince Rupert and District Chamber of Commerce said the science is sound and is satisfied the project will not harm the environment. "From our perspective, this has been well researched, and well analyzed. The scientific review was rigorous, and was done four times," said Simone Clark, the chamber's manager of communications. The CEAA also said Wednesday: "The Government of Canada is committed to conducting high-quality, thorough and science-based environmental assessments that are fair, transparent and that take into account the views of Canadians and Indigenous Peoples." |
Six thousand chess players took part in a beauty contest! By Christoph Bühren and Björn Frank, University of Kassel During the past few weeks, over 6000 chess players took part in our online experiment announced on the ChessBase newspages. In the first round the participants guessed a number between 0 and 100. In order to win, this number had to be nearest to 2/3 of the average of all guesses. Why is this game called Beauty Contest? The name of this game and its basic idea go back to John Maynard Keynes (picture right, 1883-1946), one of the most influential economists who ever lived. Keynes is currently en vogue again, as he stands for an active, stabilizing role of the state. In his famous book "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money" (1936), he explains why investors' and speculators' behaviour is hard to predict. The reason is that these people do not just face the task of picking the most promising projects or shares. Often their success depends on the number of other people thinking that a particular project will be successful, and those people think that the project will be successful if they believe many others to believe that... You see the point? In case you are not sure, Keynes offers the following metaphor: "[P]rofessional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each competitor has to pick, not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of whom are looking at the problem from the same point of view. It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one's judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practise the fourth, fifth and higher degrees." This game has no rational solution, a fact that reflects Keynes' intentions well. The modern "Beauty Contest" However, in 1993, the German economist Rosemarie Nagel (picture left) based her experiments on a nice variant of the game that Keynes' newspaper readers play; it has a rational solution, yet still it offers the chance to investigate levels – or degrees – of thinking. This is the game we had invited chess players to play. We want you to give us a number between 0 and 100 inclusively. The number need not be an integer. You have won if your number is closest to 2/3 of the average of the numbers given by all participants. There are two ways to see that a unique solution exists. First, one can easily see that no one should submit a number higher than 66, because whatever the others do, a guess higher than 66 cannot be better than 66. However, if no one guesses more than 66, then all numbers between 44 (that is, two third of 66) and 66 are inferior to 44. Hence no one would guess more than 44. That, however, should eliminate any number higher than 2/3 of 44, etc., until only 0 is remaining as a reasonable guess. (Note that a second solution besides 0 is 1 if only integers are allowed). A second method would be to just try out: Presume you guess a certain number x, and anyone else guesses the same number x, would you still wish to stick to your initial guess x? If so, you have found what game theorists call a Nash equilibrium (named after John Nash – yes, the one played by Russell Crowe in Beautiful Mind). Now the only x to which you would want to stick is 0. However, as Reinhard Selten (who received the Nobel Prize together with Nash) has said: "game theory is for proving theorems, not for playing games". Guessing 0 only leads to success if you think that everyone is rational and fully understands the solution of the game. Empirically, this is not the case. Previous results The first round of Rosemarie Nagel's first Beauty contest experiment resulted in a target number (i.e., 2/3 of the average guess between 0-100) of 24.49. Playing the Beauty Contest over the Internet produces very similar results (24.13 in Rubinstein, Economic Journal 2007), while playing the game as a newspaper or magazine contest gives participants more time, and they think one step further ahead. (The target number of a magazine experiment by Selten and Nagel, Spektrum der Wissenschaft, February 1998, was 14.72; Richard Thaler in the Financial Times, June 16th, 1997 got 12.61). Are chess players different from other humans? Why would one think that good chess players are any better in the Beauty Contest than others? Psychological research has found that excellent chess players neither calculate markedly deeper than amateurs, nor do they calculate a larger number of moves. However, they make the more relevant calculations. They have stored a large number of patterns or "chunks" that allow them to focus on the moves that are really relevant. This ability is chess-specific, and one would not expect it to help much in the Beauty Contest. Yet Palacios-Huerta and Volij (2007) tested the rationality of chess players in an experiment that shares one particular feature of ours: it has a game-theoretic equilibrium that is usually never reached by “normal” people. In their experiment all grandmasters chose this equilibrium! Our results The target number of the ChessBase experiment turned out to be 21.4769 – two third of 32.21539. As pointed out above, the online environment might have played a role. Yet, a first impression is that chess players' guesses are within the range of other humans. The winning guesses came from Nick Burns, UK (21.473), Jarred Jason Neubronner, Singapore (21.463) and Tanner McNamara, USA (21.46). The latter two argued that they anticipated most of the participants to choose a number near 2/3 of the average of 0 and 100, that is 2/3*50=33.33. Therefore, they choose a number near 2/3*33.33. Nick Burns has asked various groups of people (e.g. mathematics classes) before answering our survey. But what is the role of chess expertise? Indeed, guesses of better chess players are significantly lower. However, this relation is rather minuscule with regard to its extent: On average, chess players guess one integer lower if they have a rating that is 200 points higher according to our very preliminary results. And what about the grandmasters, of whom we have 28 in our sample? While the average guess in our complete sample was 32.21539, the grandmasters' average was slightly higher: 32.96482! One of us is a chess player (Elo 2220) while the other is not, hence we do not quite agree whether chess players are particularly clever. Did our experiment decide the issue? Only seemingly so. It might be that the strong chess players in our sample "saw" the theoretical solution, but that they presumed that the average participant makes a less sophisticated guess. Strong chess players might be particularly good in guessing other people's guesses, though this sounds more like poker than like chess. To take an example, if half of the untitled chess players would have guessed 0 and the other half 64, and if the grandmaster all would have guessed 33, then the average deviation from the winning number would be much lower for the grandmasters. However, this turned out not to be the case for our sample. And as far as the Elo rating is concerned, you are one integer nearer to the winning number if you have a rating that is 333 points higher – better chess players are closer to the winning number, but only by a tiny amount (note: this is a very preliminary result again). Some further results For round one, we also calculated the target numbers for different groups of chess players separated by their Elo rating. In our second round, we asked our participants to estimate these target numbers of round one (we wrote an email to every first round participant. If it did not reach you, argue with your spam filter): Our initial hypothesis had been that Elo rating and Beauty Contest guess might be related. Now that we rubbed this hypothesis under the participants' noses, they presume that such a relationship exists, but not very strongly. The winning guesses for this task came from the Netherlands, Denmark, USA and India: Martijn Pauw, Torill Skytte, Jonathan Tayar and Manish Kashyap. In two categories the winners did not react to our emails so far – these days it is no easy task to convince people and their spam filters that they have really won something; a ChessBase voucher in our case. And finally there was a second round, in which everyone played against players of his own rating group only. Everyone was informed about the target number of round 1 (21.4769). Hence, in the next round one should see a declining average guess, like in all other multiperiod Beauty Contests before. But how large is the decline? Do stronger chess players react stronger? No, quite the opposite is true. Comparing the first and the second round number, here is the size of what might be called a learning effect: And the winners of this second round are... Reiner Odendahl, Uwe Stein, and Thomas Seelen from Germany, Mark Huizer and Regis Huc from the Netherlands, Matthew Tapp, UK, Michel de Vathaire, France , Mark Ryan, USA, Alexis Murillo Tsijli, Costa Rica and one chess player who has not replied to our emails yet. Of course this is not the whole story, there is a lot more to do with the data. But now you know at least why we conducted this experiment. We thank all participants for giving us a lot of useful feedback about this experiment and the way they calculated their numbers. Many thanks also to ChessBase for support and cooperation, and to Alain Ledoux who turned out to be the predecessor of this game; click here if you are interested in details (in PDF). Attention GM tournament organizers in Europe: If you want us to entertain your participants with further experiments, please contact us. We would gladly come to your tournament and pay real money to participating chess players. Sources The Selten quotation is from Goeree/Holt, Stochastic game theory, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci 96 (1999), 10564-10567 The paper by Palacios-Huerta and Volij (2007) is entitled "Field Centipedes", for download here (PDF): Nagel portrait courtesy of Rosemarie Nagel; Shop window dummies courtesy of Kanzkeu Dr. Palm Prof. Dr. Björn Frank University of Kassel, IVWL Germany To contact us: frank@uni-kassel.de c.buehren@uni-kassel.de |
When it comes to pep talks, my dad nails it every single time. Since I was a kid, he has always been trying to teach my siblings and I things about life through repeating short, easy-to-remember mantras over and over and over. We used to roll our eyes and brush him off, but at the age of 24, I now cling to these mantras like they’re oxygen. I’ve also found myself passing these mantras off to others who are in need of encouragement, whether they were friends, co-workers, or the sandwich-maker at my local Potbelly (this last one only happened once, but I’m optimistic for the future). These life lessons might be short and simple, but they always help me when I’m not in a good place. 1. You’ll never get anywhere if you’re unwilling to be uncomfortable. Part of growing up means stepping outside of your comfort zone – sometimes constantly. It may seem overwhelming at first, but the more you put yourself out there, the more you will grow and the more you will experience. 2. Effort is more important than talent. Talent’s important. But there are plenty of talented people that never amount to anything because they’re afraid of trying. The people that are willing to sweat and swallow their pride and put in all the work are the ones who end up going places. 3. Never bury your talents in the sand. This one comes from a favorite Bible story of my dad’s, but it can be applicable to anyone from any background. The basic message is that if you’ve been blessed with a gift, don’t let it go to waste. It’s not enough to just have a knack for something. You have to develop it and work at it if you ever want it to amount to anything. If you’re not going to do that, you might as well just bury your talent in the sand. 4. Respect money, but don’t worship it. Dealing with money is inevitable. It’s part of being an adult. What you need to remember is that it’s important to be careful with your money and handle it wisely, but you should never get to the point where you’re putting money above everything else. That’s when you start getting into trouble. 5. Do the thing you fear and the fear will disappear. Sometimes the scariest part about something is the apprehension that we build up inside our own heads. It doesn’t mean that the thing we’re dreading isn’t scary. Most of the time, it’s terrifying. But if you hide in a corner and never face it, the fear is only going to get bigger and more powerful. So shine a light on it by facing what you’re afraid of. 6. Vacation is the absence of deadlines. Having a vacation doesn’t mean you have to jet off to some expensive paradise location. Vacation just means that you are temporarily freeing yourself from the demands of your everyday life. When you take a vacation, make sure you are putting yourself in a situation where you are answering only to yourself and doing what you want to do, not what you think you should be doing in order to have an experience. 7. Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes. Sometimes I forget that Billy Joel said this and not my dad. Either way, it’s an important one to remember, especially as you get older. It’s going to be hard to remain close with every single friend you have for the rest of your life. You get busy and people move and things change and you meet new people that seem to wander into your life at the most perfect moment. You’re always saying goodbye to someone and hello to another. Embrace this early on and be thankful for the time that you do have with people. 8. Listen to your body. If you’re tired or sick or exhausted, take care of yourself. There’s a reason you get headaches and sore throats and sore muscles. It’s your body telling you to slow down and take it easy. Never mistreat your body. It’s the only one you’ve got. 9. People’s favorite sound in the world is the sound of their own name. You’re going to get a lot farther with people if you remember their name, whether it’s the person who’s interviewing you for a job or your waitress. Using someone’s name is a way to signify to them that you think they are important. It’s the simplest thing in the world, and yet people never bother to do it. 10. Be a rebounder. Everybody fails at some point. Most people deal with failure regularly. It’s not about how much you fail, but how you handle that failure. Don’t wallow in self-pity. Instead, get up and be a rebounder. Force yourself to keep trying and keep working at it. Eventually, you’ll get there. It might not be the there that you initially intended, but it’s somewhere. 11. Settling for less than you are capable of is being lazy. It doesn’t matter if most people think you’ve already achieved a lot. If you’re not reaching your full potential, you’re giving up on yourself. Don’t settle for less than you know you can do and be. 12. You have to go in with the right mindset, or you’ve already lost. People tend to underestimate the power of their own thoughts. No matter what challenge you are facing, if you go in feeling defeated, you will be defeated. Whatever you are doing, be sure to enter the arena with the mindset that you can accomplish what you came to do. Or else you don’t stand a chance. 13. People who worry about how their life “appears” to others are the least happy. The illusion of happiness is not the same thing as happiness. Someone may look like they have the most amazing life on their profile, but that doesn’t mean anything. Most of the time, the people that are trying the hardest to make their life look impressive are the ones who are trying to fill a void. 14. There’s nothing more satisfying than achieving a goal you never thought you could achieve. It gives you confidence and fulfillment that you never thought possible. It’s one of the greatest feelings in the world, and one worth fighting for. 15. Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it. Alright, so this one goes out to Bill Cosby. My dad has a knack for giving great pep talks, but he also has a knack for sharing great quotes of the day, and this is one of his personal favorites. Anything worth having or achieving is scary, and that’s why not everyone reaches this point. So if you want it, decide that you’re willing to go through a lot of shit to get there. 16. The path to success isn’t glamorous, and it isn’t overnight. The movies make it look easy, with a quick montage and some inspiring music. But real success comes from the late nights where you just want to relax but instead you keep working. It comes from getting out of bed morning after morning when all you want to do is hide under the covers. It’s a long road that consists of many repeated days of sweat and effort. But the end result is worth it. 17. Habits are much more important than big one-time actions. It may seem like giving one amazing, life-changing presentation is your answer to that big promotion at work, but it’s not. The way to get noticed at your job or through your work is through the little things: showing up every day on time, working hard, giving it all you’ve got, getting things in on time, helping your team, and putting in the effort when no one’s watching. |
Using a few ultracold ions, intense lasers and some electrodes, researchers have built the first programmable quantum computer. The new system, described in a paper to be published in Nature Physics, flexed its versatility by performing 160 randomly chosen processing routines. Earlier versions of quantum computers have been largely restricted to a narrow window of specific tasks. To be more generally useful, a quantum computer should be programmable, in the same way that a classical computer must be able to run many different programs on a single piece of machinery. The new study is “a powerful demonstration of the technological advances towards producing a real-world quantum computer,” says quantum physicist Winfried Hensinger of the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. Researchers led by David Hanneke of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colo., based their quantum computer on two beryllium io |
There is a line in The Guard which sums up both the brilliant fish out of water hysterics of John Michael McDonagh’s movie and the frequent underestimation of small-time folks. Brendan Gleeson’s unorthodox underdog cop would at first seem to be out of his depth as international drug smuggling makes landfall on his bleak rural Irish community. That line delivered by Don Cheadle’s FBI agent Everrett – “You know, I can’t tell if you’re really motherf***in’ dumb, or really motherf***in smart” is not only hilarious, but proves that no matter where you’re from, you’ve either got smarts or you haven’t. The fact is, Boyle knows all too well; he is just not arsed, confrontational and only looking forward to his prostitute appreciating day off. There’s more to Gleeson’s initially, couldn’t give a shit anti-hero and it’s a familiar turn from an always fascinating actor. To say Gleeson is now the go-to guy for this sort of subversive portrayal would be discourteous; he is far better than that and here he is as captivating, charismatic and equally scathing as ever. While always managing to be inexplicably hilarious; the economy of how Gleeson continues to deliver profanity is side-splitting; in no small part due to a hysterical screenplay, ingrained with riotous dialogue by McDonagh again. Admittedly, themes of culture class and prejudice are somewhat bludgeoned in on the not so subtle undercurrent of perceptions of Americans, Irish and English, parodying convention as much as anything else, but in both language and tone it’s not really concerned with trying to upset the feelings of any one, it is a fine line but it’s clever without victimising and just as smart beneath the surface as Gleeson’s rebel. When agent Everett arrives with Gleeson’s dissident further wrapping the knuckles when handling racial sensibilities, Cheadle adds even more mirth in a welcome deviation, the true fish out of water when handling an international scale investigation with feckless, corrupt support; forming an unlikely allegiance with Boyle to provide an unconventional but brilliant buddy cop story to bring down Mark Strong’s band of philosophical cocaine dealers. But this is every bit Gleeson’s film, bringing further heart felt dimension to his central nonconformist, with a sickly mammy played by Fionulla Flanagan showing that this rogue has a care. An Olympic swimming fourth place (?) and a chequered past tells of just how literally and metaphorically equipped this caustic minnow is at swimming with the narcotic peddling sharks. The Guard is immensely entertaining and hilarious, with Gleeson proving never judge an underdog by his grizzled cover – he’ll bite your ankles! Advertisements |
A rugged phone with a near-indestructible screen that doesn't compromise on performance and usability Kyocera is probably best known for making "those rugged phones" for just about every carrier out there, but the just-announced Brigadier on Verizon has a few things special about it. The headline feature here is the all-new Sapphire Shield display, which the Brigadier uses instead of a traditional glass-covered display to provide drastically higher screen durability. It makes a traditionally-rugged Kyocera phone even more indestructible, all without compromising features like visibility or touchscreen sensitivity. But a synthetic sapphire-coated display isn't the only worthwhile feature of the Kyocera Brigadier — this phone actually has much higher specs than your average mid-range phone from the manufacturer. It all adds up to a great combination for those who need a phone that can basically go anywhere and look no worse for the wear. Read along for our first impressions of the Kyocera Brigadier and a torture test of its Sapphire Shield display. Hardware, specs and durability It's big, heavy and covered in rubber — but that comes with the territory. The Kyocera Brigadier is a lot of things, but attractive is not one of them. That comes with the extreme durability that this phone brings, and of course Kyocera has a bit of branding to keep up as well. There are big hefty rubber bumpers all around the device, a handful of exposed screws, easy-to-press buttons and big flaps over all the ports, but that's why this phone is so tough. The Brigadier is Military Standard 810G compliant, meaning it's far more rugged than your average "rugged" phone — resistant to water up to six feet for 30 minutes, driving dust and sand, shocks, high and low temperature and dozens of drops from four feet. With all of that extra protection the Brigadier is understandably larger and heavier than you'd expect for a 4.5-inch device, but it isn't completely unwieldy. The extra rubber along the sides actually does help you hold onto the phone, and while I could do without the physical navigation buttons at the bottom at least they're in the "proper" layout and easy to press. You also get a dedicated camera button and a "programmable key" on the opposite side that can be used to launch apps, bring down your notification bar or just wake the device. On the inside, you're thankfully getting rather high-end specs for a phone like this — not the low-end stuff you expect. We're looking at a 4.5-inch 720 x 1280 display, a Snapdragon 400 processor at 1.4GHz, 2GB of RAM, 16GB storage (MicroSD expandable), 3100mAh battery, 802.11ac Wifi, Bluetooth 4.0 and an 8MP rear camera. The Brigadier also packs one of Kyocera's great technologies, a bone conducting speaker, which makes calls easy to hear in any situation. There's also Qi wireless charging, which is great to see on a phone with a flap over the USB port. The Kyocera Brigadier isn't going to win any design awards or compete toe-to-toe with the latest flagships, but for someone who needs the extra protection it will be a drastically less-compromising device than previous models. It has enough under the hood to not have slowdowns, the external aspects are a bit on the ugly side by overall standards but aren't horrible, and the few extra hardware features are actually useful. Sapphire Shield display Though all of the "sapphire screen" talk has been circling around the iPhone 6 for the past few months, Kyocera is putting its expertise in synthetic sapphire to work with a "Sapphire Shield" covering on the Brigadier. This 4.5-inch display and bezels are covered edge-to-edge with synthetic sapphire, which is dramatically tougher than glass of any type, even the latest Gorilla Glass product. It's tougher against scratches, impacts and shatters — just what we all want in our phones. I wish every phone's screen was this insanely durable. I took the opportunity to put the Sapphire Shield display to the test, doing things to this phone's screen that I wouldn't dare attempt on any other device that I wanted to keep using. I took the Brigadier and dropped (or basically threw) it into gravel, dirt full of rocks, a manhole cover, pavement and brick, with a short stoppage to grind my set of keys on it. The result? Three dings on the screen so small that I wasn't able to actually pick them up on camera. That's just incredibly impressive, and you wouldn't ever expect any phone with a traditional glass screen to survive even one of those drops without significant damage to the screen. Naturally the extra protection of a thick bezel and shockproofing helps out a bit, but there's no doubt that having this Sapphire Shield technology in a "regular" smartphone would dramatically improve its durability. We know the plastic and metal around the edges of our devices are going to get dinged up over time, what we really don't want to get destroyed is the screen we look at and interact with every day. And as I noted earlier, all of that display durability comes at no cost, as the Brigadier's display looks absolutely fantastic. Sure it isn't 1080p but at 4.5-inches I have no real issues with 720p — it's the quality and technology that makes a difference. It's no stretch at all to say that this is the best display I've ever seen on a Kyocera phone, and there's a great chance it'll look this good for the life of the device. Software and performance Though Kyocera has put a drastically-improved display and specs in the Brigadier, it's still loading up some pretty atrocious-looking software. While I understand the necessity of having a rugged exterior to the phone, there's no real reason why the software needs to look this rugged. The fake chrome, drop shadows and neon lights remind me of the software of yesteryear, and really just doesn't have any place on a modern phone. The Brigadier isn't sluggish like other low-end Kyocera phones. Fortunately due to improved specs and possibly some optimization under the hood (it is running Android 4.4, after all) , the software is in no way sluggish like other lower-end Kyocera phones. Swap in the Google Now Launcher and you've gotten rid of a bulk of the badly-designed software, though the lockscreen and settings are still a bit like nails on a chalkboard for me. That's pretty easily sidestepped, but I still wish Kyocera would tone down the over-the-top rugged and macho software interface. In terms of daily use, the Brigadier performed beyond my expectations. The software is smooth and capable, and I never noticed a slowdown in the days I've had it. The 8MP camera is also quite capable, but won't be producing many pictures worth framing — just like any other phone in this range. The Verizon LTE network (I refuse to call it XLTE) has seriously improved since my last time using it here in Seattle as well, which is a plus — I never had a speedtest under 20mbps down / 10mbps up, no matter the time of day. Bottom line |
