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The programming language, dubbed DuckyScript, is a simple instruction-based interface to creating a customized payload. However, it runs independently from the microcontroller that installs the drivers to the machine. On some older models running Windows XP, the device took upwards of 60 seconds to install the drivers. On newer machines running Windows 7, it took anywhere from 10-30. And if the drivers take longer to install than the delay you put at the beginning of your payload, it will begin firing off anyways. There is a firmware release you can flash onto your Ducky that will additionally act as a USB flash drive where executable binaries can be hosted. In this case, it would be significantly faster to open the drive and load the file into memory. The benefits to this include Don’t miss: How To — Get Your Mac Ready for Hacking? the ability to potentially avoid dropping any files to the machine quicker than remotely retrieving a payload no internet connectivity required for additional payload but remotely retrieving a payload is a viable method if you absolutely have to do it that way. In short, it is a very promising and effective tool, but seriously lacks versatility. In some machines it may take 5 seconds to load the drivers, in others maybe longer than 60. Then you have to account for how long it will take to deliver your payload in accordance to how fast the machine can handle keystrokes. This becomes a huge bummer during official penetration testing scenarios where you are required to enter the office physically, because the variety of machine setups can be drastically different. Otherwise, exactly what it says on the tin: emulates a keyboard and mouse set up to deliver instructions. |
Update Oct. 31: Rochester police renew investigation SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Chase Coleman, an autistic ninth-grader at Corcoran High School, was running in a cross country race in Rochester when a middle-aged stranger attacked him. The man got out of his car, shoved Chase down in the road and yelled "get out of here'' before driving off, according to witnesses. A few days after the Oct. 14 incident, the nonverbal 15-year-old runner handed his uniform back to his coach and quit the team. Now Chase's mother, Clarise Coleman, wants to know why Rochester authorities refuse to press charges against the man who admitted pushing Chase. She fears the answer is this: Chase is black and disabled, and his attacker was white. Whatever the reason, 57-year-old Martin MacDonald of suburban Pittsford was not charged. Rochester City Court Judge Caroline Morrison denied a requested arrest warrant charging MacDonald for second-degree harassment, despite Coleman's desire to press charges. The harassment charge is only a violation, with a maximum jail sentence of 15 days. But Coleman is outraged that authorities won't seek at least that much justice for her son. "If that man had been black and Chase had been white, and that (police) report went in, he'd have been in jail,'' she said. Syracuse city officials also expressed concern. Coleman's city councilor, Susan Boyle, this week wrote a letter to Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley deploring what Boyle called "a racist, aggressive, unprovoked attack on a disabled African American minor with absolutely no consequences.'' Boyle said Syracuse officials want an explanation and an assurance that city school kids will be safe participating in events in Rochester. Chase was running in his maroon Syracuse West cross country uniform, with a race number pinned to it. The incident occurred near the reservoir in Cobb's Hill Park, Rochester. Witnesses said Chase was in the middle of a road when MacDonald stopped his car several feet away from the runner. The road was not closed to traffic. Chase's mother, who did not see the incident, speculates that Chase may have been confused about where to run. MacDonald admitted pushing Chase to the ground, police said. Asked why, he told an officer "he thought Chase was going to mug his wife and take her purse,'' according to the police report. "MacDonald's wife was sitting in the front passenger seat at the time of the incident,'' the officer noted. MacDonald said he was concerned about Chase's intentions because "some youths had broken into his car recently,'' according to the police report. MacDonald also told an officer that Chase did not respond when told to move out of the road, police said. Kris Van Metter, 42, was in Rochester visiting relatives that weekend and went for a bicycle ride in Cobb's Hill Park. Reached by phone Friday in Washington, D.C., Van Metter said he had just finished riding when he saw a large middle-aged man -- later identified by police as MacDonald -- get out of his car and yell at Chase for several minutes. "I see a grown man, who is quite tall and fairly heavy . . . exit the vehicle and give this young man a shove that puts him back 10 feet and flat on his butt,'' Van Metter said. "Like, just shoved him across the road. The kid didn't seem to be doing anything but standing there, obviously had nothing in his hands, and weighed all of 130 pounds. This guy (MacDonald) was easily twice that." MacDonald then hopped in his car and drove off, according to Van Metter and another witness, Collin Thompson, who was running in the area. Thompson and Van Metter both said Chase was in the middle of the road during the confrontation. Both witnesses took down the car's license plate number. Thompson told police that MacDonald yelled "Get out of here'' after shoving Chase to the ground, according to the Rochester police report. Thompson could not be reached for further comment. Efforts to reach MacDonald by phone Friday and Saturday were unsuccessful. Judge Morrison, who is African-American, did not respond to a request for comment. A clerk in her office referred questions to the district attorney. Mary Wilmot, a spokeswoman for District Attorney Doorley, said their office was not involved because no arrest was ever made. Wilmot referred questions to the judge. Chase, a slender 15-year-old, wasn't hurt physically in the attack. But because he is almost wholly unable to communicate with words, it's hard to assess the emotional impact, said his mother, Clarise. "I just want to know what's in his head,'' she said. Chase had been running cross country for three years, since seventh grade, and his mother said she was grateful that he had finally found a sport he liked. The team camaraderie was important for a kid who could not hold a simple conversation, she said. Chase finished many races last, well behind the other runners, and the Oct. 14 race in Rochester was no different. Chase was straggling far behind the other runners when he encountered MacDonald. Coleman, who was waiting for her son near the finish line, did not see the attack. Based on what the witnesses told her about Chase being in the road during the confrontation, she thinks it's likely he was off course and confused about where to go. In the past, Coleman ran races with her son to keep him on course, but a knee injury forced her to stop. Van Metter said he heard MacDonald shouting at Chase before he pushed him. If the man was yelling at him to move out of the road because he was blocking MacDonald's car, Chase likely would not have understood without being physically guided, his mother said. Coleman said her son requires one-on-one guidance in most activities. "He looks to adults to assist him, because that's what he's used to,'' she said. Contact reporter Tim Knauss anytime | email | Twitter | 315-470-3023 Chase Coleman by Tim Knauss on Scribd |
Polytron and Finji reveal support for musical indie game Panoramical A unique partnership was unveiled today at the Los Angeles-based Horizon conference, an E3 alternative event hosted by Venus Patrol and the LA Museum of Contemporary Art. Panoramical is described as "anthology of interactive musical landscapes coming soon to home computers," that allows players to experience "a series of synaesthetic alien vistas like an ambient disco-god controlling your own tiny universe." The project comes from indie developer Fernando Ramallo and David Kanaga, the composer behind Proteus and Dyad, in collaboration with Fez team Polytron and Finji, Canabalt creator Adam Saltsman's new studio. Kanaga was on hand at the event at MOCA, where he played Panoramical with a MIDI controller, manipulating the experience sliders during the presentation, rather than traditional inputs. Following the presentation, Phil Fish broke his silence to discuss Panoramical, saying he's been "fascinated by it ever since experiencing it for the first time at Fantastic Arcade two years ago." Polytron is starting a new partnership program, where the studio hopes to pay it forward for all the support it received while creating and distributing Fez. Panoramical is the first such title to receive Polytron's aid, which will mostly be in a production and promotional capacity. Prior to Polytron's involvement, the developers already inked a deal with Adam Saltsman's Finji, which Fish says will handle logistics and "the kind details independent developers often need help with when they’re busy trying to ship the damn thing." Fish made clear Polytron is steering clear of acting as a publisher, though. "One word we’re trying real hard to avoid is 'publishing,'" Fish wrote. "Because what does that even mean in 2014, really? Even saying it out loud feels wrong." Panoramical is targeting an early 2015 release via Steam. You are logged out. Login | Sign up Click to open photo gallery: |
Joy Reid with Malcolm Nance (Photo: Screen capture) Former United States Navy senior Chief Petty Officer Malcolm Nance knows a thing or two about the chain of command and he think’s that’s why President Donald Trump is infatuated with hiring generals. Host Joy Reid noted that it speaks to a larger conversation that Trump prefers the “trappings of an authoritarian leader” like Kim Jong Un or President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines. Nance said that Gen. John Kelly will likely “fall in line” when he begins work in the Oval Office on Monday. As a Marine, Kelly is accustomed to following chains of command, certainly the commander in chief. “He feels that generals give him that steel in his back and will get things done for him that he chooses to do,” Nance explained. “He does not want to fit the role of a president of the United States. He wants to be a CEO of a Trump corporation and he is going to put people behind him that will crack the whip.” He brought up the developments in North Korea, saying that if Trump decides “he’s going to burn that program out of the ground with perhaps a nuclear weapon, well these generals are going to have to be the ones that have to consequences of that, because his consequence management skills are null.” While Kelly will follow the chain of command, Nance said that Kelly “might have to be the guy who tackles him” before poor decisions are made like getting into a nuclear war with North Korea. Watch his full comments below: Kelly 'might have to be the guy who tackles him… by sarahburris |
Copyright by WFLA - All rights reserved Judge Olu Stevens. Image courtesy WAVE 3. Copyright by WFLA - All rights reserved Judge Olu Stevens. Image courtesy WAVE 3. LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A Kentucky judge facing possible banishment from the bench for racially charged comments aimed at a prosecutor has instead been suspended by the state Judicial Conduct Commission. Olu Stevens, a circuit judge in Louisville, accepted a 90-day suspension without pay on Monday in an agreement with attorneys for the commission. The agreement came at the start of a hearing that potentially could have ushered Stevens off the bench for good. A contrite Stevens admitted to violating judicial canons and said his social media onslaught against prosecutor Tom Wine was wrong. Stevens is black; Wine is white. In provocative posts that threatened to end his judicial career, Stevens' comments ignited a debate about racial fairness, judicial impartiality and free speech for judges. He wrote that Wine's request that the state Supreme Court review Stevens' decision to dismiss the jurors amounted to an attempt "to protect the right to impanel all-white juries," a charge Wine vehemently denies. Stevens suggested there was "something much more sinister," and wrote that the prosecutor will "live in infamy." His outburst came after Wine questioned his authority to scrap a jury panel because it lacked minorities. http://wx.wfla.com/oembed/email/noon_signup.html |
Everybody knows 2016 was a weird year. But guess what: So far, 2017 is even weirder. Like dystopian, wake-me-from-this-nightmare, am-I-living-in-an-episode-of-Black-Mirror weird. We’ve got the tweets to prove it. A simple Twitter search reveals that a critical mass of people thinks the world is suddenly turning into a dark scifi reality, much like the spine-tingling, dystopian TV show. They’re not wrong. From stories about texting dead people to news about creating artificial memories, the things that are happening this year are undeniably disturbing. So much so that “This is some Black Mirror shit” might as well be the motto of 2017. Just look at how many people are saying it in the last month alone—and this is just a sampling: Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Be safe out there. Beware the robots. |
When Mass Effect fan Jackie sought BioWare Montreal's help in proposing to her partner, the studio pulled out all the stops. A small team made up of level designer Colin Campbell, writer Ann Lemay, and QA analyst Barrett Rodych put together a completely new level loaded with subtle references to their relationship, then studio manager Marie-Renée Brisebois cooked up a fake contest as a way to bring them into the studio to play it. A letter sent to Jackie and her partner, Amy, informed them they'd won "A Day With Our Devs" contest at PAX East, and that part of the prize included playing a new Mass Effect level in order to provide feedback to the developers. Lemay, Rodych and other employees made the whole thing look legit by watching and taking notes as she played. "I was really nervous, even having gone through the level 20 times on my own making sure all the doors were working and all the message boxes were working," Rodych said. "But I would do it again in a heartbeat." The final room contained a single console and Jackie and Amy's names for one another painted on a wall in 50-foot high graffiti. When Amy activated the console, a message popped up stating, "Dear Amy, Jackie would like to ask you something. Love, all of us at BioWare." Jackie then took out the ring and proposed. "When she got to that room, everyone around was riveted and hoping she’d say yes," Brisebois said, and of course, she did. "It was a beautiful sight to see. No matter how grumpy you are, when you see a thing like that you can’t help but smile and maybe even tear up a bit." A happy story with a happy ending—isn't that nice? Well done, BioWare. |
At this time there is preliminary evidence for CAM therapies including acupuncture, massage, and naturopathy in the treatment of anxiety disorders; while homeopathy is not supported by clinical evidence. No studies identified assessed chiropractics or osteopathy in treating anxiety disorders. Thus, in the absence of conclusive studies, clinicians should prescribe these treatments with caution as their efficacy is not as well characterised as more standard therapies. The practice of homeopathy (use of preparations consisting of highly diluted substances) has its roots in the 1800s in Germany where it was used to treat a range of illnesses and health disorders [ 16 ]. A systematic review by Pilkington and colleagues [ 32 ] identified eight RCTs using homeopathy to treat anxiety. Results revealed that the benefit of homeopathy in generalised anxiety and anxiety disorders is unable to be determined, as the identified studies all exhibited significant methodological issues (e.g., small samples, lack of control group). Reported adverse effects appear to be limited to “remedy reactions” and included temporary worsening or reappearance of minor symptoms. Another stricter systematic review by Davidson et al. [ 33 ] of homeopathy in psychiatry, found that for four of five studies for anxiety (two on GAD), homeopathy was not superior to placebo. An example of an RCT using homeopathy to treat anxiety was conducted by Bonne and colleagues [ 34 ]. Forty-four patients with diagnosed GAD participated in a 10-week RCT of individually tailored homeopathic remedy. While significant improvement in most measures, including HAM-A, was observed in both the active treatment and placebo groups, no difference was found between groups. In summary, on the basis of the current literature it is not possible to provide support for the use of homeopathy for treatment of anxiety disorders. Acupuncture has been documented to interact with opioid pathways, and interventions which modify these pathways have been shown to have potential mood modulatory activity [ 28 , 29 ]. Other potential mechanisms of action that may induce anxiolysis include increased release of serotonin and norepinephrine, and cortisol modulation [ 30 ]. Examination of biological mechanisms of acupuncture and massage therapy, including measurements of neurotransmitters and immune biomarkers has been conducted in the area of depression [ 26 , 31 ], although specific research into the underpinning neurobiological effects of these interventions to treat anxiety has not yet been explored. Regarding studies for specific DSM-IV diagnoses, Pilkington and colleagues [ 26 ] identified 3 trials specifically on GAD. These trials were all of short duration (four to six weeks) and compared acupuncture against pharmacotherapy. Similar efficacy was found for both interventions, but small sample sizes limited the generalisability of the findings. Very few trials in other anxiety disorders such as OCD and PTSD have also been published, but due to design flaws do not support solid recommendations about potential efficacy. In summary, acupuncture appears effective in short-term use for anxiety symptoms, but we cannot yet make clear recommendations for specific clinical anxiety disorders. Adjunctive therapy studies are lacking, which is unfortunate given that acupuncture is generally well tolerated and does not appear to cause adverse interactions with pharmacological therapies [ 27 ]. Analysis of the studies was hampered by common problems encountered when interpreting the acupuncture literature in general. These include between-trial variation in acupuncture protocols and specific points used. Furthermore, different studies used a variety of control interventions, including behavioral desensitisation, sham acupuncture with nonspecific points, biofeedback, and drug therapy. The authors were rightfully suspicious of some of the reported “cure rates” that they described as “unrealistically high”. Acupuncture appeared to be comparable in efficacy to drug therapy, but this similarity could be explained by the small sample sizes leading to underpowering of studies, limiting the ability to detect a difference between treatments. Other limitations included the mixing of diagnoses in the samples, for example, anxiety disorder and depression. Acupuncture is a very popular CAM intervention that, unlike the previously mentioned interventions, has a more substantive body of clinical trial evidence regarding its efficacy and safety in the treatment of anxiety and depression. A recent review by Pilkington et al. [ 26 ] identified 10 randomized and two nonrandomised clinical trials of acupuncture for generalised anxiety or anxiety disorders. Among the RCTs, four were in patients with GAD or anxiety neurosis, and six in patients with acute perioperative anxiety. Other investigations have compared CBT against aromatherapy massage (AM) for treating symptoms of anxiety or depression in cancer patients. In a sole comparison of these two interventions, Serfaty and colleagues [ 24 ] recruited 39 cancer patients with anxiety and/or depression assessed on the Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale (HADS). Subjects were randomised to treatment as usual (TAU) plus up to eight sessions of AM or CBT over three months. AM proved the more acceptable therapy based on sessions attended, and both treatments were significantly effective based on the Profile of Mood States (in respect to total mood, depression, and anxiety scores). CBT had a trend to an advantage in depression but not in anxiety. Therapeutic massage is one of the most popular CAM treatments for anxiety, but has had few rigorous evaluations for diagnosed anxiety disorders. A recent study by Sherman and colleagues [ 23 ] assessed the effectiveness of massage for treatment of GAD. The investigators randomised 68 patients with GAD to therapeutic massage, thermotherapy (the application of heat to the body), or relaxation-room therapy for 12 weeks (total 10 sessions). Changes in various outcome measures, such as the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HAM-A), were assessed at the conclusion of the 12 weeks and also after six months of additional followup. All three treatment groups had significant improvement on the HAM-A after 12 weeks and maintained their gains after 26 weeks. However, no significant differences were found between groups. The authors concluded that all three treatment arms showed some clinically significant improvements, perhaps due to a generalized relaxation response rather than any individual characteristics of the three treatments. In fact, given the lower expense of the relaxation-room, the authors suggested that this particular intervention might prove the most cost-effective for GAD patients who are interested in CAM [ 23 ]. A double-blind RCT by Cooley and colleagues [ 22 ] compared a naturopathic therapy (NT) protocol, including the herbal medicine Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) 300 mg twice daily, dietary counseling, breathing relaxation techniques, and a standard multivitamin. Eighty-seven subjects with moderate to severe anxiety of longer than six weeks were recruited. The control group received a standardized psychotherapy intervention (PT), matched deep breathing relaxation techniques, and placebo pill supplement over 12 weeks. Final Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) scores decreased significantly in both groups, by 56.5% in the NT group and 30.5% in the PT group, with a highly significant advantage for the NT group compared to PT group. The NT group also had significantly greater clinical benefit in mental health, concentration, fatigue, social functioning, vitality, and overall quality of life. No serious adverse reactions were reported in either group. The study, while enlightening, was limited by a small sample size, and utilisation of comprehensive treatment packages, making it difficult to assess the benefit of any particular component. Additionally, Naturopaths frequently apply complex personalized herbal and nutritional formulations in treatment protocols, and thus the standardized intervention does not reflect normal practice. The results however are encouraging and endorse further research. Naturopathic practitioners seek to improve health by assisting the body's innate capacity to recover from illness [ 20 ]. Practitioners typically employ a combination of many CAM therapies, including herbal and nutritional supplementation, and dietary and lifestyle recommendations, and may additionally incorporate acupuncture or homeopathy. Only one study has been performed with regard to naturopathic medicine (naturopathy) in the area of anxiety disorders, although another naturalistic observational study is currently underway [ 21 ]. There are several complementary therapy modalities touted as having potential benefit in the treatment of anxiety, including interventions such as acupuncture, massage, naturopathy, chiropractics, and homeopathy [ 16 ]. Regulation of these practices and their practitioners vary depending on jurisdiction, and if clinicians are referring patients for these treatments, several considerations should be recognised, including evidence for the modality, cost of the treatment, and the training and qualification of the therapist. In summary, for reducing generalised anxiety, evidence supports the use of Kava (although potential extremely rare hepatotoxicity needs to be considered), while limited research points towards a beneficial effect of Ginkgo, Passion flower, and Chamomile, multinutrient formulations, Scullcap, Lemon balm, and Bacopa. Further studies are needed to extend this research into clinical cohorts. Although there appears to be growing support for a general anxiolytic effect of aromatherapy, future research is required to explore the effects on clinical anxiety disorders. There is little support for the use of St John's wort for any anxiety disorder, while tentative evidence supports inositol for PD and discourages its use in OCD. The proposed pharmacodynamics of herbal medicines used for treatment of anxiety disorders primarily involve modulation of neuronal communication, affecting neuroreceptor binding and activity [ 35 ], or alteration of neurotransmitter synthesis and activity [ 36 ]. Anxiolytic nutraceuticals may have effects on the GABA system either via inducing ionic channel transmission by voltage-gated blockage, or through alteration of membrane structures, GABA transaminase or glutamic acid decarboxylase inhibition, or less commonly via binding with benzodiazepine receptor sites (e.g., GABA-A) [ 35 ]. Other actions may involve dampening CNS activity, and regulating or supporting the healthy function of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal-axis [ 80 ]. Despite a lack of evidence for nutrient supplementation in other anxiety disorders, evidence does suggest that inositol may have a potential role in ameliorating panic. In 21 patients with diagnosed PD with or without agoraphobia, 12 g/day of inositol was shown to quell the frequency and severity of panic attacks and the severity of agoraphobia in a double-blind four week cross-over trial [ 58 ]. A later small trial involving 20 participants reported that Inositol (18 g/day for one month) was more effective than fluvoxamine (250 mg/day for one month) in reducing weekly panic attacks [ 60 ]. In 13 patients with OCD, 18 g/day of Inositol reduced OCD symptoms in a six week cross-over trial [ 59 ], however other studies have revealed equivocal effects to placebo [ 79 ]. At present, there is little evidence to support the anxiolytic effects of nutrient supplementation for treatment of most anxiety disorders (see ). One large double-blind RCT (n = 264) reported that supplementation with magnesium, when combined in a herbal formula, decreased anxiety in patients with mild to moderate generalised anxiety over three months relative to placebo [ 77 ]. In relatively healthy samples, multinutrient therapy has been shown to have no effect on state anxiety (n = 205) over 12 months [ 57 ]or self rated calmness following 28 days (n = 198) [ 56 ] and 33 days (n = 215) [ 55 ] of treatment. However, while approximately one month of multinutrient supplementation reduced anxiety relative to placebo across 88 healthy males [ 52 ] and 44 women with premenstrual symptoms [ 53 ], a further study reported no beneficial effect of multinutrient therapy on anxiety in participants in aged care following eight weeks of supplementation [ 54 ]. In healthy participants (n = 108), one double-blind RCT reported that a week of amino acid treatment (2.64 g L-lysine and 2.64 g L-arginine per day) decreased stress-related anxiety [ 78 ]. Aromatherapy (the practice of prescribing isolated volatile oils from plants via inhalation, massage, or internal use) is one of the most widely used CAMs in the treatment of anxiety. A recent systematic review concluded that, across the 16 studies, aromatherapy was generally safe and effective in reducing anxiety symptoms [ 61 ]. The review reported that those with higher levels of anxiety appeared to respond better to aromatherapy than those with mild anxiety. However, the review noted that many of the studies were of questionable quality and study cohorts were heterogeneous, comprising participants with dementia, cancer, and also healthy volunteers. A single double-blind RCT has assessed the use of Matricaria recutita (Chamomile) in the treatment of GAD [ 40 ]. Following eight weeks of treatment in 57 patients, Chamomile was found to have a modest effect on reducing anxiety (HAM-A scores) relative to placebo. Adverse events were not different between the placebo and treatment groups. Several small double-blind RCTs suggest that Melissa officinalis (Lemon balm) increases self-rated calmness acutely in healthy participants [ 44 , 45 ]. Interestingly, all three of these double-blind studies reported significant effects on self-rated calmness with different dosages of Lemon balm (ranging from 300–1600 mg). The effects of Lemon balm have yet to be investigated in clinical samples. Limited evidence exists for an anxiolytic effect of Scutellaria lateriflora (Scullcap) and Passiflora incarnata (Passion flower), both of which have traditionally been used in the Americas as calming agents [ 74 ]. Following acute administration, one small study reported that Scullcap reduced anxiety relative to placebo in a dose-dependent fashion [ 48 ], however, the methodology was weak and the results were communicated poorly. Building upon promising preclinical research [ 75 ], Akhondzedah et al. [ 47 ] reported that 45 drops of randomised Passion flower extract was comparable to oxazepam in reducing anxiety in 36 patients with GAD. Two acute double-blind RCTs (samples of 60 participants) have reported that 500 mg of the herbal medicine