You will forgive us for not bowing to journalistic convention and referring to a "perception" of influence-peddling when talking about Ontario's useless party financing laws. There is no "perception" that something is awry. The fact of the matter is that, thanks to the province's legislated indifference to normal standards of behaviour and morality, Ontario's Liberal government practises the systematic selling of access to wealthy donors from the corporate and labour worlds. The Toronto Star reported on Tuesday that the Liberal Party assigns high-ranking cabinet ministers annual fundraising quotas of as much as $500,000, and expects them to raise that money by hitting up wealthy stakeholders in the economic sectors affected by the departments they run. The money is raked in at swish, high-cost dinners that promise intimate access to ministers and to Premier Kathleen Wynne. The Star's revelation comes just weeks after The Globe and Mail reported that energy-industry insiders paid $6,000 each for one-on-one access to Ms. Wynne and to Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli at a dinner in Toronto on March 10. Story continues below advertisement The Ontario Liberal Party has turned ministers into salespeople, giving them hard quotas and telling them to sell the one product every lobbyist wants – uncontrolled access to the levers of government. It is a practice so unbecoming that a former Liberal finance minister, Dwight Duncan, says he quit politics in 2013 partly because he was "sick" of being asked to hustle for the party. The Liberals aren't alone in this. The provincial Progressive Conservatives and NDP also take advantage of laws so lax that they might as well not exist, for all the good they do. The same applies to the laws in British Columbia where, as The Globe revealed on Tuesday, the Liberals hold secretive events that trade intimate access to Premier Christy Clark for as much as $10,000 a person. Both provinces need to join the 21st century and legislate an end to their respective cash-for-access anarchy. The federal government did it a decade ago, banning donations from corporations and unions and limiting the size of personal donations. A rapidly backpedalling Ms. Wynne promised on Tuesday that her government will "bring forward a plan" in the fall that will include "transitioning away from corporate and union donations." Why a premier in a majority government needs to take so long is a mystery. You can be sure, though, that right up until the moment any changes are enacted, her ministers will continue to pound the pavement like the door-to-door salespeople they have become. |
Search Gallery ---Second Renaissance--- Green New Deal: Colorado River Authority YNot1989 92 Advertisement Advertisement Flag of the President of the United States YNot1989 69 Flags of the Planetary Commonwealths YNot1989 144 Bradbury Map YNot1989 93 New Virginia Map YNot1989 121 Free Associations YNot1989 105 European Association YNot1989 167 Association of East Asia YNot1989 176 The Atlantis Colony YNot1989 180 Earth 2160: Epilogue YNot1989 129 The Great Experiment YNot1989 114 Final Act - American Theater YNot1989 97 Bradbury YNot1989 48 New Virginia YNot1989 71 Endgame in Eurasia YNot1989 109 African Theater YNot1989 127 South Asian Theater YNot1989 87 The Battle of Washington YNot1989 134 European Theater: 2136 YNot1989 135 American Theater YNot1989 145 United States of Aztlan YNot1989 126 Washington DC: 2133 YNot1989 83 2132: Dusk YNot1989 126 Second Martian Revolution YNot1989 96 |
Remember that part in Casino Royale when Bond sips his martini, realizes he has been poisoned, then rushes out to his Aston Martin to inject himself with the antidote that Q thoughtfully stashed beforehand? This is exactly like that. Except, instead of Daniel Craig (*sigh*), it’s with worm larvae. The roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans is a favorite laboratory model organism of geneticists and developmental biologists, mainly because it is simple, transparent, and easy to grow in bulk. Most worm researchers use the standard N2 strain, typically called the Bristol strain because it was isolated from mushroom compost in Bristol, England, in 1951. Having a common reference strain like this is undoubtedly useful for labs spread across the world. But, like all species, C. elegans harbors genetic variability. Studies of wild strains can yield insights that would be missed if we assumed that N2 represented the entirety of worm genetics. pha-1 is an essential gene in the N2 reference strain. N2 worms that have mutant pha-1 have pharyngeal defects (hence its name), so the gene was thought to be required for the development of the pharynx, which C. elegans use to eat. The lethality that results from a lack of pha-1 can be suppressed by mutations in another gene, sup-35; if sup-35 is inactivated, it doesn’t matter if pha-1 is inactivated, too. And, sup-35 over-expression mimics a loss of pha-1. The two genes obviously counteract each other. When researchers looked at the genomes of wild worms from Hawaii, they noticed that they don’t have pha-1. So, clearly, the gene cannot be essential for worm development. When they crossed males from this wild strain with hermaphrodites that were N2 (that’s just how it works in these worms), half of the offspring died as embryos. This didn’t happen when the cross was done the other way around—N2 males and Hawaiian hermaphrodites. There was no lethality. The antidote This pattern is consistent with the N2 mother bestowing a toxin on all of her offspring, and only those offspring that produce an antidote survive. The gene for the antidote is found in the N2 genome but not in the genome from the wild strain, which is why half of the progeny die in some crosses. A lot of other genetic evidence, from this work as well as previous studies in other labs, bolstered this idea. It turns out that pha-1’s essential function in the N2 genetic background is not in pharynx formation. Rather, pha-1 is necessary to act as an antidote to the toxin made by N2 moms and encoded by the sup-35 gene. That’s why N2 worms with nonfunctional pha-1 develop OK if sup-35 is not around. Since this genetic interaction had only been studied in the standard laboratory strain, its nature had been completely misinterpreted. Selfish genetic elements like this sup-35/pha-1 dyad “subvert the laws of Mendelian segregation to promote their own transmission,” writes Ben-David. “Selfish elements can kill individuals that do not inherit them.” In addition to being crazy cool, this might have practical implications: since these elements will spread really well through populations, maybe we could hijack them to alter pathogen vectors, like mosquitoes, in the wild. Of course, we may want to take our time with that, given we don’t yet really have a handle on how they work. One thing we do know, though: in worms at least, it is not only the mom that can lethally poison the brood. Ben-David’s lab previously identified another selfish genetic element, and this one had a sperm-delivered toxin. Science, 2017. DOI: 10.1126/science.aan0621 (About DOIs). |
Graffiti Sessions is a three day event that welcomes authorities, academics, policy makers, artists, writers, community members and urban managers to come together in order to question value, creativity and control in relation to street art and graffiti. You can sign up for tickets at graffitisessions.com/register. If you are a staff member or student at a university, or UCL Alumni, you can purchase a one-day ticket and receive entrance for the other two days complimentary (to benefit, you must email Chloe Griffith c.griffith@csm.arts.ac.uk to confirm which additional days you would like to attend for free). Programme 3rd December, Purcell Rooms, Southbank Centre Adam Cooper from the London Mayor’s office, author and cultural criminologist Alison Young, Detective Constable Colin Saysell plus well known UK street artists amongst other high profile urban managers and creatives, join together to discuss “How ‘cops, courts and cleaning’ of graffiti can be more economically and socially sustainable for the publics they serve?” 4th December, UCL, Bartlett School of Architecture Author and political theorist Chantal Mouffe, plus speakers including Alice Pasquini, NuArt, Global Street Art, with other artists, leading academics and urbanists, to ask “Can street art and graffiti practices support claims that they can resocialise, regenerate or otherwise revitalize cities and neighborhoods?” 5th December, LVMH Lecture Theatre, Central Saint Martins Keynotes include Robyn Buseman from Philadelphia Mural Arts programme, Devon Ostrom from Toronto’s Beautiful City Arts Alliance. Also workshops sessions feeding from discussions held during the first two days of the event aimed to understand “How should policy and practice shift, to take account of contemporary perceptions of graffiti and street art, and what approaches could better represent the diverse communities affected?” This international event based in London brings together three of the most influential centres of arts and learning in the world; UCL, Central Saint Martins and Southbank Centre. The event is organised by Sabina Andron and Dr. Ben Campkin from the UCL Urban Laboratory, Marcus Willcocks and Prof. Lorraine Gamman from the Socially Responsive Design and Innovation Hub at Central Saint Martins, UAL, and Lee Bofkin from Global Street Art. Funded by the Grand Challenge for Sustainable Cities and the Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL, and the Socially Responsive Design and Innovation Hub at CSM. Full programme: graffitisessions.com/programme facebook.com/graffitisessions |
Five women in a village in Jharkhand's Mandar block, barely 40km from state capital Ranchi, were lynched for allegedly practising witchcraft early on Saturday, police said. Sources in the village, who were not party to the crime, told Hindustan Times that it all began with the death of a 17-year-old tribal boy, Bipin Khalko. He died due to a stomach-related ailment last Sunday at Suru Akhra village under Mandar police station. Villagers, who suspected that these five women practiced witchcraft, jumped to a conclusion that they had killed Khalko by using black magic. On Friday night, people from at least four villages held a meeting that began after 9pm and stretched up to midnight. In the meeting, they unanimously decided to eliminate the five women to prevent further deaths in the village. "Every year, these women are claiming 5-7 lives, mostly our young sons and brothers. Lest we kill them, they will continue to claim more lives," said one Xavier at the meeting. Xavier also allegedly led the frenzied crowd in dragging the women out of their homes and killing them. "By the time I reached the spot after hearing about the incident around 1am, the mob had already killed them," said village head Prem Chand Ekka. When police arrived in the morning, the accused villagers showed no remorse for committing the crime and even prevented them from picking the stripped and badly mutilated bodies. And when the police began wielding the baton, all of them came forward to court arrest. The audacious villagers have also submitted a written confession to the police claiming responsibility for the killings and threatened to eliminate two more women who they could not nab. Police had detained over a hundred people, mostly men, and packed them in two buses before sending them to an undisclosed location. The women, who were left behind, marched to the nearby Mandar police station and asked the police to arrest them too. "We have taken control over the situation," said police spokesperson SN Pradhan. He said the villagers have refused to reveal the names of the actual culprits but said they knew about the person who started the lynching. "We will come out with their names soon," he added. The frenzied mob also shooed away local legislator Gangotri Kujur, who reached the village in the morning, and warned her not to meddle in their 'personal affairs'. The incident drew sharp criticism from chief minister Raghubar Das, who described it as a heinous and inhuman act. "Such incidents in this knowledge-driven age is highly unfortunate and the society should come forward united to fight this social evil," said Das, directing senior police officials to punish the culprits. Witchcraft is a major social evil spread across the tribal belts of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and the northeast. Barely a month back, villagers in neighbouring Odisha's Keonjhar district had lynched six members of a family in a similar fashion. In Odisha, around 450 people have reportedly been killed over the years while Jharkhand's social welfare department records show that at least 1046 women were branded as 'witches' and killed since 1995. Despite numerous awareness programmes launched by the government, Jharkhand Police records show gradual increase in the number of witchcraft-related killings -- 36 in 2012, 54 in 2013 and 56 in 2014 (till November). "The state, especially politicians, have since decades turned a blind eye towards this malady as they fear meddling in this social evil would alienate their vote bank," said Premchand, president of the NGO Free Legal Aid Committee that had taken an initiative to introduce the witchcraft prevention act in 1999 in Bihar. He accused that the act is never used and police act only after the murders have already happened. First Published: Aug 08, 2015 15:03 IST |
With iPads, it’s all about the apps, and rightly so sometimes, but not everyone takes full advantage of the native features that Apple builds in to the iPad software for everyone to use. So, for this post I am rounding up ten of the most forgotten iPad features that are awesome for education. No additional apps are required to use any of these features because they work right out of the box. 1. Visual Timer – The Clock app often gets buried in a folder deep among some other apps that you don’t use very much, but if you are looking for a good visual timer, you should look for the Clock app. Just open the Clock app, and tap Timer. You can even choose from a variety of tones to mark the end of your timer. While you are here, take a look at the stopwatch with lap timers for PE, and the world clocks are great for checking the time before Skyping with a class overseas! 🙂 2. Dictionary – Did you know the iPad has a built-in dictionary? Press and hold your finger on any word on a webpage, then let go to select it. A pop-up menu next to the word will allow you to select the option to define the word. The default language of your iPad is the one a word will be defined in, but tapping Manage in the bottom left-hand corner of the definition will let you add foreign language dictionaries too! Try the Spanish-English dictionary for a quick translator. 3. Maps – I think there is a huge amount of potential for using the Maps app in the classroom. Whether it is adding context to a novel you are reading, or analyzing the 3D view of foreign cities in Social Studies. In Math you can use directions to create cross-curricular problems like “How far is it from here to New York and back?” The Maps app is not always 100% up to date, but I would bet it is a lot more up to date than any globe you have in your classroom! 4. Speak Selection/Page – For students that need this accommodation, the ability to have the iPad read the screen aloud is a great option. It works on webpages, PDFs, iBooks and more. To activate it, go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Speech and turning on Speak Selection and/or Speak Screen. Once activated, press and hold on a word to make a selection, then tap speak to hear the words read aloud. To speak the whole screen, swipe down from the top of your screen with two fingers, or tell Siri to speak the screen. The on-screen controls let you pause, skip and adjust the pace. Headphones or earbuds are great to have on hand for just this purpose. 5. Home Screen Bookmarks – There are lots of great websites out there, but not all of them have apps. However, you can make them behave like apps by adding home screen bookmarks. This adds a shortcut to the website on the home screen of your iPad and one tap will take you straight to your favorite educational website. To get started, navigate to the website of your choice in Safari and tap the Share arrow. Choose the Add to Home Screen button and give it a name. The website will then appear as an app icon on your home screen. You can move it around as required or add it to a folder. 6. Record Widescreen Video – This is a tip I picked up from Steve Lai’s blog. The iPad screen has a 4:3 ratio. This means that, by default, any video you record on the iPad will be kind of square and have black bars on the side of it when viewed on a widescreen TV, a laptop, or on YouTube. However, you can fix this by enabling 16:9 (widescreen) video recording. Simply open the camera app, select Video, then double tap the screen to change to a 16:9 aspect ratio. Record your video, then share online without the black bars. Genius. 7. Automatic Updates – Are you haunted by the red number on the App Store? Is the password for your school’s Apple ID so top secret that you can’t even update your own apps? Turn on Automatic Updates and you will always have the latest version of all your apps. To check and see if this feature is enabled go to Settings > iTunes and App Store, and toggle the switch next to Updates to enable automatic app updates on your iPad. 8. Lock Rotation – When presenting with the iPad to a groups of students (or teachers) there are few things more distracting than a rotating iPad screen that flips and turns at the slightest turn of your wrist. If you lock your screen, you can solve this problem. Simply swipe up from the bottom edge of your screen to reveal the Control Center. Then tap the padlock with the circular arrow around it to lock your screen. Once locked, you should see the same lock icon in the top right-hand corner of your screen next to the battery indicator. Locking screens is also a great tip when using iPads with preschool or early elementary students who may get frustrated by all that tilting and rotating. 9. AirDrop – This one won’t be for everyone, but if you have a newer iPad you can take advantage of a great feature called AirDrop. With AirDrop enabled, you can send photos, videos and other files to another iPad or Mac wirelessly and without email. Students could use this to share photos or video clips with each other while working on a group iMovie project, or to turn in assignments to a teacher’s Macbook. Just beware of the space sloth. 10. Safari Reader Mode – The web is an amazing resource for teachers, but it can be a cluttered and distracting place at the same time. Safari’s reader mode helps with that and provides a clean, easy-to-read text that has no ads, sidebars, or other distractions. To activate Reader mode, look for the four horizontal lines on the left hand-side of Safari’s address bar. Tap them to turn Reader mode on and off and be amazed at the difference! So, these are ten of my top picks. What’s your best tip or trick for iPad classrooms? Leave a comment below. |
Illustration by Marie Isabelle Marbella Janice is 60 years old and, for many years, sold sex. "The police knew us and our flat and knew it was run well," Janice tells Broadly. Under British law, the flats she worked from would be classed as brothels by virtue of the fact that more than one sex worker was based there. For a while, police turned a blind eye. Then in 2012, the flat was raided. "It was a terrible shock when they turned against me," she says. During the raid, £13,000 in money and jewelry was confiscated by the police under the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA). According to Janice, both had been given to her by her mother. However, as her mum was dead and she had no paper evidence of the gift, they were seized. Janice was ordered to pay an additional £2,000 in court costs for challenging the confiscation order. Two weeks after the case finished, the flat was raided again and Janice was prosecuted for brothel keeping. At the trial, Janice was found not guilty. However, the initial £13,000 wasn't returned and she still owed the court fees from the initial POCA challenge. Janice is now in the process of complaining to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. "They took my life savings, including money from my mom," she says. "They even tried to take my home. I was left with nothing after a lifetime of hard work. I'm not young anymore and don't know how I'll manage. My life has been turned upside down. My family found out what job I was doing and that has caused a lot of upset." Janice's story isn't unique. Last year, Kent Police confiscated nearly £40,000 from two women accused of running a brothel in Folkestone. One woman was forced to sell her home to pay the confiscation order or face an additional jail sentence. Read More: The Insidious Myth of the 'Unrapeable' Sex Worker Commenting at the time, Detective Chief Inspector Emma Banks said: "Officers worked long and hard to bring this particular case to its conclusion and this demonstrates that we will use the Proceeds of Crime Act wherever and whenever possible." POCA was created in 2002 to aid the recovery of assets gained through criminal activity. Between its implementation and 2013, more than £12 million has been confiscated by the police relating to brothels, prostitution, pornography, and pimps. Of this, the police were awarded £2.26 million and the Crown Prosecution Service £1.78 million. It can be used under civil legislation, meaning the burden of proof is reversed: the defendant must prove where assets came from. The burden of proof is lower under civil legislation, so POCA can be used even when a criminal conviction might not be possible. In a criminal trial, the case must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt; whereas in a civil trial, one party's case need only be more probable than the other. Photo by Nemanja Glumac via Stocksy In another 2015 case, a former sex worker was pursued under POCA ten years after her conviction. A decade ago, she had been busted for working with another woman. Although she only had £300 in assets at the time, it was estimated she had made £50,000 from selling sex. Last year, she was back in court after the prosecution discovered she now owned a house. Although the woman is now a care worker earning £19,000 a year, the judge gave her six months to hand over £50,000 or face an 18 month prison sentence. "What POCA has done is make some things more simplistic," Mick Beattie of the Regional Asset Recovery Team tells Broadly. "Prior to this legislation it was often necessary to prove direct links between actual offending and criminal property ownership. Now the court has more discretion and under certain circumstances can make an assumption, based on the evidence presented to them, that suggest the asset is a result of criminal activity." However, Alex Feis-Bryce, CEO of National Ugly Mugs, a scheme that provides safety alerts for an estimated 20,000 sex workers, believes that police pursuit of sex workers' assets is taking the place of protecting their safety. [Police] can take every penny earned from years of hard work—her house, her savings, her car, her jewellery, even her children's and other family members' money. "POCA often skews police priorities, incentivizing and targeting sex work premises that they see as easy hits to boost their resources rather than the small proportion where sex workers are at risk of harm or coercion," he says. "The National Policing Sex Work guidelines explicitly state that police should prioritize sex worker safety and only pursue enforcement as a last resort if serious organised crime is taking place or sex workers are being subjected to harm. Many of the premises that are currently raided or are ones run by sex workers working together for safety." Nigel Richardson, criminal defence lawyer and partner at Hodge Jones & Allen, says his law firm deals annually with around 30 cases for sex workers, half of which will involve POCA. "The majority of the cases we have dealt with have involved women working in an entirely consensual fashion, either for themselves or in an agency or massage parlor where they are just employees," Richardson says. Sex workers run into trouble, he says, due to the "restrictive nature of the law." Money made selling your own sexual services is legal, but the fact that so many surrounding activities—working together in a flat, any administrative work around a running a brothel, soliciting—are illegal means that money generated is deemed criminal. Given the informal nature of much sex work, it can be nigh on impossible to prove which money is which. Read More: Stigma Puts Sex Workers at Higher Risk of HIV "Anything that falls into the 'illegal activity' realm and is successfully prosecuted is subject to POCA proceedings," Richardson says. "Cash that the police find on a raid can be seized and, unless the owner can prove that it was legitimately obtained, it can be confiscated. This is obviously a problem for women working in the black economy of prostitution." A recent case supported by Hodge Jones & Allen involved a sex worker who had asked the owner of her massage parlor if she could work day shifts in return for opening and supervising the premises. She was prosecuted for assisting in the management of a brothel and police tried to confiscate £8,000 in cash, which she had earned through her personal sex work. Her lawyer was able to reach a settlement but, for many sex workers, this isn't the case. The English Collective of Prostitutes has supported numerous women through POCA proceedings. Mother-of-two, Jenny, from Guildford, called the police when men threatened to torch her working flat. Police didn't pursue her attackers; instead, they charged her with brothel-keeping and begin POCA proceedings against her. Jenny lost her home and life savings. Monica from Wolverhampton was forced to pay £10,000. At the time, her baby had passed away from cot death; she was made to hand over the £1,000 she'd saved for the headstone. "Raids and arrests of sex workers have increased since the introduction of the Proceeds of Crime Act as police now have the added motivation that they can take women's money," says Niki Adams of ECP. "Their powers are draconian and they can take every penny earned from years of hard work—her house, her savings, her car, her jewellery, even her children's and other family members' money." A spokesperson for the Crown Prosecution Service told Broadly: "Confiscation orders are sought to deprive criminals of the benefits of their crimes and to cause maximum disruption to future criminal activity. The CPS seeks confiscation in cases which will achieve these objectives, regardless of the type of crime being committed." Critics suggest that POCA's confiscation legislation leaves much to be desired. Even outside the gray area of sex work, estimates of criminal earnings can be unrealistic. In many cases, the threat of a prison sentence which goes with an unpaid confiscation order can seem harsh. Janice doesn't mince her words. "The police are vindictive," she says. "They have massive powers and use them against women whose only crime is to earn money for our family." |
If you asked Aaron Draplin how he gets so much done, he’ll pretty much tell you that he doesn’t know any other way. Outsiders can easily attribute the designer’s success to “hard work” but they’d be severely understating Draplin’s maniacal blue-collar hustle as he has painstakingly built his career, brick-by-brick, into a wide-ranging empire. The Portland-based designer has his hands in a wide range of projects—like creating top notch logos for clients, making merch for his favorite bands, or getting designers fired up at his 40-plus speaking dates per year. And if client work for folks like Nike, Burton, and President Obama weren’t enough, Draplin has a healthy portfolio of self-commissioned work and businesses— like his brand of notebooks (Field Notes) and the Draplin Design Company (or DDC)—that generate just as much revenue as the logos he is known for. We sat down with Draplin to find out how he keeps the DDC factory floor operating at full capacity day and night, his lucky break that started his series of “speaking fiascos,” and his successful transition from employee to freelancer where he tripled his wage in one year. — You do a lot of things beyond just sitting in front of your computer hammering out logos and Powerpoints for your clients. How do you break it all up through your year? I’m slowing down with the logos…. and I do Field Notes, maybe a couple of days a month. The speaking gigs take a lot of time and it’s fun to be on the road. The good thing is, I can get a lot done on the plane. Everyone wants to take you out for a drink but I don’t even really drink; I’m kind of saving that for some point later in my life maybe! So I’ll go back to the hotel room and work… A normal day is to just rip down to my shop. I always have a list of things to do in my Field Notes and I tackle what’s at the top of the list. If it’s a logo, then I’m doing that… I’m just trying to enjoy this (and make a shit wag of money of course). I take care of a lot of people with this stuff—will I slow down? I guess so, but I don’t really know how to. How did you decide you were going to become a professional designer? I started living my wild life at 19 when I decided to leave Michigan and head out West to Mt. Bachelor to snowboard full time. When I was 22 it was my fourth winter as a snowboarder and it was fun, but I asked myself, “Was I really making leaps in my life?” I was into design and had already gone to work in Alaska to save for a computer and I had friends who worked for snowboard companies making graphics, but those guys had gone to design school. So I went to design school as I felt that you needed to have a degree to even get hired, which of course is total bullshit. So I went to design school as I felt that you needed to have a degree to even get hired, which of course is total bullshit. However the blessing there was that going to school allowed me to go and spend two years and have this incredible discourse about design. Some of it was very fluffy and some of it very elite, but some of it was also very down-to-earth where it was confirmed to me that it was how I wanted to make a living. It taught me that I was ready to go. Does coming from an action sports background affect your aesthetic? I’d like to think that what I did what was appropriate for that world. Riding snowboards really pushed me to make things that I wouldn’t really make, but those things were right for their line … Designers should have styles, but when clients call you, do what is appropriate for them. If it works out that it happens to be your style, then great. If not, then you have to go and figure out new territory. You worked full time for a studio job before going into the contract world, what was that like? I did studio work just long enough— two years—to get freaked out because we were spending so much time talking about shit, making a lot of design, and then debating it in meetings and it was kind of wasteful. It’s not their fault, it’s just the process. It just scared me and I thought, “I don’t want to be in the situation where I don’t like what I work on, so I’ve got to jump out.” We’d play ping-pong all day and it was awesome but at the end of the day I thought, “What am I doing?” We’d still have to be in there at 9 a.m. just to try to sneak out of there by 7.30 p.m. and I was like I could have come in from 12 to 4 and just slayed it and gone home! It’s what inspired me to go out on my own. Because when I went out on my own I could just build the day to whatever I wanted it to be. I went out on my own I could just build the day to whatever I wanted it to be. What does the staff of D.D.C (Draplin Design company) consist of? It’s me! Well, my girlfriend Leigh does the shipping, but otherwise it’s me. All the management, all the billing, all the check cashing, oh God, I love cashing those fucking checks!… All the behind the scenes work is me, account management to janitorial services! To answer your question, why is anyone doing design work? We are doing it for the love of it, sure. That’s why I value my side projects like Field Notes and my thick line posters, but why am I making these logos? Because you make fucking money! You talk about making a plan and sticking to your plan. Did you have a plan at the beginning, and do you still have a plan now? The planning is really this: Is my rent paid? Yeah. Is my car payment paid? Yeah. Is my insurance paid? Yeah. Then what happens when you have all that paid off and you kind of go, “There’s no more house and car payment and everything is in the positive”? You have this level of freedom, an internal freedom where you can be like, “Why don’t I make some really cool posters? What’s the risk? If they don’t sell I’ll give them to my buddies!” And then they started to sell. And then there’s the first time someone likes what you do and then comes and says, “Come speak to us.” And then suddenly I’m on a plane making this presentation and they dug it! That was the first time speaking at an event and I was filling in for legendary graphic designer David Carson, a big name. And suddenly then I’m making room to do the merchandise for all these speaking tours I am doing. Then that takes off, I have now done over 180 speaking dates, 42 last year alone. It’s kind of scaring me. It’s nice to have the money coming in but now I have to make room for less logos just to handle the merch. There is no planning for that, it just sort of happens. How do you judge success for a project, whether it’s client work for Target or merch for a friend’s small music gig? Did I meet their brief? Did they love it? Do I love it, selfishly? Does it work in context? That’s my bar. Can I make them something that makes them feel successful with what their message is? A lot of that comes down to the client. Are they happy with it? Done. How far do you push clients, to get your way? Here’s you how you make a good logo: You show them good shit. Seriously, if you give them bullshit then they are going to find a way to be bummed. But if you sense that you have put your best foot forward and show them work you think is awesome and they kill it, then get out and drop the client. Because it’s not going to get it any better. Push it through a couple of rounds and then say, “You know what guys, I’m not the right fit. I’m going to go and take naps instead of doing this.” How close is the viral video you made—”Make a logo in 15 Minutes” (above)—to your actual process? Sometimes you have to sketch, sketch, sketch and sketch and sketch and sketch. You have to put in the work. You have to put the muscle in… It’s not necessarily reality but it’s fun to see, but that is the normal process. Sometimes you nail one right away and other times it takes a couple of weeks and you show a bunch of stuff. You’re on record saying that designers should be wary of certain business professionals: telemarketers, TSA agent, transportation security, pickpockets, DMV professionals, horse thieves, tax collectors, and web-developers. Why web developers? It’s a joke: Web developers are going to inherit the world. Whatever stupid app web developers are already developing that is going to die tomorrow and won’t work for me later on tonight, they make the money from that. Can I laugh at the relationship that a web developer holds over a graphic designer? Yes, I can. Because they hold the keys and wield them the way they want… But I’ve got tons of buddies who are web developers and they love that joke. Because those guys make a shit ton of money, as they should. Did you have a moment when you felt like you hit the big leagues? There’ve been some clients like Nike, or when I worked on the Mr. Obama thing … But it’s tough because the taste in my mouth wasn’t all that good, because the bigger the job, the more complicated it is. It’s more like whatever amalgamation of whatever I did that stacked up allowed me to pay off my house, that’s when it feels like the big time! It’s like a soft explosion in me, it really snuck up on me. I just thought, “You have made a living doing what you like and it’s going really good, so do not fuck this up!” I didn’t feel like I made it because of one job but because of all the tiny steps. By hopefully going the extra mile, and when someone complained about something I adjusted it…No questions asked. I just thought, “You have made a living doing what you like and it’s going really good, so do not fuck this up!” What is your advice for a young designer that would want to follow in your footsteps? A stringent diet of pizza. It’s so hard to answer that stuff…There’s no battle plan, but just be prepared and be thankful for every job that you get.…Sometimes I see that my buddies aren’t doing any work, and that resonates. I makes me think, “Oh man, how could I ever say no to another logo gig?” It makes me appreciate every single job. |
91 SHARES Facebook Twitter Linkedin Reddit Adventure Time: Magic Man’s Head Games is a whimsical Gear VR 3D platformer featuring all of your favorite characters from the show. Fans of Adventure Time better keep their eyes peeled in the coming months though, as the game is ‘coming soon’ to Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR. If you watch Adventure Time, you know Magic Man is a big jerk – always turning people into things and prancing around like a big magic bully. Using Finn’s sword and and Jake’s stretchy powers to battle the tattered Martian, your mission is ultimately to lift a curse that has turned you, the player, into a tiny 3rd-person balloon. Oh yeah. Your name is Tiny. See Also: New ‘Adventure Time’ Gear VR Game Released, Gameplay Footage Revealed Cartoon Network and Turbo Button announced the game’s new multi-headset support via a tweet Saturday, which – much like the Gear VR version – will likely use a system-compatible gamepad for input. MAGIC! Adventure Time: Magic Man's Head Games is coming to Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, & Playstation VR! You're welcome. pic.twitter.com/Xgfor3PXTJ — CartoonNetwork Games (@CNGames) January 30, 2016 Not long ago creator of the series, Pendleton Ward, started tweeting a rash of VR-themed drawings, showing just how much he actually knew about virtual reality – which turns out to be quite a bit. We’re still waiting for Ward to bankroll the VR-bubbletea-facehole-massage table. Another VR furniture concept. honestly.. just put "VR Flying" on a massage table or a doin-it swing and I'll buy it. pic.twitter.com/VvUUL8NV0w — Pendleton Ward (@buenothebear) August 18, 2015 Adventure Time: Magic Man’s Head Games is only $4.99 on the Gear VR store, a steal for such a high quality game that perfectly matched the show’s characteristic animation style with original voice acting from the Adventure Time cast. The Gear VR version is currently only available in USA and Canada. |
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court seems deeply divided over the arrangement devised by the Obama administration to spare faith-based groups from having to pay for birth control for women covered under their health plans. The court's conservative justices sounded supportive Wednesday of the groups' complaint that the administration's effort violates their religious rights. The four liberal justices seem likely to vote to uphold the accommodation offered to faith-based colleges, charities and advocacy groups. Affordable Care Act not so affordable A 4-4 tie would uphold four appeals court rulings in favor of the administration. But different rules would apply in parts of the country in which another appeals court has sided with the challengers. Wednesday was the sixth anniversary of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul; the case in front of the justices was the law's fourth Supreme Court appearance in five years. The issue this time is the arrangement the administration devised to make sure that religiously oriented groups do not have to pay for or arrange the provision of contraceptives to which they object, while ensuring that women covered under their health plans still can obtain birth control. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy voiced sympathy for the groups' claim that they remain complicit in providing morally objectionable contraceptives under the government's plan. "Hijacking. It seems to me that's an accurate description of what the government wants to do," Roberts said. Kennedy also used that word during 90 minutes of crisp arguments and frequent interruptions by the justices. Only Justice Clarence Thomas asked no questions, but he has repeatedly sided with the health law's challengers. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the administration's arrangement takes into account women who are covered by the affected plans and "have a real need for contraception." Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan also asked questions that signaled their support for the administration. Eight justices are hearing the case, following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia last month. The challengers could find it hard, without Scalia, to attract the five votes they need to prevail. Contraception is among a range of preventive services that must be provided at no extra charge under the health care law. The administration pointed to research showing that the high cost of some methods of contraception discourages women from using them. A very effective means of birth control, the intrauterine device, can cost up to $1,000. Merrick Garland faces GOP roadblock as Supreme Court nominee Houses of worship and other religious institutions whose primary purpose is to spread the faith are exempt from the birth control requirement. Other faith-affiliated groups that oppose some or all contraception have to tell the government or their insurers that they object. The groups say doing so leaves them complicit because the government is using their insurers and health plans to provide the contraception. In 2014, the justices divided 5-4, with Scalia in the majority, to allow some "closely held" businesses with religious objections to refuse to pay for contraceptives for women. That case involved the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores and other companies that said their rights were being violated under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The nonprofit groups are invoking the same law in asking that the government find a way that does not involve them or their insurers if it wishes to provide birth control to women covered by their health plans. Among the challengers are Bishop David Zubik, head of the Catholic Diocese in Pittsburgh; the Little Sisters of the Poor, nuns who run more than two dozen nursing homes for impoverished seniors; evangelical and Catholic colleges in Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington, D.C., and the anti-abortion advocacy group Priests for Life. SCOTUS exempts Hobby Lobby from covering birth control in health plans The groups argue that the administration already has carved out exemptions and encourages people who can't get contraceptives through their employers to use the health care exchanges that were created by the health care law and serve millions of people. The administration contends that tens of thousands of women would be disadvantaged by a ruling for the groups. The court will consider whether the accommodation offered by the administration violates the group's rights under the religious freedom law. Even if it does, the administration still could show that it has a "compelling interest" in the provision of contraception and that its plan is the most reasonable way, or "least restrictive means" of getting birth control to women covered by the groups' health plans. Nationwide, eight appeals courts have sided with the administration and one has ruled for the groups. A 4-4 outcome would leave a mess, because different rules would apply in different parts of the country. The Supreme Court takes on cases in order to lay down uniform nationwide rules. |
San Diego continues to lower its greenhouse-gas emission thanks largely to California’s tough environmental rules, according to an annual monitoring report released Wednesday that tracks the progress of the city’s ambitious Climate Action Plan. The city has pledged to dramatically reduce its carbon footprint by using 100 percent green energy within the next two decades and getting tens of thousands of people to ditch their car commute in favor of riding transit, bicycling and walking. Specifically, the city has committed to slashing its greenhouse gases 15 percent below 2010 levels by 2020 and 50 percent below that benchmark by 2035. The goals are intended to mirror the state targets of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and 40 percent below that by 2030. The report released Wednesday found that in 2016 the city had already cut its emissions by 19 percent, a two percentage point improvement from the previous year. The report largely attributed that progress to the state’s strict vehicle-emissions standards and renewable energy requirements on utilities, such as San Diego Gas & Electric. Mayor Kevin Faulconer acknowledged the role that state standards have played in helping the city meet its short-term goal, while also highlighting local efforts to use renewable diesel and battery power to run municipal vehicles, such as construction equipment, trash trucks and street sweepers. “I’m happy to report that we continue to be ahead of schedule,” Faulconer said at a news conference Wednesday. A number of businesses and environmental groups also attended to show their support, including the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, Center for Sustainable Energy and Circulate San Diego. The city’s first climate plan progress report released in November last year showed that the city had already met its 2020 emissions reduction goal before the plan was approve because of the statewide standards. Faulconer said the city is making progress on a number of local fronts. “One of the greatest contributing factors to our success so far has been improving fuel efficiency,” he said. “Yes, efficiency standards keep getting stronger, and we’ve also taken the initiative to make sure we’re replacing gas-guzzling city vehicles with newer more efficient vehicles that produce significantly less pollution or none at all.” The city still faces several major challenges going forward to meet its long-term emissions target. More than half of all emissions in the city come from transportation, and the city has called for commuters living within a half mile of a major transit stop dramatically change their habits. “The city is moving the right direction but given the scope and scale of the climate crisis we need to act bolder if we’re going to cut our carbon footprint in half,” Nicole Capretz, executive director of the San Diego-based Climate Action Campaign. Of commuters in so-called transit priority areas, by 2020 the climate plan calls for 12 percent to ride transit, 3 percent to walk and 6 percent to bicycle. The city has yet to provide data on the progress of this goal. Twitter: @jemersmith Phone: (619) 293-2234 Email: joshua.smith@sduniontribune.com |
UN warnings of the “staggering” number of civilian casualties in Raqqa, Syria that were denied by coalition commanders are no exaggeration, a monitoring group insists. Airwars, a UK-based group that monitors airstrikes and civilian casualties in Iraq, Libya and Syria, reports it has tracked 119 alleged civilian casualty events at Raqqa, claiming up to 770 deaths, between June 6-29. The coalition began its assault on the so-called capital of the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) caliphate, Raqqa, on June 6. It has been accused of having no plan in place for civilian evacuations, and Airwars reports a number of civilians have been killed attempting to flee in boats. The United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights warned at least 173 civilians have been killed by air and ground strikes in Raqqa since June 1, saying this is “likely a conservative estimate and the real death toll may be much higher.” 2) Four June cases where (mostly named) civilians reportedly bombed as they fled Raqqa by boat. Cars also being bombed as civilians flee pic.twitter.com/HX3SqJoJgF — Airwars (@airwars) July 3, 2017 The coalition’s Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - denies the coalition isn’t being careful enough, with coalition commander General Stephen Townsend saying, “show me some evidence of civilian casualties.” In June, the UN’s chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, Paulo Pinheiro, warned the UN Human Rights Council that the fight in Raqqa shouldn’t be “at the expense of civilians,” saying it is “gravely concerned with the mounting number of civilians who perish during airstrikes.” Pinheiro said the airstrikes had resulted in a “staggering loss of life.” Townsend called the UN’s concerns “hyperbolic,” saying the coalition is being, “careful as we need to be and as we can be.” “I would challenge anyone to find a more precise and careful campaign in the history of warfare on this planet,” he told the BBC last week. #Al-Raqqa, #Syria: +100,000 civilians are effectively trapped as the air & ground offensive intensifies https://t.co/aRZkw5TasZ — UN Human Rights (@UNHumanRights) June 30, 2017 “The UN's Commission of Inquiry is one of a number of international agencies, NGOs and monitors which have expressed significant concern in recent weeks at high numbers of reported civilian fatalities around Raqqa from Coalition actions,” Airwars’ Chris Woods told RT. “Rather than attacking the messengers, the US and allies should urgently examine their tactics at Raqqa, improving where necessary protections for civilians on the ground.” “Our present estimate is that around 370-450 civilians have been killed by Coalition airstrikes and artillery at Raqqa in just three weeks,” Airwars said. The group is still working through a significant number of cases to garner a final number of civilian casualties for the month. 2) From June 6 start of assault to June 29 we'd tracked 119 separate alleged civilian casualty events at Raqqa, claiming up to 770 deaths — Airwars (@airwars) July 2, 2017 “All local monitors, plus UN agencies, reporting high civilian casualties at Raqqa for months. Gen Townsend comments smack of complacency,” Airwars said in tweet, pointing to the additional 132 civilian casualties in both Iraq and Syria that the coalition itself reported in June. READ MORE: Civilian death toll rises to 484 from US-led coalition strikes in Iraq & Syria According to Airwars and its sources, the coalition has been targeting boats which are carrying civilians fleeing the battle. The coalition refers to such strikes as hitting “ISIS boats.” “Four June cases where (mostly named) civilians reportedly bombed as they fled Raqqa by boat. Cars also being bombed as civilians flee,” Airwars said in a Tweet. Coalition Airstrikes Destroyed the only 2 Bridges links the south side with north side of the city of #Raqqa Bridges are used by civillans pic.twitter.com/o54v4X25yU — الرقة تذبح بصمت (@Raqqa_SL) February 2, 2017 The coalition says it has nearly sealed off Raqqa, as the Syrian Democratic forces fight on the ground. Two bridges on the northern bank of the Euphates River have been destroyed by the coalition, “and we shoot every boat we find,” Townsend told the New York Times. “If you want to get out of Raqqa right now, you’ve got to build a poncho raft,” he added. Townsend’s comments don’t bode well for civilians desperate to flee the battleground. Between 50,000-100,000 civilians are believed to be trapped in the city. #Raqqa Nedaa & Yasser Khalil AL Keri were killed during their attempt to flee Raqqa by boat ,coalition targeted the boat with Airstrikes — الرقة تذبح بصمت (@Raqqa_SL) June 12, 2017 Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RIBSS), a group of journalists with alleged ties to Turkish authorities, says people have been trying to flee the bombardment with help from local smugglers, but that IS have already planted hundreds of landmines and banned people from leaving. It has reported 358 civilian casualties in Raqqa in June, with 177 coming from ‘warplane attacks’. Between June 21-26 specifically, 88 civilians have died or are missing after coalition shelling or bombing. At least 18 of these were fleeing via car or boat, according to RIBSS, as cited by the Daily Beast. Human rights groups have also criticized the coalition for its use of white phosphorus near civilians, which is against international law. |
The Uttar Pradesh Police conducted 420 encounters with alleged criminals, killing 15, in less than six months since the Yogi Adityanath government came to power, according to official statistics released Friday. Figures released by the Director General of Police headquarters show that a sub-inspector, Jai Prakash Singh, died in one of these encounters with a gang of alleged dacoits in Chitrakoot. Advertising Eighty-eight policemen suffered injuries in the encounters between March 20 and September 14, according to the figures. They show that ten of the alleged criminals were killed in just 48 days leading up to September 14. While IG (Law and Order), Hari Ram Sharma, said that these encounters were part of police’s efforts to “control crime”, questions are being raised over a series of tweets by Rahul Srivastav, public relations officer at the DGP headquarters. On September 2, a day after wanted criminal Sunil Sharma succumbed to injuries sustained in an encounter on the outskirts of Lucknow, Srivastav posted: “#uppolice encounter express halts in the capital… miles to go…” The tweet was accompanied by a news clipping of the encounter. Advertising On September 12, Srivastav posted: “No count is final. It’s 5 now. A 12,000 rewardee criminal Raju succumbed to bullet injuries in Shamli, another got injured in Muzaffarnagar.” When contacted, Srivastav declined comment and referred queries to IG Sharma, who is the spokesperson for the DGP’s office. Sharma said police also arrested 1,106 persons in these encounters in which 84 accused were injured. The officer said that the National Security Act has been invoked against 54 accused while the properties of 69 gangsters were attached under the UP Gangster and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act. “Criminals do not surrender to police without any resistance. Policemen need to fire in retaliation,” he said. Dismissing suggestions that police were portraying these encounters as normal, Sharma said, “Police is accountable to the executive, judiciary, media and people. Every encounter is probed through a magisterial inquiry. The National Human Rights Commission has been informed about the deaths.” ADG (Law and Order) Anand Kumar said, “We have adopted an aggressive and proactive approach towards criminals who are creating fear in society. We are identifying these wanted criminals to arrest them.” Asked about the encounters, Kumar said, “They happen and are not planned. When police work proactively, there are chances that such encounters will happen.” Advertising The BJP government, which took charge on March 19, had faced criticism for its inability to control crime, especially in the initial days of its rule. In June, in an interview telecast on India TV, Adityanath warned: “Agar apradh karenge toh thok diye jayenge (If they commit crimes, they will be hit).” |