significantly reduced anxiety associated with surgery relative to placebo [ 46 , 76 ]. Importantly, no negative interactions with anesthesia and surgical outcomes were observed. Commonly considered an anti-depressant, the anxiolytic effects of St John's wort were investigated in a double-blind multicentre RCT using a cohort of 324 outpatients with mild to moderate depression. Twice daily supplementation with 250 mg of St John's wort, relative to 75 mg of imipramine, significantly improved scores on the HAM-A somatisation subscale [ 73 ] over a period of six weeks. A further 6-week multicentre double-blinded RCT reported that St John's wort (600 mg/day) significantly improved various subscales on the HAM-A in a cohort of 151 outpatients with somatoform disorders [ 51 ]. However, studies exploring the use of St John's wort in specific anxiety disorders have not produced positive results. For example, two smaller double-blind RCTs have not supported its use (both trials used a flexible dose of 600–1800 mg extract daily over 12 weeks) in reducing the symptoms of OCD [ 49 ] or SP [ 50 ]. Due to this, St John's wort cannot be recommended as an anxiolytic for use in any anxiety disorder. Limited evidence suggests that Bacopa monnieri (Bacopa) [ 71 ] and Ginkgo biloba (Ginkgo) [ 35 ], both used for their cognitive enhancing effects, may have anxiolytic properties in humans. Although Ayurvedic writings document Bacopa in the treatment of anxiety [ 72 ], double-blind RCTs investigating effects of Bacopa on anxiety are scarce. In one study, where cognition was the primary outcome, 300 mg of standardised Bacopa extract daily for three months in 46 healthy volunteers was found to reduce State anxiety relative to placebo [ 39 ]. One double-blind RCT investigated the effects of Ginkgo extract EGb 761 on anxiety [ 41 ], using the HAM-A as the primary outcome measure in 107 patients with GAD or adjustment disorder with anxious mood. After four weeks of supplementation both a high (480 mg/day) and low dose (240 mg/day) of EGb 761 significantly reduced anxiety compared to placebo in a dose-dependent fashion. Despite evidence of efficacy, support for the use of Kava has been blunted by ongoing safety concerns following numerous reports of liver toxicity [ 69 ]. As discussed in detail elsewhere [ 64 ], various factors such as the manufacturing quality, plant part of Kava used, the method of extraction, and the dose are potential in factors that affect the safety of Kava [ 70 ]. Interactions with alcohol and pharmaceutical medications should also be considered. The most researched herbal medicine in the treatment of anxiety is Piper methysticum (Kava); a perennial plant native to various regions of the South Pacific [ 62 ]. The roots of the Kava plant are traditionally prepared as a water-based beverage for its medicinal properties and psychotropic effects [ 63 ]. In 2003, a Cochrane review evaluated the effectiveness of Kava in treating anxiety [ 42 ]. Out of 12 RCTs that satisfied the inclusion criteria, seven used the HAM-A and were included in the metaanalysis. The pooled analysis found Kava to be effective in reducing the HAM-A total score relative to placebo (weighted mean difference = 3.9, n = 380). Another pooled analysis of six studies found an effect size of 1.1 (Cohen's d) in favour of Kava reducing HAM-A score over placebo [ 64 ]. Those studies not included in the pooled analysis were generally congruent with this result. A further metaanalysis of six RCTs reported that a standardised Kava extract (WS1490) was effective in significantly improving anxiety relative to placebo (by 5.94 points on the HAM-A) further supporting the anxiolytic effects of Kava [ 43 ]. The anxiolytic properties of Kava appear to be due to a collective group of compounds called kavalactones [ 65 ]. Amongst numerous mechanisms, kavalactones appear to modulate calcium and sodium channels [ 66 ], modify binding of ligands to GABA receptors [ 67 ] and inhibit noradrenaline uptake [ 68 ]. Over the past 25 years, there has been increasing interest in the use of nutraceuticals (herbal or nutritional medicines) for the treatment of anxiety disorders, with numerous human clinical trials emerging in the area [ 19 , 35 , 36 ]. At present, the clinical evidence for herbal medicines, nutrients, and aromatherapy in the treatment of anxiety varies greatly in respect to methodological quality (see ). Considerations when referring or prescribing nutraceuticals involve the knowledge of potential drug interactions (e.g., with Hypericum perforatum (St John's wort) [ 37 ]), the additional cost of these supplements, and most importantly, concern over quality issues [ 38 ]. While some nutraceutical companies provide researched, standardised products, manufactured to a pharmaceutical standard, such confidence cannot be extended to many products, thus clinicians need to be mindful that quality and safety are paramount when integrating nutraceuticals into the therapeutic domain. The weight of evidence supports the use of moderate graded exercise to reduce anxiety and can be in most cases recommended after an appropriate health assessment. While the evidence strongly supports PA and exercise as an acute anxiolytic, the utility of exercise as treatment for anxiety disorders would benefit from rigorously controlled studies. Current clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of anxiety disorders including, PD, [ 118 ] support regular physical activity (e.g., walking for 60 minutes or running 20–30 minutes at least four days per week) as part of best-practice treatment. These recommendations are the same as those for MDD [ 119 ]. This is prudent given the high comorbidity between depression and anxiety. Moreover, given the relationship between physical activity and mental health appears to be complex [ 120 ], the input of robust RCT evidence will assist in substantiating and refining these recommendations. For example, some evidence suggests exercise recommendations should differ between men and women. In a survey assessing the relationship between exercise intensity and mental health, the positive effects of vigorous activity on anxiety symptoms found in men were not replicated in women [ 120 ]. In contrast to men, women appeared to benefit significantly from less intense forms of exercise (e.g., walking), with benefits found in more general domains (e.g., well-being and somatisation) and not those directly related to depressive or anxiety symptoms. The therapeutic effect of physical activity or exercise in reducing anxiety is likely the result of complex interactions between developmental, neurobiological, and psychological processes [ 107 ]. The neurobiological mechanisms underpinning the effect of physical activity on anxiety are not yet fully elucidated, but potentially involve modulating activity of 5-HT neurons in the dorsal ralph nucleus (DRN), modulation of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and regulation of various neuroactive agents, including brain derived neurotrophic factor [ 108 ] and beta-endorphins [ 109 ], and atrial natriuretic peptide [ 110 ]. Exercise appears to protect against stress-induced sensitisation of 5-HT DRN neurons which are known to exhibit afferent and efferent projections to cortical regions, the amygdala, locus coeruleus (LC), and periaqueductal grey matter, which are areas associated with fear, anxiety, and mood regulation [ 111 ]. In addition, exercise is known to produce an anti-inflammatory state [ 112 ] and potentially increase production of brain antioxidants [ 113 ]. Inflammation and oxidative stress are both postulated to have roles in the pathogenesis of numerous mental disorders including major depression [ 114 ]. In PD, exercise may be beneficial by inducing interoceptive cues that elicit anxiety, and by this repeated exposure to those sensations may assist in training the person to manage these symptoms [ 115 ]. Furthermore, exercise may induce beneficial downregulation of 5-HT2C receptors in sufferers of PD [ 116 , 117 ]. It is possible these factors interact in a complex fashion in exerting protective effects on the tumescence of anxiety symptoms. In regards to prescriptive use of exercise in diagnosed anxiety disorders, currently there is a surprising deficit of robust studies. However, in PD, a study of 46 individuals suffering from moderate to severe PD reported that patients who received structured aerobic exercise had significantly greater symptomatic improvement than patients who received placebo, but less improvement than those receiving clomipramine [ 98 ]. Further, aerobic exercise training was not statistically superior to relaxation when combined with either paroxetine or placebo in the treatment of patients with PD [ 99 ]. Other available pilot studies of structured exercise programs have demonstrated beneficial effects as individual or adjunctive therapies in patients with PTSD [ 100 – 102 ], SP [ 103 ] and OCD [ 104 ]. However, these studies generally suffer from methodological issues including lack of control groups and small sample sizes. As it stands, little other RCT evidence exists supporting the efficacy of exercise in the treatment of clinical anxiety disorders, although further evidence may soon become available [ 105 , 106 ]. Few prospective observational studies have been conducted assessing the impact of physical activity on anxiety disorders. Ströhle et al. [ 92 ] demonstrated a lower incidence of some anxiety disorders, and all anxiety disorders when grouped (OR: 0.70), as being associated with regular physical activity in a sample of 2548 adolescents and young adults. In a Swedish cohort prospectively followed for 2 years, moderate to vigorous physical activity (defined as >2 hours of activities per week, including aerobics, dancing, swimming, playing football, or gardening) was significantly associated with fewer symptoms of anxiety on the HADS (adjusted RR: 0.56) [ 93 ]. In this study, the association between physical activity and depression was of greater magnitude than with anxiety; a finding consistent with previous studies in which self reported depression rates (but not anxiety) were associated with less physical activity [ 94 , 95 ]. Prescriptive exercise has demonstrated efficacy as a treatment strategy for anxiety symptoms. In a recent metaanalysis, exercise as a therapeutic intervention was found to be as effective as psychotherapy, and nearly as effective as pharmacotherapy, for the treatment of self-reported anxiety symptoms [ 96 ]. The effect size of exercise for reduction of anxiety symptoms (d = −0.48) however appears smaller than the benefit observed in RCTs of exercise therapy in clinical depression (d = 1.42) [ 97 ]. There is now considerable evidence drawn from epidemiological surveys demonstrating the association of regular physical activity with reduced depressive and anxious symptoms [ 88 , 89 ]. Utilising cross-sectional data from the US national comorbidity study of 8098 adults aged 15 to 54, Goodwin [ 90 ] revealed regular physical activity as being associated with decreased prevalence of current anxiety disorders, including panic attacks (OR: 0.73), SP (OR: 0.63), specific phobia (OR: 0.78), and agoraphobia (OR: 0.64). However, an inherent issue with these cross-sectional studies is their inability to explain the direction of relationship between physical activity and anxiety. Regardless, mental disorders characterised by anxiety and depression are associated with many symptoms which may lead to reduced physical activity, such as fatigue, poor motivation and social isolation [ 91 ]. Physical inactivity is an established risk factor for the development of many of health disorders, including psychiatric illnesses [ 81 ]. For example, increased rates of MDD were correlated with physical inactivity in surveys of German [ 82 ] and Norwegian populations [ 83 ]. Regular physical activity appears to reduce all-cause mortality and is an established independent protective factor for premature death [ 84 , 85 ]. Mortality and morbidity aside, regular physical activity has been repeatedly shown to be associated with improved emotional wellbeing [ 86 ] and inactivity with poorer emotional wellbeing [ 87 ]. 3.4. Meditation Techniques (Mindfulness, Yoga, Tai Chi) 3.4.1. Overview The concept of meditation is varied, with a key attribute of the practice involving “mindfulness,” commonly defined as the awareness which arises through “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally” [121]. The development of mindfulness has its origins in the spiritual tradition of Buddhism, which dates back over 2,500 years. Over the past 60 years, ever since the advent of Buddhism in the West, there has been growing interest in the relationship between mindfulness, meditation, and mental health. In regards to anxiety disorders, a growing body of empirical evidence exists. The use of meditation as a Western behavioral intervention was pioneered by Kabat-Zinn [122], who originally investigated structured mindfulness training for the treatment of chronic pain. The training program has become known as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). MBSR is an 8–10 week structured program which involves (i) training in mindfulness meditation practice, (ii) mindful awareness, for example, during yoga postures, and (iii) mindfulness during stressful everyday situations and social interaction. The typical MBSR course involves weekly group meetings, a one-day workshop, and daily individual practice at home [123]. Over the past 30 years, the MBSR technique has been investigated in relation to a number of physical and mental illnesses, with a moderate clinical effect being reported in relation to the effect of MBSR on general mental health [123]. There is also evidence to suggest that amongst the general population, the MBSR technique may bring about a reduction in trait and state anxiety and symptoms [124, 125]. A number of mindfulness techniques in the context of adaptations of CBT have also been developed, including Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) [126], Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) [127], and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) [128]. However, due to the vast quanta of data in the area, the focus of the current section will be on formal mindfulness meditation techniques rather than obscure techniques, or specific mindfulness approaches to CBT. 3.4.2. Clinical Evidence Kabat-Zinn et al. [129] first investigated the efficacy of an 8-week MBSR program on anxiety scores in 22 patients who met DSM-IIIR diagnostic criteria for GAD or PD, as well as 58 “non-study” participants who did not meet formal criteria for an anxiety disorder yet scored above the 70th percentile on the Symptom Check List-90 Revised (SCL-90-R). At the end of the treatment period, as well as at 3-month followup, the number of patients experiencing panic symptoms (measured by the Hamilton Panic Score), was found to be significantly reduced, together with overall symptoms of anxiety. In a followup study, 18 of the original patients in addition to 39 of the larger study comparison cohort we assessed by Miller [130] in order to determine if the improvements in anxiety symptoms were maintained at 3 years. In the 18 original patients, posttreatment improvements in the Hamilton Panic Score, as well as the number and severity of panic attacks were maintained at 3-year followup, together with improvements on anxiety outcome measures. As an adjunct to pharmacotherapy with benzodiazepines or SSRIs, Lee et al. [131] investigated the efficacy of an 8-week variant of the MBSR program in ameliorating anxiety symptom severity in 41 patients who fulfilled DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for either GAD or PD. Twenty one patients were assigned to the MBSR group while the remaining 20 were assigned to an active control group in which they were educated about the biological aspects of anxiety disorders for one hour per week. In comparison to the education group, the MBSR group displayed significant improvement in anxiety symptoms on a range of outcome measures, such as the HAM-A. Koszycki et al. [132] conducted a study which directly compared the efficacy of an 8-week course in MBSR with 12-weeks of group CBT in 53 patients with chronic SP. Participants in both treatment groups were found to improve significantly over the course of treatments, however, both patient and clinician-rated measures of social anxiety were found to be significantly lower in the CBT group in comparison to the MBSR group at endpoint. The response and remission rates were also found to be significantly higher for the CBT group in comparison to the MBSR group, although the reported response rate of 45% for the completer sample in the MBSR group is encouraging [132]. In a more recent study Vøllestad et al. [133] investigated the efficacy of 8-week MBSR in reducing anxiety amongst 39 patients with PD, SP, or GAD, in comparison to a wait list control group of 37 participants. A significant difference between treatments in favor of MBSR was found on the primary anxiety outcome. Further, all treatment gains were found to be maintained at 6-month followup in the anxiety disorders group [133]. It has been argued that mindfulness practice may be of some benefit in OCD [134]. However, there is a scarcity of empirical research to date to investigate the efficacy of mindfulness interventions for OCD, despite the fact that some clinicians have claimed a degree of success using mindfulness approaches with their patients [134, 135]. A small pilot study by Hanstede et al. [136] investigated the efficacy of eight meditation group meetings (similar to MBSR) with participants experiencing OCD symptoms; eight participants were assigned to the mindfulness training while nine participants were assigned to a waiting-list control group. The mindfulness intervention was found to significantly reduce OCD symptoms by enhancing the mental ability of “letting go”. However, in the absence of a formal diagnosis of OCD and a broadly recognised outcome measure it is difficult to draw firm conclusions from this study. 3.4.3. Mechanisms of Action A number of mechanisms have been proposed whereby meditation and mindfulness techniques may ameliorate anxiety symptoms. First, through meditation training physiological arousal or negative thoughts may become viewed increasingly as transient events that come and go, decreasing the propensity of these thoughts to trigger secondary reactions that increase subjective distress [137]. Second, meditation has been proposed as a form of gradual exposure therapy, whereby prolonged exposure to anxiety-provoking thoughts and images may foster habituation [138, 139]. In this regard, Rapgay et al. [140] argue that “classical mindfulness,” with a greater emphasis on concentration to acquire direct experience, may be more effective for the treatment of GAD than MBSR because it involves greater exposure and habituation to threatening stimuli, rather than discriminate analysis. The benefits of meditation and mindfulness are also now beginning to be understood at a neurobiological level. Neuroimaging studies have provided evidence to suggest that regular meditation is associated with a number of changes to gray matter morphology using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). A study by Lazar et al. [141] reported that regular insight meditation practice was found to be associated with increased cortical thickness in a number of brain regions associated with attention, such as the prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula. Differences in prefrontal cortical thickness were also found to be more pronounced in older participants, which the authors interpreted as evidence that meditation may offset decline in cortical thickness associated with aging [141]. A number of other meditation practices have also been investigated, with the hippocampus and the right anterior insula found to be the most consistently implicated regions for group differences [142]. Finally, there is emerging direct evidence suggesting meditation may also influence neurotransmitter release, with intriguing research by Yu et al.[143] reporting that 20 minutes of focused attention on breathing movements in the lower abdomen is associated with significantly increased levels of oxygenated haemoglobin in the anterior PFC, as measured by near-infrared spectroscopy, as well a significant increase in whole blood serotonin (5-HT) levels at 5 minutes and 30 minutes after meditation [143]. 3.4.4. Yoga and Tai Chi Yoga and Tai chi are mind-body practices that both have a long standing history of use. Yoga is generally defined as a practice which consists of three components: gentle stretching, exercises for breath control, and meditation as a mind-body intervention [144]. Tai chi is practiced in China as both a form of exercise and as a martial art and involves moving from a standing position through a series of postures like a choreographed dance. Sequences of postures are known as “forms”, which require considerable time and concentration to master [145]. In a systematic review of yoga for anxiety, Kirkwood et al. [144] assessed eight studies for evidence of efficacy in the amelioration of anxiety. Positive results were reported for the effects of yoga treatments of durations up to three months, although many of the studies suffered from methodological limitations such as inadequate randomisation and high dropout rates. Firm conclusions were also hindered by the fact that there was a large diversity in the conditions studied, including OCD, examination anxiety, snake phobia, and the outdated diagnoses of anxiety neurosis and psychoneurosis [144]. It is interesting to note that the most rigorously conducted study was in 22 adults with OCD, as diagnosed by DSM-III-R. In this small study, three months of yoga treatment was found to provide a significantly greater reduction on the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) and SCL-90-R at endpoint in comparison to the relaxation response and mindfulness meditation control group [146]. A recent systematic review of the effects of Tai chi on psychological health and well-being was conducted by Wang et al. [147]. While not relating directly to clinically diagnosed anxiety disorders per se, the authors identified two RCTs and six nonrandomised studies which reported Tai chi to be associated with a significant reduction in anxiety when practiced two to four times a week (30 to 60 minutes/time) for five to 24 weeks. The overall effect size (Hedge's g) associated with reduction in anxiety symptoms between groups was reported to be 0.66. However, it should be noted that the 359 participants included in the metaanalysis presented with a diverse range of health conditions. While these preliminary findings are intriguing, further research using individuals with formally diagnosed anxiety disorders is required in order to properly test for the efficacy of Tai chi in ameliorating anxiety in clinical populations. In regards to the putative mechanisms of action of yoga and Tai chi in reducing anxiety, further investigation is also required in order to properly differentiate the effects of these meditative exercise practices compared to normal physical activity or other relaxation techniques. |
Story highlights Fake news report about Google sheds light on Web news pitfalls Press release saying Web giant bought Wi-Fi company was a hoax In rush to publish, many online outlets failed to double-check accuracy CEO apologizes, promises changes It was big news in the tech world -- or at least it would have been if it had been true. Google, so the story went, had purchased ICOA, a Wi-Fi provider, for $400 million. Some news organizations pounced, with everyone from long-established outlets like The Associated Press to new-media tech blogs like TechCrunch reporting the news Monday. But hours later, both companies would deny the story, which PR Web, a site that distributes press releases for a fee, says was planted by someone falsely claiming to represent ICOA Hoaxes have slipped their way into the public eye for as long as journalism has existed. But media experts say the way bad information spread so quickly casts a light on how reporting can go wrong in the fast-paced world of Web journalism. Long gone are the days when newspapers and the evening TV news were the only game in town -- when reporters had hours, if not days, to sift through a report before sharing it with the masses. In their place is an info-hungry Web that wants news now and rewards the quick with a currency of page views, Twitter links and Facebook "likes." "With something like this, there are a lot of blogs and websites that build their reputation on the tech world," said Kelly McBride, a senior faculty member at the Poynter Institute , a nonprofit devoted to the study and teaching of journalism. "If Google is spending $400 million to buy something, there are people who are expected to have something to say about that and they want to be in that mix." While a rush to get into that mix as quickly as possible probably played a role, McBride said there were multiple breakdowns in the Google-ICOA nonstory. The first, obviously, was the person who -- according to PR Web owners Vocus -- impersonated an ICOA representative. "Vocus reviews all press releases and follows an internal process designed to maintain the integrity of the releases we send out every day," the company said in a written statement. "Even with reasonable safeguards identity theft occurs, on occasion, across all of the major wire services. We have removed the fraudulent release and turned the matter over to the proper authorities for further investigation." On Thursday, Vocus CEO Rick Rudma n published a letter apologizing for the gaffe and promising that the company had improved it's process. "It's clear that we have to hold our service to an ever-higher standard, so PRWeb will continue to evolve," Rudman wrote. " We will continue to deliver a service that's valuable to our customers, valuable to our readers and valuable to our distribution and media partners -- and we'll work tirelessly to deliver on these promises." Financial experts say the hoax looks like an illegal effort to inflate ICOA's meager stock. Shares, which trade for a fraction of a penny, jumped in price dramatically Monday and hundreds of millions of shares changed hands before the stock was frozen. ICOA CEO George Strouthopoulos told Mashable , a CNN content partner, that the release apparently originated in Aruba and was sent from an e-mail account designed to look like an official ICOA address. But the most damning gaffe may have been PR Web's, McBride said. Acquired by Vocus in 2006, PR Web aims to compete with the decades-old PR Newswire and other press-release outlets. "Their quality-control process in printing out press releases obviously has some problems," McBride said. "It's not just that they got 'hacked' -- but that it was a pretty crappy press release." The release had several grammatical errors, included no contact information for representatives of Google or ICOA, and didn't include biographical information about the companies that is typical in releases from major corporations. In a post titled "How PRWeb Helps Distribute Crap Into Google & News Sites," Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land searched PR Web and found one of the Internet's ubiquitous "how to buy cheap Viagra" posts and other content that would seem more at home in a spam e-mail than on a news site. The final error, McBride said, was on the part of reporters. Whether racing to publish fast or working on analysis of the supposed purchase, news outlets missed what should have been red flags. "Journalists who were looking at it should have spotted those same weak spots in the press release and questioned whether it was real or not," she said. "Those journalists were relying on PR Web to do that and they shouldn't have. "It would be easy to conclude that we're all going too fast. But it could be that we placed way too much trust in PR Web ... and assuming it had the same checks and balances and safety nets that other PR wires have." (Full disclosure: Last year, this reporter, like others at numerous news outlets, was duped by pranksters who created an entire website for a fictional consulting firm to release a phony survey comparing the IQs of users of various Web browsers.) Perhaps helping push the fake ICOA story, McBride said, was the Web's ability to share news stories in real time. "Once one organization does it, other organizations tend to place even more blind faith," she said. "Once the AP (for example) does it, then everyone does it." The Associated Press retracted and issued a correction for the story . When contacted, an AP spokeswoman referred CNN to the wire service's retraction , which cited ICOA and "a person close to Google" as saying the original report was untrue. TechCrunch apologized to its readers, both owning up to the error and appearing to take a shot at PR Web in the process. "We were wrong on this post, for not following up with Google and the other company involved but posting rather than ... waiting on a solid confirmation beforehand from either source," read an editor's note atop the original post. "We apologize to our readers, to the companies involved, and we'll be sure to act in a more responsible manner for future stories, rather than trusting the word of a website that doesn't necessarily hold itself up to any journalistic standards." Forbes and Reuters were among the other news outlets that reported the fake purchase, as were popular tech sites PC Magazine, The Next Web, Business Insider, Engadget, VentureBeat, The Verge and GigaOM. Other outlets, like MSNBC and USA Today, ran the Associated Press account. |