It's been two weeks since the Cleveland Browns named Hue Jackson their next head coach, but Jackson admitted Wednesday that he has yet to speak with quarterback Johnny Manziel. "He just wasn't in the first batch of guys," Jackson told Cleveland.com at the Senior Bowl. "But he's definitely on our list." Good news for Browns fans -- Jackson did reach out to Pro Bowl left tackle Joe Thomas, who debated on opting out if he did not like the new coaching staff. "I'm kind of picking guys," he said. "Some I know on this team that I've been involved with at other places. Some I don't know and want to get to know. There's no rhyme or reason why I haven't talked to (Manziel), but it's just the process I'm in right now. I'm just kind of picking the guys as I go." Jackson said he's not "directing anything" at Manziel. "I don't think that's the right thing to do," he said. "One of my philosophies for our organization is talent is important, but character and being a good person and doing the things that we want done as a Cleveland Brown is very important." Jackson added that he hasn't viewed Manziel's newest videos. He intends to address Manziel's offseason once the two meet. "One, I haven't watched it to be very honest with you," he told 92.3 The Fan. "Then, No. 2, it is the offseason, and I would hope that players would do a great job of representing themselves and our organization and our team in a positive light. That's what we want. "And if guys don't, I mean, I think everybody understands and recognizes there's consequences for everything that you do." |
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) scares Wall Street to death. Since Warren has called for breaking up the big banks, Wall Street banksters have threatened to cease donating to Democratic senators, reported Reuters. Because Warren and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) so aggressively attack the banks, representatives of Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America have discussed this plan. In this desperate move, Wall Street is trying to bend the party to its will by cutting donations to Democratic senators. Each of the four banks threatened to cut $15,000 in total contributions to Democratic candidates, nothing truly substantial – but a shot over the bow. Reuters noted that this idea “has been raised in one-on-one conversations between [the bank’s] representatives.” There was no official agreement, and bank representatives said each of their respective institutions will decide its actions independently. Some sources have said that Citigroup has already decided to move on the decision, cutting donations from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Citigroup wants to control the power that Senate Democrats give to Warren. When asked about the money freeze, Citigroup spokesperson Molly Meiners resorted to vague business jargon, saying that the bank “contributes to candidates and parties across the political spectrum that share our desire for pro-business policies that promote economic growth.” The banks’ main goal is to “soften” Warren’s tone against Wall Street, which is puzzling. Wall Street banks can viciously defraud the government and target the American People, but when a courageous, populist senator calls the banks on their malfeasance, they are suddenly the victims. Warren is a favorite among true liberals because of her aggressive, no-nonsense approach to addressing Wall Street and corporate misbehavior. She calls out banks, by name, on their crooked practices. She angered the banks earlier this year by blocking Antonio Weiss’s nomination to the Treasury. Weiss is cozy with Wall Street and would likely have been soft on big banks. The Wall Street banks are doing this because they are afraid. They know how powerful Warren is, and they can’t handle the pressure. If Wall Street thought Warren wasn’t a threat, they wouldn’t have given her a second thought. However, she makes the Wall Street thugs tremble, and they have resorted to desperate measures. Considering most Democrats are weak and would buckle at this situation, Warren is just the person to meet this challenge. She’s tough enough to take on the banks, and will not bend to their will. The banks’ threats will likely just impassion Warren even more. |
Thursday's perfect weather will unfortunately not stick around for Canada Day, with potential thunderstorms expected from the late morning through late afternoon Friday . CBC meteorologist Jay Scotland says the sky will begin to clear for fireworks Friday evening "but northwest winds in the wake of that cold front will be strong with gusts topping 50 km/h possible." If the weather doesn't put a dent in Canada Day celebrations around the city, several road closures might. Queen's Park/Queen's Park Circle from College Street to Bloor Street will be closed from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. for a Canada Day celebration. For the East York's Canada Day event, the following roads will be closed from 7 a.m. to 11:59 p.m.: Cosburn Avenue will be closed from Cedarvale Avenue to Oak Park Road. Virginia Avenue will be closed from Cedarvale Avenue to Cosburn Avenue. Gledhill Avenue will be closed from Holborne Avenue to Cosburn Avenue. The Canada Day parade in Scarborough will result in these road closures: Brimley Road from Progress Avenue to Ellesmere Road from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and from Ellesmere Road to Lawrence Avenue from 4 to 7 p.m . and from Ellesmere Road to Lawrence Avenue from . Ellesmere Road will be closed from Midland Avenue to McCowan Road from 4 to 5 p.m. And these roads will be closed for the Canada Day celebrations at Mel Lastman Square: The southbound lanes of Yonge Street between North York Boulevard and Park Home Avenue will be closed from noon to 11 p.m. The same block will be fully closed to traffic from 7 to 11 p.m. Streets closed for Pride celebrations The following roads will be closed in the Village for the last weekend of Pride Month festivities: Church Street from Carlton Street to Hayden Street will be closed from Friday, July 1 at 6 p.m. to Monday, July 4 at 6 a.m. for the Church Street Pride Festival. Justin Trudeau will become the first prime minister to participate in Toronto's Pride Parade on Sunday. Trudeau marched in the Vancouver Pride Parade last year (Vancouver Pride Society) (Vancouver Pride Society) The Trans Pride March on Friday will start at Church Street between Hayden Street and Bloor Street, proceed west on Bloor Street to Yonge Street, go south on Yonge Street to Carlton Street and proceed east on Carlton Street to Allan Gardens. Roads in the area will be closed from 7 to 9:30 p.m. The Pride and Remembrance Run on Saturday will result in these street closures: Wellesley Street from Jarvis Street to Queen's Park Circle and Queen's Park from College Street to Bloor Street will be closed from 8:30 a.m. to noon . The Dyke March will start on Church Street on Saturday at 2 p.m. between Hayden Street and Bloor Street, then proceed west on Bloor to Yonge Street, south on Yonge Street to Carlton Street and east on Carlton Street to Allan Gardens. Roads in the area will be closed between noon and 6 p.m. The 36th Pride Parade will start at Church Street and Bloor Street East on Sunday, go west on Bloor Street East to Yonge Street, proceed south on Yonge Street to Dundas Street East and move along Dundas Street East to Victoria Street. A number of roads in the area will be closed for varying periods between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m., with the parade taking place from 2 to 6:30 p.m. |
The November/December issue of acmqueue is out now Subscribers and ACM Professional members login here PDF October 16, 2013 Volume 11, issue 8 Barbarians at the Gateways High-frequency Trading and Exchange Technology Jacob Loveless I am a former high-frequency trader. For a few wonderful years I led a group of brilliant engineers and mathematicians, and together we traded in the electronic marketplaces and pushed systems to the edge of their capability. HFT (high-frequency trading) systems operate and evolve at astounding speeds. Moore's law is of little comfort when compared with the exponential increase in market-data rates and the logarithmic decay in demanded latency. As an example, during a period of six months the requirement for a functional trading system went from a "tick-to-trade" latency of 250 microseconds to 50. To put that in perspective, 50 microseconds is the access latency for a modern solid-state drive. I am also a former and current developer of exchange technology. The exchange is the focal point of HFT, where electronic buyers and sellers match in a complex web of systems and networks to set the price for assets around the world. I would argue that the computational challenges of developing and maintaining a competitive advantage in the exchange business are among the most difficult in computer science, and specifically systems programming. To give you a feeling of scale, the current exchange technology is benchmarked in nightly builds to run a series of simulated market data feeds at 1 million messages per second, as a unit test. There is no such thing as premature optimization in exchange development, as every cycle counts. The goal of this article is to introduce the problems on both sides of the wire. Today a big Wall Street trader is more likely to have a Ph.D from Caltech or MIT than an MBA from Harvard or Yale. The reality is that automated trading is the new marketplace, accounting for an estimated 77 percent of the volume of transactions in the U.K. market and 73 percent in the U.S. market. As a community, it's starting to push the limits of physics. Today it is possible to buy a custom ASIC (application- specific integrated circuit) to parse market data and send executions in 740 nanoseconds (or 0.00074 milliseconds).4 (Human reaction time to a visual stimulus is around 190 million nanoseconds.) In the first of the other two articles in this special section on HFT, Sasha Stoikov and Rolf Waeber explain the role of one-pass algorithms in finance. These algorithms are used throughout the industry as they provide a simple and very fast way of calculating useful statistics (such as correlation between two streams). One-pass algorithms are also easier to implement in hardware (using Verilog or VHDL) because they require only a few bits of memory, compared with a vector of historical events. In the other article, Stephen Strowes discusses a method for estimating RTT (round-trip time) latency from packet headers. Estimating RTT is a key issue for both HFT firms and exchanges, and the method presented here solves an interesting problem when you cannot install a tap on every interface or on the other side of the wire. My Time in HFT When I began in HFT, it was a very different world. In 2003, HFT was still in its infancy outside of U.S. equities, which two years earlier had been regulated into decimalization, requiring stock exchanges to quote stock prices in decimals instead of fractions. This decimalization of the exchanges changed the minimum stock tick size (minimum price increment) from 1/16th of a dollar to $0.01 per share. What this meant was that "overnight the minimum spread a market-maker (someone who electronically offered to both buy and sell a security) stood to pocket between a bid and offer was compressed from 6.25 cents...down to a penny."5 This led to an explosion in revenue for U.S. equity-based HFT firms, as they were the only shops capable of operating at such small incremental margins through the execution of massive volume. Like the plot of Superman III, HFT shops could take over market-making in U.S. equities by collecting pennies (or fractions of a penny) millions of times a day. I wasn't trading stocks, however; I was trading futures and bonds. Tucked inside a large Wall Street partnership, I was tackling markets that were electronic but outside the purview of the average algorithmic shop. This is important as it meant we could start with a tractable goal: build an automated market-making system that executes trades in under 10 milliseconds on a 3.2-GHz Xeon (130 nm). By 2004, this was halved to 5 milliseconds, and we were armed with a 3.6-GHz Nocona. By 2005 we were approaching the one-millisecond barrier for latency arbitrage and were well into the overclocking world. I remember bricking a brand-new HP server in an attempt to break the 4.1-GHz barrier under air. By 2005, most shops were also modifying kernels and/or running realtime kernels. I left HFT in late 2005 and returned in 2009, only to discover that the world was approaching absurdity: by 2009 we were required to operate well below the one-millisecond barrier, and were looking at tick-to-trade requirements of 250 microseconds. Tick to trade is the time it takes to: 1. Receive a packet at the network interface. 2. Process the packet and run through the business logic of trading. 3. Send a trade packet back out on the network interface. To do this, we used realtime kernels with bypass drivers (either InfiniBand or via Solarflare's Onload technology). At my shop, we had begun implementing functionality on the switches themselves (the Arista switch was Linux based, and we had root access). We must not have been alone in implementing custom code on the switch, because shortly after, Arista made a 24-port switch with a built-in FPGA (field-programmable gate array).1 FPGAs were becoming more common in trading—especially in dealing with the increasing onslaught of market-data processing. As with all great technology, using it became easier over time, allowing more and more complicated systems to be built. By 2010, the barriers to entry into HFT began to fall as many of the more esoteric technologies developed over the previous few years became commercially available. Strategy development, or the big-data problem of analyzing market data, is a great example. Hadoop was not common in many HFT shops, but the influx of talent in distributed data mining meant a number of products were becoming more available. Software companies (often started by former HFT traders) were now offering amazing solutions for messaging, market-data capture, and networking. Perhaps as a result of the inevitable lowering of the barriers to entry, HFT was measurably harder by 2010. Most of our models at that time were running at half-lives of three to six months. I remember coming home late one night, and my mother, a math teacher, asked why I was so depressed and exhausted. I said, "Imagine every day you have to figure out a small part of the world. You develop fantastic machines, which can measure everything, and you deploy them to track an object falling. You analyze a million occurrences of this falling event, and along with some of the greatest minds you know, you discover gravity. It's perfect: you can model it, define it, measure it, and predict it. You test it with your colleagues and say, 'I will drop this apple from my hand, and it will hit the ground in 3.2 seconds,' and it does. Then two weeks later, you go to a large conference. You drop the apple in front of the crowd...and it floats up and flies out the window. Gravity is no longer true; it was, but it isn't now. That's HFT. As soon as you discover it, you have only a few weeks to capitalize on it; then you have to start all over." The HFT Technology Stack What follows is a high-level overview of the modern HFT stack. It's broken into components, though in a number of shops these components are encapsulated in a single piece of hardware, the FPGA. Collocation The first step in HFT is to place the systems where the exchanges are. Light passing through fiber takes 49 microseconds to travel 10,000 meters, and that's all the time available in many cases. In New York, there are at least six data centers you need to collocate in to be competitive in equities. In other assets (foreign exchange, for example), you need only one or two in New York, but you also need one in London and probably one in Chicago. The problem of collocation seems straightforward: 1. Contact data center. 2. Negotiate contract. 3. Profit. The details, however, are where the first systems problem arises. The real estate is extremely expensive, and the cost of power is an ever-crushing force on the bottom line. A 17.3-kilowatt cabinet will run $14,000 per month.7 Assuming a modest HFT draw of 750 watts per server, 17 kilowatts can be taken by 23 servers. It's also important to ensure you get the right collocation. In many markets, the length of the cable within the same building is a competitive advantage. Some facilities such as the Mahwah, New Jersey, NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) data center have rolls of fiber so that every cage has exactly the same length of fiber running to the exchange cages.3 Networking Once the servers are collocated, they need to be connected. Traditionally this is done via two methods: data-center cross connects (single-mode or multimode fiber) and cross-data-center WAN links. The Cross Connect and NAT. Inside the data center are multiple exchanges or market-data feeds. Each endpoint must conform to the exchange transit network. This is a simple NAT (Network Address Translation) problem and can be tackled at the switch level, as shown in figure 1. Multiple vendors (for example, Arista2) offer hardware-based NAT at the port level. For some marketplaces (such as foreign exchange) there may be as many as 100 such NAT endpoints within a single data center. The key to the internal NAT problem is the core nature of trading: correlated bursts. These bursts are what make HFT networks so ridiculously difficult. Figure 2 is a screenshot of an internal monitoring application that shows the packet-per-second rates for a (small) collection of symbols moving together. The ISM (Institute of Supply Management) manufacturing composite index is a diffusion index calculated from five of the 11 subcomponents of a monthly survey of purchasing managers at roughly 300 manufacturing firms nationwide. At 14:00 EDT the ISM announcement is made, and a burst occurs. Bursts like this are common and happen multiple times a day. As the world becomes more interconnected, and assets are more closely linked electronically, these bursts can come from anywhere. A change in U.K. employment will most certainly affect the USD/ GBP rate (currency rates are like relative credit strength). That in turn affects the electronic U.S. Treasury market, which itself affects the options market (the risk-free rate in our calculations has changed). A change in options leads to a change in large-scale ETFs (exchange-traded funds). The value of an ETF cannot be greater than the sum of its components (e.g., the SPDR S&P 500), so the underlying stocks must change. Therefore, the state of employment in London will affect the price of DLTR (the Dollar Tree), which doesn't have a single store outside North America—it's a tangled web. WAN Links. Outside the data center the systems need WAN links. Traditionally HFT shops ran two sets of links, as shown in figure 3: a high-throughput path and a lower-throughput fast path. For the high-throughput path, private point-to-point fiber—10GbE (gigabit Ethernet) is preferred. For the fast path, each location allows for options. In the New York metro area, both millimeter and microwave solutions are available. These technologies are commonplace for HFT fast-path links, since the reduced refractive index allows for lower latency. Feed Handler The feed handler is often the first bit of code to be implemented by an HFT group. As shown in figure 4, the feed handler subscribes to a market-data feed, parses the feed, and constructs a "clean" book. This is traditionally implemented on an FPGA and has now become a commodity for the industry (http://www.exegy.com). Most feed handlers for U.S. equities are able to parse multiple market-data feeds and build a consolidated book in less than 25 microseconds. Tickerplant The tickerplant is the system component responsible for distributing the market-data feeds to the internal systems based on their subscription parameters (topic-based subscriptions), as shown in figure 5. In these scenarios, the tickerplant is like a miniature version of Twitter, with multiple applications subscribing to different topics (market-data streams). In addition to managing topic-based subscriptions, advanced tickerplants often maintain a cache of recent updates for each instrument (to catch up subscribers), calculate basic statistics (for example, the moving five-minute volume-weighted average price), and provide more complicated aggregate topics (for example, the value of an index based on the sum of the underlying 500 securities). LOW-LATENCY APPLICATIONS In my experience, most high-frequency algorithms are fairly straightforward in concept—but their success is based largely on how quickly they can interact with the marketplace and how certain you can be of the information on the wire. What follows is a simple model (circa 2005), which required a faster and faster implementation to continue to generate returns. To begin, let's review some jargon. Figure 6 shows the first two levels of the order book. The order book is split into two sides: bids (prices at which people are willing to buy); and asks or offers (prices at which people are willing to sell). A queue consists of the individual orders within a price. Queue Life: Getting to the Front Orders are executed in a first-in, first-out manner (in most marketplaces). When describing the life of an individual order in an individual queue, we often say that X is ahead, and Y is behind. More generally, we say we are in the top X percent of the queue. This is called the queue position. Figure 7 shows an order in the middle of the queue by the last time step: there are six shares in front of the order, and eight shares behind it. The longer an order is in the queue, the more likely it is to get to the front. The speed at which an order gets to the front is a function of two things: the rate of trading (trades take orders off the front of the queue); and the rate of cancelling of other orders. Trading Rates Trading rates are somewhat difficult to estimate, but there is a clear relationship between the probability an order will be executed and the ratio of its queue size to the opposite queue size (e.g., the bid queue size versus the ask queue size). This is shown in figure 8 as pUP. Cancel Rates If trading rates are hard, then cancel rates are even harder. The question is, given your place in the queue, what is the probability a cancel will come from in front of you (thereby allowing you to move up)? This is very difficult to estimate, but our own trading and some historical data provides the basis for an engineering estimate. To start, we know that if we are in the back of the queue, the probability of a cancel coming from in front of us is 100 percent. If we're in the front, it's 0 percent. Figure 9 is a chart of the empirical percentage of time a cancel comes in front of your order; it is a function of the percentage of orders that are behind you in the queue. For example, if you are at 0 on the x-axis, then you are at the very front of the queue, and cancels must come from behind you. The key takeaway is this: The closer your order gets to the front of the queue, the less likely an order in front of it will cancel (so your progression slows). We often say you get to the front of the queue via two methods: promotion, which is a second-level queue becoming a first-level queue, and joining, which is, exactly as it sounds, joining the newly created queue. Figure 10 illustrates the difference between promotion and joining. Profit and the Big Queue If your order is executed on a large queue, then you have a free option to collect the spread. If one of your orders on the opposite queue is executed, then you collect the difference between the price at which you bought the asset (bid side of $9) and the price at which you sold the asset (offer side of $10). In the event the queue you were executed on gets too small, you can aggress the order that was behind you. This means crossing the bid/ask spread and forcing a trade to occur. If you get executed passively, you are aggressed upon by another order sitting on a queue. As long as another order is behind you, you can unwind the trade, meaning you can aggress the order behind. Aggressively unwinding a trade is called scratching the trade. You didn't make a spread; you didn't lose a spread. It's a zero-sum trade. Exchange Technology An exchange is the collection of systems that facilitate the electronic execution of assets in a centrally controlled and managed service. Today, exchanges are in a fight to offer faster and faster trading to their clients, facing some of the same latency issues as their newer HFT clients. Collocation For exchanges, collocation can be an invaluable source of revenue. The more incumbent exchanges run their own data centers (such as NYSE and Nasdaq), and customers pay collocation fees to the exchanges directly. Newer exchanges must collocate in third-party data centers that house financial customers (for example, Equinix's NY4 in Secaucus, New Jersey). When exchanges operate inside third-party hosting facilities, they are subject to the same power and cooling costs as their HFT brethren. As such, many exchanges focus on delivering high- throughput systems using standard x86 designs. Networking Exchange networking is as challenging as HFT networking but also has a deeper focus on security. Information arbitrage, or the practice of gaining information about a market that is not directly intended for the recipient, is a major concern. An example of information arbitrage is when an exchange participant "snoops" the wire to read packets from other participants. This practice is easily thwarted with deployment of VLANs for each client. Most exchanges still deploy 1GbE at the edge. This is both a function of history (change management in an exchange is a long process) and practicality. By putting 1GbE edge networks in place, the exchange can protect itself somewhat from the onslaught of messages by both limiting the inbound bandwidth and adding a subtle transcoding hit. For example, a 1GbE Arista 7048 has a three-µsec latency for a 64-byte frame, which is a 350-nsec latency for the same frame on a 7150 (10GbE). Gateway The gateway is the first exchange subsystem that client flow encounters. Gateways have evolved over the years to take on more responsibility, but at the core they serve as feed handlers and tickerplants. The gateway receives a client request to trade (historically in the FIX format, but as latency became paramount, exchanges have switched to proprietary binary protocols). It then translates the request to a more efficient internal protocol, and routes the request to the appropriate underlying exchange matching engine. The gateway also serves as the first line of defense for erroneous trades. For example, if a client attempts to buy AAPL for $5,000 (whereas AAPL is offered at $461), the gateway can reject the order. Market Data Gateway Traditionally the Order Gateway (which receives client requests to trade) and the Market Data Gateway (which distributes market-data feeds) are two separate systems, and often two separate networks. For market-data distribution, two methods are common: UDP (User Datagram Protocol) Multicast for collocated customers, and TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) for noncollocated customers. Customization takes place here as well (for example, Nasdaq's SoupTCP9). In some markets (for example, FX), all market data is distributed over TCP in FIX (Financial Information Exchange). For the other markets, data is often distributed over UDP in a binary format or an easy-to-parse text format. The predominant two binary formats are ITCH6 and OUCH,8 and both sacrifice flexibility (fixed-length offsets) for speed (very simple parsing). Gateways are often shared across customers, as a gateway for each and every exchange participant would likely require a massive data-center footprint. As such, gateways must be closely monitored for malicious manipulation. An example of gateway "gaming" is shown in figure 11. In figure 11a, client A is connected to two distinct gateways. In 11b, Client A induces extreme load on Gateway 1, causing Client B traffic to slow. In 11c, Gateway 1, not under load, slows all attempts for Client B to cancel resting markets. Client A has an advantage with the self-made fast path. Matching Engine The matching engine is the core of the exchange, and like its HFT cousins is fairly straightforward. A matching engine, shown in figure 12, is a simple queue management system, with a queue of bids and a queue of offers. When a customer attempts to execute against a queue, the exchange searches the queue until it reaches the requested size and removes those orders from the queue. The difficulties arrive in determining who receives notifications first. The aggressing party does not know (for certain) it has traded 10,000 shares until receiving a confirmation. The passive parties do not know they've been executed until they receive a confirmation. Finally, the market as a whole does not know the trade has occurred until the market data is published with the new queue. Problems such as this are becoming increasingly more difficult to solve as we move from milliseconds to microseconds to nanoseconds. Conclusion The world of high-frequency trading is rich with problems for computer scientists, but it is fundamental to the new marketplace of automated trading, which is responsible for the majority of transactions in the financial markets today. As HFT moves from milliseconds to microseconds to nanoseconds, the problems becoming increasingly more difficult to solve, and technology must strive to keep up. References 1. Arista Networks. 7124FX Application Switch; http://www.aristanetworks.com/en/products/7100series/7124fx/7124fx-development. 2. Arista Networks; 7150 Series 1/10 GbE SFP Ultra-Low Latency Switch; http://www.aristanetworks.com/en/products/7150-series/7150-datasheet. 3. CBS News. 2010. Robot traders of the NYSE. Sixty Minutes Overtime; http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6942497n&tag=related;photovideo. 4. Millar, M. 2011. "Lightning fast" future traders working in nanoseconds. BBC News; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15722530. 5. Moyer, L., Lambert, E. 2009. Wall Street's new masters. Forbes (Sept. 21): 40-46; http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0921/revolutionaries-stocks-getco-new-masters-of-wall-street.html. 6. Nasdaq. 2013. Nasdaq TotalView-ITCH 4.1; http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/content/technicalsupport/specifications/dataproducts/nqtv-itch-v4_1.pdf. 7. Nasdaq. OMX Co-Location; http://app.qnasdaqomx.com/e/es.aspx?s=453941583&e=9032&elq=4824c6a202f34d00a5e586d106f64cc8. 8. Nasdaq. 2012. OUCH Version 3.1; http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/content/technicalsupport/specifications/TradingProducts/NQBX_OUCH3.1.pdf. 9. Nasdaq. SoupTCP; http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/content/technicalsupport/specifications/dataproducts/souptcp.pdf. LOVE IT, HATE IT? LET US KNOW [email protected] Jacob Loveless is the CEO of Lucera © 2013 ACM 1542-7730/13/0800 $10.00 Originally published in Queue vol. 11, no. 8— see this item in the ACM Digital Library Related: Ivar Jacobson, Roly Stimson - Tear Down the Method Prisons! Set Free the Practices! Essence: a new way of thinking that promises to liberate the practices and enable true learning organizations Alpha Lam - Using Remote Cache Service for Bazel Save time by sharing and reusing build and test output Jez Humble - Continuous Delivery Sounds Great, but Will It Work Here? It's not magic, it just requires continuous, daily improvement at all levels. Nicole Forsgren, Mik Kersten - DevOps Metrics Your biggest mistake might be collecting the wrong data. Comments (newest first) Displaying 10 most recent comments. Read the full list here Alex | Wed, 29 Jun 2016 14:06:14 UTC One line of the article is confusing me: "Today it is possible to buy a custom ASIC (application- specific integrated circuit) to parse market data and send executions in 740 nanoseconds". If the context is about HFT shops, they are clients to exchange and they are not sending executions. If the context is Exchange, exchanges do not parse market data. Could anyone please explain what "execution" means in this context? Does it mean NOS 35=D? Wei Liu | Thu, 14 Nov 2013 02:05:19 UTC I was always thinking of entering this field one day and this article successfully frighten me away - just a few days back I was in New York seeing the classic-looking buildings and thinking of working by solving programming challenges. It feels to me that HFT is more about electronic engineering or even physics instead of computer science, as the biggest challenge is to implement the simplest algorithm as fast as possible (which usually is done with hardware). Rodrick B. | Thu, 31 Oct 2013 17:56:04 UTC The screen shot in P2 is from http://boundary.com/ a network monitoring tool. @JOE yes you are right many firms do use public space from ARIN instead of NAT that being said many trading firms that trade FX especially in the global markets do use NAT and VRF's extensively especially on the exchange side/(sell side) who have to deal with a large number of cross connects and client connections. Nemo | Mon, 28 Oct 2013 13:06:38 UTC The market servers 2 purposes: 1) it is a place for firms to raise capital through share or debt issuance. 2) It is a place that provides a place of exchange for differing views on the value of those issuances. Firms still go public and shares are still exchanged. Regarding social value: That is subjective. One could ask, exactly what socially redeeming value do those who receive government largesse supply? For many, the answer is also "none". Yet they do, and will continue to do so. Harish M | Sat, 26 Oct 2013 20:11:55 UTC @JB Poplawski - the app in figure 2 looks like it's Boundary (http://boundary.com/) Walter Faxon | Thu, 24 Oct 2013 11:47:50 UTC Commenter "Fred" lists some reasons why HFT is in general a very bad idea. He's hardly the first to do so. To discourage the practice, commenter "Joe Smith" suggests a 100% tax on profits on trades held less than one second. That might need a little tuning. Commenter "ivo welch" suggests batching buy/sell orders for auction once per second. That would increase fairness at least. My own idea is to delay all orders by a random few seconds. This would undermine the logic behind HFT but not effect regular investors at all. And isn't the market supposed to facilitate "investment"? There's big money behind HFT so I don't expect regulation anytime soon. More trading by itself improves Wall Street's bottom line. But how bad will an HFT-triggered crash have to be before we effectively outlaw it? Joe Brunner | Wed, 23 Oct 2013 03:58:29 UTC The NAT part is wrong - we don't use nat... we and the exchanges/dark pools/ecn's use reserved PUBLIC IP's in the facilities we manage... only requirement is the big bank gives smaller firms some non-contended ipv4 rfc 1918 space (like 10.168.10.0/24) and allows us to source from that... most larger firms (over 50 traders) have some public ip's we dont advertise to the internet, but own with arin... i cant think of one trading firm doing hft that uses nat... just not a very good technology... while the newer arista and Nexus 3548's do "hardware nat" I have not had to implement it for anyone... weird... Bruce | Tue, 22 Oct 2013 01:16:14 UTC This money has always been taken from investors, ever since the buttonwood tree. Its just being taken by different people, enabled by technology. And they are taking less of it than ever before. Are we going to start passing judgment now on who should make money? Tobacco, gambling, alcohol and prostitution ... Are we going to stop them? Justin | Mon, 21 Oct 2013 16:25:27 UTC When will the third article in the series be published? Lawrence Oswald | Mon, 21 Oct 2013 16:17:59 UTC A victory for the internet in that this is a fine article that has engendered equally fine comments. I guess I will end the streak. So HFTs have a bit of overhead ... rent, electricity, salaries ... and beyond that this HFT business generates a lot of profit while benefiting the world not one bit. They make money but they create nothing, neither money nor goods nor services nor happiness nor love. Where does this money comes from? Some of their dollars might be mine, or yours. Or it could be from the FED and this is just a distribution system that effectively raises the velocity of money thereby increasing the GDP. That's good? Displaying 10 most recent comments. 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File this under ‘Freaking nuts’. Police find a satanic ritual dungeon in the basement of a Chicago Chucky E. Cheese. Chicago, Illinois – Authorities have identified the skeletal remains found in a Chicago Chuck E. Cheese basement as those of four teenagers that disappeared between 2013 – 2015. Multiple media outlets report that the teenagers were local residents of the city. Charged in their deaths is the owner, 68-year-old Melvin Wallace. There is another woman being charged as an accessory to the murders. Court documents allege that Wallace regularly performed “Satanic rituals” and “animal sacrifices” in the Chuck E. Cheese basement where the bodies were found. The basement dungeon, where the bodies were discovered, was full of mold, garbage, debris, animal feces as several satanic markings. Police say the children were more than likely abducted from the “family fun center.” Parents, who regularly take their children to the Chicago Chuck E. Cheese say they are shocked at the findings. “We come here to have pizza and play games at least once a week,” said Rita Thomas, mother of four. “Melvin seemed like such a nice guy, a little weird, but a nice guy. Parents need to watch their children more closely! There are these crazy types of creeps everywhere!” Authorities believe that Wallace was performing these satanic rituals below the restaurant for more than a decade now. Crime scene investigators are searching the wooded area behind the building for any other bodies which may have fallen victim to Wallace’s disturbing rituals. The business has been closed, pending further investigations. Wallace is being held on murder charges with no bond. People are going crazy these days. 9:30 am pacific update: We just received a comment on Reddit that this story is fake. So many crazy stories these days that a story like this is fools us. Damn click bait sites! Turns out this is just crazy fiction. Good plot for a horror story? source: Now8News |
This is an article written by the three most senior members of the Bitnation team (save for the CEO). It’s written from the perspective of each of us individually. First, who am I? I’m the guy who got married on the block chain last weekend. I’m a true believer in the Bitnation concept. I’ve owned UnPassport.com and SovereigntyNow.com for years, even though I’ve never actually developed them. You might call me a zealot. Until recently I’ve been an advisor to Bitnation and trying to help to launch it, even though I’ve disagreed with the manner in which it was being handled. I can no longer stand by and allow this crowdsale to continue.First, the manner in which it was conducted, especially in the last 72 hours is offensive. We’ve had people working nonstop for days, people go to hospital from exhaustion, vendors pull out at the last minute due to legal reasons while we’ve continued to obliviously plow forward. I refuse to be a part of a machine that builds a company on broken bodies. That is what our opponents do, and I won’t be a part of it.Second, I worry about the legality of the crowdfunding. While we have talked about locking out US investors based on their IP in order to comply with the law, we have not actually done so. It’s unethical, not to mention illegal to continue to raise funds in this manner. While we may not agree with laws or government regulations, they have a weight and a cost measured in thousands of dollars and years of time. It’s unconscionable to put people’s lives and freedoms at risk for the sake of money, or even for a shining vision on the hill. It matters not only what your goal is, but also the manner in which you achieve it.Third, and most importantly I worry about the investors. I worry less about the “whales”, and more about the poor disenfranchised people of the world. The ones that will contribute their last $5 because they want to see a better future and who will be disillusioned when their money is lost or misspent. I refuse to be a part of anything that will damage the concept of a “BitNation” in the future. As I said before I’m a true believer in the power of Transparent Crypto Ledgers to make the world a better place, and if this implementation fails and is branded another “Gault’s Gulch”, the damage to the concept will take years if not decades to resolve. I simply cannot stand by and watch that happen.And so on the basis of those three points, on the basis of my conscience and for the future of my children, I urge all of you to not participate in the Bitnation launch at this time. Hopefully in several months or perhaps a year or more this team will come back, stronger than ever and launch a better TCL governance project.Thank youDavid Mondrus Dear Community,My name is Nathan Wosnack, I am the former Chief Communications Officer at Bitnation. I was originally hired with the organization to help with spreading the word via media/communications division. Throughout the last month, as we approached the crowdsale launch date, it became ever-increasingly apparent that our organization was not prepared for the crowdsale launch despite the brilliant and dedicated team working tirelessly.As time progressed, it also became apparent to me that the crowdsale launch may be breaking securities laws by offering cryptoequity to the public without specific structures in place. The lack of a registered corporation, the lack of a dispute resolution form to accompany our business plan and prospectus, the lack of proper employment agreements with staff, and a lack of a solid business plan at the last moments before the October 10th launch was very concerning to me as a member of the Bitnation team.Furthermore, the treatment by a leader of our organization towards me when I had a potentially life-threatening situation, the overworking of developers, and the selling of a bill of goods to the public which is deceptive is something I cannot and will not be a part of.We’re talking about the poor and the developing nations who are struggling to get by. Bitnation as a concept is beautiful and a way out for many in the world, but the way it was executed will not work and only - in my opinion - continue to cause more harm than good for them, the staff, and the cryptocurrency community. I will continue to believe in the necessity for freeing people from the shackles of the old system using blockchain technology, but it must be done in another way, at another time.I am honoured to have worked with many of the people I did on our team, to have attended the Coins in the Kingdom Conference in Florida, and to have inspired people to look at blockchain technology in a brand new way for the first time. Even though this didn’t work out as planned, I will continue to march ever-onward in this crypto-space.Regards,Nathan WosnackDear Community,My name is Matt McKibbin. I have been a part of Bitnation as a communications partner for about a month. I came on board with the idea because of my passion for how the blockchain will enable and empower individuals all over the world. I saw this project as a way to help people in developing nations construct and implement governance services they have never had the privilege of having. The concept of designing applications for land registry, incorporation, and dispute resolution on the blockchain still intrigues me to this day and I think has a bright future in society. However Bitnation cannot be the one to bring those services where they are desperately needed.Over the past couple weeks it has become apparent to me that our organization is not and was never going to become legally, or structurally prepared for handling funds from the world. The cryptoequity crowdsale would have been breaking securities regulations in many different jurisdictions. Furthermore, I cannot allow myself to be a part of something which plays on the idealistic visions of many people all over the world when I know the structure and management of the organization would not allow it to succeed.I continue to be optimistic for blockchain technology in the future. I think once regulatory uncertainty is lifted this technology will be able to prosper to its full extent. I would like to thank the community for all the inspiration and support which I have seen.Best Regards,Matt McKibbin |
GOP officially wants to take your rights away and give them to this. Which is still not a person. Republicans drafting their party's official policy platform on Tuesday ratified a call for a Constitutional ban on abortion that makes no exceptions for rape or incest. The vote to endorse the party's long-standing opposition to abortion and support for a "human life amendment" took place at a meeting of the GOP's official platform committee in Tampa, the site of next week's Republican National Convention. The party's official stance on abortion was approved after just a few minutes of discussion. [...] "Faithful to the 'self-evident' truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed," the platform language declares. "We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children." Of course it took them only a few minutes to officially adopt the position that is already the official position of the Republican Party. All in favor of continuing to take rights away from women? Probably a unanimous "aye" on that. What makes it awkward, of course, is that, as Jed Lewison explained, "There is no daylight at all between Todd Akin's position on abortion and the GOP's official position on abortion." So while Republicans are running around pretending they're offended by what Akin said, they just voted to support what Akin said. Here's the comedy gold, though: @mpoindc via Seesmic twhirl RNC's @Reince on abortion in GOP platform: 'This is the platform of the Republican Party; this is not the platform of Mitt Romney." Republicans are trying to pretend that the party's "let's amend the Constitution to super-screw women" position is somehow different from the not-as-radical position of the Romney/Ryan ticket. That way, Republicans can appeal to their rabid base while also trying to claim to the moderate and not-bugfuck-insane voters that President Romney and Vice President Ryan won't be that bad. Just one little problem with that: Paul Ryan co-sponsored the Sanctity of Life Act, which defines a fertilized egg as a person and grants it "all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood." No exceptions. HUCKABEE: Would you have supported a constitutional amendment that would have established the definition of life at conception? ROMNEY: Absolutely. Okay, two little problems The entire Republican Party believes this shit, from Todd Akin to Mitt Romney and all the Republicans in between. Anyone who disagrees is forced out of the party. (Cough Arlen Specter cough.) They can pretend to be "offended" by Akin all they want, but he was just saying what they all believe. And now it's official. |
Coach Jim Harbaugh took the high road when reporters asked about the penalty that wiped out a 75-yard touchdown reception for his San Francisco 49ers. The call was unlucky but also correct, Harbaugh said, following the 49ers' 16-6 defeat at Baltimore on Thursday night. Running back Frank Gore went low to block the Ravens' Bernard Pollard. Gore had already made his block when right guard Chilo Rachal shoved Pollard high. Cam Inman of the San Jose Mercury News quotes Harbaugh this way: "It was a bang-bang play for Chilo. He really just got his hands on (Pollard). I wish he could have seen that and not put his hands on him. It certainly was a chop block and it was a good call." Noted: A 75-yard touchdown strike to snap a 3-3 tie would have changed the dynamics of this game. The call from referee John Parry's crew might have been technically correct, but if the call had never been made, would there be any outcry? I don't think so. The rules governing chop blocks exist to protect players from serious injuries. No defender should have to worry about getting chopped at the knees while another offensive player engages him in a block. This penalty did more to demonstrate Parry's knowledge of the rules than it did to protect Pollard from a dangerous block. NFL Network analyst Marshall Faulk explained this well on the broadcast. Harbaugh was exceedingly gracious in his response. He also set the right example for his team by refusing to embrace potential excuses. The Ravens were the better team on this night and deserved to win the game. Also from Inman: postgame thoughts on various aspects of the 49ers' performance. Inman: "The 49ers' defense played OK. But OK isn’t good enough when the 49ers' offense is getting pummeled. True, the Ravens scored only 16 points and the 49ers still lead the league in points allowed and rushing yards allowed. But the 49ers' defense was terrible on third down, aside from a goal-line stand in which Joe Flacco foolishly tried running for the goal line and got stuffed for no gain by Aldon Smith and Justin Smith. The go-ahead touchdown pass by Flacco looked too easy, and I don’t know if that is because Donte Whitner came over too late to cut off the angle of that catch. One more thing: Actually no things, as in NO SACKS and NO TURNOVERS. In other words, NO CHANCE." Noted: The Ravens did not let the 49ers play this game on the 49ers' terms. That exposed the limitations San Francisco has covered so well most of the season. Matt Maiocco of CSNBayArea.com says the 49ers have many issues to address offensively following this defeat. Alex Smith: "We've haven't felt like this in a long time. But we are 9-2. This was a very tough game. Every guy in the locker room is hurting. No one is OK with this. That's a big difference from previous years. We invested in each other so much and that's why we are winning. This has left a bad taste in our mouths." Matt Barrows of the Sacramento Bee says a communication error led to Smith's interception right before halftime. Harbaugh: "We were taking a shot. We were more hoping for the back shoulder. Alex saw Braylon inside the corner and he threw it and it was an unfortunate play. I don't know exactly who was right, but (the corner) made a good play. That happens. You try to take a shot, and we didn't get it." Lowell Cohn of the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat says the 49ers failed a fourth-quarter test against the Ravens. Jim Thomas of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch gets thoughts from Rams offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels regarding the team's offensive approach against Seattle. Thomas concludes by saying the team plans to shuffle its offensive line, with right guard Harvey Dahl possibly moving to left tackle. Previously benched center Jason Brown would play right guard. Noted: My first thought upon seeing Dahl at Rams training camp was that the veteran guard looked more like a tackle. He was taller and leaner looking than anticipated given Dahl's reputation as a brawler. There was never any thought, however, that Dahl would actually play tackle, let alone left tackle. But his experience and tenacity should make him better suited for the position than undrafted rookie free agent Kevin Hughes at this time. Also from Thomas: Mark Clayton's knees continued to give the receiver trouble, leading to Clayton's placement on injured reserve. More from Thomas: a closer look at the Rams' offensive line. McDaniels: "We're at that point now where we're going to have to potentially play a guard at tackle, potentially play a center at guard -- swing guys left and right. And then if something does happen in the game, there's no question there's going to be some moving parts and pieces within the four quarters, too. They've accepted the challenge and the burden that we have. It's normal. Every team goes through it. We've got to deal with it well this week." Nick Wagoner of stlouisrams.com profiles Rams middle linebacker James Laurinaitis. Tony Softli of 101ESPN St. Louis evaluates the Rams' roster. Danny O'Neil of the Seattle Times explains how Red Bryant helped transform the Seahawks' thinking on defense. Liz Mathews of 710ESPN Seattle says the Seahawks placed right tackle James Carpenter on injured reserve, replacing him on the roster with Allen Barbre. Clare Farnsworth of seahawks.com says coach Pete Carroll has gone to unusual measures in an effort to reduce penalties. Farnsworth: "In his quest to eliminate penalties, Carroll had the unit that committed the most against the Rams purchase turkeys this week for the unit that was not penalized. So today’s turkey dinners for the linebackers are on the offensive linemen." Good quotes from middle linebacker David Hawthorne: "I got my turkey. It’s in the oven as we speak. Linebackers just don’t get penalties. We're just bred to be the smartest guys on the field." Darren Urban of azcardinals.com updates Kevin Kolb's injury status and says the Cardinals quarterback has suffered no setbacks during the week. Noted: All signs point to Kolb returning Sunday. The team might have an easier time giving Kolb additional rest if backup John Skelton were coming off a strong game. But after Skelton completed 6 of 19 passes with three interceptions at San Francisco, getting Kolb back onto the field at less than full strength has more appeal. Jim Gintonio of the Arizona Republic explains how the Cardinals plan to replace injured nose tackle Dan Williams. Nick Eason and David Carter will get more snaps. Coach Ken Whisenhunt: "We're going to miss Dan because Dan's been playing really good, he's come on. I think we've got a veteran presence in Nick, and David Carter obviously has made some plays for us there this year. We feel good about them being able to step in there and handle that." |