By By Alex Allen May 18, 2013 in Politics Philadelphia - New details and information regarding a story that broke here on Digital Journal earlier this evening are now beginning to surface. Details have been somewhat hazy about the case all night and plenty of rumors have been surfacing but some of Kokesh's fellow Adam vs the Man workers have now released a statement regarding his pending charges on the official Adam Kokesh Facebook page: Adam is locked up in a federal jail... he will go infront of a judge monday... he is being charged with resisting arrest... that us all I know - Lucas We will continue to follow this closely and report on any new details that emerge in the coming days. Earlier today Alex Allen , a digital journalist and the publisher of the " Liberty Sun ," broke the story of Adam Kokesh's arrest at a "Smoke Down Prohibition" event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Kokesh, who has attended and spoken at previous "Smoke Down Prohibition" events, was allegedly arrested without having smoked any marijuana. Footage has since been released, confirming his arrest. Although the audio is very poor in the footage, you can clearly hear Kokesh at one point stating that he was being "assaulted" by the police.Details have been somewhat hazy about the case all night and plenty of rumors have been surfacing but some of Kokesh's fellow Adam vs the Man workers have now released a statement regarding his pending charges on the official Adam Kokesh Facebook page:We will continue to follow this closely and report on any new details that emerge in the coming days. More about adam kokesh, Trial, smoke down prohibition, Arrest More news from adam kokesh Trial smoke down prohibiti... Arrest |
The Bears’ 2016 rookie class joined a host of tryout players this past weekend at Halas Hall for rookie minicamp. While the three-day camp allows coaches to get their hands on their new toys for the first time, the workouts aren’t particularly helpful in judging how the Bears’ new players will adjust to the NFL. Many of the tryout players weren’t even starters in college so early-round draft picks like Leonard Floyd, Cody Whitehair and Jonathan Bullard were by far the best players on the field. That won’t exactly be the case when OTA practices begin next week. That said, the rookie minicamp did provide reporters with an opportunity to talk to the Bears’ coordinators and assistants for the first time, providing valuable insight as to how the rookies might be deployed this season. So, after having those discussions this weekend — and evaluating the college tape — here’s a look some realistic expectations for the Bears’ nine draft picks this season: OLB Leonard Floyd, Georgia The Bears’ first-round pick (who they traded up for) won’t necessarily be a full-time player as a rookie. Floyd enters a crowded position group that includes the defensive leader — Pernell McPhee — and two other veterans — Lamarr Houston and Willie Young — who the Bears expect to be healthier and better in Year 2 of Vic Fangio’s system. These modest expectations for Floyd shouldn’t be discouraging for Bears fans. While top 10 picks are ideally Week 1 starters, the Bears’ situation is unique and Floyd is probably going to be a little raw early on in the season, especially if he is playing at 230-235 pounds, as Fangio suggested over the weekend. (For the record, I don’t have an issue with Floyd playing at that weight, I’m just a little confused why Fangio said 230-235, when general manager Ryan Pace said he wants Floyd playing in the 240s. Floyd said after he was drafted that he was at 240 and told WGN Radio he wants to add 10 pounds. He was 244 pounds at the NFL Combine.) Whatever the weight, I expect him to be an effective situational pass rusher as a rookie. Too many people are focused on Floyd’s (lack of) numbers at Georgia. They need to realize that he often wasn’t asked to rush the passer, a request that came out of necessity for the Bulldogs and not because of Floyd’s ability. If you watch the tape, you’ll see that he is more than capable of rushing the passer. His edge rushing tape is his best tape and what got him drafted No. 9 overall. As for fair rookie expectations, Fangio summed it up best on Saturday: “I’m sure there’s going to be a play or two every game where you’re going to say, ‘Jeez, he’s not heavy enough’ or ‘He’s too light.’ Hopefully there’ll be a few plays every game, too, that we say, ‘Well, jeez, we didn’t have anybody who could have done that in the past.’ He is what he is.” OG Cody Whitehair, Kansas State At this point I think the Bears would be disappointed if Whitehair isn’t the starting left guard Week 1 in Houston. Those expectations were created the minute the Bears cut veteran Matt Slauson. Even if Slauson didn’t exactly fit athletically within the scheme, the depth isn’t good enough to justify that move unless the Bears believe Whitehair is capable of playing left guard at a high level right away. For what it’s worth, I believe he is. DL Jonathan Bullard, Florida I wasn’t in love with this pick when it was made, but I did think Bullard provided solid value in the third round. The more tape I watch, however, the more I think Bullard will be a key contributor early on. Seeing him in person this weekend, he was bigger than I thought. He doesn’t look like a rookie. Realistically, Bullard will be in an intense competition with guys like Ego Ferguson, Will Sutton and Mitch Unrein for the starting defensive end spot opposite Akiem Hicks. All of Fangio’s defensive linemen play, however, and Bullard should be one of the guys in the rotation. ILB Nick Kwiatkoski, West Virginia Barring a huge surprise or injury, Danny Trevathan and Jerell Freeman will be the Bears’ starting inside linebackers when the season starts. The hope with Kwiatkoski is that he can eventually develop into a starter, but right now the Bears want him to be an impact special teams player and solid backup. S Deon Bush, Miami With Antrel Rolle out of the picture, the door is open for Bush to become the second rookie safety to start the opener for the Bears in two years. Adrian Amos will theoretically keep his starting job, but I wouldn’t call him a lock. The Bears want to see Amos make more plays on the ball. That will be a prerequisite for all of the competitors, including Bush, Harold Jones-Quartey, Omar Bolden and sixth-round pick DeAndre Houston-Carson. I’m not sure it’s fair to expect Bush to win a starting job, but given the lack of depth at the position, it won’t be surprising if he does. S Deiondre’ Hall, Northern Iowa The longterm expectation for Hall is that he can develop into a reliable No. 1 or No. 2 corner, but he’s still raw and admitted over the weekend that he’s still learning the cornerback position. “For me, it’s just taking coaching points each and every week because I’m pretty much new to the position,” Hall said. “Getting little things here and there to keep me in front of receivers to stay in prime position is huge for me.” Hall played a lot of safety in college so not only is he making a big jump from FCS football to the NFL, but he’s also being asked to refine his cornerback techniques quickly. There’s no question Hall has the size and length to be a good press corner at the NFL level, but positioning and jamming at the line of scrimmage will be key. There’s going to be some growing pains, but it was encouraging to see the progress he made over three short days of practice at the Senior Bowl back in January. “(It clicked) probably later on in Day 2. That’s when I started feeling myself,” Hall said. “That’s kind of when you heard me talking a little bit more.” I think it’s asking a lot to expect Hall to start right away, but I expect him to make steady progress during the season and see the field somewhat regularly by the second half of the season. Remember, corner isn’t a particularly deep position for the Bears. RB Jordan Howard, Indiana John Fox reiterated over the weekend that he typically likes to settle on two primary running backs in his rotation and Howard has a shot to be one of those guys. It’s going to be a pretty wide open competition between Howard, Jeremy Langford, Ka’Deem Carey and Jacquizz Rodgers. Howard might not be one of the two primary backs right away, but I expect him to see a decent amount of carries by the end of the season. S DeAndre Houston-Carson, William & Mary The Bears have made it pretty clear: Houston-Carson was drafted to boost special teams right away. “He’s a guy who can run,” special teams coordinator Jeff Rodgers said Sunday. “He’s got some decent size and length to him. He’s an active guy. He always seems to find the football. (Nine) blocked kicks. But there’s a couple of return touchdowns he has both defensively and off of blocked kicks. He was a scoop-and-score guy. Guys that have a knock for ball skills in college, that usually translates. We’ll see. But his college tape is pretty good.” It’s probably too much to ask Houston-Carson to be an immediate “playmaker” on defense, but that’s exactly what should be expected of him on special teams. WR Daniel Braverman, Western Michigan It’s going to be really hard to evaluate Braverman until he puts the pads on in training camp, but he is a very good route runner. Can he beat out Marc Mariani? Can he beat out Eddie Royal? It’s hard to say right now, but he has youth on his side. Ideally, Braverman will emerge as a solid No. 4 wide receiver. Realistically, the expectation should be to make the 53-man roster out of camp. Braverman actually left Western Michigan with a year of eligibility remaining and told me over the weekend that he thought there was a chance he would be drafted in the fourth round. He started getting nervous in the fifth round, he said. Going in the seventh round may have been a little bit of a wakeup call, but it surely will motivate the wide receiver. As for the draft class as a whole, it’s realistic to think they will all make the 53-man roster. With nine draft picks, it’s not uncommon to see multiple draft picks cut out of training camp and/or put on the practice squad. But the Bears aren’t a particularly deep team and I think they did a good job of adding guys who at least project as good special teamers. Last year, all six draft picks made the team out of camp. If the Bears can do that two years in a row, well, that would be considerable progress. Adam Hoge covers the Chicago Bears for WGN Radio and WGNRadio.com. He also co-hosts The Beat, weekends on 720 WGN. Follow him on Twitter at @AdamHoge. |
It’s been a troubled week for Malcolm Turnbull, with portents of problems that may not be so easily fixed. Here are three: The leaks have started Labor has had access to private government documents designed to prevent Tony Abbott from being blamed for approving Stuart Robert’s very official-looking private trip to China with his friend Paul Marks (Marks being a big donor to the Liberals and Robert being a shareholder in companies associated with Marks.) When Bill Shorten can stand up in the parliament and quote the serial number of government correspondence on the issue, it’s an ominous sign. Tony Abbott’s “no wrecking, no undermining and no sniping” promise has looked shaky from the start, with his very pointed interventions, and the provenance of the leaks cannot be proven. But when one of Abbott’s favourite columnists writes “blame shifting on this issue is a risky strategy considering there are still spear throwers in the party room who won’t tolerate much more revisionism from Turnbull’s camp” it looks pretty much like a direct threat from Abbott’s “camp”. Meanwhile, Scott Morrison had earlier dismissed the affair as “a massive beat-up” and made a point of walking into question time alongside Robert, his friend, flatmate and supporter, so loyal that he is understood to have switched his vote from Abbott to Turnbull in line with Morrison’s own defection. Barnaby Joyce elected Nationals leader and Fiona Nash deputy leader Read more Robert has now been sacked without reference to Abbott’s knowledge of the purpose of the trip. And the post-leadership coup bitterness does not seem to have deteriorated to the level of the deliberate and devastating leaks against Julia Gillard in the 2010 election campaign. But the signs are not good. The loud man has landed New Nationals leader and deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce is certainly good at “selling a message”, it’s just not always the same message that Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberals want to sell. On Friday he described the Coalition agreement as “a business partnership and not a marriage”. “At certain times the business partners have different views on things but I’m not going to go searching for them,” he told the ABC. Joyce, who is certainly better at long-term strategising and biting his tongue than when he entered parliament in 2005, is unlikely to make a public fuss about the Nationals’ “different views” in the lead-up to this year’s election, but the whole point of electing him is for him to do exactly that in the longer term. As country independents nip at their heels, Nationals believe their long-term survival requires them to “differentiate” more – have their disagreements with the Liberals more publicly so rural folk know they have been had. The shake-up means there a now several potential Coalition disagreements in the offing. Competition policy. The Nationals insisted the reworked Coalition agreement with Turnbull included a promise to reconsider competition laws protecting small business from big businesses abusing their market power. Turnbull has opposed the changes in Cabinet. Environment policy. The Nationals have, for example, been angered by the federal environment department’s attempts to implement federal laws on land clearing and have spoken out against the government’s renewable energy policy. Welfare policy. The Nationals go into bat for single-income families, whereas the Liberals like to encourage parents back to work. The same Coalition agreement included a pledge to pay an extra $1,000 to single-income families with a child under one who earn less than $100,000 a year, but that was part of a deal with the crossbench that hasn’t made it through the Senate. Climate policy. Barnaby, like many of the Nationals he leads, is not sure about the whole theory of human-induced climate change. Turnbull is. Hard to see how that difference wouldn’t play out when it comes to climate policy. The tax policy has fallen apart It’s not usual for governments to release internal modelling to show why they’re not doing something they’ve just spent months suggesting they will do. Not necessarily a bad thing, in my view, attracted as I am to evidenced-based policymaking, but certainly unusual. But ditching the “big bang” tax cuts does not tell us how they intend to pay for the “quietly modest” tax cuts they are now foreshadowing. But we can be pretty certain gradual long-term personal tax cuts are likely because the government is using the same modelling to present bracket creep as the problem the exercise is designed to solve. Whether voters think bracket creep is a bigger problem than the stuff Labor intends to pay for (schools and hospitals), probably with a similar set of tax changes, remains to be tested. Right now Labor has the great advantage of at least the beginnings of an actual policy, with more on negative gearing and capital gains tax released today. |
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The first series of photos and video from an ongoing investigation of a massive hole in Siberia have been released, all but confirming a very boring explanation for a very exciting phenomenon. The gigantic crater and hole was first spotted by helicopter pilots earlier this week as they flew over the Yamal peninsula - a region appropriately called the "end of the world." Experts and conspiracy theorists alike immediately started speculating as to what caused this mysterious geological formation to occur, claiming meteorites, to sub-surface explosions, to mole men. Perhaps it was even once the home of a sarlacc, the massive semi-sentient plant set to devour Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. "We can definitely say that it is not a meteorite. No details yet," a spokesman from Yamal's branch of the Emergencies Ministry told The Siberian Times, when it broke the story on Tuesday. The ministry did confirm that a team of geological experts had been set to investigate, but in the meantime experts half a globe away were already near-certain that the mysterious hole was actually the result of an unusually large pingo. A pingo often forms when a mass of ice embedded in the earth starts to get pushed towards the surface by rising ground water. Generally, this rising water level is in-turn caused by warming temperatures, especially in the Arctic where permafrost in the ground is beginning to melt. Once the ice mass reaches the surface, it can violently rupture from the Earth, creating a ring of disturbed soil that resembles a crater. When the mass finally melts, all that remains is a damp and very deep hole. This theory was all but confirmed by experts this week after investigating the hole for themselves. Andrey Plekhanov, Senior Researcher at the State Scientific Centre of Arctic Research, was quick to point out that the past two summers were unusually hot for Yamal, leading to increased permafrost melt. "There is ice inside the crater which gradually thaws under the sun." he told the Times on Thursday. "Also there is melted water flowing down from its sides, you can see water traces on the pictures. The crater is filled with ice by about eighty per cent." The investigation also found a flowing lake of ice-water at the bottom of the hole, which is estimated to be up to 230 feet deep (70m.). "For now we can say for sure that under the influence of internal processes there was an ejection in the permafrost," Plekhanov added. "I want to stress that it was not an explosion, but an ejection, so there was no heat released as it happened." The chance that the hole had been caused by a sub-surface explosion had been a big concern for experts who knew the hole to be close to natural gas lines, but the Emergency Ministry is confident it would have been notified had gas workers been alert to an explosion only 18 miles away. The investigators theorize that this unusually large phenomenon may be similar to what formed the Yamal lakes. "Such kind of processes were taking place about 8,000 years ago. Perhaps they are repeating nowadays. If this theory is confirmed, we can say that we have witnessed a unique natural process that formed the unusual landscape of Yamal peninsula," they said. Plekhanov concluded an interview with the Times reassuring people that the cause of this hole was most certainly not supernatural. "There is nothing mysterious about it. There is no weird or unexplained feelings there, we came back safe and sound." [Credit: Andrey Naumenko, OGTRK "Yamal-Region"] You can view all the photos from the initial investigation here. |
Politicians' respect scores. Photograph: Guardian Boris Johnson's campaign to position himself as the natural successor to David Cameron has received a big boost from a poll showing he is Britain's most respected political figure – outstripping even Margaret Thatcher. The YouGov poll, showing the London mayor is respected by 58% of voters compared with 46% for Thatcher, will be welcomed by Johnson because it appears to answer one of the main criticisms voiced in private in No 10: that he is a showman who cannot command respect as a heavyweight politician. Johnson's emphatic lead over Thatcher will be of symbolic significance, even though she retired 22 years ago, because Britain's first woman prime minister is still revered by Tory activists who have the final say in any leadership contest. The YouGov poll for this week's Cambridge conference, at which the Guardian is the media partner, is published as the Johnson prepares to use next month's Tory conference to maintain the momentum from his high-profile summer. He is comfortably ahead of Cameron, his Eton and Oxford contemporary, who is respected by 37% of voters. George Osborne, the mayor's junior in age and most likely rival for the Tory leadership, trails Johnson on 16%. Downing Street is dismissive of the threat posed by Johnson, who overshadowed Cameron with a witty speech at the Olympics and Paralympics victory parade on Monday. No 10 sources said serious times called for serious people. But Johnson's allies say his success in winning two consecutive mayoral contests in a predominantly Labour city show he has the appeal that could secure the prize that has, so far, eluded Cameron – winning an overall Conservative parliamentary majority. Johnson's case will be strengthened by the You-Cambridge conference poll, at which the Guardian is media partner. The poll shows that while Johnson's appeal is strongest in the south of England, his popularity reaches most parts of the country, except for Scotland. In the Midlands and northern England, for example, he is respected by 55% and 53% of the population, respectively. He enjoys respectful majorities, too, across social classes and gender, and in every age group except for the youngest. Johnson enjoys a commanding lead over 19 heavyweight political figures featured in the poll. He has an overall net score on respect of +25 points. This is calculated by subtracting the proportion who extend little or no respect to each of the figures from the proportion that respects them a great deal or a fair amount. The only other political figure with a positive net score is Thatcher, on +1. William Hague, the foreign secretary who is rapidly emerging as the "under the bus" candidate to succeed Cameron if the prime minister were to leave office abruptly, has the highest net score of any serving parliamentarian. Hague scores -1 point. Cameron scores -18 points, slightly behind David Miliband on -14 points. Osborne is on -53 points, slightly behind Nick Clegg on -52 points. Ed Miliband is on -29 points. George Galloway, the founder of the Respect party, ironically appears to be Britain's least respected politician. His overall net respect score is -67 points. The mayor is so popular he is within sight of Lord Coe, the double Olympic gold medallist who chaired the organising committee for London 2012. On the separate question of favourability, Coe has a net popularity rating of +29 compared with +26 for the mayor. But Johnson has a long way to go to catch the Olympic champions Jessica Ennis (+67) and Mo Farah (+66) – and the Queen (+58). The poll makes uncomfortable reading for Osborne. The chancellor's net respect score among Tory voters is -14 points compared with +69 for Johnson. Only 13% of voters believe the chancellor is doing a good job compared with 60% who believe he is doing a bad job. More than half of those asked (57%) believe Osborne should be replaced while 17% believe he should remain. The poll follows the YouGov/Sun poll on Wednesday, which found that the Tories would achieve a six-point poll bounce if Johnson were to replace Cameron as Tory leader.It found the Tories would increase their share from 31% to 37% if Johnson became leader. Labour would fall from 42% to 38%, thereby reducing the party's 11 point lead to a single point. Johnson's popularity is highlighted in other YouGov findings released this week which show he is a long way ahead of the three main party leaders on a series of key characteristics. More than half of voters (56%) regard Johnson as charismatic, compared with 21% for Cameron, 3% for Miliband and 11% for Clegg. Downing Street's claim that Johnson is not a serious figure will be challenged by some of the findings. Nearly a third of voters (29%) believe Johnson sticks to what he believes in compared with 19% for Cameron, 18% for Miliband and 7% for Clegg. Johnson is using the prospect of a third runway at Heathrow airport to differentiate himself from Cameron. The London mayor says he is standing by the Tory opposition to a third runway and was highly critical of the prime minister's decision to demote the former transport secretary Justine Greening amid signs that the Tories are preparing to embark on a U-turn. Just over a quarter (26%) of voters regard Johnson as strong, compared with 11% for Cameron, 5% for Miliband and 3% for Clegg. Johnson is ahead of Cameron (25% to 6%) when voters were asked who was in touch with ordinary people. The poll findings come as a small, but determined, group of Tory MPs try to oust Cameron. The Spectator reported this week that 14 Tory MPs have written letters to Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 committee, calling for a leadership contest. This falls a long way short of the 46 letters needed to trigger a contest. Between 11 and 12 September 2012, YouGov questioned 1,703 GB adults, and asked the questions about "respect". Other questions quoted come from a slightly earlier survey – between 9 and 10 September 2012 YouGov questioned 1,871 GB adults. The surveys were carried out online. All figures have been weighted and are representative of all GB adults (aged 18+) |
LONDON (Reuters) - More than half the money donated to groups campaigning in Britain’s EU membership referendum was given by 10 individuals or companies, according to research published on Friday, raising questions over the outsize influence of the wealthy on politics. Anti-corruption campaign group Transparency International UK also said 95 percent of donations to the ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’ campaigns in the run-up to the June 23 Brexit vote were made by only 100 donors. “The debate around the biggest question we have faced in a generation was financed by an astonishingly small group of exceptionally wealthy donors. That’s a dangerous place for any democracy,” said Duncan Hames, Transparency International UK’s director of policy. “It illustrates the general dependency of our country’s political parties on a millionaires club of some 50 donors, many of whom also sit in the House of Lords,” he added in a statement, referring to parliament’s upper chamber. Transparency International said public trust in politics was falling, with 76 percent of respondents to a poll run by the group saying wealthy individuals were using influence on government to benefit their own interests and 28 percent saying most or all members of parliament were involved in corruption. It said the two largest donors in the Brexit vote were David Sainsbury, the former chairman of the supermarket Sainsbury’s, who donated 4.2 million pounds ($5.32 million) to Remain between January and June, and stockbroker Peter Hargreaves, who gave 3.2 million to the Leave campaign. The third-largest donor, a group called Better for the Country which donated 2.1 million pounds to Leave, had not declared the source of its income, Transparency International said. Britons voted to leave the EU by 52 percent to 48 percent, launching the country into its biggest constitutional shift since World War Two and resulting in downgrades to its economic outlook. Transparency International recommended a cap on political donations of 10,000 pounds per donor per year, as well as tighter rules over declaring and companies donating. It said one-sixth of reported donations to political parties since 2001, or 125 million pounds, were made by companies. Current rules do not limit the size of donations but require political parties to declare large sums. Britain was rocked in 2006-07 by a “cash for honors” scandal when police investigated allegations that the then ruling Labour Party had rewarded some donors with appointments to the House of Lords. No charges were brought. |
The Pittsburgh Steelers and Minnesota Vikings will participate in the NFL’s 13th regular-season game played outside the United States on Sunday, traveling to Wembley Stadium for each team’s first international game. Non-U.S. Sites Hosting NFL Games Preseason/Regular Season Though the league has only recently held regular-season games outside the country, the NFL has held 58 preseason games outside the United States, including 13 in Tokyo alone. Including preseason matchups, Sunday will be the 16th game London has hosted and seventh regular-season game, both the most of any city outside the United States. Here’s a brief look at each regular-season game played outside the United States: Oct. 2, 2005 Cardinals 31, 49ers 14 Estadio Azteca - Mexico City Paid Attendance: 103,467 The first non-United States game in the regular season, this matchup also set an NFL regular-season attendance record that stood until 2009. The Cardinals-49ers tilt at the Azteca is still the only regular-season game outside the U.S. not played at London’s Wembley Stadium or the Rogers Centre in Toronto. The Cardinals rolled behind a 385-yard, two-TD performance from Josh McCown. 49ers quarterback Tim Rattay was pulled in the fourth quarter after a poor showing, leading to Alex Smith’s first career completions. Oct. 28, 2007 Giants 13, Dolphins 10 Wembley Stadium - London Paid Attendance: 81,176 The NFL’s first effort in Europe was held in pouring rain. Eli Manning threw for 59 yards in this game and still won, sending the Dolphins to 0-8. Dolphins quarterback Cleo Lemon led an 80-yard touchdown drive late to make it 13-10, but Jay Feely’s onside kick went out of bounds. Manning’s kneel downs led to boos from the Wembley crowd, not for the last time. Oct. 26, 2008 Saints 37, Chargers 32 Wembley Stadium - London Paid Attendance: 83,226 In what was the best pair of quarterback performances of the international games, Drew Brees and Philip Rivers combined for 680 yards and six touchdowns. Brees’s 339-yard performance with three touchdowns and no interceptions was enough to best his former backup. Since the start of 2008, Brees has had nine games with at least 330 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions, tied with Aaron Rodgers for the most in that span. Dec. 7, 2008 Dolphins 16, Bills 3 Rogers Centre - Toronto Paid Attendance: 52,134 This is the lowest-scoring international game to date, and was the start of Buffalo’s "home" series in Toronto. The Bills would lose their first three games in Toronto, and have only one win in five games north of the border. J.P. Losman completed 1 of 10 passes at least 10 yards downfield, while Chad Pennington was 5-of-8 with a first-quarter touchdown to Anthony Fasano on those throws. Oct. 25, 2009 Patriots 35, Buccaneers 7 Wembley Stadium - London Paid Attendance: 82,254 Josh Johnson threw a touchdown pass to both teams in this game, while Tom Brady threw for over 300 yards. The quarterbacks did combine for five interceptions in this game, including a Brady interception by future teammate Aqib Talib. Brady was excellent out of shotgun formations. Brady completed 16 of 20 attempts for 223 yards and all three touchdowns out of the shotgun in a Patriots rout. Dec. 3, 2009 Jets 19, Bills 13 Rogers Centre - Toronto Paid Attendance: 51,567 The only international game not played on a Sunday, the Jets won this Thursday night game in Toronto behind a sterling defensive effort. Buffalo gained 36 yards in the second half, the lowest second-half total by the Bills since 1996. Second-year cornerback Darrelle Revis shut down Bills receiver Terrell Owens, holding Ryan Fitzpatrick to 2-of-8 passing for 16 yards and an interception targeting Owens. Oct. 31, 2010 49ers 24, Broncos 16 Wembley Stadium - London Paid Attendance: 83,941 Three straight 49ers touchdowns in the fourth quarter were too much to overcome for the Broncos. Troy Smith had a passing touchdown and a rushing touchdown without a turnover. Kyle Orton threw for 370 yards but took four sacks and threw an interception. Orton would make five more starts for the Broncos before ceding the starting job to Tim Tebow. Nov. 7, 2010 Bears 22, Bills 19 Rogers Centre - Toronto Paid Attendance: 50,746 Buffalo fell to 0-8 after the loss in Toronto to the Bears, who handed the Bills their third straight loss by three points or fewer. Jay Cutler threw for two touchdowns and the Bears defense forced three turnovers in the second half. The Bears have had 30 games with at least three turnovers forced since the start of 2008, the most of any team. Oct. 23, 2011 Bears 24, Buccaneers 18 Wembley Stadium - London Paid Attendance: 76,981 The first team to repeat in London, the Buccaneers stayed winless at Wembley by not shutting down Matt Forte. Forte rushed for 145 yards and a touchdown with 38 receiving yards. Forte quadrupled the Buccaneers' rushing total himself, as Tampa Bay managed 30 yards on 11 rushes. Cutler became the first quarterback with multiple international wins. Cutler would be joined by Brady the next year, though Cutler is the only quarterback with wins in three countries. Oct. 30, 2011 Bills 23, Redskins 0 Rogers Centre - Toronto Paid Attendance: 51,579 Finally, the Bills won a game in Canada, and a convincing one at that. The Redskins are still the only team to be shut out in an international game. The Bills had four sacks in their first six games of 2011 but sacked John Beck 10 times in the game. That was only the sixth time since the start of 2011 a team had double-digit sacks in a game. Oct. 28, 2012 Patriots 45, Rams 7 Wembley Stadium - London Paid Attendance: 84,004 The biggest Wembley crowd for an NFL game saw a dominant offensive performance by the Patriots. After the Rams took a 7-0 lead, New England scored 45 straight points, including touchdowns on their first five possessions. The lone aspect of the Patriots offense to draw London’s ire was again the quarterback kneel down. Ryan Mallett drew boos for running out the clock, sealing a win that made New England the first team with multiple victories in England. Dec. 16, 2012 Seahawks 50, Bills 17 Rogers Centre - Toronto Paid Attendance: 40,770 Buffalo followed up a 2011 win in Toronto by allowing the most points in an international game. The Seahawks dominated the Bills, with Russell Wilson accounting for four touchdowns and Earl Thomas intercepting a Ryan Fitzpatrick pass and returning it for another. The game drew more than 20,000 fewer fans than the typical Bills home game at Ralph Wilson Stadium (62,527). |
It’s not just the morbid and macabre horror movie ambiance of abandoned psychiatric facilities that makes them so haunting and fascinating; it’s the shadows of the people who often lived their entire lives there. Toothbrushes hanging on hooks, bedding still wadded on cots, wheelchairs and patient records are stark reminders of the humanity that once existed between these walls. Photographer Jeremy Harris has documented many of the structures still standing in a series called ‘Abandoned American Asylums: The Moral Architecture of the Nineteenth Century.’ Harris has been sneaking into abandoned asylums since 2005 to take his photos. The series includes just about everything you’d expect: peeling paint, foreboding hallways and a whole lot of rusting metal. But there are also faded murals, grand theaters and bowling alleys. In the 19th century, a large number of people – whether seriously mentally ill or not – were institutionalized against their will, often left in hospitals their entire lives without visits from family. At the time, mental illness was often thought of as a moral or spiritual failing. Circumstances improved by the 20th century, in most facilities. Mother Jones produced a video about the photo project. You can also read more about early psychiatric hospitals and asylums at the U.S. National Library of Medicine, and see the rest of the photos at Jeremy Harris’ website. |
I have two little girls. I worry, like all parents do, about math tests and sleepovers, screen time and song lyrics, bullying and honesty. And as they grow, I just worry more. The other day we were talking about a pop star who was arrested for assaulting his girlfriend, a young woman who was hospitalized and needed plastic surgery. My pre-teen shrugged and said, “Well, she probably did something wrong. I’m sure he wouldn’t do it for no reason.” I stared at her mutely, trying to process what my child just said, trying to summon the very best tone and conjure up the most effective, convincing response. Sitting here now, I don’t even remember what I said. Hopefully, something about how no one deserves to be hurt and nothing justifies that behavior. Later that night, though, I began wondering how we got here. What messages are my children absorbing and from whom? How am I passing on my own attitudes and expectations? I learned about husband-wife relationships from watching my mother and grandmother, who both proudly tolerated unspeakable cruelty, conduct almost unheard of in today’s society. But despite these troubles, they stayed married, and isn’t staying together what really counts? Isn’t it? I also learned about relationships from the many shalom bayis speeches I attended, both before and after marriage. Counting up the inspirational lectures, phone shiurim, CD recordings, podcasts, and convention workshops, I’d guess that by her mid-30s, an Orthodox woman has probably heard at least two dozen shalom bayis lectures, if not more. Here’s the one I know inside out, the shalom bayis class I can give in my sleep. Marriage is not a 50-50 arrangement each person has to give 100%, if you treat him like a king he will treat you as a queen, don’t nag, don’t criticize, don’t sweat the small stuff, and it’s all small stuff, women need to be loved and men need to be respected, make yourself attractive, present a unified front to the children, don’t undermine his authority, give in and think about it from his perspective, men process things differently… And here’s the shalom bayis class I never heard once. The one I didn’t even know I needed: You are a beautiful human being, the kind everyone wants to get to know. Your opinions matter and you have good ideas. You are competent, likeable, independent, and you know what you’re doing. You deserve respect. Asserting yourself is not selfish – it’s essential, like breathing. Being kind is important, but not only to others. You need to be kind to yourself and that means saying no. Be polite, but don’t coddle him or feel guilty for being direct. No, don’t go to minyan because I need your help with bath time. No, I don’t want to follow that chumra. No, I don’t want to follow that kula. No, I don’t agree. No, that doesn’t feel good to me – stop right now and never do it again. Don’t sweat the small stuff, but don’t ignore the patterns. An avalanche is just a lot of small stuff falling down at the same time. If the balance of labor is uneven, for months at a time, that’s not a shalom bayis problem you fix by plastering a smile on your face and imagining yourself a hero. Martyrs win wars, but they make terrible life partners. Religion is sacred and that means we don’t ruin it for the other person through anger and ridicule. It means we don’t burden others with our own stringencies, we aren’t machmir on someone else’s cheshbon, we don’t insist or threaten or humiliate. A sensitive rav or mentor can get you through almost anything, but only if there’s mutual respect. It’s not your job to fix his bad mood. Don’t apologize for everything all the time, and stop with the self-deprecating humor. Presenting a unified front is great, but not when it comes to abuse – your child’s safety – emotional as well as physical – comes before every other consideration on the planet. Lighting yourself on fire to keep someone else warm gets you nothing but a pile of ash. His anger is not your fault, and above all else, you deserve respect. This is the kind of shalom bayis class I never heard once. And no one, I think, knows they need this kind of shalom bayis class until it’s too late. The problems started early in our marriage, with critical words, and irritated tones, and disgusted sighs, but I brushed them away because hey, everyone gets irritated sometimes, and it’s just words. And it was probably my fault anyway. I needed to change, to be a better person, a better wife. I needed to see it from his perspective and listen more and agree sooner and anticipate his needs earlier next time. I had to see the positive in his criticisms: this was a chance to grow, a chance to learn to give 100%, an opportunity to become the akeres habayis I knew I could be, if I just tried harder. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the irritation became anger, and then the anger became rage. I learned how to tiptoe around the minefield, what words calmed him down, and how to avoid an impending explosion: Ok, you’re right. It’s fine, I’m sure you know best. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to question you – I’m sure you know what you’re talking about. It was just a silly idea, I don’t know what I was thinking. For a long time, it was just words. Everyone exchanged harsh words sometimes, didn’t they? Later on, I also learned where the explosives are stored, what sets him off fastest: Demanding courtesy. Don’t speak to me like that. I will not be treated this way. I deserve respect. Immediately after that lesson, I learned what my face looked like with a split lip and how to explain to coworkers that I just walked into an open cabinet door, the klutz that I am. It seems unfathomable now, but until that first blow, I had no idea how dysfunctional this relationship was. I thought we had a pretty good marriage. Sure, some ups and downs, but everyone has those. Many men have a temper and women just have to see beyond that superficial flaw. We need to treat our husbands like kings and they will, eventually, treat us like queens. It’s like we were always told: The Hebrew word ahava comes from the word “hav,” which means to give. If only I could give more of myself, of my compassion and tolerance, then we would have a true loving bayis neeman b’yisroel. As the akeres habayis, I was the hero of our shalom bayis story; it was up to me. Of course the shalom bayis classes didn’t cause the abuse or my willingness to tolerate it for twenty years. But I absorbed these aphorisms and sayings, and, eventually, they probably created a fertile ground where manipulation and anger could – under the right conditions – blossom into something uglier. But what if we could tear out the weeds and till the soil? What if we stopped teaching our daughters to bear the burden of shalom bayis through constant demureness and self-effacement? What if the classes were more nuanced and less clichéd? Something like this: Encouraging your husband to learn is wonderful, but it’s also very important for him to help with bedtime. Cheer him up after he’s had a bad day at work, but if every day is a bad day at work– he needs to see a doctor or get a new job. Giving in doesn’t work if you’re the only one who does it. Speak to your husband calmly and with respect, and expect no less from him in return. Every woman has her own line in the sand. I left when the shame of staying finally surpassed the shame of leaving. In the end, I left not for words, but for liquids: my blood on the floor, his spit on my face, our child’s tears. I would have pitied the woman in the mirror, but she was repulsive to me – who stays with a husband like that? Who is so desperate and needy that she cannot leave a man who hurts not only her, but also her child? Over and over again. It’s been about a year since I moved out. I finally have some headspace to think about what happened, how I got here, and what this means for my daughters. And for your daughters, too, because I’m not the first – or last– woman to confuse stoicism for strength, silence for wisdom. We cannot always control what we learn from our family, from the choices our mothers and grandmothers made in their lives. But we can try a little harder to improve the shalom bayis lectures and speeches, the overt, explicit messages our young women hear about their roles as wives. Because I have two little girls. And perhaps you do too. Image by Tzipora Lifchitz Photography |
Bitcoin Fungibility: The Most Important Feature? Jacob Cohen Donnelly Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 9, 2016 What if one bitcoin isn’t like the others? That’s what Pete Rizzo, my editor at CoinDesk, asked in his coverage of the Scaling Bitcoin event held in Milan. And it’s an important question to ask because if one bitcoin is not like the others, Bitcoin is as good as dead. {Don’t miss future essays by subscribing to Crypto Brief, my weekly newsletter about bitcoin, digital currencies, and the blockchain.} The fungibility of Bitcoin has always been discussed as one of its prime merits for good reason. As the definition says, “[fungibility] is the property of a good or a commodity whose individual units are capable of mutual substitution. That is, it is the property of essences or goods which are capable of being substituted in place on one another.” Fungibility is a core attribute of any successful currency. The $20 that I handed the bartender yesterday has the same value as the $20 I’ll hand the guy charging me for lunch tomorrow. If it doesn’t, the $20 bill and, truthfully, all United States currency would lose its place as a safe currency. Gold is one of the most talked about fungible commodities on the planet. If you take one kilogram of gold, melt it down, and then make a new one kilogram brick of gold, both will be worth the exact same much. Yet, the fungibility of Bitcoin is at risk because, in increasing instances, one bitcoin does not equal another. At Scaling Bitcoin, Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, said: “Some of the exchanges and hosted wallets are using tracing services and up-to four hops deep away from you, if something is associated with Silk Road, they will freeze your account.” He summed it up perfectly by saying: “Other people’s actions, which have got nothing to do with you and you have essentially, potentially no connection with, four hops is a very long way away.” And while I hate to admit it, I understand why some of these exchanges and hosted wallets are using these tracing services. Companies like Coinbase and Circle are forced to deal with the regulation of the countries they work in. And since Bitcoin is a public ledger that allows you to trace every move of a coin, these companies are concerned about regulators coming after them for allowing money that was, at one point, associated with drugs to flow through their services. Nevertheless, this sets a dangerous precedent for those that believe in Bitcoin’s potential. If the average user cannot trust that the bitcoin they hold is going to be spendable, they are far less likely to trust in bitcoin as a whole. If I don’t trust that the $20 is going to be universally accepted, regardless of which $20 bill it is, why would I trust the U.S. dollar? Balancing Fungibility & Scaling There are quite a few other altcoins that have taken fungibility and privacy very seriously. One, for example, is Monero, which uses what’s known as a ring signature. A ring signature is: “A type of digital signature that can be performed by any member of a group of users that each have keys. Therefore, a message signed with a ring signature is endorsed by someone in a particular group of people.” What makes ring signatures appealing is that “it should be computationally infeasible to determine which of the group members’ keys was used to produce the signature.” In other words, if ten of us are sending a transaction, only one of our signatures is needed to actual sign that series of transactions. And because only one signature is used, it’s essentially impossible for anyone to know whose signature is whose. Unfortunately, ring signatures don’t exactly scale all that well. According to Greg Maxwell, a co-founder of Blockstream and a Core developer, “I mostly don’t think of the ring signature stuff as a high contender because of its adverse impact on scaling (it adds a perpetually growing spent coin accumulator, and makes the utxo set perpetually growing.” In other words, as the UTXO set continues to grow, it reduces the number of transactions that can fit into a block. Look at the above image from Bitcoin.org. In transaction 0, there is an output-0 and output-1. These are then included in TX1 and TX2. The bigger these outputs are, the bigger those transactions will appear, thus reducing the number of transactions in a block. Therefore, it can be problematic to balance fungibility with scalability. For improved privacy, we may have to suffer with reduced transactability. Or maybe not … Schnorr Signatures: Improving Fungibility & Scale A Schnorr signature is an incredibly innovative approach to managing signatures that could make it possible to achieve both scale and fungibility all at the same time. Consider the above image about transaction propagation with all of the inputs in a new bitcoin transaction. Assume there are five total inputs. What a Schnorr signature, otherwise known as signature aggregation, does is essentially create a single signature to represent all of these signatures. Therefore, the five separate signatures become a single one. How does this help with scale? Well, when you go from five signature to one, you can pack more into the block. Signatures are a big part of the size of a transaction; therefore, when you can reduce the total number, you’re in a good position. Aaron van Wirdum, in his in depth explanation about Schnorr, offered the following math to explain the benefits of Schnorr signatures: “If aggregated Schnorr signatures reduce the total size of witness data, say from 1 megabyte to .5 megabyte, this .5 megabyte would then be discounted to 0.125 megabyte, leaving room for up to 0.875 megabyte in the original block.” The benefit is simple: Segregated Witness already increased capacity, but when coupled with Schnorr signatures, the capacity becomes even greater. But what about fungibility? Remember, the reason that these exchanges and hosted wallets are able to ban people is because of how easy it is to trace the transaction. If you remove the ease of trace, banning people becomes that much harder. Greg Maxwell, again, has an answer for this. By utilizing CoinJoin, multiple people pool their transactions together and make a joint payment. Thus, being able to connect an input and an output becomes virtually impossible. Combine that with Schnorr signatures and you have multiple inputs from multiple people that then only have a single signature that is available to be analyzed. What’s nice about this particular implementation is that there is an economic incentive to adopt Schnorr signatures & CoinJoin. By combining signatures into one new signature, it would reduce the transaction fee for everyone. Thus, it becomes cheaper to send a bitcoin transaction, fungibility is greatly improved, and more transactions are packed into every block. Maxwell is hoping that Schnorr will be implemented into Bitcoin by next year, but there are numerous factors that could interfere with this rollout. Voldermort to the Rescue? I only presented one of the options that I find particularly appealing. One thing left unanswered about the Schnorr signature & CoinJoin mixture is how to create a user experience that does this automatically. I use a Ledger Nano Wallet; therefore, for me to truly gain from this, those developers would have to implement these capabilities into their software. Fortunately, there is a lot of work being done about fungibility with a wide variety of different proposals. While many might not work, there are still others that will gain steam. One proposal that has had a lot of discussion is called Mimblewimble. This effectively takes Schnorr signatures and combines it with a technology called Confidential Transactions. A confidential transaction essentially makes it possible for only the sender and recipient to see how much was transferred. The problem is that confidential transactions require proofs on every output; these proofs carry weight, so this could result in block bloat. But by aggregating these confidential transactions signatures into one new signature, we effectively get a very lean, very private transaction. Ultimately, this creates exactly what we’re looking for: great fungibility and the ability to add more transactions to the blockchain. Here’s the problem that, perhaps, even Voldermort can’t get past. Mimblewimble requires a change to the scripting languages that Bitcoin currently uses and the only currently known way around that is a hard fork. While my opinion on hard forks is not black and white, the current landscape, especially with the failed Ethereum hard fork, doesn’t seem to support using a hard fork. Fungibility Needs Work If Bitcoin is to succeed and last for years to come, people need to believe that the bitcoin they receive is equal to any other bitcoin. Otherwise, they’re not likely to use it. I am confident that a solution will be found. While I am particularly bullish on the mix of Schnorr signatures and CoinJoin, it’s not the only option. There are certainly others that will be proposed going forward. While we’re not there yet, it will be there soon. And it will make Bitcoin even stronger. {This is a new series of essays that I will be writing each week about topics that are of significant importance regarding bitcoin, digital currencies, and the blockchain. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter, Crypto Brief, so you don’t miss any future newsletters!} |
There’s a promising new treatment option on the horizon to fight cancer: Herpes. It sounds unusual, but it’s true. Combining a modified version of the herpes virus with traditional chemotherapy shows promise for killing cancer cells while easing the strain on a patient, two McMaster University studies suggest. “It’s all about manipulating the system to get the response we want,” said Karen Mossman, the chair of McMaster's Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences. She and postdoctoral researcher Sam Workenhe found that the right combination of herpes and cancer drugs can be used to jumpstart the body’s own immune response to kill cancer. The findings were published in the scientific journals Molecular Therapy and Cancer Immunology Research this month. In the trials, researchers used modified versions of the HSV-1 and HSV-2 viruses, which can cause mouth sores and genital herpes. But the viruses were genetically modified so that they only attack cancerous cells, not healthy ones. That way, patients don’t end up with herpes. That’s why I love doing this. To me, this is so cool. - Karen Mossman, chair of McMaster's department of biochemistry and biomedical sciences In lab tests, the modified version of herpes is injected into a tumour, which brings about the body’s natural immune response to fight the virus. Our immune systems are very adept at killing viruses, Mossman says, so the herpes is very quickly wiped out. In the meantime, the virus has killed enough tumour cells that the body starts to recognize the tumour, and fight that as well. In conjunction with chemotherapy, it could be extremely effective, Mossman says. “The beauty of that is even once the virus is long gone, the immune system is now also recognizing those tumour cells, and so the immune system can continue to clear those tumours,” she said. With the virus working to kill the tumour, much lower levels of chemotherapy can be used, leading to a less toxic environment for the patient, Mossman says. All around, there are fewer side-effects — though the patient might feel like he or she has a viral infection for a couple of days. “If you have the right combination, they kind of feed off each other.” The process is now in the last steps of trials on mice, which Mossman calls “very positive.” She believes the treatment could be “potentially” two to three years away from U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval. The research team is currently focusing on breast cancer and plans to expand its work to other types of cancer. It’s likely that different kinds of viruses would be better suited to different kinds of cancer, Mossman said. The McMaster professor has been working with viruses for over 20 years, and says it’s extremely exciting to see research like this start to come to fruition. “That’s why I love doing this,” she said. “To me, this is so cool.” |
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee speaks to guests gathered at the Point of Grace Church for the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition 2015 Spring Kickoff on April 25 in Waukee, Iowa. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) Hours after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a key provision of Obamacare on Thursday, Mike Huckabee made a bold declaration on Facebook. “As president, I will never bow down to the false gods of judicial supremacy,” he wrote. In a pledge posted on his Web site, Huckabee also, um, pledged: I, Mike Huckabee, pledge allegiance to God, the Constitution, and the citizens of the United States: * I will fight for term limits for members of Congress and judges. * I will support the elevation of none but faithful constitutionalists as judges or justices. They must be committed to restraint and applying the original meaning of the Constitution, not legislating from the bench. Huckabee's proposal to term limit Supreme Court Justices (among others) isn't something he thought up today. He broached the idea back in March during a speech at the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, Calif. Then he went further with reporters. Nobody should be in an unelected position for life. ... If the president who appoints them can only serve eight years, the person they appoint should never serve 40. That has never made sense to me; it defies that sense of public service But Huckabee, whether intentionally or not, is also tapping into a line of thought that Thomas Jefferson, among others, ascribed to. Jefferson was one of just a few of the Founding Fathers who objected from the very beginning to the idea of lifetime Supreme Court appointments, according to Peter Irons, a constitutional scholar and author of "A People's History of the Supreme Court: The Men and Women Whose Cases and Decisions Have Shaped Our Constitution." But Jefferson was most outspoken about his objections when the court made decisions he hated. (Sound familiar?) Some of the most common reasons cited for Supreme Court term limits include the idea that an aging Supreme Court only becomes more overtly partisan with time, less mentally sharp and more out of touch with the millions of young Americans engaged in the daily mess called life which sometimes winds up before the court. Others think that lifetime appointments have made the confirmation process unnecessarily long and nasty. Sure. But the idea of judicial term limits weren't such a popular idea in the time of Jefferson and probably won't become one now, according to Irons. The Founding Fathers understood that there are real risks to both national stability and the authority of Congress to pass laws and see them uniformly implemented if there is no national court, free of political influence, to independently review and consider law. Supreme Court justices need to be able to decide cases without fear that their decisions will lead them to be voted off the court or pushed out due to political considerations or whims. And if Huckabee were to find some public support for his Supreme Court term limits idea, that group would face a steep uphill effort. The idea behind lifetime Supreme Court appointments was included in the Constitution. So a constitutional amendment would be required to alter it. And that means that two-thirds of the House, then two-thirds of the Senate, would have to approve a term limits measure, followed by three-quarters of the states. A very small handful of constitutional amendments have managed to navigate that process -- think Prohibition repeal and the amendment that allowed 18-year-olds to vote in the United States. But most face a hard, long slog. Some, like the controversial Equal Pay Amendment, linger and die. That said, Huckabee isn't really out there alone on the term-limits-for-judges idea. Former Texas governor Rick Perry has also suggested term limits in the past, along with a host of left-leaning writers and thinkers. And so has Rand Paul. The bottom line is this: The idea of Supreme Court term limits came up today. It has come up before and will quite likely come up again when the court makes a big decision that some people don't like. But it just isn't ever going to happen. |