Online courses that don’t meet the needs of learners with disabilities have come under fire at colleges and universities. Institutions can find themselves at a crossroads if found in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act: Compliance. Or avoidance. If a college or university wants to enable higher education ADA compliance, what might that attempt look like? This article adapted from the March 2017 issue of Mealey’s™ Litigation Report: Cyber Tech & E-Commerce. Mealey’s is a subscription-based information provider and a division of LexisNexis. Copyright © 2017 by Kevin Gumienny. Any commentary or opinions do not reflect the opinions of Microassist or LexisNexis, Mealey’s. How Institutions of Higher Ed Can Demonstrate a Commitment to Accessibility in Online Course Offerings Higher Education ADA Compliance On Wednesday, March 1, 2017, the University of California at Berkeley announced that, in response to a Department of Justice demand to make its publicly available courses fully accessible to individuals with hearing, visual, or manual disabilities, it would pull the courses from the internet. Late last year, the Department of Justice (DOJ) had found that the University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley) was in violation of the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) because “significant portions of its online content” were not accessible. In addition, “UC Berkeley’s administrative methods have not ensured that individuals with disabilities have an equal opportunity to use UC Berkeley’s online content.” Specifically, the Department of Justice was concerned with the courses that were publicly available on Berkeley’s edX channel, YouTube channel, and iTunes U platform. (DOJ’s investigation did not look at how Berkeley serves its own students, only whether its public courses were accessible. ) In its initial public comment, UC Berkeley hinted that it might pull and close down the public courses. With its note on March 1, UC Berkeley announced that it intended to do just that. UC Berkeley is not alone in seeking alternatives to making its online educational experience accessible to those with disabilities. When the National Association for the Deaf sued Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for failing to provide accurate captions for their online course videos, the universities chose to fight the lawsuit. Early last year, the lawsuit survived a motion to dismiss. Enabling Accessibility Faced with similar demands from the DOJ, other educational institutions agreed to revise their internal processes and revamp their material so that their content became accessible to those with disabilities. The University of Cincinnati and Youngstown State University reached a resolution agreement with the US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and the DOJ in 2014. In 2013, Louisiana Tech University, South Carolina Technical College System, and Pennsylvania State University also reached resolution agreements. Recently, Miami University in Ohio signed a consent decree with the Justice Department that modified the approach the university takes toward the accessibility of information and communication technology, including videos, documents, and other course materials. Challenge or Provide? When UC Berkeley, MIT, and Harvard decline to make portions of their online material available to people with disabilities, they seem to be outliers on uncertain legal ground; other universities choose to seek resolution. If a university should seek to comply with the ADA, what might that attempt look like? Components of ADA Compliance In 2013, Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) and the National Federation of the Blind entered into a voluntary resolution agreement as part of the Office of Civil Rights Early Complaint Resolution process. At the March 2017 CSUN Assistive Technology Conference in San Diego, California, Christian Vinten-Johansen and Michelle McManus of Penn State University identified seven essential components for higher education ADA compliance, based on their experience with the resolution agreement and the recent consent decree signed by Miami University. The seven components are as follows: Create a policy for electronic and information technology (EIT) accessibility Appoint an accessibility coordinator Include accessibility criteria in EIT purchases Include a link to an accessibility statement and resources and provide a feedback mechanism Complete a prioritized audit of EIT Remediate inaccessible EIT Provide role-based training for faculty, staff, and administrators Policy One of the essential components of compliance is the establishment of a formal EIT policy. EIT policies outline roles and responsibilities, timelines, remediation policies, and standards (such as a requirement for websites and online documents to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level A and Level AA criteria). Policies can also, though rarely do, include enforcement mechanisms for non-compliance. Coordinator An accessibility coordinator should be appointed. Three essential points should be considered by institutions of higher education when considering an accessibility coordinator. Fundamentally, accessibility must be an institutional commitment that is championed at the highest level. A point made again and again, by both institutions of higher education and other organizations, is that accessibility succeeds at an institution when it is fully supported at the top level of an organization. Second, always train a primary and backup coordinator. It’s not uncommon for a primary to be reassigned once trained—accessibility coordinators are often in high demand. Third, ensure that the coordinator is trained not only in accessibility, but also in leadership. Even with a high level of support, it’s often the case that coordinators are given the responsibility to implement accessibility without the formal authority to enforce it. Training in leadership helps the coordinator leverage the personal power needed to accomplish their goals when they lack positional power. Procurement In terms of accessibility and procurement, Vinten-Johansen and McManus recommend doing in-house testing prior to signing any contract. While vendors will file a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) that evaluates how well a product complies with accessibility requirements, the VPAT should be verified. Attempts can be made to require vendors to include an indemnification clause, but, according to Vinten-Johansen, this strategy is not often successful. Testing can be either automated or manual. Automated testing is useful, but only catches between 20% and 40% of issues. Manual testing is more effective, but more time-consuming. It may be possible to convince the vendor to perform compliance testing; the vendor can use the results to support future efforts when making their product available to other institutions. Feedback For communication and feedback, it’s essential to provide a simple, accessible feedback process. Lori Kressin, Barbara Zunder, and Catherine Spear of the University of Virginia, for example, developed a process that is easily available to students, faculty, staff, and the public, and provides a simple, actionable, and trackable report. While such a form by itself might be seen as a merely reactive approach to accessibility, when incorporated as part of an overall compliance effort, the feedback process becomes an essential proactive element. Audit Vinten-Johansen and McManus’s fifth component, an EIT audit, should identify risks. In accordance with recent letters and consent decrees, the audit should assess (among other items) web content accessibility for administration, learning management system accessibility, textbook and course material accessibility, and the accessibility of institution-related websites, including those maintained by student organizations. As seen with MIT and Harvard, course materials include video. As noted in DOJ’s letter to UC Berkeley, public-facing material needs to be considered, as well as student-specific resources. Remediation The sixth component is perhaps the most intense: the remediation of inaccessible EIT. Penn State implemented a structured approach, first fixing what it identified as “blockers” (such as issues with image alternative text tags, complex images, page or document titles, headings, link text, tables, and forms). Other items, such as contrast, color, foreign languages, and legibility, they classified as “beyond the blockers.” Faculty staff tools were addressed after the other items. The precise order can be determined on an institution-by-institution basis. While there is often differentiation between legacy content and new content (with all new content being made accessible from that point forward, and legacy content being made accessible according to a schedule), all content must be remediated (unless an exception is granted, following a formal process). Training The final component is training. Accessibility is a lively and changing field, as new technical solutions are developed, new assistive technologies are invented, and new procedures and regulations are implemented. To remain in compliance, an institution needs to provide ongoing training so that people are able to establish and maintain their skills, and training will be most effective when incorporated at the individual role level. Instead of resting responsibility for accessible EIT in a single quality assurance department, an institution should expect web developers, visual designers, content authors, instructional designers, and faculty members to produce accessible material (and should provide support that enables them to do so). Visual designers can determine that all images and text meet the proper color contrast ratios. Instructional designers can ensure that course design, structure, and the language level meet the needs for cognitive accessibility. Administrative staff can ensure that the Word documents and PDFs they produce meet WCAG 2.0 AA criteria. Faculty members can ensure that video they use, record, and share is properly captioned and equipped with audio description. Once faculty and staff are aware of the requirements needed for content to be accessible (in the same way they might be aware of the proper use of the university logo or the correct format for source citation), they can implement accessibility on a foundational level. IT accessibility coordinators and staff can focus on verifying that the material meets the standards, rather than remediation. Note that the accessibility of material created by course-based tools such as learning management systems, exam delivery systems, and platforms for delivering MOOCs (massive open online courses) also needs to be considered, especially when relying on non-technical staff to develop material. Many accessible solutions are fragile—adding the right component in the wrong place makes the content inaccessible to assistive technology like a screen reader. Course-based tools should be robust, designed to publish accessible material even if the creator lacks a high level of technical skill. Support Two additional points enable these seven components to be successful. To ensure effective compliance, university policy must identify what each of these areas needs to succeed, and make sure that support is available. Second, all solutions should be tracked and socialized. If this is not done, then a situation solved for one instance may be forgotten and not available the next time the incident occurs. There will be no progress for the next student—nor will there be progress for the institution. Higher Education Accessibility Going Forward In light of UC Berkeley’s decision to remove its publicly available material rather than remediate it (and MIT and Harvard’s continued resistance to captioning their course videos), it might be tempting to assume that an institution of higher education no longer needs to bring its online presence into compliance with ADA regulations. Indeed, Lainey Feingold and Linda Dardarian, in their recent digital accessibility legal update at the March 2017 CSUN Assistive Technology conference, noted that the federal approach to regulation, after several years of consistency, has become much more uncertain in the past few months. However, they point out, existing laws and standards have not changed, and “digital accessibility is here to stay.” Feingold and Dardarian maintain that accessibility remains a civil right, and the best defense against related lawsuits at institutions of higher education (as well as others) is a demonstrated commitment to accessibility. More on Accessible Elearning Kevin was featured on the ELearning Council’s Leaders in Learning Podcast, and spoke on creating accessible elearning. You can find that podcast here: Accessibility, Higher Education, and Elearning Microassist Accessibility Services Outlining a host of accessibility-related services, Microassist Accessibility Services: Barrier-Free Digital Development, provides background on Microassist expertise and the various offerings available for digital content and platforms. Services cover accessible elearning development, accessible website and application development, and audit and remediation services. Receive Accessibility in the News in Your Inbox! Accessibility in the News is a weekly curation of the top accessibility stories from a range of online media sources. Topics vary, but generally focus on digital accessibility standards and implementation, accessibility compliance and accessibility litigation, and other online access issues. To receive “Accessibility in the News” curation via email, subscribe below. Image credit: Flickr |
A new amusement park attraction in the Mexican state of Hidalgo is offering the thrill of crossing the United States-Mexico border without the risk, complete with fake smugglers and fake Border Patrol agents, PBS reported Monday. The Parque EcoAlberto is offering the attraction as a way to dissuade people from attempting to cross the border. For three hours, tourist groups endure sirens, dogs, chases and the fake Border Patrol yelling threats, PBS reported. “It’s not worth risking it because if we can’t stand a few hours, we won’t be able to stand days. Because it’s very ugly,” Jazmin Arely Moreno Alcazar said in Spanish. Tourists also can enjoy other recreational attractions such as hot springs and rappelling at the park, PBS said. Maribel Garcia, who works as an administrator for the park, said the purpose of the Night Walk attraction is simple. “Our objective is to stop the immigration that exists amongst our citizens, principally from the state of Mexico to the U.S.,” Ms. Garcia said in Spanish. Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. |
An examination of the strange suggestion, spread by the Green Party, that our native ecosystems are at a greater risk than those of any other country on Earth except for Burma. Part of living away from New Zealand is accepting that things change back home. Last week, for example, I learned that my favourite coffee shop, 32 The Terrace, has changed hands. I can no longer look forward to a latte made by Marg and Owen on my next trip to Wellington. On a grander scale was the discovery that New Zealand's indigenous forests have started vanishing. On Friday, all of New Zealand's main online media outlets reported the news, with headlines like "New Zealand forest ecosystem crisis" and "New Zealand's forests disappearing". The rationale for the story was that US environmental group Conservation International had concluded that our forests are currently "the second most threatened in the world". Radio New Zealand reported, "Only Myanmar is reportedly worse than New Zealand and countries often criticised for deforestation - such as China and the Philippines - fare better." The media's attention appears to have been directed to this startling news by the Green Party's Kevin Hague, who issued a press release ("World's eyes focus on New Zealand's disappearing forests") that said, "New Zealand stands at the brink of losing some of our most precious plants and animals unless the Government works smarter to protect them". Admittedly, I have been out of the country for a while. There are recent trends - like the fascination with Phil Goff's hair, or John Key's indestructible popularity - that I don't begin to understand. But I figured things must have changed a lot if our management of indigenous forests is now comparable to that of Myanmar's military regime and worse than that of China, the Philippines - or, for that matter, a long list of countries such as Honduras, Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Indonesia, Nepal, North Korea, Ecuador, Haiti, etc. I went in search of what Radio New Zealand and Mr. Hague called the "report" that sparked this reportage. It turned out not to be a new research paper, but a press release issued by Conservation International to bring attention to the launch of the International Year of Forests. Combining two things the media love - doomsday hyperbole and a good list - the lobby group issued a global ‘Top Ten Forests On the Edge of Collapse". First: Myanmar. Second: us. The press release included quotes like this one -- "Forests are being destroyed at an alarming rate to give room to pastures, agricultural land, mineral exploitation and sprawling urban areas " - which made it clear that the group's top ten forest hot spots were at threat of extinction today. Alarming stuff, and it got international attention, outside New Zealand. Yet New Zealand's placing in this list just didn't seem to make a lot of sense. First of all, I thought this might be because of Conservation International's measurement criteria. in determining which forests in the world are the most at risk of disappearing, Conservation International didn't measure anything as obvious as current deforestation rates. It didn't count the percentage of forest that was protected. What it claimed to have done was to calculate New Zealand's "original" forest cover. Which it considered to be 100% of New Zealand. Then it claimed that only five percent of the "original" cover is left. Another criteria for inclusion in the list was that forests have at least 1,500 endemic plant species. And that combination was apparently how we ended up second. So New Zealand's inclusion in the list rests on the fact that our forests have many endemic species, and are a lot smaller now than they were before humans arrived. Much of that destruction happened shortly after inhabitation, and certainly a long time ago. But even setting this objection aside, the numbers appeared plain wrong. About 6.5 million hectares of New Zealand is covered in native forest. That's close to 25 percent, and a long way from 5 percent. Even Conservation International's own figures don't match the claim. Now I'm no forestry expert, and I figured it was possible Conservation International had a different way of measuring 'forest' than everybody else. So I emailed their PR person. I didn't hear back by the time I wrote this, but in the meantime, something odd happened to the organization's press release. References to New Zealand disappeared. It now reads: "** CORRECTION: The press release distributed originally in February 2nd reported erroneously that New Zealand was #2 in the ranking, when New Caledonia is actually #2. See below correct version.***" Oh. Whoops. Wee mistake there. New Zealand doesn't make the list at all! It turns out I wasn't the only person alarmed by the news of New Zealand's vanishing forests. The New Zealand Institute of Forestry was understandably perturbed, and sparked the change in the Conservation International press release. Good on them. It's a shame that the New York Times' Green blog still has us included in the list of shameful forest-destroyers, and that a bunch of environmental blogs and websites around the world have repeated the story. It's disturbing that neither the Green Party MP who trumpeted the news in New Zealand, nor the media who reported it, seemed to spend any time looking at the "report" itself. Neither Mr. Hague, his press secretary, nor a series of reporters and sub-editors stopped to think that the figures might be just a little counterintuitive. They just shared the grim news. |
Introduction It’s great to be here at Open Labour. And today I want to talk about what has always been our task—which is how we shape the political moment we are in and build a progressive future and what open Labour’s role can be. It has been hard times in the last two years for the Left in Britain and indeed for our country. The general election defeat of 2015, Brexit, Trump. I’ve had my share of low moments in that time too. Many real and poignant, because I so hate what the Tories are doing to our country. As all of you do. There have been some even lower moments too. Like when I got on an aeroplane a couple of months after the election and the stewardess recognised me. I thought its good to be remembered. She beamed at me and said “So good to have you with us Mr Clegg”. Open Labour’s Purpose But my point in acknowledging hard times is to also to explain what should sustain us and sustains me. I look at our country and the world and I see something more important, more enduring and more powerful, even through the gloom. And that is the the values we stand for and the values that Open Labour stands for. That’s why I am here on a Saturday afternoon. That is I think why we are all here. We see a deeply unequal, divided and unfair country and we are determined to change it. And whatever the hard times, we know we can. We see a country where more than ever, people’s life chances, and the lives they lead are determined by the postcode they are born into. And we are determined to change it. And whatever the hard times, we know we can. We see our NHS, our care for the elderly in peril–=and we are determined to change it. And whatever the hard times, we know we can. We are appalled that we live in a world where the top 6 richest men own as much of the wealth as the 3 billion poorest people in it. And we are determined to change it and we know whatever the hard times we can. We fear for the planet we will pass on to our children and grandchildren as we see the reality of climate change becoming ever more apparent. We are determined to change it and whatever the hard times, we know we can. And we see the power, the allure and the grotesque falsity of the appeal of right-wing populism which seeks to blame the other and we are determined to fight it, to resist it and to change it. And we know we can. This is who we are and this is why we are here. We are not fatalists, we are not pessimists, we are optimists. That for me is the point of Open Labour. Rooted in the world as it is not the world as we would wish it to be. But determined to engage with it, shape it and transform it to become the more equal, fair society that brought us into the Labour Party. In the words of Neil Kinnock “We have a dream but we are not dreamers”. We understand that the path to a fairer society is rocky, it is winding, it is uncertain, but there is always a path. It is this spirit of transformation that I come here to honour, to uphold and I hope Open Labour will take forward. The World As It Is And what we have to do is what we have always done and apply this politics of transformation to the circumstances of our time. So what are they? Even before Brexit, the challenges facing Left parties are enormous. The breaking down of old identities, based on work, union, and tradition which have tied many of our supporters to us. Globalisation and the sweeping economic and cultural change it is bringing for communities. The transformation of work, a foundation for us a party, which has made it more insecure, uncertain and tenuous and will do so even more in the future. The greater scepticism about the centralised state and its ability to deliver. A sense that our politics is broken and in disrepute. When you live through this historical disruption, sometimes it is harder to see it. But we should step back and see it for what it is. And the major rethinking that it calls for. We can see these challenges playing out across the developed world. But for us today in Britain, uniquely, they are in the background not the foreground. Because there is a more immediate issue that is testing to the limit who we are and what we stand for and that is Brexit. And if Open Labour is pledged to deal with the realities of the world as it is not as we would wish it to be, it has to grapple with this—and the fallout from the referendum. We can’t ignore an event that will reshape our economy, our society and our place in the world more fundamentally than for at least 40 years. That challenges our politics and who and what we stand for in a fundamental way. Realities Here is my reality as a local MP. I represent a constituency that voted by 70-30 to Leave, one of the highest in the country. I still don’t think that the voices of those who voted to leave are being properly heard or understood. Immigration mattered a lot in that vote, probably more than any other issue. But the most important driver of Brexit wasn’t a policy question. It was a sentiment, an emotion, a feeling. It was about the desire for a new beginning. A sense in fact of hope, of the potential for transformation. Including among people who have never voted before, including people who didn’t vote for me —or vote at all—in 2015. If I heard it once, I have heard it a hundred times, that desire for change. And when we hear it this way, and hear it we must, we realise that the challenges that I said were in the background—around class, work, globalisation, the state, politics,–are not somehow separate from Brexit but were a fundamental cause of it. And when we hear it this way as we must I think it should make us far more reticent as too many Remainers seem to do to dismiss the Leave vote as one of nativism or racism. In my constituency, people feel the pain of low wage, insecure work today compared to mining jobs that were hard, dangerous but well paid and regarded. They have a huge sense of doubt about the future for their kids. They have well merited scepticism that anyone in politics has real—or big enough answers. And a weariness about a country that doesn’t seem to work for them. Its why I truly believe that many of the roots of Brexit lie in a failed free market, economic model which has ill-served so many of my constituents. This is my truth, the reality as I see it as a constituency MP. The Other Reality Of course, though on the other side, we all know there is another truth in the aftermath of this referendum. The feelings of the Remainers about what has been lost. The fears about whether there is a place for the 48% today in Britain. The pain of young people who voted Remain and feel their futures have been snatched away. The fears of citizens from other European countries about what happens to them. The fears about what happens to our economy and indeed jobs. I hear these truths too. And I do not deny or underestimate them. In fact, I profoundly believe that our politics must be about understanding both of these truths. Because both represent reality. The Leave voters desperate for a new beginning; the Remain voters now fearing deeply for the future. Labour’s Task And that takes me to our task. I think there is only one future for Labour. And that it is to speak –for a politics of transformation—that can bridge the divide. My starting point is that we can’t wish away the referendum result. Think about our politics: we are the people who want to build a project that unites the country, we are the people who want to rebuild faith in politics. Then ask yourself whether we can really do that by being the people who are covertly or overtly, on a mission