You know that little globe icon on the Facebook website that displays your pending notifications? Of course you do. You probably look at it a couple of times a day and it's the first place you look when you get on Facebook. Did you know the globe looks different depending on where you are in the world? The default icon portays the Americas: But it was recently pointed out that Facebook has quietly introduced a new icon for its desktop users in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia (Oceania) which shows the globe from the other side. If you log in from any of those continents, you'll see the below icon instead: This small change highlights something a lot of people might not realise: Americans are vastly outnumbered on Facebook. Facebook reports that just 18.3 percent of its 829 million daily active users hail from the United States or Canada. A far larger percentage come from Asia, even with the site still mostly blocked in China. Source: Slate.com |
A Denver-area police officer was fatally shot by a colleague who mistook him for an armed assailant early Friday, authorities said. James Davies, a 35-year-old police officer in Lakewood, Colorado, was shot outside a house that he and fellow Lakewood officers - including the firing officer - were checking after hearing shots fired there, police spokesman Steve Davis said. The firing officer, whom police haven’t identified, thought Davies was an armed threat in the dark of night, the spokesman said. “This has affected our entire department very, very deeply,” Davis told reporters Friday afternoon. “I don’t think it could have a more tragic set of circumstances.” The incident started when an officer, searching for the source of gunfire that had been heard in the area, saw someone firing a gun on the porch of the home in Lakewood, Davis said. A number of officers, including Davies, arrived at the home and took three people into custody in connection with the gunfire. Preparing to enter the home a second time to search it for anyone else, officers surrounded the building, with Davies standing in the backyard, Davis said. In a neighboring yard, on the other side of a fence, an officer saw Davies with a gun and didn’t know he was a police officer, the spokesman said. “It’s my understanding that the firing officer could see either a silhouette or enough lighting to see someone with a gun, and mistook him for an armed suspect,” Davis said. “Apparently there were some commands given, but quite frankly everyone seems to think Officer Davies thought that the other officer was in contact with someone else, and was giving commands to that person.” Davies, in full police uniform, would have had little reason to believe that the shouting officer was commanding him, Davis said. The second officer shot Davies, who died at the scene, the spokesman said. Davies, who had been with the department for more than six years, had a wife and two children. The department’s chief spent part of Friday consoling Davies’ family. “You can imagine the anguish that the other officer is going through right now,” Davis said. “We feel like we have two victims in the department, to be quite frank. That officer is really having a difficult time with what happened last night.” The incident will be investigated by a team of detectives from several agencies in Jefferson County, and a district attorney would decide whether to charge the firing officer after getting the investigators’ report, Davis said. Police didn’t say what prompted the gunfire that attracted the officers to the home. The three people who had been detained hadn’t been arrested as of Friday afternoon, Davis said. He said he didn’t know whether they would be charged. |
2 years ago The show that brought you Michael's dick, James's ass, Aaron's eyebrows, Adam's nipples, Jack's foot & Maggie's boobs is back. And we have a lot of big changes this season! First one being we now stream the show Friday nights for FIRST Members so you guys can pre-game with us before going out for a night of debauchery on the town. Another big change is we will have a live, studio audience from the community this season so keep an eye out for the Eventbrite announcements from the Rooster Teeth twitter account each week to try and get your tickets. We have a very limited amount each week so make sure you grab them fast when we put them live. My favorite new thing we are doing with the show is a secret that you will have to watch the premiere to find out what it is and trust me, it's the biggest change the show has ever seen. So...do you guys have some prompts for me? Here are the games this week! ABCs OF STORYTELLING Come up with a 2 person scenario where the characters interact with each other a lot. Be as descriptive as you want, this is a scene the guests have to play out. Scenes that work best for this game have a high potential for rapid dialogue and confrontation. QUICK THINKING Come up with a category for the guests to list off possible answers for (i.e. Things not to say after someone says "I love you" for the first time.) Category with a lot of possibilities for answers are the best. COME AGAIN? You give me a story and I make them act it out. This week I'm looking for prompts involving: Your worst experience at a stadium Something strange that happened when you got picked up by an Uber/Lyft/Cab BONUS GAME: SYNC ABOUT IT Finish the sentence: How to...? Feel free to submit more than one idea. Three cheers for On The Spot's premiere and an extra one for Inauguration Day! xoxo The Risemonger |
Learn about BigBench, the new industrywide effort to create a sorely needed Big Data benchmark. Benchmarking Big Data systems is an open problem. To address this concern, numerous hardware and software vendors are working together to create a comprehensive end-to-end big data benchmark suite called BigBench. BigBench builds upon and borrows elements from existing benchmarking efforts in the Big Data space (such as YCSB, TPC-xHS, GridMix, PigMix, HiBench, Big Data Benchmark, and TPC-DS). Intel and Cloudera, along with other industry partners, are working to define and implement extensions to BigBench 1.0. (A TPC proposal for BigBench 2.0 is in the works.) BigBench Overview BigBench is a specification-based benchmark with an open-source reference implementation kit, which sets it apart from its predecessors. As a specification-based benchmark, it would be technology-agnostic and provide the necessary formalism and flexibility to support multiple implementations. As a “kit”, it would lower the barrier of entry to benchmarking by providing a readily available reference implementation as a starting point. As open source, it would allow multiple implementations to co-exist in one place and be reused by different vendors, while providing consistency where expected for the ability to provide meaningful comparisons. The BigBench specification comprises two key components: a data model specification, and a workload/query specification. The structured part of the BigBench data model is adopted from the TPC-DS data model depicting a product retailer, which sells products to customers via physical and online stores. BigBench’s schema uses the data of the store and web sales distribution channel and augments it with semi-structured and unstructured data as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: BigBench data model specification The data model specification is implemented by a data generator, which is based on an extension of PDGF. Plugins for PDGF enable data generation for an arbitrary schema. Using the BigBench plugin, data can be generated for all three pats of the schema: structured, semi-structured and unstructured. BigBench 1.0 workload specification consists of 30 queries/workloads. Ten of these queries have been taken from the TPC-DS workload and run against the structured part of the schema. The remaining 20 were adapted from a McKinsey report on Big Data use cases and opportunities. Seven of these run against the semi-structured portion and five run against the unstructured portion of the schema. The reference implementation of the workload specification is available here. BigBench 1.0 specification includes a set of metrics (focused around execution time calculation) and multiple execution modes. The metrics can be reported for the end-to-end execution pipeline as well as each individual workload/query. The benchmark also defines a model for submitting concurrent workload streams in parallel, which can be extended to simulate the multi-user scenario. BigBench Extensions: Toward BigBench 2.0 BigBench has some ways to go before it can be declared complete. A work-in-progress paper about BigBench co-authored by various industry and academia experts, discusses the reference implementation, community feedback on what is done well, and shortcomings of the 1.0 specification and implementation. The concerns are addressed in the form of proposed extensions for BigBench 2.0, some of which are described below. The current specification, while representative of a wide variety of big data use cases, falls short of being complete—primarily because it is structured-data-intensive, with some representation for semi-structured and unstructured content (which also gets formatted into structured data before being processed). By adding more procedural and analytic workloads that perform complex operations directly on unstructured data, the lopsidedness can be eliminated. This approach is also closely tied to the data specification model, which currently doesn’t state the rate of input data generation and refresh, thereby excluding streaming workloads from the current specification. The specification also needs to be extended to enforce that all file formats demonstrate sufficient flexibility to be created, read, and written from multiple popular data processing engines (MapReduce, Apache Spark, Apache Hive, and so on). This capability would ensure that all data is immediately query-able with no ETL or format-conversion delays. The current set of metrics excludes performance per cost. As our experiments show, this metric is critical for comparing software systems in the presence of hardware diversity. Performance subject to failures is another important metric currently missing in the specification. On the implementation side, the kit needs to be enhanced with implementation of existing and proposed queries over popular data processing engines, such as Impala, Spark, and MapReduce in addition to Hive. Results for BigBench Intel has evaluated a subset of BigBench 1.0 workloads against multiple hardware configurations. The goals of these experiments were to: Validate a reference implementation of BigBench 1.0 on the latest Intel hardware using CDH (CDH 5.1) Understand the price/performance trade-off for different configurations Highlight price/performance as the key metric We selected four queries (2, 16, 20, 30), each representing a different processing model (for query descriptions, please see https://github.com/intel-hadoop/Big-Bench). A common input dataset of 2TB was used. Input data sizes for each of the four workloads (2, 16, 20, 30) were 244GB, 206GB, 144GB, and 244GB respectively. We used Intel’s Performance Analysis Tool (PAT) to collect and analyze data. (PAT automates benchmark execution and data collection and makes use of Linux performance counters.) The table below shows the three different configurations under experimentation. Each of the three clusters contained 10 nodes. For Configuration 1, we selected Intel Xeon E5 2680 v3 with 12 cores, 30MB cache, 2.5GHz (3.3 GHz @Turbo) and operating TDP of 120W. 800GB DC3500 series SSD was used as the boot drive. For primary storage, 12x 2TB SATA drives were used. In Configuration 2, Intel Xeon E5 2680 v3 was replaced with E5 2697 v3 (14 cores, 35MB cache, 2.6GHz with 3.6 GHz@Turbo, and 145W TDP). A 2TB Intel DC3700 SSD was added as primary storage alongside the hard-disk drives. Concerns with regard to endurance and affordability of a large capacity NAND drive have prevented customers from embracing SSD technology for their Hadoop clusters; this Cloudera blog post explains the merits of using SSD for performance and the drawbacks in terms of cost. However, SSD technology has advanced significantly since the blog was published. For example, capacity and endurance have improved and the price of Intel DC3600 SSD is now one-third the price of SSD reported in that post. In Configuration 3, we replaced Intel Xeon E5 2697 v3 with Intel Xeon E5 2699 v3 (18 cores, 45MB cache, 2.3GHz with 3.6 Ghz@Turbo, and 145W TDP). The hard-disk drives were replaced with a second SSD drive. Memory was increased from 128GB to 192GB. As shown in the table above, Configuration 2 costs 1.5x of Configuration 1 and Configuration 3 costs around 2x of Configuration 1. A summary of results from the experiments are shown in Figure 2. Figure 2: BigBench testing results For workloads #16 and #30, the performance gains from Configurations 2 and 3 are strictly proportional to the cost of the hardware. The customer has to pay 2x for getting 2x performance, and the performance per dollar ratio is close to 1. For Workloads #2 and #20, however, the performance per dollar ratio is less than 1. From these results we can conclude that Configuration 1 is a good choice in all cases—whereas scaled-up Configurations 2 and 3 make sense for certain type of workloads, especially those that are disk-IO intensive. We monitored CPU utilization, disk bandwidth, network IO and memory usage for each workload (using PAT). Most of the gains come from the use of SSDs. In the presence of SSDs, the workloads tend to become CPU-bound at which point an increase in CPU cores and frequency starts to help. For in-memory data processing engines (Spark and Impala), an increase in memory size is likely to be the most important factor. We hope to cover that issue in a future study. Summary BigBench is an industrywide effort on creating a comprehensive and standardized BigData benchmark. Intel and Cloudera are working on defining and implementing extensions to BigBench (in the form of BigBench 2.0). A preliminary validation against multiple cluster configurations using latest Intel hardware shows that, from a price-performance viewpoint, scaled-up configurations (that use SSD and high-end Intel processors) are beneficial for workloads that are disk-IO bound. Acknowledgements BigBench is a joint effort with partners in industry and academia. The authors would like to thank Chaitan Baru, Milind Bhandarkar, Alain Crolotte, Carlo Curino, Manuel Danisch, Michael Frank, Ahmed Ghazal, Minqing Hu, Hans-Arno Jacobsen, Huang Jie, Dileep Kumar, Raghu Nambiar, Meikel Poess, Francois Raab, Tilmann Rabl, Kai Sachs, Saptak Sen, Lan Yi and Choonhan Youn. We invite rest of the community to participate in development of the BigBench 2.0 kit. Bhaskar Gowda is a Systems Engineer at Intel Corp. Nishkam Ravi is a Software Engineer at Cloudera. Software and workloads used in performance tests may have been optimized for performance only on Intel microprocessors. Performance tests, such as SYSmark and MobileMark, are measured using specific computer systems, components, software, operations and functions. Any change to any of those factors may cause the results to vary. You should consult other information and performance tests to assist you in fully evaluating your contemplated purchases, including the performance of that product when combined with other products. Intel processor numbers are not a measure of performance. Processor numbers differentiate features within each processor family. Not across different processor families. Go to: http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number. Intel, the Intel logo and Xeon are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. |
Germany, U-Boats and the Lusitania In 1909, an international law was agreed upon that differentiated between "contraband" and "non-contraband" shipping. "Contraband," defined as weapons and other materials used in military manufacturing, could be controlled and blockaded during a war. "Non-contraband" cargoes like food, cloth, and raw goods could not be regulated through a blockade; countries could still import and trade these items. This regulation was a response by continental Europe against England, which had the most powerful navy and could strangle the economy of any continental nation with a blockade of the sea. In 1915, England, in support of France, blockaded Germany, disregarding the regulation. The United States still believed in the difference between contraband and raw goods and supported Germany's right to receive the imports that it needed to survive. The United States reversed its position when it entered the war against Germany, and international law was changed. In response to the British blockade, the Germans tried to blockade England. Their most effective weapon was the submarine, which although still primitive, took the British by surprise. In 1915 the Germans declared British waters a war zone. All Allied ships in those waters would be torpedoed ( true enough, because captains of German submarines couldn't distinguish one type of ship from another, anyway). Ironically, the U-boat was originally intended as a defensive craft. It was only mobilized offensively in response to the British blockade. The first expression of the German U-boat's offensive power was the sinking of the Lusitania in May, 1915. The Germans had placed numerous newspaper ads warning Americans not to travel aboard the Lusitania, which was carrying munitions but masquerading as an ocean liner. Americans still believed in their right, as members of a neutral nation, to travel unharmed. Of the 1,153 passengers on the Lusitania, 118 Americans died; President Wilson therefore warned the Germans that another aggressive act would provoke the United States to war. This warning inhibited the German Navy for almost two years, until the German Navy ceased to consider the United States an immediate threat. The German Navy began to claim that, with unrestricted submarine warfare, they could force the British to surrender in six months. The experts calculated that it would take the United States at least a year to mobilize, and by that time, the British surrender would be complete. The Germans were willing to risk American intervention because they were confident they could secure Britain. The German plan seemed to be an early success; however, with the intervention of America's strong navy and the implementation of the convoy (a group of cargo-ships protected by a large number of warships) the United States neutralized the German U-boat. Germany had gambled and lost. [A note: Life aboard a German U-boat was not pleasant. Military and personnel problems were the norm. The first U-boats were visible during the day and night, because their engines produced thick white smoke and sparks visible at the surface. After the switch to diesel engines, the smoke and sparks were eliminated, but the smell on board was unbearable. Some submarines had no flush-toilets; you pumped them by hand. The bubbles from pumping out the head were visible on the surface, so waste disposal was kept to a minimum, and the stench of human waste was overpowering.] Sources and further reading: Compton-Hall, Richard. Submarines and the War at Sea . London: Macmillan, 1991. . London: Macmillan, 1991. Palmer, R.R., & Joel Colton. A History of the Modern World . New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1984. . New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1984. Tarrant, V.E. The U-Boat Offensive. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989. Inaction as Action: How Churchill Sank the Lusitania "If you suspect my husbandry, or falsehood, / Call me before the exactest auditors, / And set me on the proof." William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens "They believe you / If you swear you're telling lies." Brenda Kahn, Anesthesia Like most members of my generation, I was indoctrinated in high school with the belief that the United States entered World War One because the evil Germans had sunk an innocent ship carrying nothing but neutral American passengers. Although I, as well as a few others in my history class, questioned the teacher on the sheer illogic of this action, we eventually accepted the argument that the Lusitania was sunk unfairly. Of course, we did soon learn that the ship was carrying weapons for the British, supplied by American businessmen, but even then, we didn't know the whole truth: Winston Churchill was directly responsible for sinking the ship. Christopher Hitchens, who wrote a brilliant book on the history of Anglo-American relations entitled Blood, Class, and Nostalgia talks about is the sinking of the Lusitania, which he solidly proves is the responsibility of the British head of naval intelligence, Sir Winston Churchill. Churchill played a strong part in both the sinking of the ship and the controversy that ensued later. That there was such a large cache of arms on the ship (over 1,248 cases of shells) that it sunk after being hit by only one torpedo was not a surprise, nor was it uncommon; there was a sizable number of American citizens who supported the British war effort, supplying arms on almost every cruise ship between the nations. What was a surprise was the lack of protection given to the warship. Churchill had been warned that there were German submarines in the area (which had, in fact, already sunk several other British ships), and failed either to warn the ship or send any escort ships into the area. Tempting as it is to simply attribute this to negligence on Churchill's part (warning the ships was solidly his responsibility), the odds of Churchill failing to do his duty were astronomically low. It would have taken a period of over ten days of negligence, according to Hitchens, for the sinking to occur. Churchill, one of the most efficient people in British government, could not reasonably have been so negligent; he could, however, have suppressed the information without effort. Had he wanted intelligence suppressed, the King himself could not have found anything out. Churchill didn't stop there, however. After letting the ship (and most of the civilians on board) go down, he started an insidious publicity campaign and ran the investigation that "discovered" that there had been more than one torpedo, and he was responsible for the spread of a rumor that the Germans had created a Lusitania medal honoring soldiers who killed civilians. These propaganda moves helped shift public opinion in the United States to the British side (granted, there was already a growing tendency for Americans to be Anglophiles, but they were also fence-sitters). I'm not a post-Kennedy conspiracy theorist. I don't think it was wrong for America to get involved in the War. I don't think Churchill was evil (although his cold pragmatism is frightening). I don't think we can even realistically attribute the American involvement in the War to one ship (there would have been something else to shift public opinion). Still, it is hard not to look at the actions of Churchill and not feel that the British man of American descent that we revere as our greatest British ally caused the deaths of so many innocent American and British citizens. Worse, the sheer callousness of his actions, as well as the total disregard for the truth (an abstract that even some sociopaths would claim allegiance to) make his part in the history of World War I truly disturbing. |
How do you pick, let alone rank, the 12 best tracks recorded by the most beloved and influential pop band of all time? The premise is ridiculous, the task impossible. But just for fun (and with apologies to inevitable dissenters), Elysa Gardner offers USA TODAY’s purely subjective list of Beatles favorites. 1) Ticket to Ride No single better reflects the mix of ambition, tension and pure pop genius that made The Beatles unique than Ticket to Ride. John Lennon and Paul McCartney have disputed the authorship of this chart-topping, spine-tingling hit from 1965’s Help! Lennon maintained that McCartney’s contribution was essentially Ringo Starr’s propulsive drum part, a key element in the production, which prefigures a heavier, more muscular rock sound. The bridge is just as brilliant: The band suddenly, frantically picks up the pace, and the tune becomes precociously groovy even as it reflects the nervous desperation lurking beneath that soaring melody and majestic arrangement. The first Beatles song that ran over three minutes long, Ticket to Ride is perfection all the way through., 2) I Want to Hold Your Hand There are few things as blissful, or as hard to pull off, as a happy pop song, free of sentimentality or snark. No rock group is responsible for more such treasures than The Beatles; a number of them are on this list, none more effervescent than 1963’s I Want to Hold Your Hand, the band’s first No.1 hit in the USA. Fittingly, the song that allowed The Beatles to conquer America was a joint effort between Lennon and McCartney, who wrote it sitting together in the basement of McCartney’s then-girlfriend Jane Asher’s parents. I Want to Hold Your Hand’s joyful simplicity is deceptive; there are tricky chord shifts and syncopated (hand-clapped) rhythms within rhythms. But the effect is unfussy exuberance — just try listening to it without grinning. BACK | NEXTPAGE |