to overturn the result. It was in large part, people’s dissatisfaction with politics that drove the Brexit vote, so how can we possibly hope to rebuild that faith if our starting point is to seek to ignore how people have voted? People make a comparison with a general election. Of course, when we lose an election, as I did, we come back to fight again. But the key thing is that first we implement the result in good faith. This referendum had a particular character which we cannot deny. We told people it was a one-off vote to decide our European future, not advisory, or a prelude to a second vote or contingent on what we thought of the campaign. Of course people have a right to change their minds, but our task is, unless and until that happens, and there is no evidence of it yet, to seek to the best of our ability to implement the result. Part of what I want to convince you of today is that it is too fatalistic, too defeatist, not in keeping with the traditions that Open Labour is trying to represent, to think a reactionary politics is therefore inevitable. It would in many, many ways be easier to build the progressive politics I believe in if we were in the EU. But a basic part of what we believe is we grapple with the world in all its imperfections. Think about our greatest government—that of 1945. They faced much worse economic circumstances than the ones we will face after Brexit —a country bankrupt, flattened by war. Imagine if they had concluded that things were too difficult to build something better. False optimism serves nobody but we can’t succumb to the idea that there is no better future we can create. And I fear the danger of a self-fulfilling prophecy: if the choice is reversing the referendum versus hard, right wing Brexit, then right wing Brexit will most likely win. And we know what that would look like: deregulation, fewer rights, corporate taxes slashed further, Britain as a Hong Kong of the North Sea. It would be a grim irony if a referendum rooted in the failed free market model ended up producing a more extreme version of it. That was not what people voted for. But that is the risk if we leave the field clear to the Right. The Way Forward We owe it to people to give them an alternative. We need over the coming months to answer the question in our terms of the new economic, political and foreign policy settlement we need. A new settlement that answers the call of change from those who voted Leave we heard in the referendum. But also understands and answers the fears of people who voted to Remain. So I agree with those who say we must fight for a meaningful choice about the terms of Brexit, for tariff-free trade, membership of the customs union, co-operation on research and do everything we can to avoid hard Brexit. And those who are deeply worried about the government’s strategy and prospectus are right. We must hold them to account for it. But people will not rally to our cause if this is all we do. Limiting the damage from Brexit is not enough. Damage limitation has never been enough for us. When article 50 is triggered we have to shift gear. We have to reclaim the politics of hope and transformation. Let’s start by showing that we can answer the deep concerns about insecurity we heard in that referendum. The government will introduce the the so –called Great Repeal Bill. People have said we should use it to protect workers rights, but that isn’t nearly ambitious enough. Any government worth its salt should be using that bill too do away with zero-hours contracts ,tackle the lack of rights for the self employed, do more to tackle the gender pay gap. Lets call the Brexiteers’ bluff. They said they wanted battery deal at work for people. Now is the chance to do it. And lets go further. Lets use some of the greater freedom we may have through state aids for an industrial policy that will provide proper help for the industries of the future. As we change free movement, let’s shape a labour market and immigration policy which once and for all stops the ability of firms to exploit overseas labour to undercut wages. As regional policy and spending comes back to the UK, lets have proper devolution of power and money to tackle the inequalities of place across our country Its time to get out of a defensive crouch. Its time to reclaim the politics of transformation, And this is just some of what we should be doing. Right across the board, we should be recognising what choices Brexit will force us to confront. Let’s celebrate what the EU did for our environment, but lets resolve to be environmental leaders outside the EU. EU environmental law should be floor on our ambitions not the ceiling. Let’s shape a progressive trade agreement with the EU. And lets defend the principle of an open, engaged, tolerant, Britain. And take on the idea of a nasty, intolerant Britain post Brexit. A Remainers said to be the other day she feared a racist country after Brexit. I think that misunderstands why most people voted to Leave but it underestimates our capacity to shape the political debate. Closing the drawbridge, shrinking from the world, is not inevitable. We can and must continue to co-operate with Europe. We must have mechanisms to do that. We cannot and must not be forced into the arms of Donald Trump. But we need to make the case for it. And we need to do so not by looking as if we are trying to rerun the match we just played. We need to move on from trying to replay history and start writing the future. More That Unites Us And we should do this on behalf of both Leavers and Remainers. And understand this: Remainers and Leavers are not as different as they appear. We meet today in the secondary school I went to in the constituency in which I still live in London, which voted 70% to Remain. But I simply do not accept the idea that what divides them is greater than what unites them. Working people in Holborn and St Pancras worry about the insecurity and uncertainty in their working lives, just like Doncaster north. The parents of kids at Haverstock School here worry about their kids future, just like in Doncaster North. Patients and citizens in both places. worry about our NHS and their Mums and Dads In the words of Jo Cox, we have more in common than what divides us. And we should never forget that and we should always seek to reach out to people beyond our circle. This too is who we are. There are lots of reasons to have a sense of despair. The easiest thing in progressive politics is to give up To conclude the task is hopeless. But it isn’t. There is always something to fight for and there is today, whatever the adversity. The Right doesn’t have the answers to the inequality, division and problems that our societies face. Our politics is needed now more than ever. Gloom, pessimism and despair have never contributed to a single progressive advance. Never built a single home, never lifted a single child out of poverty or changed a single life for the better. We have to reclaim the politics of transformation. We have to grapple with the world as it is. And build something new. Not because of false optimism but because of grounded hope. It is what our predecessors have done. We can do so again. |
These Braised Beef Short Ribs with Cheesy Horseradish Grits are decadent and finished with a sweet and sour Porter Sauce. Divine. In 2010 I realized I wasn’t going to be heading either east or west to attend blogging conferences like many. I own a web business and the demands of that full time job just didn’t afford me the luxury of taking off for parts unknown yet I yearned to meet more of ‘my kind.’ Not one to sit and hope someone else will do something I wished done; I connected with another local blogger and we started a Meetup Group inviting local Denver bloggers to join us for a meet and greet. We’ve come a long way since then; some people popping in and out occasionally, some just once to promote their blog and some, and that was the hope, have become real friends. One of those is my friend Karen Harris of the blog Savoury Table blog who has been kind enough to do a guest post for me today. Though hailing from Texas; living in England with her family for a period fundamentally transformed Karen into a semi-Anglophile and her blog is evidence of the wide range of dishes from those two cultures. I asked my pal to help me out with a guest post today and I just LOVE what she’s done with the fabulous short ribs that were so graciously given to us by one of my new cowboy friends, Ty Gates of 5280 Beef. Thanks Karen and Ty! Barb asked me a couple of weeks ago if I wouldn’t mind filling in for her today. We all know it has been a rough time for her with her daughter’s illness and a big move looming, so I thought the least I could do was keep this ball in the air and give her a little time to spend with her girls. So Barb, if you are reading this, turn off your computer and go take Lauren and Em to lunch, I’ve got you covered. I really kind of owe her one or two. Over the time I have known her, Barb has done a lot of really nice things for me. I’ve gone to several blogger events and dinners as her guest, and many times she has passed my name along to contacts looking for someone to try out their products. This pattern held true when a couple of weeks ago, I got a call from her telling me to come on over to meet Ty Gates, a 6th generation cattle rancher and the owner of a company called 5280 Beef. She said he was on his way over to bring “us” some samples of his grass feed beef and tell us a little about himself and his business. Since I’m always in the mood to meet a cowboy bearing gifts, she didn’t have to tell me twice. Once we all got there and sat down together, Ty explained to us that along with his business partner, Mike Chewning, he owns and operates 5280Meat, located in Meeker, Colorado. He and Mike actually started their partnership while working in a corporate environment in Denver a few years ago. Through their working relationship and ensuing friendship, they soon discovered their mutual desire to provide consumers with high quality, healthy, and affordable meat products. It was from this common interest that their enterprise was born. The 5280 Beef herd, which is comprised of approximately 600 – 700 head of Black Angus cattle, grazes exclusively in northwest Colorado and is 100% grass-fed and 100% grass-finished. The herd’s water is sourced from the White River Valley and during the winter months, they eat home grown hay. Their cattle are free to roam and are never confined to a feedlot. These animals live in a healthy, low stress environment and are never given growth hormones, supplements, steroids or antibiotics. It is this attention to detail and consistent approach which results in great tasting and healthy beef products. On the 5280 Pork side of the business, there is just as big a commitment to quality as there is with their beef. Their natural, free-range pigs live in a healthy, low stress environment and are never given growth hormones, antibiotics, or steroids. These Hampshire/Yorkshire blended pigs eat an all vegetarian diet and are pasture raised exclusively in Meeker. They believe that pigs should roam free, where they can forage in a natural habitat and absorb vital nutrients from the land. Ultimately, it is this stress-free environment that produces a more healthy and nutritious meat. Just like 5280 Beef, the goal is to provide consumers a higher quality, healthier product that is naturally better. If you are interested in acquiring some of this superior meat, 5280 sells directly to the public through their website. Due to a limited supply, all orders are first come, first served. Unless stated otherwise on their website, they do have supply available for sale. Beef is sold in quarters, halves and whole. Pork is available in halves and whole. For more information and pricing, please hop on over to the 5280Meat website. Questions? Feel free to contact them; they are always available to help. To show off this delicious beef, I really wanted to prepare a standout dish that would do it justice, but there was only one problem, I needed Barb’s short ribs to make it. After a couple of days of hinting around she finally got the message and handed them over. I could tell that this was a real sacrifice for her because as I pried her fingers off the package, I swore I saw tears welling up in her eyes . . . but I took them anyway. Ahhhh, the things we do for our blogs. Print Braised Beef Short Ribs with Cheesy Horseradish Grits and Sweet and Sour Porter Sauce Yields 4 servings Prep Time 15 min Cook Time PT3-5H Total Time 15 mins Slow cooked short ribs with a porter sauce are served over cheese grits. Ingredients For the short ribs and porter sauce 4 large meaty bone-in beef short ribs (approximately 2 – 1/2 pounds) Salt and pepper to taste 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 2 tablespoons light olive oil 1 – 12 ounce bottle porter, stout or your favorite dark beer (Since I was using Colorado beef, I used a Colorado porter from Left Hand Brewery in Longmont) 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme 1 large garlic clove, thinly sliced 1 medium size onion, sliced into quarters from end to end 1 tablespoons tomato paste 1 tablespoon butter 2 teaspoons lightly packed dark brown sugar 2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar Fresh parsley or a couple of chopped green onions for garnish For the grits 2 – 1/2 cups water 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 1 cup quick cooking grits 1 tablespoon butter 1/3 – 1/2 cup half and half (depending on how soft you like your grits) 1/2 cup grated sharp white cheddar cheese 1/4 teaspoon granulated garlic 2 teaspoons horseradish White pepper to taste Directions To Make the Short Ribs: Season short ribs with salt and pepper to taste. Dust on all sides with flour; set aside. Heat a medium size skillet over medium high heat. Add oil and heat until it is hot. Add the short ribs and brown on all sides. Transfer to a slow cooker set to low. Pour the porter over the top then add the thyme, garlic and onion; cook for approximately 4 – 5 hours on low or on high for 3 hours or until they are fall apart tender. This can also be done by cooking them in an oven proof dish with a tight fitting lid in a 275 degree oven for approximately 3 hours. Remove the short ribs from the slow cooker and carefully transfer to a large plate, cover to keep warm. Pour the juices from the slow cooker through a strainer into a medium size sauce pan (they should measure approximately 2 cups). Cook juices uncovered over medium heat until they start to simmer. Stir in tomato paste, butter, brown sugar and vinegar. Reduce heat to maintain a slow simmer. Cook to reduce until mixture is slightly thick, approximately 15 – 20 minutes. Serve short ribs over a bed of grits (recipe follows), drizzle with sauce and sprinkle with parsley or sliced green onions. To Make the Grits: Place water in a medium size sauce pan over medium high heat. When water boils, add the salt and then slowly whisk in grits. Reduce heat to low, cover and cook for approximately 5 minutes until water is absorbed and grits are slightly tender. Remove from the cover and whisk in the half and half, cheese, garlic, horseradish and white pepper. Whisk until cheese is melted. Serve while hot. 0.0 rating SHARE THIS RECIPE Thanks Karen; I do hope you saved me one little bite; these look fantastic! One more note about Karen; she is what she herself calls ‘A Contester’ meaning she enters (and WINS big) contests calling for recipes from home cooks. She’s recently been selected as a semi-finalist in the 2013 Pillsbury Cookoff. PLEASE, I beg of you (I believe in being honest, I am begging you!!), go vote for her Corn Pancakes with Maple Cream. They are simply divine! |
VIRTUAL museums and art galleries could exist in 2050 and robots doing the housework could leave people with much more free time to explore them. But residents and businesses can now shape the future by giving their views on the city's culture and leisure activities in 33 years. Oxford City Council is asking residents and businesses for their views on how the city should be in 2050 as part of a five-week consultation. All those views will form a single document of principles which will be adhered to as technology changes and advances. This week the focus is on the culture and leisure activities. Pro-vice-chancellor at Oxford University, professor Anne Trefethen, said: "We are extremely fortunate to have some of the world’s leading collections in Oxford, located across our museums, libraries and gardens. "By 2050 greater digital capability will not only provide an even richer experience for visitors but also enable people across the world to engage with the collections." The city council said the development or virtual reality could change the way we watch sports events, view museums and experience art. Director of Modern Art Oxford, Paul Hobson, said art and culture would play a far bigger role by 2050. He said: "Artists will have moved beyond conventional art spaces, using new technologies and social media to reach new audiences with new forms of art. "It is likely that these will be highly interactive, designed for specific contexts and audiences, and very user-responsive enabling participation and creativity." He added: "The idea of the artists will broaden to embrace other producers and consumers, which is very exciting in a city with Oxford's intellectual and technological assets." Head of culture at Oxford City Council, Peter McQuitty, said the city's cultural diversity would be better displayed. He said: "Oxford’s cultural offer is already rich, vibrant and engages with extremely large numbers of people across a wide range of art forms. "Over the coming years and decades, cultural diversity will become much more pronounced as new and emerging communities share more of the richness of their own cultural heritages with the rest of the city." To take part in the consultation visit oxford2050.com. The consultation ends on December 31. |
It’s time to get excited, Raspberry Pi enthusiasts. Pretty soon, you’ll be able to pick-up an official touch screen to connect to your Raspberry Pi. Plus, a beefier new Raspberry Pi Model A+ is incoming, according to Eben Upton, CEO of Raspberry Pi Ltd. Upton made the announcements during a recent interview at TechCrunch Disrupt Europe in London. The impact on you at home: The biggest deal is the display. Serious Raspberry Pi DIY fans have already been making tablets and other touch screen devices with the Raspberry Pi. But having an official product specifically designed for the Pi will make it far easier for more people to experiment with Raspberry Pi and touch. Plus, an official display accessory means you don’t have to worry about whether it will work with your Raspberry Pi. Raspberry rising Upton didn’t provide a ton of information about the new touch panel. It’s slated to come out either before the holidays or early 2015. It will also most likely be compatible with the B and B+ boards, but that’s just speculation. TechCrunch Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton holding the mini-PC's upcoming display accessory at TechCrunch Disrupt. The panel will be a 7-inch WVGA capacitive touch display and the Raspberry Pi will snap onto the back of it. There’s also another specially designed PCB that comes with the display to connect to the Pi. From the looks of the new display set-up, the official Pi screen isn’t so much about creating your own personal tablet as it is about creating mini kiosks and other embedded projects. With two cards stacked on the back, the display is pretty bulky, and it looks like you’ll be on your own when it comes to figuring out a case—although you can bet some accessory makers will start looking at creating tablet cases once the new display rolls out. As for the A+, all Upton would say is that there’ll be an announcement about it very soon. Raspberry Pi decided to design a new board to replace the A since it doesn’t sell very well. Upton said the $35 B and B+ models have already topped 4 million unit sales, while the $25 A model has only hit around 100,000. Upton hopes the upgraded A board will be a bigger hit than its predecessor. “We think we’ve actually managed make something that’s really going to capture people’s imagination,” Upton said |
At the very top of the show she announced: We can report exclusively tonight, that two major power brokers on the left have told MSNBC that they are encouraging a Senate strategy now, in which the leadership would revoke chairmanships and other leadership positions from any Democrat who sides with a Republican filibuster to block a vote on health reform. Who might these "major power brokers" be? Maddow wouldn't reveal her sources, but my judgment, having watched her show a lot, is that she's generally not the type to tease this sort of thing lightly. If she says she's got sources, she's got them. She goes on: Regardless of how individual senators would vote ultimately on the bill, committee chairmen or subcommittee chairmen who allowed Republicans to force a 60-vote requirement for passing health care...under this type of strategy would be in danger of losing their chairmanships. Messing with chairmanships ain't a small thing in the Senate. As Rachel put it: That would be the Senate equivalent of busting a Lieutenant Colonel down to Private. Her take on this? This is cracking heads time in the Democratic Party right now. This is arm-twisting, vote-counting, "are you a real Dem" time for the proponents of health reform. Could this actually be true? Could Senate Dems, who so cravenly allowed Lieberman back into the fold, be prepared to remove committee chairmanships from any Dem who refused to oppose a Republican filibuster? If it were anyone other than Maddow reporting this, I'd have considerably more skepticism. Is it actually possible that Harry "I cave at the office" Reid would get behind something like this? Who are the "power brokers"? Rahm? Reid? I still reserve the right to be skeptical until I see this strategy in action, but there are lots worse sources than Rachel Maddow out there. Here's the segment in its entirety. Judge for yourself: ADDED: A big shout-out to Superribbie for pointing out the following: |
An Asian member of the UK Independence Party has quit Nigel Farage’s organisation alleging that he has encountered racism within the party. Breitbart London understands that over the past month Ismail Patel has been engaged in online ‘flame wars’ with other party members, specifically regarding the Israeli operation in Gaza. Patel, who has now joined anti-Israel MP George Galloway’s ‘Respect’ Party, announced he was leaving UKIP over a week ago, citing racial hatred. But critics have suggested that Patel’s pro-Hamas propaganda on his social media profiles was really the cause of certain arguments which led to “nasty” but untraceable abuse over Facebook. In other words, it was unclear who was sending Patel messages, or if they were indeed a UKIP member. Pictures of Patel on stage with Farage at UKIP’s multi-racial event in London this year may cause some embarrassment for the party and its leader, especially as the mainstream media is often quick to jump on stories such as this, spinning against the eurosceptic party. But a look into Patel’s online activities reveals a worrying side to the man’s politics, most notably his penchant for irrational, anti-Israel activism and the toeing of the Hamas line. Links to pro-Gaza protests and marches are strewn over Patel’s pages. Earlier this month he had claimed that an ‘internal investigation’ was underway regarding comments made to him. When Breitbart London checked with UKIP, it transpired that no such investigation had been launched, though there were subsequently efforts to ascertain the source of Patel’s complaints. Patel’s ‘likes’ on Facebook include the anti-Israel PressTV, which is funded and run by the Iranian state. He also ‘likes’ the Palestine Solidarity Campaign – an organisation that stands accused of wanted to abolish the State of Israel entirely due to its use of the outline of the country with the Palestinian flag draped over it as its logo. Bizarrely, Patel is also a Facebook fan of ‘UK Nightlife Exposed’ which features lewd pictures of women, and has shared Facebook posts with illustrations of different positions of sexual intercourse. This alongside ‘liking’ organisations like the Ummah Welfare Trust (UWT), a charity whose bank accounts were recently closed by HSBC bank. UWT had previously donated money to Interpal, an organisation that was designated as a Hamas supporting organisation by U.S. authorities in 2003. Patel likes ‘Lee Jasper’ – a black community activist who has claimed that black people cannot be racist, and has shared pro-Hamas links from the Middle East Monitor website which has itself been linked to the Muslim Brotherhood network. George Galloway, who leads the Respect Party that Patel is now a member of, has repeatedly been accused of anti-Semitism, as have his party members and supporters. Last week Galloway urged a full boycott of Israel in Bradford, noting at a speech that the 95 percent of Jewish Israelis who backed Israel’s action against Hamas were not welcome in his constituency. A petition to have Galloway prosecuted under Section 5 of Britain’s Public Order Act has now reached 17,000 signatures. UKIP told the Leicester Mercury newspaper that “it was unable to substantiate Mr Patel’s complaint with the evidence he initially provided – two screen shots – and had asked him for further information that would prove a UKIP member was responsible.” UKIP’s Head of Press Gawain Towler said: “[the abuse in the screenshots] was really nasty. I was gobsmacked when I saw it. If that person was a UKIP member I would want him thrown out of the party but with what Ismail originally sent us it was not clear who was responsible. I offered to go to Market Harborough and meet Ismail so he could open up his Facebook page to us. We were working hard on this and needed Ismail’s co-operation but he left before any of that could happen.” |
Japan's Omocoro performed an unusual experiment in Shibuya recently which attempted to discover whether it was possible to track Twitter users down in real life just by using their Twitter feeds. The writer, called Sebuyama, set about tracking down three targets in the Shibuya area and chronicled his investigation. Shibuya is one of Japan's busiest districts. Its famous crossing, the Shibuya sprawl, is said to have over 45,000 people crossing it every 30 minutes. It is one of the most 'checked in' locations in the world. It is also densely packed, with hundreds of shops and restaurants, making it a prime location for tracking down some avid Twitter users. First, Sebuyama filtered results by looking for people tweeting that they were "now in Shibuya." He apparently found around 30 tweets within a minute, and from this list he picked out three victims to hunt down. Many Japanese Twitter users do not use real pictures of themselves, which helped narrow down his chosen three, but he also looked at physical descriptions used on their Twitter profiles. Perhaps most frightening, he was able to follow these users from tweets about where they were shopping, pictures of their lunch and comments on purchases. Although he lost the first target because she moved around too much, he was able to track the other two down pretty easily. Understandably the two Twitter victims were surprised and shocked to have a random stranger find them, identify them by their Twitter user name and even tell them what they had just eaten for lunch. The experiment serves up an eerie lesson about posting personal information on Twitter, but the column has also spread through Japan's social networks, with many commenting on how "scary" it is. Sebuyama has achieved his goal with this experiment, proving effectively that we just don't think about the information we're putting online. He made sure to punctuate the end of his column with photos of himself sitting in a darkened room with his laptop, ominously holding a knife. The imagery is on the money. We should be scared at how easy it is to track people down. Not everyone openly shares personal information on Twitter, but even those who don't might also be using Foursquare or Facebook to talk about their daily activities. It would be interesting to see how well such an experiment would work in other major cities, like London or New York. I'm not sure whether or not the kind of personal information shared by Japanese users on Twitter is more open than their western counterparts. Either way, I think we'd be surprised by how easy to catch we all are. Image sources: Sebuyama/Omokoro.jp Related: |