Getting started with Heroku This guest post is by Ben Scofield, who is Heroku’s developer advocate, responsible for listening to the tens of thousands of developers deploying their Ruby applications to the cloud. He’s spoken at many conferences around the world, and in 2010 became the co-chair for RailsConf. Introduction Heroku has been in the news a lot lately, and it’s been a popular choice for Ruby application developers for a few years.If you haven’t worked with it before, here’s your chance — it’s designed to be as painless as possible to get going, and to give a powerful, stable, and scalable platform for your code. Setting up If this is your first time working with Heroku, you’ll need to start by setting up an account. Visit https://api.heroku.com/signup and enter your email address. You’ll soon get an email to confirm your account; click on the confirmation link and choose a password, and you’re registered! Next, you’ll want to create an app (or find an existing one you want to push). Heroku supports any Rack-based Ruby web framework — so you can use Rails, Sinatra, Camping, Ramaze, or pretty much anything you want. Let’s say you’re going to build a new Rails application: $ rails new myapp $ cd myapp After you’ve chosen (or created) your app, you’ll need to make sure it’s tracked in git: $ git init $ git add . $ git commit -m "initial commit" Once you’ve got your app ready to go, you’ll want to install the heroku gem. As you’ll see, it’s a powerful tool for managing your apps from the command line. $ gem install heroku And now, from your application route, run: $ heroku create If this is your first time using the heroku CLI, it’ll prompt you for your username and password — on subsequent uses, it’ll pull your username and API key for accessing Heroku from ~/.heroku/credentials, but that doesn’t exist until you’ve logged in through the CLI. It will also upload your public SSH key, and finally it’ll create your new application on Heroku and add a git remote. If you want to specify the name of your app (and thus the subdomain on Heroku), you can pass an argument: $ heroku create myapp # created myapp.heroku.com Finally, to push your code to heroku, push it as you would to any git remote: $ git push heroku master $ heroku rake db:migrate # you'll need to do this for any schema change You’ll see feedback on the process, but by the end your code should be up and running on Heroku’s platform! Of course, there’s a lot more to working with Heroku than just that, so here’s a little more information. CLI The heroku gem gives you a lot more than just ‘heroku create‘, though. It provides a full CLI for working with your application. Here’s an incomplete list of what you can do with it: rake You can run any rake task you like by prefacing it with ‘heroku rake‘: $ heroku rake db:migrate $ heroku rake routes (Note that heroku doesn’t run your migrations by default — when you change your schema, you’ll need to run ‘heroku rake db:migrate‘ to update your production database.) Resources You can change your resource allocation from the command-line, too. ‘heroku dynos 5‘ sets your application to 5 dynos; you can do the same with workers. As you’ll see below, this extends to add-ons, as well. config Many capistrano-deployed projects have sensitive configuration information (database.yml, etc.) in a shared folder on the server. When a new version of the code is deployed, those files get symlinked into the app. On Heroku, that’s not possible. Instead, the best practice is to use config variables. $ heroku config # lists all configuration variables $ heroku config:add NAME=VALUE # set a new variable $ heroku config:remove NAME # remove an existing variable There’s also a ‘heroku config:clear‘ command, but it’s dangerous — it clears out all your environment variables, which includes those set by Heroku itself. If you do that, then there’s a very good chance you’ll lose information that you might not know (e.g., your DATABASE_URL). add-ons Heroku allows third-party developers to create add-ons for your application, providing for both infrastructure features (exception tracking through Exceptional and Hoptoad and business features (email delivery through SendGrid, subscription billing through Recurly, etc.) As the owner of an application, you can manage your add-ons from the command line: $ heroku addons # lists addons $ heroku addons:add newrelic:bronze # app monitoring for free? count me in! $ heroku addons:remove piggyback_ssl plugins Add-ons extend your application’s functionality; plugins extend the heroku gem itself. You can see available plugins at Herocutter, but some of our favorites are: colorize\_console for wirble colors in the heroku console tab\_complete\_console for tab completion heroku-accounts for managing multiple Heroku accounts on the same machine And more The heroku CLI provides even more functionality; take a look through the documentation or its own help (‘heroku‘) to see more. Common problems Heroku imposes some constraints on your application; some of these stem from architectural decisions and are pretty much unavoidable, while others come from less fundamental decisions and can be worked around. Filesystem access Heroku’s architecture means that you can never be certain that your application will be running in the same space for two separate requests — two different dynos might serve later requests, and a single dyno might be moved from one EC2 instance to another for a variety of reasons. Because of that, Heroku doesn’t allow you access to the filesystem; it just doesn’t make sense. To solve this, you should use an external service to host content that you might want to serve up. Filesystem page caching, for instance, can be replaced by properly using Heroku’s HTTP caching layer. Uploaded assets should be saved to S3 or a similar service. Process timeouts Heroku has some opinions about acceptable HTTP behavior, and timeouts are a result of that. If you have a request that runs for more than 30 seconds, the platform will automatically kill it. For many apps, this might include hitting remote services (like the Twitter API) or doing file processing (with Paperclip or a similar tool). The solution is to move those long-running processes into a background worker. You can read more about this in the documentation. Idling Heroku is fantastic for experimentation, which leads to a predictable conclusion: a lot of abandoned applications on the platform. In order to keep them from chewing up an inordinate amount of resources, the platform treats single-dyno applications a little differently (with the assumption that an experiment is likely to be running on the free plan): if the app hasn’t been hit in a certain amount of time, it gets idled (or spun down). Then, on the next attempt to access it, the single dyno is unidled. The effect of this is very similar to what you might do on your local development box. When you’re working on an app, you fire up a local app server (with rails server or something like that); when you stop working on it, you shut down the server. Then, when you next want to hit the app, you have to spend a few seconds starting the server again. Postgres migration Every application on Heroku gets its own database — by default, it’s a 5MB shared Postgres db, though you can pay to get larger (or dedicated) instances. This can cause problems, since the majority of Rubyists seem to use MySQL in development, and Postgres and MySQL aren’t always same in how they treat SQL and display messages. You can see some of the most common issues (and their solutions) in the Heroku documentation. Troubleshooting Every app runs into problems in production — and sometimes an exception tracker (like Exceptional or Hoptoad) don’t give you all the information you need to fix it. On a VPS or dedicated server, you might be accustomed to SSHing in and popping into an interactive console, digging through logs, or something similar. With Heroku, that isn’t an option — but we do have some alternatives, provided in the heroku gem. heroku console You might not be able to run rails server or irb on the server yourself, but ‘heroku console‘ gives you an interactive shell for your application. Once in the shell, you’re interacting directly with your production instance, so be as careful as you’d normally be when futzing with production data. There are a few things to be aware of with this console. First, it runs over HTTP — every command you enter is pushed up to Heroku as an HTTP request, so it’s subject to the same restrictions as your web app. For instance, any process you start that runs longer than 30 seconds will be killed. Also, requests from your console session tie up a dyno, so if you’re running on a single dyno then your web app isn’t available to serve regular requests while you’re updating your database. The other important thing to note is that each line you send is a separate HTTP request. This means that you can’t write multi-line code in the heroku console. Say you’re trying to do this: User.all.each do |user| puts user.email end When you hit enter after the first line, the console sends ‘ >User.all.each do |user| to the server, which isn’t a complete expression. Before you can start typing the next line, then, the system sends back an error. You can still run this code, but you have to rewrite it to be on a single line: User.all.each {|user| puts user.email} heroku ps Sysadmins live and die by process lists, so Heroku provides a tool to see what processes you have available and what state they’re in. If you run heroku ps for an active application, you’ll see something like the following: UPID Slug Command State Since ------- ------------ -------------------------- ---------- --------- xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx dj up 16h ago xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx cron idle 43m ago xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx dyno up 16h ago xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx dyno up 16h ago This is especially useful when combined with the Unix watch) command (if you’re on OS X, you may have to install it manually), which reruns the command periodically so you can see how things are changing in real-time. heroku logs And finally, the logs. Anyone who’s built a web app knows just how important logs are, so Heroku provides a set of tools to help review (and in some cases analyze) them. To use Heroku’s logging, you have to install both a plugin and an add-on: $ heroku plugins:install http://github.com/heroku/heroku-logging.git $ heroku addons:add logging Once that’s done, anything your app pushes to STDOUT or STDERR is captured in your logs — if you’re using Rails, you should make sure to redirect your logger to STDOUT by adding this line to your config (application.rb or environment.rb, depending on what version of Rails you’re running): config.action_controller.logger = Logger.new(STDOUT) The ‘heroku logs‘ command by itself will show you the last 20 lines of your log, looking something like this: 2010-12-10T15:13:46-07:00 app[web.1]: Completed in 74ms (View: 31, DB: 40) | 200 OK [http://myapp.heroku.com/] 2010-12-10T15:13:46-07:00 heroku[router]: GET myapp.heroku.com/posts queue=0 wait=0ms service=1ms bytes=975 2010-12-10T15:13:47-07:00 app[worker.1] You can filter the logs by source (-s) and process (-p), you can tail them in real-time with -t, and you can ask for a specific number of lines with -n. Perhaps most powerfully, you can also add syslog drains for your logs, pushing syslog packets to another server for long-term storage or analysis: $ heroku logs:drains add syslog://your.syslog.host Where to go for help This is just the tip of the iceberg, really — there’s a lot you can do with Heroku, and spending time digging into the platform is very worthwhile. Take a look at our documentation, and talk to other developers in our Google group and on IRC. Feel free to ask questions and give feedback in the comments section of this post. Thanks and Good Luck! |
View of the gateway paving stones with a shoe nail between the stones The camp was presumably built during Julius Caesars’ Gallic War in the late 50s B.C. Nearby lies a late Celtic settlement with monumental fortifications known as the “Hunnenring” or “Circle of the Huns,” which functioned as one of the major centers of the local Celtic tribe called Treveri. Their territory is situated in the mountainous regions between the Rhine and Maas rivers. Gaius Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic Credit: Wikipedia “The remnants of this military camp are the first pieces of archaeological evidence of this important episode of world history,” comments Dr. Sabine Hornung of the Institute of Pre- and Protohistory at JGU. “It is quite possible that Treveran resistance to the Roman conquerors was crushed in a campaign that was launched from this military fortress.” The existence of this site with a size of about 260,000 square meters had been known since the 19th century, but its interpretation was controversially discussed. “Some remains of the wall are still preserved in the forest, but it hadn’t been possible to prove that this was indeed a Roman military camp as archaeologists and local historians had long suspected,” Hornung explains. The breakthrough came through systematic investigations closely linked to archaeological research conducted in the vicinity of the Celtic settlement “Hunnenring” near Otzenhausen in the St. Wendel district. The Celtic fortification is located just 5 kilometers from the military camp at Hermeskeil and can be seen directly from the site of the Roman stronghold. As a result of agricultural development, large sections of the former military camp can no longer be recognized and are in danger of being lost forever. View of the exposed gateway of the camp at Hermeskeil with the remains of the stone pavement. The darker areas in the lower section mark the filled-in camp ditches while to the north there is a narrow berm behind which is the earthen wall to whose rear the remains of a scorched wickerwork construction were found. This served as a stabilizing support for the wall made of heaped soil that had been dug out of the ditches. The dots mark the different sites where shoe nails from the sandals of Roman soldiers were found. Photo/©: Sabine Hornung, Arno Braun Sabine Hornung and her team began their work in Hermeskeil in March 2010, supported by the Rheinische Landesmuseum Trier. Initial research enabled them to determine size and shape of the military camp that was fortified by means of an earth wall and a ditch. They determined that the fortress consisted of an almost rectangular earthwork enclosure with rounded corners, which, by its size of about 182,000 square meters, provided space for several thousands of soldiers, including both legionaries and mounted auxiliaries. An extension of additional 76,000 square meters encompassed a spring, which thereby secured water supply for the troops. These findings made it possible to undertake targeted excavations in which one of the gates of the camp was discovered in summer 2011. This consisted of a gateway paved with stones crossing the fortifications consisting of wall and ditch. In the gaps between these paving stones, Hornung’s team of archaeologists found numerous shoe nails originating from the sandals of Roman soldiers that had loosened as they marched along. The size and shape of the nails were among the first indications that the military camp at Hermeskeil dated back to the time of the late Roman Republic or the Gallic War. This theory was subsequently confirmed by shards of earthenware vessels discovered during excavations and further verified using scientific dating methods. These iron shoe nails once protected the soles of Roman soldiers’ sandals. The pattern of a cross with four studs that can be seen on the underside is largely typical for the time of the late Republic. Their size, with a diameter of up to 2.6 cm, is also characteristic for this period. Photo/©: Sabine Hornung, Arno Braun The special historical significance of the Hermeskeil military camp lies in its relationship to the neighboring Treveran settlement “Hunnenring”. Based on the findings of their recent excavations, Hornung and her team were able to confirm that this settlement was abandoned by its inhabitants around the middle of the 1st century B.C. Before the identification of the camp near Hermeskeil, however, it was only possible to speculate that this abandonment had had something to do with the Gallic War. In his “De Bello Gallico,” Julius Caesar reported that the tribe of the Treveri was split into anti-Roman and pro-Roman factions. The anti-Roman faction, led by the aristocrat Indutiomarus and his relatives, fomented unrest that resulted in Roman reprisals in 54/53 B.C. and 51 B.C., over the course of which the Treveran resistance to the invaders was broken. The discoveries near Hermeskeil have potentially provided the first direct archaeological evidence for this dramatic episode in world history. Contacts and sources: Universität Mainz Photo/©: Sabine Hornung, Arno Braun |
Neatly piled onto a grey sectional in the loft-style home of Braddock mayor John Fetterman are sixteen bags of plastic Easter eggs that need stuffed with candy – 1,500 pieces into orange, pink, yellow, green, blue, and purple eggs. Looming over them is the hulking, 6’8” frame of Fetterman himself, wearing his signature black Dickie’s shirt, 15104 tattoo visible. He picks up an egg, carefully separates the halves, and inserts a few pieces of candy with the thoughtful intention of an impressionist artist. “This is the glamorous side” he deadpans, reaching for another. It’s a joke, but this is, after all, the same guy who was on The Colbert Report, The Bill Maher Show, invited to the White House to meet President Obama, and continues to be a source of fascination with CNN, MSNBC, The Nation, and The New York Times whose headlines scream, “Tattooed, head shaven, straight talking Mayor wants to Be the Next Senator from Pennsylvania”; “Mayor of Rust”; and “The Giant Underdog.” It’s just after 1 o’clock on the Thursday before Easter – a few weeks before the April 26 primaries and 24 hours after a grassroots campaign stop in Erie, where people desperate for change, answers, and a voice showered him with a hero’s welcome. “There are three bridges that have been closed and condemned in my town. Why run for Senate? So I can get the money to fix them,” he says. There are a million things John Fetterman could be doing right now to further his cause: glad handling, scoring corporate endorsements, currying favor with the political in crowd, posting selfies with celebrity friends. Instead, the man The Guardian dubbed “The Coolest Mayor in America” picks up another egg – hot pink – that will become one of hundreds scattered throughout the Braddock Community Park for the annual Easter Egg Hunt. An event he began in his front yard 10 years ago. “I hate to see who gets in next,” said Dana Portokalis, 41, a lifelong resident who attended the hunt with her three kids. “They ain’t gonna do what he does.” Stuffing plastic eggs was one in a series of remarkably unglamorous tasks filling Fetterman’s Thursday agenda. Earlier, someone needed to run to the Waterfront Costco to pick up donated food for The Free Store, an errand his wife Gisele gently reminded him of with an affectionately blown kiss. When his black Ford F150 pulls up at the receiving door, a voice calls out, “The mayor is here!” Within minutes, a metal cart appears carrying shrimp cocktails, chicken salad, shrimp salad, roasted chicken and Swiss rolls, and pork tenderloin with seasoning. “First quality stuff,” John says. The food is all marked to expire that day, but instead of being tossed, it will end up in the hands of people who need it. “If you think this is better off in a Dumpster than someone’s stomach, you can go f-yourself,” he says. When he arrives at the Free Store, a cargo container painted orange, blue, green, and yellow, people are waiting. The parking lot is packed. He helps unload the truck and then hangs back as Gisele runs the show. This is her baby. As he watches, the furrowed brow disappears only when his three kids greet him excitedly. Fetterman never sugar coats what he’s up against, nor does he consider himself to be a miracle worker –for him, the miracle still hasn’t happened. There is no plan for urban sprawl, no dream scenario. “In a dream scenario I would have a full head of hair,” he quips. Sustained rebound is the plan. He’s not concerned about gentrification turning Braddock into the next East Liberty or Lawrenceville. He’s worried about Braddock’s 400 abandoned homes and keeping that number from growing. He becomes agitated while reciting a story in The National Review entitled, “If Your Town is Failing, Just Go.” Letting a town like Braddock die is an appalling option. “The attitudes of ‘fuck it’ or ‘why bother?’ starve off places like this,” he growls. Most people probably would have let Braddock die. Put it out of its misery. Even he’ll admit that ninety percent of what used to include 30 tailors, 14 jewelers, 5 banks, 5 car dealerships, 51 barbers, 3 newspapers, 53 restaurants, 9 department stores, and 14 furniture stores is now in a landfill. Braddock Avenue, once bustling with 20,000 residents, has gone on life support. Fetterman refuses to pull the plug. There’s a reason why he paid for those 1,500 pieces of candy with his personal debit card, why his phone is on 24/7, why he drives the streets every day, talking to people, keeping an eye out. “The work he’s done,” says Raemon Prunty, 15, “we need that for towns like Braddock all across Pennsylvania.” Braddock has come a long way, agrees resident Elaine Glover, but still has a long way to go. “There’s no gas station, bank…we don’t have nothin’ out here. If we had that kind of stuff we’d be alright.” She gets irritated when she sees remnants of plastic bags stuck in tree branches. But she believes in Fetterman. “He’s caring…he’s a really good guy.” Fetterman’s permanently furrowed brow mirrors that of his town’s grim determination. On a desolated street where one house remains, the front door is covered in shiny black and gold ribbons, Here We Go! posters, American flags and Steelers, Penguins, and Pirates logos: homage to a city – and a nation – that looked the other way while Braddock slowly rotted with the collapse of the steel industry. Change has been slowly coming – but he refuses to take any credit. “He’s painfully modest,” says friend and Barebones Productions artistic director Patrick Jordan. “A lot of people’s blood, sweat, and tears went into making things happen here, but John was definitely the catalyst.” If your town is failing, just go? If Fetterman had skipped town, there would have been no Levi’s “Ready to Work” campaign with 100% of the proceeds going back into to the community, no Braddock Youth Project employment program, renovation of the Nyia Page Community Center, Allegheny Health Network Urgent Care, or 24 subsidized apartments built on the former site of UPMC hospital. The Fetterman’s aren’t looking for any return on their investment other than paying it forward. John has never kept a single mayoral paycheck. The $150 he earns every month is passed along without hesitation to any resident who needs it. If he does win the Senate bid, he’ll commute to Washington. The 15104 will always be home. “It’s wonderful and admirable what he’s been doing,” Jordan added. “If he didn’t believe in Braddock, who would?” Photos by John Altdorfer |
After today's Supreme Court ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby, the left and Democrats are predictably claiming the 5-4 decision bans contraception for women. DSCC: Nearly every GOP candidate supports radical measures that would block birth control &roll back women’s health care rights even further — Matt Canter (@mattcanter) June 30, 2014 Supreme Court rules that bosses can deny employees coverage of birth control. #HobbyLobby #NotMyBossBusiness — Sandra Fluke (@SandraFluke) June 30, 2014 That claim is completely false. Not to mention, Hobby Lobby itself provides coverage of 16 different types of contraception to its employees. The Green family has no moral objection to the use of 16 of 20 preventive contraceptives required in the mandate, and Hobby Lobby will continue its longstanding practice of covering these preventive contraceptives for its employees. However, the Green family cannot provide or pay for four potentially life-threatening drugs and devices. These drugs include Plan B and Ella, the so-called morning-after pill and the week-after pill. Covering these drugs and devices would violate their deeply held religious belief that life begins at the moment of conception, when an egg is fertilized. Facts matter, but to the left, emotion on this issue wins. |
GJLP/Science Photo Library Using a virus to reprogram cells in the brain could be a radical way to treat Parkinson’s disease. People with Parkinson’s have difficulty controlling their movements due to the death of neurons that make dopamine, a brain signalling chemical. Transplants of fetal cells have shown promise for replacing these dead neurons in people with the disease, and a trial is currently under way. But the transplant tissue comes from aborted pregnancies, meaning it is in short supply, and some people may find this ethically difficult. Recipients of these cells have to take immunosuppressant drugs too. Advertisement Ernest Arenas, at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and his team have found a new way to replace lost dopamine-making neurons. They injected a virus into the brains of mice whose dopamine neurons had been destroyed. This virus had been engineered to carry four genes for reprogramming astrocytes – the brain’s support cells – into dopamine neurons. Five weeks later, the team saw improvements in how the mice moved. “They walked better and their gait showed less asymmetry than controls,” says Arenas. This is the first study to show that reprogramming cells in the living brain can lead to such improvements, he says. Human cells The effect of the virus was localised to the specific area where the team injected them. They did not see astrocytes turn into dopamine neurons in any other areas of the brain, nor were there any signs of tumours or other unwanted effects. The team has also used the same four genes to convert human astrocytes into dopamine neurons in a dish, suggesting that a technique like this may be possible in people. However, Arenas says careful safety checks and improvements to the technique are necessary before such a procedure could be tried in people. “The critical question will be whether this would work in the aged human brain, and generate enough dopamine cells of the right type that can connect up with the brain in the same way that transplanted dopamine cells can,” says Roger Barker at the University of Cambridge, who is leading the fetal transplant trial. Journal reference: Nature Biotechnology, DOI: 10.1038/nbt.3835 Read more: Parkinson’s disease may start in the gut and travel to the brain |
There’s no shortage of bad prosecutors in America. At the top of the law enforcement pyramid, there are federal prosecutors seeking to lock up pot growers for life (Montana) and those deporting of hundreds of immigrants every month (Texas), destroying lives as if they were disposing of traffic fines. But lower down the pyramid, where the country’s 17,000-plus state and local police departments dump cases on their desks, is where many criminal defense lawyers say the worst prosecutors are. “I think the biggest injustices are at the state level,” said Miles Gerety, a public defender in Connecticut who recently retired after three decades. “The U.S. attorneys don’t try cases unless they are complete winners… If the feds don’t think they have a good case, they dump it on the states.” A perfect example would be Florida State Attorney Angela Corey, who not only oversaw the failed prosecution of Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, but also oversaw the prosecution of Marissa Alexander, an African-American woman who fired a warning shot at her abusive husband and was sentenced to 20 years under Florida’s sentencing guidelines. In both cases, Corey approved the charges to be filed—making it harder to convict a predatory Zimmerman and easier to convict a domestic abuse victim. There’s no shortage of examples like this through the country. The deeper you look, the more you can turn up local and state examples of overzealous prosecutors bringing a battlefield mentality to their job, or botching prosecutions, or covering up for police brutality, or using their job as a stepping-stone for political office. What follows are a four examples that stand out, but they just scratch the surface. 1. Florida State Attorney Angela Corey The Marissa Alexander conviction prompted celebrity lawyer and legal commentator Mark Geragos to tell CNN that Angela Corey was “a menace” who needed to be disbarred and removed from office. Rev. Jesse Jackson visited the 32-year-old mother after the sentence and told the local papers, correctly, “It’s not beyond her influence,” to have sought a different charge and jail term.” And that was before the Trayvon Martin verdict, where even the New York Times explained that Corey could have filed different charges against Zimmerman with lower legal hurdles to clear to obtain a conviction. SPONSORED 2. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott Top Texas lawman Greg Abbott just announced he was running for governor. What stands out the most is not his recent conversion in the media to a centrist before seeking the higher office, or his long record picking legal fights to overturn federal voting rights laws, but one initative before the cameras were rolling. A decade ago, Abbott sent state troopers after elderly women of color who were registering voters. In the most outrageous example, the state troopers walked past known crack houses to spy in and then arrest one elderly woman—waiting until she was taking a bath. It was all part of an “voter fraud” effort, which in Texas, means stopping non-whites from voting. 3. Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes Brooklyn, New York’s top prosecutor, has been in office for 23 years, the Village Voice recently noted in a long profile that detailed why a prosecutor who was once seen as “innovative” had to go. In recent years, Hynes has presided over an office filled with bad prosecutions, including scores of cases from one detective who fabricated evidence, sending innocent people to prison. In other instances, his deputies let innocent people languish in jail after witnesses recanted or others were charged with the same crime. On the other hand, Hynes, who is elected, is known for ignoring evidence in politically sensitive cases, such as not prosecuting Orthodox Jews—a big voting block—for child abuse. “The D.A. consistently ignored red flags brought to its attention,” veteran criminal defense lawyer Mark Bederow told the Voice. Bederow should know: he’s a former prosecutor. 4. Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley Alameda County, where Oakland is located, has been an epicenter of overwrought policing for years. Whether it was firing wooden bullets at protesters, breaking up the Occupy camp, or the killing of an unarmed man at a subway stop, local police have been known for their heavy-handed tactics. And police brass—and now the county prosecutor—has cleared one of the worst officers in a misconduct investigation. A half-dozen years ago, the officer mistook a 20-year-old man leaving a convenience store for a robbery suspect, leaving him shot twice in the back, handcuffed and bleeding to death on the street. District Attorney Nancy O’Malley’s April 17 letter to the local police chief said “the evidence does not justify criminal charges.” Unfortunately, her dismissal of deadly force by police is not an isolated incident. Last October, O’Malley reached the same conclusion in another instance where an Oakland cop killed a teen. The Power of Prosecutors These four examples augment other accounts and lists of prosecutorial misconduct and abuses of power. At the federal level, 97 percent of all charges were not even decided by a judge or jury, because few people have the resources to fight the feds. There, federal prosecutors decide the charges and punishments, with little to balance their power. Montana U.S. attorney’s recent crusade against medical marijuana, despite a statewide ballot measure legalizing its medical use, is a striking example. Cotter is seeking life terms for the state’s biggest growers and dispensary operators. Lower down the criminal justice ladder, state and local police departments investigate crimes—or ignore them—and then present those cases to prosecutors whose job, at its most idealistic, is to obtain justice for crime victims. But along the way, it is often the case that overzealous police and prosecutors make mistakes and cover their tracks, delivering travesties, not justice. |
Property based testing and bitcoin libraries Property based testing is type of testing that generates random values inside a given set and then uses those randomly generated values for a test case. Inside of bitcoin-s we just integrated ScalaCheck to help us feel confident in the code we are writing for our implementation of Bitcoin. Property based testing frameworks will generate tests that are common sources of bugs by developers. Edge cases are some of the most common bugs from developers. ScalaCheck intentionally generates values along these boundaries to test our library handles them correctly. Here is an example of a property we have in bitcoin-s This simply checks that we can serialize block headers symmetrically. ScalaCheck will generate 100 random BlockHeader’s and test the property above. It is imperative that you write these generators correctly, or else you will have bad test cases, eliminating the entire reason for using property based testing. Here is an example of a set of generators for bitcoin-s These two functions generate a BlockHeader composed of random values and a Block composed of a random block header and random transactions. While this block will not be valid if it was validated by a bitcoin full node, it is still can be useful for testing other parts of the library such as serialization/deserialization. The generators can be modified to generate valid block headers/blocks according to Bitcoin’s consensus rules and will be in the future. Once you have a library of generators built up, you can build new functionality and test it rather thoroughly using old generators for regression tests. This is really important with a consensus critical system like Bitcoin. Frankly it is hard to think about numerous test cases — property based testing allows developers to unload some of the cognitive burden onto software tools. |
Categories Warning : parse_str() expects parameter 1 to be string, array given in /home/clients_ssl/www.dailyicon.net/www/magazine/wp-content/plugins/fold-category-lists-231.php on line 296 No categories Located in the southern suburban area of Paris along wide boulevards and roadway interchanges, in an industrial landscape characterised by a succession of boxes, the RATP Bus Centre in Thiais controls all the bus lines in the south and east of Paris. The structure displays a non slippery texture of dots in relief like a game of Lego. Editor's Picks Konstantin B …the compensation for all the things you simply did not do, polished to perfection. [more...] Suggested Reading The Story of Eames Furniture Brimming with images and insightful text, this unique book is the benchmark reference on what is arguably the most influential and important furniture brand of our time. [more...] Buy it here: Amazon The Guggenheim: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Making of the Modern Museum First-ever book to explore the process behind one of the greatest modern buildings in America. [more...] Buy it here: Amazon MoonFire: The Epic Journey of Apollo 11 A unique tribute to the defining scientific mission of our time, the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. [more...] Buy it here: Amazon Cars Freedom Style Sex Power Motion Colour Everything. This lavish and beautifully designed book is the gift book for all car enthusiasts and design aficionados. [more...] Buy it here: Amazon Design Icons Fjordfiesta Scandia Senior by Hans Brattrud A Norwegian furniture design classic from 1957, Scandia Senior is a comfortable high-back easy chair with a leather head cushion, on a satin swivel base. [more...] Resources More Books Case Study Houses “It’s a huge coffee-table book, which analyses each of the houses in chronological order, with plans, sketches and glorious photographs.” [more...] Buy it here: Amazon The Eames Lounge Chair The book examines the evolution of a design icon and places it in its cultural, historical and social context. [more...] Buy it here: Amazon The U.N. Building Symbol of world humanitarianism, a beacon of unity after the Second World War. More than 50 years on, the 39-story building is regarded as one of the pinnacles of mid-century modernism. [more...] Buy it here: Amazon Loblolly House Including a DVD of the film "A House in the Trees", a real-time documentary of the design, fabrication, and assembly of this amazing house. [more...] Buy it here: Amazon Desire The Shape of Things to Come. An up-to-date comprehensive survey on furniture and object design today, showcasing the crème de la crème of designers. [more...] Buy it here: Amazon Marcel Wanders Behind the Ceiling is the first monograph on one of the most influential, prolific and celebrated international designers today. [more...] Buy it here: Amazon How to Wrap Five Eggs A mid-60s classic of Japanese design. Stunningly laid-out paean to traditional Japanese packaging is rife with sumptuous black and white photos of all manner of boxes, wrappers and containers that appear at once homely and sophisticated, ingeniously utilitarian yet fine and rare. [more...] Buy it here: Amazon |
Fifteen million a people a year who travel by air or sea between Britain and the Irish Republic will face formal passport checks for the first time in more than 80 years, under immigration legislation published today . But no compulsory passport checks are to be imposed on the 224-mile land border between the republic and Northern Ireland, although ad hoc "intelligence-led" immigration checks will be carried out by mobile teams of Border Agency staff. Ministers say the proposal in the citizenship and immigration bill will "plug a critical gap" in Britain's border security as they introduce the multibillion pound "electronic border" over the next five years. The programme will enable travellers to be checked against watch lists before they get on the plane or ferry. The legislation will bring to an end the common travel area between the republic and Britain, which dates back to the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922. Apart from limited attempts to control the land border during and after the second world war the common travel area has been a free movement zone for more than 80 years. A Home Office impact assessment published alongside the bill acknowledged the possibility of large queues building up as a result of the introduction of the passport checks, particularly at Welsh ferry ports for those coming from Ireland. Officials hope to minimise such delays. At the same time as the legislation was published in London yesterday, the Irish government announced that it will introduce its own new border control system from next year. The Irish justice minister, Dermot Ahern, said the Irish border information system would also screen for illegal migrants by checking travel data collected by airlines and ferry companies before departure and checking it against watch lists. A British proposal to introduce passport checks for those who fly from Belfast to the rest of the UK was dropped after strong opposition from Conservatives and Ulster Unionists. The imposition of border controls will however also apply to those who travel between Britain and the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey. The citizenship and immigration bill introduces radical reforms to British citizenship, including the introduction of a requirement for migrants to speak English and obey the law if they want to get a British passport. |
When Brad Treliving signed his multi-year extension this past summer, Calgary Flames fans rejoiced in a collective happy dance. The heir to the Boston Pizza kingdom has served more than his fair share of mouthwatering cap-friendly contracts, and delivered on his promise of making the Flames competitive again. He gave us Dougie Hamilton and Travis Hamonic. He gave us Kris Versteeg and Michael Frolik. He gave us Deryk Engelland and Troy Brouwer! Okay, some of his signings embody pineapple on pizza, but by and large, most of his moves have placed the Flames in a position to compete for the Stanley Cup now and into the future. Window 1: 2017-2020 With the big additions of Hamonic, Mike Smith, Spencer Foo, and Jaromir Jagr(?) this offseason, it’s clear the Flames organization feels that they have a legitimate chance to win now. They’ve built a team with a defense that can compete against the high flying offense in Edmonton and look poised to challenge for the division this year. This window is structured to span 3 years based on the contracts of T.J. Brodie, Frolik, Smith, and Hamonic. The Flames have continually improved in all three zones. They are creating better scoring opportunities, and giving themselves a better chance of winning on a nightly basis. The Flames have trended up in their Corsi For percentage, finally getting rid of the ghosts of Hartley’s past. Though this is not the full picture, it is a positive metric that can’t be ignored. They have spent the past year improving under Glen Gulutzan’s new systems. Despite getting swept in the playoffs, the Flames belonged in the postseason and probably deserved a better fate. If things fall into place, they could go much deeper in the coming springs. As Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan, Matthew Tkachuk, and Hamilton continue to improve, this team is poised to be a contender throughout this first window. Window 2: 2020-2024 At this point, many of the fixtures in the Flames current lineup have matured and developed a sense of what it takes to be a contender. Gaudreau and Monahan enter their prime and Hamilton is consistently in the Norris Trophy conversation. Tkachuk overtakes Brad Marchand as the most hated 30-goal scorer in the league and Mikael Backlund solidifies his place as an elite two-way center in the league. Most importantly, the bad contracts that are left expire, providing cap relief and more flexibility to acquire players in the offseason or at the trade deadline. The defense corps will still be terrifying to play against, as it is a certainty that prospects will graduate into full-time NHL blueliners. Whether it is Rasmus Andersson, Oliver Kylington, Adam Fox, Juuso Valimaki, or any combination, the Flames’ defense will see constant upgrades as the development of these players progresses. Smith will likely retire and the Flames will welcome a budding superstar between the pipes in Tyler Parsons. While we still have our fingers crossed that Jon Gillies can still one day be a bonafide NHL goaltender, it’s fairly obvious that Parsons has become the number one goalie, assuming the Flames properly manage their prospects. With any luck, the goaltending woes that have plagued the team since Miikka Kiprusoff’s retirement in 2013 will be resolved once and for all. Window 3: 2024-2030 With the way the Flames’ prospect cupboard is loaded, it’s hard not to jump ahead and envision what our team might look in the future. The aforementioned depth in defense has many other teams envious of the Flames’ drafting; a feeling that is new and exciting for Flames fans. Captained by Monahan, the Flames could boast a high flying offense featuring Gaudreau, Tkachuk, Andrew Mangiapane, Matthew Phillips, and their future late-round draft steals. In tandem with their elite defense corps and superstar goaltender, they still remain perennial cup contenders. Although these speculations are premature, it is not far fetched to think that Treliving did in fact set the Flames up for long term success. He has strategically managed their current and future assets, relying on the “defense wins championships” mantra. Hopefully his efforts will prove to be fruitful, and Flames fans can look forward to many Aprils, Mays, and Junes spent on the Boston Pizza patio, overlooking the Red Mile, cheering on the boys. |
Fifty Hackers Arrested in Russia during One Biggest Cyber-Crime Raid Russian agencies carrying out one joint operation against cyber crime recently led to 50 people's arrest belonging to a gang on suspicion that they stole 1.7bn Roubles (18m pounds; $25m) from a theft orchestrated on financial institutions and banks within the country. The bust of the hackers was of a scale that never happened before and the country's Ministry of Interior in coordination with partners such as Kaspersky Lab the security company and FSB (Federal Security Service) stated that a further benefit of the operation was that another theft of 2.3bn Roubles was prevented because outstanding money transfers were stopped. Those arrested participated in an overall eighteen assaults by the gang against state agencies and financial entities in Russia during 2015 employing malware for invading PCs, says Russia's Interior Ministry. As per Kaspersky Lab, cyber crime in Russia has a notorious linkage to online assaults against financial institutions worldwide, like the Carbanak gang which pilfered around $1bn out of banks within thirty nations. Darkreading.com posted this dated June 2, 2016. The current cyber crime was waged for grabbing login credentials for accessing Internet banking A/Cs. The most notable target was on accounts existing within a biggest Russian bank namely Sberbank. According to investigation chief of computer attacks, Ruslan Stoyanov at Kaspersky Lab, the gang called Lurk began its bank heists 18 months back prior to which its malware attacked different consumer and business computers. The criminals used the data which their Trojan collected for pilfering funds out of bank accounts. Although Sberbank was the sole name authorities mentioned within their press statement, nevertheless, they stated other institutions of finance too were attacked. Kaspersky explains the gang utilized hijacked Wi-Fi connection nodes, VPNs and Tor while infiltrated servers so they could conceal their actual Internet Protocol address during attacks on organizations. The servers sometimes were of different telecom and information technology firms of Russia. The group crafted e-mails with the help of Buhtrap while making those e-mails look as arriving from industrial syndicates which authorize accounting staff and banks. This was done for duping people into clicking the malicious electronic mails. » SPAMfighter News - 08-06-2016 |
The Galaxy S4 is Samsung’s fastest-selling smartphone ever with shipments topping 6 million units in two weeks. Samsung co-CEO Shin Jong-kyun revealed on Friday that sales of the Galaxy S4 into channels will likely pass 10 million units next week, The Korea Times reported. The executive noted that it is selling much faster than the Galaxy S III, which took 50 days to reach the 10 million mark. The Galaxy S4 will hit the same milestone in less than a month. Samsung’s latest flagship smartphone is equipped a 5-inch full HD display, a 1.9GHz Snapdragon 600 processor and a 13-megapixel camera. The device also includes 2GB of RAM, a microSD slot, NFC, up to 64GB of internal storage and a handful of unique features built into Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. Earlier reports suggested that Samsung hopes to sell more than 100 million Galaxy S4 handsets. |
Bernie Sanders pulls off a surprise and wins in Michigan; Trump just keeps winning Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders looks on as former senator Don Riegle announces his endorsement of Sanders during a press conference ahead of the Democratic Debates in Flint, Michigan, March 6, 2016. / AFP / Geoff Robins (Photo credit should read GEOFF ROBINS/AFP/Getty Images) [ + - ] Video ABC News - Bernie Sanders breathed new life into his long-shot presidential bid with a crucial win in Michigan's primary Tuesday night. The Vermont Senator is chipping away at Hillary Clinton's dominance in the Democratic presidential race. Meanwhile Republican Donald Trump swept to victory in both Michigan and Mississippi, overcoming fierce efforts to blunt his momentum. Even with Sanders' win, Clinton and Trump moved closer to a general election face-off. Clinton breezed to an easy victory in Mississippi, propelled by overwhelming support from black voters, and she now has more than half the delegates she needs to clinch the Democratic nomination. Trump, too, padded his lead over Texas Sen. Ted Cruz his closest rival. The front-runners turned their sights on November as they reveled in their wins. Sanders, meanwhile, said Michigan signaled that his campaign "is strong in every part of the country, and frankly we believe our strongest areas are yet to happen." While a handful of recent losses to Cruz have raised questions about Trump's durability, Tuesday's contests marked another lost opportunity for rivals desperate to stop his march to the nomination. Next week's winner-take-all contests in Ohio and Florida loom large as perhaps the last chance to block him short of a contested convention fight. Ohio Gov. John Kasich was in a fight with Cruz for second place in Michigan and hoping a good showing would give him a boost heading into next week's crucial contest in his home state. For Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Tuesday marked the latest in a series of disappointing nights. He emerged from Michigan and Mississippi with no new delegates, a grim outcome for a candidate who has the overwhelming support from Republican senators, governors and other elected officials. Rubio insisted he would press on to his home state's primary in Florida next Tuesday. After Tuesday's results, Clinton has accumulated 1,214 delegates and Sanders 566, including superdelegates. Democrats need 2,383 delegates to win the nomination. With Tuesday's wins, Trump leads the Republican field with 428 delegates, followed by Cruz with 315, Rubio with 151 and Kasich with 52. Winning the GOP nomination requires 1,237 delegates. |
Republicans in Congress were not functioning independently of one another on their first workday after the Independence Day holiday. Shortly after noon on July 5, House Speaker John Boehner’s "tweeted" a July 3 blog posting from the conservative Weekly Standard’s website, labeling it "POTUS’ economists: ‘Stimulus’ Has Cost $278,000 per job." Around 4 p.m., the National Republican Congressional Committee followed suit with multiple press releases that used the same Weekly Standard blog item to target dozens of Democrats in Congress, including Ohio’s Betty Sutton. Its headline: "New Report Shows Dems’ Failed Stimulus Cost $278,000 Per Job As Economy Got Worse." It went onto claim that Sutton’s "government spending spree" "delivered little except skyrocketing debt owed to foreign countries like China." By 4:55 p.m., the National Republican Senatorial Committee had recycled the Weekly Standard blog posting to attack Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. This time the claim was: "President Obama’s own top economists estimate that the Obama-Brown stimulus debacle cost taxpayers an average $278,000 per job." PolitiFact Ohio thought the concerted GOP effort made it worthy of a look. Since Boehner kicked it off on Twitter, we’ll use his tweet. The Weekly Standard blog item that spawned the statistic cites a July 1 report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, which states the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act "saved or created between 2.4 and 3.6 million jobs as of the first quarter of 2011." It also tallies the sum of the stimulus bill’s outlays and tax cuts at $666 billion. The $278,000 per job figure doesn’t appear anywhere in the White House report. To come up with that number, the publication divided the $666 billion stimulus total by the low-end 2.4 million job estimate to come up with a dollars per job statistic that it rounded off to $278,000. The blog item contends this statistic "provides further evidence that President Obama’s ‘stimulus’ did very little, if anything, to stimulate the economy and a whole lot to stimulate the debt," and insists "the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the ‘stimulus’ and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead." After Republicans began to circulate the blog item, White House spokesman Jay Carney said its conclusions were "based on partial information and simply false analysis." White House spokeswoman Liz Oxhorn issued a statement that noted the Recovery Act bolstered infrastructure, education, and industries "that are critical to America’s long-term success and an investment in the economic future of America’s working families." The White House points out that Recovery Act dollars didn’t just fund salaries - as the blog item implies - it also funded numerous capital improvements and infrastructure projects. Lumping all costs together and classifying it as salaries produces an inflated figure. Furthermore, the publication created its statistic with the report’s low end jobs estimate. Had it instead gone with the 3.6 million job figure at the top end of the range, it would have come up with a smaller $185,000 per job figure. Republicans made a similar assertion in November 2009, using similar calculations to contend that the stimulus cost taxpayers more than $246,000 per job. Back then, they divided $160 billion in stimulus spending by 650,000 jobs that the White House estimated the measure had created or preserved. A "fact check" conducted at the time by the Associated Press called that math "satisfyingly simple but highly misleading." "Any cost-per-job figure pays not just for the worker, but for the material, supplies and that workers’ output - a portion of a road paved, patients treated in a health clinic, goods shipped form a factory floor, railroad tracks laid," the 2009 Associated Press item noted. The Weekly Standard claimed that the stimulus actually "has been working in reverse the last six months, causing the economy to shed jobs." It derives this conclusion from the fact that as of two quarters ago, the stimulus had added or saved just under 2.7 million jobs - or 288,000 more than it has now. Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi says the Weekly Standard misinterpreted that data. "It’s not that ARRA [the stimulus] is now costing the economy jobs, it is that the economy is now creating jobs without ARRA’s help," Zandi told TPMDC. "This is exactly the objective of fiscal stimulus, namely to end recession and jump-start economic recovery." The day after the White House responded to the GOP’s dissemination of the Weekly Standard blog item, its author penned a defense that reiterates his claims. He says he never said that $278,000 per job went to salaries, but "rather that each job has cost taxpayers $278,000." Yet, his original item did say taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead if the government had simply "cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the ‘stimulus?" So where does that leave Boehner’s tweet that said "POTUS’ economists: ‘Stimulus’ Has Cost $278,000 per job." The figure attributed to the president’s economists does not appear anywhere in the White House report. Rather, the Weekly Standard attributed the number to economists at the White House after it made its own calculations and conclusions. The methodology used to get that number was previously termed suspect because it lumps all costs associated with stimulus projects together as if they are wages, suggesting it would have been cheaper to just "cut a $100,000 check" to each person who found work as a result of the stimulus. On the Truth-O-Meter, we rate Boehner’s tweet (and the subsequent variations of his claim) as False. Comment on this item. |
By summer 2018, 4/20-friendly Canadians could be handing over cash to buy legal marijuana. But some health and safety advocates are already expressing concern about how that revenue stream will be spent. The Liberal government is expected to announce its long-awaited marijuana legislation this week, with plans to legalize use on or before Canada Day 2018 The government has said it's approaching legalization through a health lens, but it's also expected to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars . Colorado legalized marijuana in 2014 and, with a population smaller than Quebec and Ontario, that state is doing more than $1 billion US in legal sales a year. Much of the heavy lifting to implement a countrywide system for the distribution or marijuana in Canada will have to be done by the provinces, and it appears that Ottawa is counting on the potential profits from marijuana sales to speed things along. The hope is that at least a few of the provinces will move quickly to finalize their system for retail sales and that will motivate slower jurisdictions. Dr. Gail Beck, the director of youth outpatient psychiatry at The Royal Ottawa Hospital, has concerns with approaching legalization mainly concerned about revenue. (Giacomo Panico/CBC) Dr. Gail Beck, the director of youth outpatient psychiatry at The Royal Ottawa Hospital, has concerns about approaching legalization with dollar signs for eyes. "As a physician who works a lot with young people who have addiction problems, I'm hoping that legislators keep their mind focused on health and how the legislation — and hopefully regulation — of marijuana might contribute to the health of Canadians," she told CBC Radio's The House. "[Revenue] shouldn't be the priority." Age limit can play important role The marijuana legislation is expected to broadly follow the recommendation of a federally appointed task force that was chaired by former Liberal justice minister Anne McLellan. The federal government will be in charge of making sure the country's marijuana supply is safe and secure and Ottawa will license producers. But provincial governments will have the right to decide how the marijuana is sold and have the right to set the price. Part of regulation needs to include education, argued Beck, who says many of the teenagers she works with think marijuana is harmless since it's a plant. "We hear that despite the fact that the impact on young people is significant ... regular users of cannabis can actually see, over a period of time, a decrease in their intelligence quotient, in their IQ," she said. "When you're combating those kinds of myths of harmlessness, that's a very difficult thing to overcome. The more education that we have as this legislation is introduced, the better." Ottawa will set a minimum age of 18 to buy marijuana, but the provinces will have the option of setting a higher age limit, should they wish. The idea that slapping an age limit on cannabis is going to deter teens from getting their hands on it might elicit an eye roll. For generations, young people have found ways to drink booze, but Beck said whatever age the provinces land on could play a crucial role. "For the most part, when they do get access to alcohol, they're getting it through an older individual and there is significant evidence in Canada that people, at the moment, have better access to cannabis than they do to alcohol," she said. Training money needed On the safety front, MADD Canada, not surprisingly, has concerns about how well-equipped all 13 jurisdictions are to handle high drivers. Robert Solomon, of MADD Canada, says police will need training to deal with high drivers. (MADD) For now, most police in the field use a physical co-ordination test as screening test, and if a driver fails that, they then undergo a two-hour drug evaluation test. "It's long and complicated, involves the collection of over 100 separate pieces of information," Robert Solomon, national director of legal policy for MADD Canada, told The House. "In order to conduct these tests, you have to be trained, and the cost of training is about $17,000 per officer." In Colorado, about 10 per cent of drivers involved in fatal accidents in 2010 tested positive for the drug. By 2014, just over a year after recreational sales were legalized, that number had nearly doubled to 19 per cent. "The federal government needs to introduce a more effective means of enforcing the drug impaired law," Solomon argued. |
In the latest shake-up inside President Trump’s volatile White House, communications director Anthony Scaramucci has been removed from his post just 11 days after landing in the West Wing. “Anthony Scaramucci will be leaving his role as White House communications director,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in a statement Monday. “Mr. Scaramucci felt it was best to give chief of staff John Kelly a clean slate and the ability to build his own team. We wish him all the best.” Kelly was officially sworn in as Trump’s chief of staff Monday morning, following the sudden departure of former chief of staff Reince Priebus on Friday. At her daily press briefing Monday afternoon, Sanders confirmed that Scaramucci is no longer serving the administration in any capacity, despite earlier reports that he may assume an alternate post. “He does not have a role at this time in the Trump administration,” she said. Sanders told reporters that Kelly “will bring new structure to the White House, and discipline, and strength” and that the retired general “has the full authority to carry out business as he sees fit.” The spokeswoman said “all staff will report to him.” It remained to be seen whether that blanket statement would apply to Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, or senior strategist Steve Bannon. A White House source told Yahoo News that Scaramucci was in the West Wing on Monday morning. The source also said the move was a shock to staffers and “came out of the blue.” The flamboyant financier’s shocking exit came with twists that would not be out of place in a Hollywood version of the White House. Scaramucci’s arrival led to the dismissal of Priebus and press secretary Sean Spicer, his ouster has been credited to the man who replaced Priebus. The White House statement announcing Scaramucci’s departure was crafted in the office that Spicer, for now, still occupies. Spicer, approached by reporters to confirm early news reports of Scaramucci’s departure, was all smiles and would not say whether he would now be staying on. While Trump has suffered more turnover among this top aides than any modern president, Scaramucci’s removal seemed to be more a sign of order than chaos. It suggested an attempt by Kelly — a retired four-star Marine general — to impose discipline, and, notably, to enforce a traditional pecking order. Whereas past communications directors have answered to the chief of staff, Scaramucci’s arrangement had him reporting directly to Trump. In just over six months in office, Trump has shed his first national security adviser (Michael Flynn), communications director (Mike Dubke), press secretary (Sean Spicer), deputy chief of staff (Katie Walsh), deputy national security adviser (K.T. McFarland) and now his chief of staff. His attorney general, Republican former Sen. Jeff Sessions, has been in an increasingly tenuous position, with the president openly criticizing him, but stopping short of firing him or asking him to resign. The president had announced Friday via Twitter that he was replacing Priebus with Kelly, who had been serving as secretary of homeland security. Scaramucci, who accepted his short-lived role on July 21, made headlines less than a week after assuming the post with a profanity-laced interview with the New Yorker in which he insulted members of the White House staff, including Priebus, whom he also singled out in attacks on Twitter and suggested he believed the one-time RNC chair had leaked information to the media. When asked whether Scaramucci’s vulgarity-riddled interview had anything to do with his removal, Sanders said Trump felt the comments were “inappropriate.” “The president certainly felt that Anthony’s comments were inappropriate for a person in his position,” she said. The New York Times reported that Scaramucci’s removal came at Kelly’s request. Scaramucci and his spokesperson have not responded to requests for comment from Yahoo News. Over the weekend, reports surfaced that Scaramucci’s wife had filed for divorce in early July. While he had already stepped into the public eye, Scaramucci’s official start date was set for Aug. 15, meaning his tenure has ended before it officially began. Yahoo News White House Correspondent Hunter Walker contributed to the reporting of this story. Read more from Yahoo News: |