I really hadn't intended to do any more Star Wars / Aliens crossover pieces again - but after my Stormtroopers vs Aliens painting went all round the net and attracted a lot of favorable comments and new watchers - I thought I'd do just one more piece (for now) as a thank you for all the support and interest I've received.This one was prompted by a comment on my Darth Vader Meets His Match painting by who suggested that maybe Vader wanted to make the Alien his pet.I took that initial suggestion and thought that Jango Fett might have had some experience hunting xenomorphs - so the idea of this piece is that it's a 'prequel' to my Darth Maul vs Aliens picture. (Please check out my gallery if you've haven't already seen my earlier pictures.)Jango is delivering a subdued Alien Queen and drone to the Emperor who wants to put them up against Darth Maul as an initiation test. Jango's saying: "...it was a helluva job to fit these in the cargo hold. Don't worry - they'll be docile until the tranquilizers wear off - but they'll be plenty mad when they snap out of it... should be a good test for your boy, Maul. Now where's my payment?"This is an original depiction of copyright characters created by George Lucas and HR Giger and the property of their respective owners. None of my work is for sale - this is fan art intended solely to showcase my artistic abilities.I'm sorry but this is a very low resolution version - I was very upset recently to find that several of my earlier pieces were being sold without my knowledge or permission - so from now on, I'm afraid I'll only be posting low-res images.Anyways, hope you like! |
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday that House Republicans had “engineered” a contempt vote against him and were not really interested in investigating the Fast and Furious scandal. “Today’s vote is the regrettable culmination of what became a misguided – and politically motivated – investigation during an election year,” he said. “By advancing it over the past year and a half, Congressman Issa and others have focused on politics over public safety. Instead of trying to correct the problems that led to a series of flawed law enforcement operations, and instead of helping us find ways to better protect the brave law enforcement officers, like Agent Brian Terry, who keep us safe – they have led us to this unnecessary and unwarranted outcome.” In an unprecedented move, the House voted 255-67 in support of a criminal contempt resolution against Holder. Seventeen Democrats voted along with a majority of Republicans. But dozens of other Democrats, led by the Congressional Black Caucus, walked off the House floor in protest of the vote. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) allegedly sold thousands of assault rifles and revolvers to traffickers suspected of being linked to Mexican drug cartels with the intent of tracking the firearms. However, a six-month investigation by Fortune magazine, which reviewed more than 2,000 pages of confidential ATF documents, raised serious doubts about those allegations. Holder noted that when news of the Fast and Furious operation first became known to the public, he had quickly ordered an independent investigation. He accused members of Congress of being unwilling to work with the Justice Department to find “real solutions to the terrible problem of violence on both sides of our Southwest Border.” “Today’s vote may make for good political theater in the minds of some, but it is – at base – both a crass effort and a grave disservice to the American people,” Holder added. “They expect – and deserve – far better.” “As a result of the action taken today by the House, an unnecessary court conflict will ensue. My efforts to resolve this matter short of such a battle were rebuffed by Congressman Issa and his supporters. It’s clear that they were not interested in bringing an end to this dispute or obtaining the information they claimed to seek. Ultimately, their goal was the vote that – with the help of special interests – they now have engineered.” |
Facebook has open-sourced its Prophet forecasting tool, designed "to make it easier for experts and non-experts to make high-quality forecasts," according to a blog post by Sean J. Taylor and Ben Letham in the company's research team. "Forecasts are customizable in ways that are intuitive to non-experts," they wrote. The code is available on GitHub in both Python and R. Prophet is aimed specifically at business problems such as computer infrastructure capacity planning that have at least several months of data (preferably a year or more) and issues such as seasonality, "holidays" that can affect trends (such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday for retailers), and events that can have significant impacts (such as launching a new website when trying to forecast site traffic). Prophet can also handle some missing values and outliers, the blog post said. [ To comment on this story, visit Computerworld's Facebook page. ] Facebook suggests taking Prophet for a spin using page views from a Wikipedia page, data which is currently available on tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews. In R, data needs to be set up so it has two columns: one named ds containing dates, and the other with numerical data. The sample -- forecasting pageviews for Peyton Manning's Wikipedia page - changed the numerical data to a log scale with R's log() function. Basic Prophet forecasting steps: A command such as my_model <- prophet(mydata) fits a model; fits a model; my_future <- make_future_dataframe(my_model, periods = 365) starts a data frame with an appropriate date column for both past and to-be-predicted dates; starts a data frame with an appropriate date column for both past and to-be-predicted dates; my_forecast <- predict(my_model, my_future_df) generates the forecast; generates the forecast; plot(my_model, my_forecast) visualizes the forecast; and visualizes the forecast; and prophet_plot_components(my_model, my_forecast) graphs trend and seasonal components of the forecast. Screenshot of graphic created by Facebook's Prophet tool Sample plot of trends and seasonality using Facebook's Prophet in R. To include holidays and other special events, you'd create a new data frame with a ds column for dates and a holiday column with the name of the holiday. That information can be included in the initial model with my_model <- Prophet(my_data, holidays = my_holidays) . There's more about holidays in Prophet in the documentation. Prophet was built using Stan, a probability programming language that connects with several popular analytics platforms such as MATLAB and Stata in addition to Python and R. |
After letting their Never Settle Forever gaming bundle program slowly lapse over the past few months, AMD sends word this morning that they’re going to be significantly refreshing the program. The updated program will now include virtually all of AMD’s current discrete video cards and will be adding a number of new games to the program. First and foremost, the latest iteration of the program will now cover almost the entirety of the Radeon 200 series. In short, every GCN based card will be covered, from the low-end $70 R7 240 right up to AMD’s new flagship R9 295X2. In fact the only retail card not covered by this program is the R5 230, AMD’s Radeon HD 6450 rebadge. AMD Never Settle Forever Tiers Video Card Tier Number of Free Games Cur. Number of Games on Tier R9 295X2 R9 290 Series R9 280 Series Gold 3 17+4 R9 270 Series R7 260 Series Silver 2 17+4 R7 250 Series R7 240 Series Bronze 1 10+4 R5 230 N/A N/A N/A As was the case with the previous iteration of the program, the cards are still separated into three tiers: bronze, silver, and gold. Each tier gets a larger number of free games and a better selection of games within those tiers. This latest rendition of the program will see the R9 280 series, R9 290 series, and R9 295X2 in the gold tier. Elsewhere the R9 270 and even the R7 260 series qualifies for the silver tier, while the R7 250 and R7 240 fall under the bronze tier. Meanwhile on the games front AMD has added several different games and thrown in a twist in how games are counted for the program. Alongside traditional full budget and bargain bin titles, AMD is also rolling in some indie titles into the program: Guacamelee, Dyad, The Banner Saga, and Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack. The indie games – which are typically lower priced items to begin with – are bundled in a 2-for-1 fashion with 2 of the indie games counting for a single game selection. As for full budget titles, AMD’s new anchor title for the program is the forthcoming Murdered: Soul Suspect, a GCN-optimized game which is due in June. Murdered, along with AMD’s True Audio showcase game Thief, are only 2014 games in the program and are only available at the silver and gold tiers. The rest of the program is being fleshed out with a number of older titles – primarily from the Square Enix and Sega catalogs – ranging from relatively recent summer 2013 games like Company of Heroes 2 and Payday 2, to games going back as far as 2010 such as Darksiders. Many of these titles are essentially classic games at this point, particularly the games available at the bronze tier, so it’s worth pointing out that while AMD is giving out free games their catalog isn’t as aggressive as in previous Never Settle programs (though it’s certainly still stronger than NVIDIA’s Spring GeForce Bundle). AMD for their part says that this greater emphasis on classic titles is due to customer demand, though it goes without saying that this is certainly a cheaper option for AMD too. Moving on, as with the first iteration of the bundle AMD is allowing the offer to be banked for a few months, with the idea being to redeem the offer later for newer games. Vouchers from this wave of the bundle will be good until August 31st, a bit over 4 months from now. The availability of any individual game meanwhile depends on how long AMD’s supply of keys last and how long AMD is allowed to offer the game. Based on what we saw for the previous iteration of this program and looking at Square Enix’s and Sega’s release schedule, we suspect the best move is to redeem sooner than later before keys for popular games run out. It doesn’t look like either publisher is launching any further major games before September, and while AMD is promising to add further games to the program there doesn’t appear to be much that AMD could add other than a handful of recent titles not already part of the program. On a final note, as always with these bundle programs the distribution of vouchers is taking place at the retailer level. So while most of the usual suspects are participating, including Newegg, Amazon, and Microcenter, it’s always a good idea to check with retailers to make sure a purchase qualifies. Wrapping things up, it’s interesting to note just how quickly AMD’s supply situation has changed in the last couple of months. 2 months ago AMD’s retail partners couldn’t keep their $300+ cards in stock even at prices well over MSRP. Now those cards are near or back to their original MSRPs, and AMD is now offering a video game bundle to sweeten the deal. The computer industry is a history of boom and bust, and AMD’s fortunes this year have certainly been a microcosm of that. |
Last week’s announcement that Ireland’s environmental protection agency approved the nation’s first trial of the genetically modified potato has reactivated the conversation about the spuds, which have actually been kicking around Europe — on a trial basis — since 2010. Potatoes are an industrial crop; we grow nearly as many of them worldwide as we do corn, soy, wheat, and sugar, and those industries all rely heavily on genetic engineering. And — like corn, sugar, and soy — potato starch is now often valued for its indirect uses, such as in animal feed and biofuel. So it’s not surprising that industry forces would be pushing for giant swaths of industrial-starch-producing GMO potatoes. But to do so in Ireland would involve a unique historical irony. You see, it just so happens that the Irish potato famine of the 19th century is held up as one of the most striking examples of the way monocrops — those grown with little or no genetic diversity — are vulnerable to disease. Heralded as a miracle when it arrived from South America in the 1800s, the potato produced more calories per acre than wheat and corn, and virtually did away with the mass-scale hunger many European countries were facing at the time. (Some say it was the potato that made European nations into world superpowers, and its cultivation also marked the beginning of today’s industrial agriculture model.) Because farmers were only growing very few potato varieties at a time, however, Europe — and in particular Ireland — was an easy target for disease. As historian Charles Mann wrote in 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, excerpted here in Smithsonian magazine: In two months [a fungus called] P. infestans wiped out the equivalent of one-half to three-quarters of a million acres. The next year was worse, as was the year after that. The attack did not wind down until 1852. A million or more Irish people died — one of the deadliest famines in history, in the percentage of population lost. A similar famine in the United States today would kill almost 40 million people. All this makes potatoes a powerful symbol of biodiversity (and lack thereof) in the global food system. But to read this week’s news, it’s easy to wonder if we’ll ever learn our lesson. According to a BBC report, the new GMO potato has been engineered to withstand blight, a dangerous potato disease that “can rapidly turn the vegetable into an inedible mush.” Through genetic splicing, scientists say the new potato now has a resistance gene taken from a wild South American potato. John Spink, head of crop research at Teagasc, the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority that has applied for the license, told the BBC: “You could achieve the same results by conventional breeding, but it might take 15 to 20 years — this way we can do it in weeks.” Meanwhile, South American nations have maintained an incredibly diverse array of potatoes. Mann writes that as recently as 1995: … a Peruvian-American research team found that families in one mountain valley in central Peru grew an average of 10.6 traditional varieties — landraces, as they are called, each with its own name. In adjacent villages Karl Zimmerer, an environmental scientist now at Pennsylvania State University, visited fields with up to 20 landraces. The International Potato Center in Peru has preserved almost 5,000 varieties. The range of potatoes in a single Andean field, Zimmerer observed, “exceeds the diversity of nine-tenths of the potato crop of the entire United States.” As a result, the Andean potato is less a single identifiable species than a bubbling stew of related genetic entities. It’s highly likely that in a field where you were growing 20 varieties of potato, at least a few of those would be resistant to whatever disease might come along. And I’m guessing that at least some of those 5,000 varieties already contain traits that are similar to the ones from the wild potato that have been genetically inserted in this GMO variety. And yes, a 15 to 20 year time investment in traditional breeding may sound onerous, when compared to the genetic quick fix. But all this makes me wonder: Is it ever worth making an end run around real biodiversity? The four-year trial in Ireland is slated to be relatively small — two hectares or around five acres — but it will also probably take place in the open air, where cross-pollination with other potatoes is highly possible. In a related article in the Irish Independent, critics pointed to the fact that GMO crops have also been shown to impact other forms of life in the fields. It reads: [R]esearch on GM crops in Britain had shown a worrying decline in farmland biodiversity, where numbers of bees and butterflies were found to be 68 [percent] lower in GM fields. Indeed, that’s key to biodiversity — every species lives in relationship to those around it. Potatoes don’t grow in a vacuum; and surely the scientists involved know this. But it rarely benefits the companies engineering these products to factor in ecosystem health. Stella Coffey, an activist who runs a blog called GM Moratorium, told the BBC: “It’s absolutely preposterous to use such a risky tech as your first line of action.” And she has a point. You don’t have to be convinced that GMOs are inherently unsafe in their own right, or that we should all start growing 20 varieties of potatoes in our backyard (although, if you’re a gardening nerd like me, that might sound pretty amazing), to see this tendency for the agriculture community to default to new technology — often simply because it’s there and it has the potential to generate revenue for shareholders — as more than a little disturbing. It may not be as risky as it was to feed the whole of nation on just a few varieties of potato in the 1850s, but how can we know that for sure? Shhh. Did you hear that? I think the ancestors on my Irish side are rolling in their graves. Correction: This story mistakenly referred to the Amflora potato as being involved in this trial. In actuality, Amflora’s trials began in Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands earlier this year. |
Not all heroes wear capes. At least, that’s what I told myself as I entered the brand new “4D” theater at the Regal Cinemas in Manhattan’s Union Square to watch a movie about cape-wearing superheroes. The theater, New York’s first 4D-equipped space and the third in the United States (after Los Angeles and Chicago), opened specifically for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice this weekend. Tickets are nearly $30, about double the price of a 3D movie ticket in New York City. What is a 4D theater, you ask? No, it does not exist in the theoretical fourth dimension (although that would be much cooler). Rather, 4D theaters are “the ultimate in state of the art technology delivering a fully immersive cinematic experience,” according to 4DX, the appropriately-named South Korean company that builds them. Inside every 4DX theater are motion chairs and a number of “environmental effects,” including rain, wind, lights, fog, and odors. Similar “sensory cinema” experiences have existed since the 1950s, though none as extensive as 4DX’s. The operative word here is “immersive.” 4DX purports to further immerse you in your film experience with these physical effects. Why simply watch Superman get rained on when you can get uncomfortably wet at the same time? Why just commiserate with Batman when he’s punched in the back by an evil henchman, when you can get punched in the back by your very own chair? Genius! While some of the effects were fun, in a dumb, gimmicky, never-again sort of way, the full experience actually does exactly the opposite of what 4DX intends it to. The annoying physical distractions that the auditorium inflicts upon moviegoers don’t immerse you in the movie; they completely take you out of it. Here are some examples: Rain The most jarring effect was the simulated rain. By rain, I mean an uncomfortable spritz of water onto your head and face. It felt as though the person sitting behind me had just released a monstrous sneeze. Every time it rained in the film, I was spritzed. Here’s the worst part, though: With each water spray, everyone in the theater would erupt with surprised laughter. I didn’t blame them. That is a natural, human reaction. But the only scene I felt immersed in was that of a throng of wet filmgoers cackling in unison. For those who prefer to stay dry, there’s a console on your armrest to toggle the water on or off. But if you’re paying $30 for a 4D movie, you might as well get the full experience. And in any case, there’s no switch to turn off the crowd’s immersion-destroying laughter. Motion seats To see Batman v Superman in a 4D theater is to be an adult forced to ride the lamest roller coaster at an amusement park. You know, the ones that sort of just sway side to side and twirl around in circles. Every car chase, every time Superman flew or Batman used his grappling hook, the chair would attempt to move in a similar fashion. At times, it would start rumbling for no apparent reason, like a surprise shiatsu massage performed by an arm wrestler. The coup de grâce (literally?) was when someone on screen was shot with a gun: Something in my chair punched me in the back. Nothing says immersion like being shot. Warner Bros. Pictures Wind The least intrusive effect was probably the “wind.” A row of large fans line both sides of the auditorium, and they blow air onto you every time wind is depicted in the film. When a helicopter is landing in the film, these ceiling fans go crazy. When Bruce Wayne sulks through a field, they offer a gentler, almost-soothing breeze. I didn’t mind it, as far as immersive weather experiences go. There are also two small ports in your chair that shoot a quick gust of air by your ears at certain points, like when Superman lifts off. These reminded me of that unsettling puff of air that eye doctors use to test for glaucoma. Lights There are large strobe lights around the theater that flare every time lightning strikes in the movie. They also seemed to go off at random times for reasons unclear. Each time these lights flickered on, my eye was drawn away from the screen and toward the colored pattern on the theater’s walls that the lights illuminated. Pass. Smoke (or was it supposed to be fog?) After some explosions in the film (there were many), a wisp of gray vapor would seep out from under the screen, before dissipating quickly. 4DX’s website says that this effect is fog, but it was intended to simulate smoke, so we’ll call it smokefog. It was a slightly disconcerting thing to see in a theater, even knowing it’s not real. If actual smoke had filled up the auditorium, I might not have been able to tell the difference. Smells There were allegedly various odors dispersed throughout the film, but I didn’t notice any of them. Perhaps I had a stuffed up nose. As I left, I heard someone say the theater smelled bad. Conclusion A movie theater is a sacred space for a lot of people. It is for me. To get existential for a moment, watching a film at a theater allows you to suspend your existence for two hours. You’re in a dark box, staring at a screen. You forget that you’re even there, or that there even is a “there.” The best movies force you out of your body. For a moment, you don’t think about your position in space or in time, and instead focus only on the cinematic world before you. That’s why despite the rise of home video and now streaming options, a lot of people will still pay a small fortune to see a movie in theaters. A 4D movie takes a pickaxe to that part of moviegoing. By inflicting physical sensations upon you, it drags you out of that fugue-like state and back into the here and now. And the reality it brings you back to resembles an amusement park ride, not a movie experience. For some people, that’s fine. That can be fun in its own right. Similar “4D” rides have been around for decades at theme parks, zoos, and science centers. But for those seeking real immersion in a cinematic experience, 4D is at best an expensive distraction. Batman v Superman was the least immersive movie experience of my life, and all it left me with was wet hair and a sore back. |
Bookmark this article for the future, when you’re looking for a robot to assist staff and residents. Newly published research in the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies indicates that senior living communities will want to choose the type of robot they use based on the goals they seek to accomplish with it. Communities looking to help residents with everyday tasks, such as the dispensing of medication, will want robots that convey a cheerful demeanor, according to the study, which was conducted by researchers in the United States, Singapore and Hong Kong. If, however, communities wish to offer emotional support to residents by having a robot serve as a friend or pet, then they will want a robot that conveys a more serious demeanor. The investigators reached their conclusions after studying how 51 residents at a Central Pennsylvania retirement home reacted to serious and cheerful robots performing assistant and companion tasks. Two vocal recordings were used to manipulate robots’ perceived demeanors. A higher-pitched voice was considered more playful, whereas a voice deemed to be serious had limited changes in inflection and tone. “We were actually surprised to find out that they wanted companion robots to be serious and assistant robots to be playful,” said lead author S. Shyam Sundar, Ph.D. (pictured), the Distinguished Professor of Communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory at Pennsylvania State University. “But it’s pretty clear from our data that a serious demeanor adds credibility to a companion robot, whereas a playful demeanor softens the tension when interacting with an assistant robot.” From the February 01, 2017 Issue of McKnight's Senior Living |
The video game retailer GAME Australia will immediately shut down 16 stores and close the remaining 15 in the coming weeks, according to its administrator PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The video game retailer GAME Australia will immediately shut down 16 stores and close the remaining 15 in the coming weeks, according to its administrator PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The embattled retailer went into administration last month after a long financial struggle that saw the company reduce its number of stores. In late May, the administrator closed 60 stores and laid off 281 staff from retail stores and GAME Australia's head office. The administrator is now moving to close all of GAME Australia's stores. "In the interests of creditors, the 31 remaining Game stores are to be closed over the coming weeks and a final closing down sale has commenced with discounts of up to 60 percent available in-store and online," administrator Kate Warwick said in a statement. "This is a difficult time for employees and closing the stores was not a decision we made easily. Despite exploring available opportunities for continued trading, the ongoing trading performance and absence of viable offers for the purchase of the business has resulted in these closures." PwC said another meeting of creditors is scheduled tomorrow to determine the future of the business. |
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