The Internet empowers all of us to share content and media, express ourselves, and message our friends and family for free, regardless of borders, instantly and securely in many fun, delightful ways. Why is sharing money so different? We don’t think it should be, and today UK citizens can take a step closer toward that new reality. People in the UK can now experience social payments over the open Internet in their native currency, pound sterling (GBP), using Circle’s updated apps for Android, iOS, and the Web. Echoing our existing US dollar support (available in all US states), we’re also enabling people to make GBP payments that seamlessly cross currencies as needed -- instantly, and with zero fees. Finally, we’re also eliminating transaction and withdrawal limits for customers in all of the 150+ countries where Circle is available. UK Launch When we founded Circle, we were inspired by a range of innovations -- including the birth of digital currency and distributed ledgers (e.g. blockchain tech), AI and machine learning, smartphone advancements, and cloud computing economics -- that were converging to make it possible (finally!) to change money and banking to work the same way nearly everything else already works on the Internet. Similar inspiration struck many in the UK, and over the past year we’ve worked closely with such forward-thinkers in the UK government and banking sector to bring this new social payment experience to UK consumers. As the first digital currency company in the world to be granted an E-Money license, Circle will also offer the benefits of digital money to Europe’s 500 million consumers, and ultimately enable anyone with sterling or euros to send and receive value for free and with an experience familiar to anyone who uses messaging or social media. What is Circle? Why Social Payment Apps? Through Circle’s social payment apps, consumers can share payments with and send money to friends, whether across the table or across the planet, with the speed, convenience, zero cost, and fun of the Internet. Social payment apps are an emerging class of Internet services that empower people to share payments with friends and family. These apps (a) enable new creative expressions of value like gifting, (b) simplify debt and IOUs between friends and family, (c) eliminate the inconveniences of cash and cheques, and (d) smooth the pain of cross-border money transfer. Typically, social payment apps provide a free service that allows customers to use their existing debit cards and bank accounts to send and receive personal payments; these apps often integrate payment behavior with social graphs, messaging, and media experiences. Examples of social payment apps include Circle, PayPal’s Venmo, Facebook Messenger Payments and WeChat Pay. Money is inherently social and personal, wedded to life experiences and obligations and to the people in our lives -- our family, our friends, our colleagues, the associations and clubs we belong to, the businesses we are members of and interact with. Until recently, social and personal payments have been cumbersome, awkward, and highly local, unlike the Internet. At Circle, we envision a new experience for money that builds on the experiences and possibilities we have with messaging, social media, and other forms of communication and information sharing that billions of people have become accustomed to online. We don’t need bank branches; we have billions of smartphones as our distribution channel, our core product experience, and our customer service fulfillment channel. We don’t need to employ thousands of compliance staff; we build machine learning algorithms and financial artificial intelligence to reduce risk and improve the experience of money. We ship new releases of our “bank” every day and we’re constantly iterating on the consumer experience of digital money. Money Without Borders Part of making money work the way that the Internet works is overcoming the arcane, siloed systems of currencies and bank transfers that exist today, and making it work the same way that we send and receive email or browse the Web. If we’re in the United States and want to send you some value, and you’re in the United Kingdom, or Ireland or Spain, why can’t we just text you the value, just like sending you a photo or a message? And why does someone have to charge a toll on that exchange? Google doesn’t strip out a few lines of text from emails as a fee when we send email around the world. Why can’t money move around without these costs and time delays? When is the last time that you sent a “cross border email”, or conducted “an international Web browsing session”? The Internet knows no boundaries or borders; money is merely data and banks are regulated database operators. “Money Transfer” and “Payments” is nothing more than synchronizing data among these regulated database operators. With software and the Internet, we can make this so much better, faster, more secure and cost effective. With Circle’s UK launch, we’re bringing this global vision another step forward. For the first time ever, any consumer in the US or UK can instantly send value, without fees, and with the convenience of sending an email or text. US dollars and pound sterling are becoming more digital and global, and we’re gearing up to bring the same capability to Euro-zone consumers. An Open Internet of Value Exchange No one needs yet another closed transaction network. A critical element of Circle’s “money without borders” open value proposition is blockchain technology. Distributed ledgers and the protocols that support them are to payments what HTTP is to information sharing and media. Rather than creating more proprietary, closed, centralized networks, we’ve embraced the ideas that have fueled the digital age -- open networks, open intellectual property and open source software, distributed and decentralized information and computing architectures, and a fundamental respect for privacy and security. We’d be thrilled if everyone in the world enjoyed Circle, but people benefit most if Circle is part of an open global network of value exchange with thousands of other software providers, online services, and financial institutions who are connecting to and innovating on public blockchains. We create network effects for one another, and grow the strength and resiliency of the system as a whole. Circle allows UK and US consumers to transmit sterling and dollars over the blockchain, which means that Circle customers can send and receive value through thousands of other digital wallets and online money services, instantly and without fees. If you live in the UK and want to send pounds to someone, or receive value from someone in Japan, Korea, The Philippines, China, the US, Europe, Africa, etc., there are blockchain products and services in those markets that allow consumers to receive your payment instantly, and they can instantly convert it into their local currency and transfer it in and out of their existing bank accounts. We’re in the early stages of blockchain technology. Bitcoin, ethereum, private chains, and new distributed ledger protocols will evolve, and a free and open experience with money will emerge. Circle is committed to accelerating this evolution and bringing the benefits to consumers around the globe. Your View Grab Circle Pay by visiting the Android or iOS store or by visiting the Circle Web app, start sharing money, and help us change the global economy via your thoughts and feedback! Jeremy and Sean, Circle Co-Founders |
While the US is still pondering SOPA, we just got some absolutely fantastic news out of Europe. The European Court of Justice, the highest court in the European Union, has just ruled that P2P filters installed by ISPs violate the European Directive on electronic commerce as well as fundamental rights [full ruling]. This is a hugely important ruling that effectively protects all member states of the European Union from ever being subjected to ISP filtering and spying. The origins of this ruling lie in Belgium. The Belgian version of the RIAA, SABAM, had sued Belgian internet provider Scarlet because the ISP’s users were downloading copyrighted content without paying royalties. The President of the Tribunal de première instance de Bruxelles (Brussels Court of First Instance) then ordered Scarlet to install a filtering system to monitor the internet traffic of its subscribers. Scarlet didn’t like this and appealed, and argued before the European Court of Justice that such a filtering system is incompatible with the Directive on electronic commerce and with fundamental rights. Today, the European Court of Justice ruled in full agreement with Scarlet – this has to be one of the clearest and most straightforward rulings I’ve ever seen. The Court of Justice doesn’t mince any words here. There are two elements to the ruling. First, imposing such a filtering system would hinder Scarlet in freely conducting business, a violation of the Directive on on electronic commerce. This is the practical side of the ruling. “In the present case, the injunction requiring the installation of a filtering system involves monitoring, in the interests of copyright holders, all electronic communications made through the network of the internet service provider concerned. That monitoring, moreover, is not limited in time,” the Court of Justice states, “Such an injunction would thus result in a serious infringement of Scarlet’s freedom to conduct its business as it would require Scarlet to install a complicated, costly, permanent computer system at its own expense.” Other than this practical side, the ruling also has a philosophical side which deals with the implications such a filtering system would have for fundamental rights such as privacy. “What is more, the effects of the injunction would not be limited to Scarlet, as the filtering system would also be liable to infringe the fundamental rights of its customers, namely their right to protection of their personal data and their right to receive or impart information, which are rights safeguarded by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU,” the Court continues. “It is common ground, first, that the injunction would involve a systematic analysis of all content and the collection and identification of users’ IP addresses from which unlawful content on the network is sent. Those addresses are protected personal data,” the Court further clarifies, “Secondly, the injunction could potentially undermine freedom of information since that system might not distinguish adequately between unlawful content and lawful content, with the result that its introduction could lead to the blocking of lawful communications.” The Court concludes, therefore, that ISP-side filtering systems would not strike a fair balance between IP protection on one side, and “the freedom to conduct business, the right to protection of personal data and the right to receive or impart information” on the other. The European digital rights organisation EDRI is obviously pleased with the ruling. “This result is hugely important, as it protects the openness of the Internet,” EDRI states in a press release, “The alternative would have been a decision which would ultimately have put all European networks under permanent surveillance and filtering. This would have had major negative consequences for both fundamental rights and the online economy in Europe.” It’s interesting to see how many parts of Europe are starting to take serious stands against the draconian, anti-freedom laws and initiatives the United States is trying to impose upon the rest of the world. Just this week, the Dutch minister of foreign affairs refused to declassify all the documents and negotiation details surrounding ACTA – as a result, the Dutch Lower House accepted a motion to block all debates and talks in the Lower House until all materials related to ACTA are declassified and made available to the public. Until then, ACTA will not even be discussed in the Lower House, and thus, will not be accepted. Meanwhile, the European Parliament is taking a stand against SOPA, and fighting to make unconditional net neutrality – as codified first by Chile and second by The Netherlands – part of European Union law. And now we have the highest courts on the side of freedom of speech and fundamental rights as well? Only a few months ago I thought the fight was pretty much over, and that we, sanity, had lost. Now – things ain’t looking so dire any more. The tables are turning. |
A French father-of-two is to take GlaxoSmithKline to court, alleging the British firm's drug to treat Parkinson's disease turned him into a gay sex and gambling addict. The 51-year-old's lawyers say their client's behaviour changed radically after he was first administered the drug in 2003 for the illness, which causes tremors, slows movement and disrupts speech. Didier Jambart, a married father-of-two who says he has attempted suicide three times, claims he became addicted to internet gambling, losing the family's savings and stealing to feed his habit. He also became a compulsive gay sex addict and began exposing himself on the internet and cross-dressing. His risky sexual encounters led to him being raped, his lawyers said. The behaviour stopped when he stopped taking the drugs in 2005 but by then he had been demoted in his defence ministry job and was suffering from psychological trauma resulting from his addictions, his lawyers said. |
Here’s something everybody should understand about journalism. The reporters, columnists and news anchors you follow almost all have opinions about the subjects they cover. There is nothing wrong with this. In fact, it is a good thing, because any person who immersed him or herself in a vital, contentious subject all day and formed no opinion about it whatsoever would be an idiot, and you do not want to get your news from idiots. Some journalists (like me) are paid to express opinions. Others are paid to report news without regard to their opinions–and many, though not all, do an excellent job of this. And many more are required to hide their opinions by their bosses, in the belief that it builds reader confidence to maintain the illusion that the news is produced by people without opinions, i.e., idiots. That is the spirit behind a new policy at the Washington Post about staffers using Twitter, which manages to get both social media and journalism wrong at the same time, and suggests that the newspaper is working hard to make itself as irrelevant as possible. The Post drew up its policy after one of its managing editors, Raju Narisetti, posted tweets to his Twitter account that touched on a couple of political issues: We can incur all sorts of federal deficits for wars and what not. But we have to promise not to increase it by $1 for healthcare reform? Sad. and Sen Byrd (91) in hospital after he falls from “standing up too quickly.” How about term limits. Or retirement age. Or commonsense to prevail. There you have it: a man whose sole job is to focus on news and issues has opinions on health care, deficits and term limits. Shocking. It was shocking to Narisetti’s bosses, anyway, who quickly instituted rules for staff Twitter and other social-networking activity that included the following: “When using these networks, nothing we do must call into question the impartiality of our news judgment … Post journalists must refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything – including photographs or video – that could be perceived as reflecting political racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility.” See, obviously you and I know a guy like Narisetti, not being an idiot, has opinions. That’s fine. As long as he treats them like a shameful secret and hides them from us like a fat kid reinventing himself on a piece of awful home exercise equipment. Then we can all have trust in the media! Sigh. I’ve expounded before on why it’s a bogus idea that repressing opinions makes journalists fairer or more trustworthy. In short: by having policies like these, newspapers only reinforce an inaccurate idea of their own profession. Objectivity does not mean having no opinions. (Having no opinions more likely is a sign of apathy or stupidity.) Nor does it mean having opinions but hiding them. It means having opinions—as intelligent, informed people do—but not subordinating your work to them. It means being truthful and fair about your area of coverage, even if doing so hurts the causes you support. If you slant your coverage, hiding your beliefs does not make your work better. If your work is fair, sharing your beliefs does not make it less so (on the contrary, it provides your reader more information to keep you honest). But by perpetuating a fiction no one believes anyway, newspapers don’t make themselves trustworthy; they just seem phony. What’s more, as I wrote when the Wall Street Journal adopted a similarly hamhanded policy earlier this year, this kind of policy sabotages the kind of intimate connection with readers that Twitter and other services make possible, and that newspapers desperately need. (As do their writers, for the day that newspaper lays them off and they’re on their own; the Post’s policy should make any journo with options think twice about taking a job there.) I get why: to successfully use Twitter et al., you have to give up control, and that scraes scares the hell out of institutions like the Post. Their old way of doing business is to make sure that (except for a few stars like Bob Woodward) their staff remain anonymous drones who subordinate themselves to the paper’s brand. But that day is over, and the Post only hurts its brand by handcuffing its writers on Twitter. Its policy amounts to: just don’t say anything interesting, and things will be fine. Now, there actually is some common sense in the Post’s new dictates. For instance, the reminder that you should treat anything you post to Twitter, Facebook, etc., as if it can and will be widely read. But these common-sense guidelines should be left to just that: common sense (without which, why would you have a job at the Post in the first place?). There are plenty of reasons to avoid oversharing online—for instance, not antagonizing a source you might need information from. But that decision should be left to the writers, and the writers judged on their work. As for Narisetti’s tweets, restricting them has nothing to do with serving the reader better; it’s all about avoiding embarrassment for the Post. And needlessly. I don’t agree with all that he posted. (For what it’s worth, I’m glad to raise deficits for healthcare reform if it drives down costs in the long term, but I think all term limits are antidemocratic.) But I don’t think any less of him for posting them. Thanks to its new policy, though, I do think less of the Post. Or rather—because it believes that we have to be protected from information about its staff’s opinions—I now know how much less it thinks of us. |
At first glance it seemed like a pipe dream, a pie-in-the-sky type of move cooked up by fantasy football general managers. Darrelle Revis to the Patriots? What, are you kidding? The cornerback has $80 million and five years left on his contract — a cool $16 million per season, tying him with Mario Williams as the highest-paid defenders in the league. There’s no way the Patriots could afford him under the salary cap, right? Advertisement Well, I’ve had a few days to chew on it and crunch the numbers. And it’s pretty clear what the Patriots need to do. Get Sports Headlines in your inbox: The most recent sports headlines delivered to your inbox every morning. Sign Up Thank you for signing up! Sign up for more newsletters here Go get Revis. Seriously. Forget Aqib Talib, who has a history of off-field problems, a troublesome hip injury that won’t go away, and a high price tag this offseason. Revis is the guy you want. And believe it or not, the Patriots can make it happen fairly reasonably. It obviously makes good football sense to pry Revis — widely regarded as the top cornerback of his generation — away from the Buccaneers in a blockbuster trade. Revis, who will be 29 this summer, is likely the difference between another loss in the AFC Championship game and an appearance in the Super Bowl. Advertisement He also makes more financial sense than re-signing Talib, who is primed to cash in and doesn’t seem much interested in giving the Patriots a hometown discount. Revis is durable, playing all 16 games last year for the fifth time in his seven-year career. He gives you an elite presence in the secondary and improves your defense across the board. He was clearly the NFL’s No. 1 cornerback before tearing his ACL in 2012. Last year, in his first season back from injury, whom did profootballfocus.com rate as the No. 1 cornerback in the entire league? Yup, Revis — who according to PFF allowed just 400 receiving yards all season. Talib was 58th. And by trading for Revis, you get to needle the hated Jets, which is worth the price of admission in itself. The Patriots love to talk about value, and guess what? Revis provides more of it than Talib, who is injury-prone and not nearly as skilled as Revis. Advertisement Because believe it or not, fitting Revis in under the salary cap wouldn’t be too difficult. How? Let’s explain: Revis is set to make $16 million per year — $13 million in base salary, plus a $1.5 million roster bonus due each March and a $1.5 million workout bonus for showing up each offseason. At that structure, Revis’s $16 million salary cap number would be the largest on the Patriots – higher than Tom Brady’s $14.8 million. But that contract comes with a big asterisk, as discovered by the Tampa Tribune. Per the contract, the team can convert Revis’s $13 million salary into a guaranteed bonus at any time. Revis actually would prefer this to happen — instead of waiting for the fall to receive his salary in 17 installments, he’d receive most of it up front in a big, fat check. Converting salary money to bonus money allows a team to spread that cap money over the life of the contract, as the Cardinals did with Larry Fitzgerald last month. So, for example, in 2014 the Patriots could decide to turn $10 million of Revis’s $13 million into bonus money, which would be spread over the final five years of his deal at $2 million per season. That would put Revis’s 2014 salary cap number at $8 million — $3 million in base salary, $2 million bonus proration, $1.5 million roster bonus and $1.5 million workout bonus — which the Patriots easily could handle. The Patriots currently sit with $12.7 million in cap space for 2014, and can create an extra $9.2 million by cutting Dan Connolly, Isaac Sopoaga, Tommy Kelly, Adrian Wilson, and Jake Bequette. They can create even more space by giving contract extensions to Vince Wilfork, Devin McCourty, and Stephen Gostkowski. Now consider that Talib should be able to equal or better the deal received by Miami’s Brent Grimes, who just signed for $16 million guaranteed over the next two seasons — $8.475 million in cash this year and $7.525 million next year. Grimes also has cap numbers of $4 million in 2014 and $10 million in 2015. At those numbers, wouldn’t you rather spend just a little more and get the best cornerback in the NFL? Converting Revis’s salary to bonus money could create a problem for 2015. If Revis plays to form in 2014 and the Patriots want to bring him back the next season, he would carry a cap number of $18 million in 2015, which is quite high. Then again, absorbing that hit wouldn’t be as bad considering Aaron Hernandez will come off the books next year, and the salary cap will continue to climb thanks to an influx of new TV money. And if Revis is a bust in 2014? The Patriots simply can designate him as a post-June 1 cut and have salary cap hits of $2 million in 2015 and $6 million in 2016. In summation, with Revis you’re looking at cap numbers of $8 million and $18 million if he’s great, or $8 million, $2 million, and $6 million if he’s less than great. Well worth the risk, in my humble opinion. Plus, you always can try to restructure before next season. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on a Revis trade. He is due a $1.5 million roster bonus March 13, a week from today. If he’s still on the Bucs roster then, he gets his money, the Bucs owe the Jets a third-round pick instead of a fourth-rounder, and the Bucs lose any incentive to trade their star. The Bucs certainly don’t have to do this trade — they are comfortably under the salary cap for the next two years. But the men running the Bucs aren’t the same guys who traded for Revis last year. They’re not emotionally attached to the player. No team minds shedding an exorbitant contract while acquiring extra draft picks or young talent in the process. Bill Belichick should call up new Bucs GM Jason Licht — you know, the guy who worked in the Patriots’ scouting department and front office from 1999-2002 and again in 2008 — and give his buddy an offer for Revis he simply can’t refuse. Offer Licht a second-round pick to take that big contract off his hands. If he must, throw in Logan Ryan, a promising young corner, to offset the loss; the Patriots always can draft another Logan Ryan in the third round this year. Heck, consider sending the Bucs your first-round pick (29th overall) if that’s what it will take. Revis in a Patriots uniform. It’s not just some silly fantasy anymore. The Patriots need to make it happen. *** Who else is available? If the Patriots do not re-sign Aqib Talib (or trade for Darrelle Revis), here are some other interesting free agents at cornerback: Player 2013 team Age Ht. Wt. Int. Comment Vontae Davis Indianapolis 25 5-11 204 1 Patriots familiar with his game from his years with Dolphins Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie Denver 27 6-2 193 3 High-end speed (4.33 at Combine in 2008), talent, but inconsistent Alterraun Verner Tennessee 25 5-10 187 5 Pro Bowler in 2013, can play outside or inside Walter Thurmond Seattle 26 5-11 190 1 A backup until Brandon Browner was suspended, but played well as replacement Charles Tillman Chicago 33 6-2 198 3 Top corner in 2012; tore right triceps last season and missed eight games Ben Volin can be reached at ben.volin@globe.com . Follow him on Twitter @BenVolin |
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) played up reports that Vice President Pence is eyeing a 2020 presidential run on Sunday, warning that President Trump should be concerned about his second-in-command. "The rumor is is that [Pence] is getting ready because maybe he believes that something might happen and he should be ready to step in, or that he could run in 2020 and win," Waters told MSNBC's Joy Reid Sunday on "AM Joy." "So I don't think that we should be concerned about him. Trump should be concerned about him," she continued. ADVERTISEMENT Waters, a frequent and outspoken critic of President Trump, made her comments following a New York Times report on Saturday that said advisers to the vice president he has been hinting to party donors that he is ready to run in 2020 if Trump does not. Pence called the rumors "laughable and absurd" on Sunday. “The American people know that I could not be more honored to be working side by side with a president who is making America great again,” he said in a statement. But Waters explained Sunday why she believes the president is so vulnerable at the moment. "If the people around you are leaking in the way that they're doing, they are trying to tell us something. Of course, we don't want classified information leaked out and I don't think that they would do that with a credible president. They're doing that to this president because he has defined himself as someone who cannot be trusted," she said. And she said she knew where to start on national security leaks "The first thing they need to do is start with the president,” Waters said. “The president gave classified information to Russians in the White House and our ally Israel was very upset with us, so start with him.” The congresswoman also warned that impeachment could be a possibility if the president fires special counsel Robert Mueller, who was appointed by the Justice Department to probe Russian election meddling and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow. "I believe that if he moves on Mueller, that he has crossed the line," Water said. "It's a combination of that kind of thing and the information that's going to come out about him that would cause impeachment," she continued. |
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