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The internet world exploded earlier this month when South Carolina mega-pastor Perry Noble informed his attendees that the Ten Commandments are not commandments after all but promises. Noble gleaned this insight not from a careful study of the Scriptures - he admits that he did not do that - but from a conversation with a Jewish taxi driver. There are a number of reasons to be upset about this. For one thing, in order to redefine the law of God one must first assume the prerogatives of deity, something that Noble seems to have assumed due to his godlike celebrity status. Second, it brings us to near despair about the Christian culture today when the most popular preachers are those who admit that they are both untrained and irresponsible in handling the Scriptures. Third, the claim that the Ten Commandments are not, well, commandments is not only rebutted by a 30 second Bible software search (see Dt. 4:2; 4:40; 5:10 just for starters, not to mention Jesus' description in Mt. 5:19 and 19:17) but provides one more instance of a narcissistic age recasting the message of the church. With these things in mind, I cheerfully add my voice to the chorus denouncing Noble's teaching and urging all sane believers to leave their nearby emotion-driven mega-worship-center as soon as possible and start attending an actual church, preferably a Reformed one. With that said, however, I want to say to the internet world of popular Reformed teaching today: "Don't blame Perry Noble." After all, the message that he so unartfully spewed upon his holiday worshipers is more or less the same message going out from respected mouthpieces of Reformed teaching. It is well-chronicled both by Kevin DeYoung at TGC and also here at Ref21 how PCA pastor Tullian Tchividjian seeks to liberate Christians from the burdensome idea of practical obedience to God's Word. More recently, Justin Taylor has posted an interview with David Dorsey seeking to dismantle completely the idea that God's Law has any bearing on the Christian life. What we are seeing in Perry Noble, then, is simply a crass version of what is apparently a permissible idea within popular Reformed theology today: the belief that the Christian owes no obligation to live according to God's Law. Dorsey's argument, which dates to a 1991 article that for some unstated reason is being highlighted, strikes me as particularly egregious. When it comes to the Mosaic Law, Dorsey makes the following points: · All the 613 laws, rules, and commands found in the Mosaic Covenant are lumped together without distinction. Therefore, the Ten Commandments, written on stone by the very finger of God on Mount Sinai, is given no hermeneutical distinction to set it apart from rules governing, for instance, what to do when an axehead flies from its handle. · The Mosaic Law - including the now trivialized Ten Commandments - may be ignored by Christians as regulations intended only for ancient Israel in its distinctive covenantal, cultural, and cultic setting, and thus has been "discontinued with the Church." No discussion is offered about how the Law's validity is carried over into either the teaching of Jesus or the apostolic writings. Without nuance, the remarkable assertion is made that the Ten Commandments are of no direct relevance to Christians. · The Reformed distinction between the moral, ceremonial, and civil laws is casually dismissed as "methodologically questionable." Dorsey defends this glib dismissal by saying that these categories are not found in either the Old Testament or the early Rabbinical literature (which could also be said about the doctrine of the Trinity). · When asked how to apply the Law to the Christian life today, his first summary statement tells believers to say "this is not my law, that I am not legally bound by it," but rather that it is only "one of the laws God issued to ancient Israel as part of his covenant with them." · So is there any positive way in which the Ten Commandments apply to Christians today as a guide to life? Dorsey states, "There is a more logical, Biblically supported approach to the law that retains for Christians not only the very heart of the so-called 'moral laws' but also the underlying moral truths and principles, indeed the very spirit of every one of the 613 laws." Well there is sort of a positive statement about keeping the Law. But in working out this approach, it amounts to drawing theological conclusions from a given Mosaic commandment and making our own practical application. This is pretty much what Perry Noble did when he recast the Ten Commandments. Under the very approach offered by Dorsey, Noble taught that "You shall have no other gods before me," is not a commandment at all, but a promise that says, "You do not have to live in constant disappointment anymore." Now, I realize that there are nuanced arguments to be made on both sides of this debate and that there are reputable scholars who doubt the confessional Reformed doctrine of God's Law. But I just want to say that if the popular organs of Reformed teaching are going to promote this kind of doctrine, then we should not blame Perry Noble for endorsing it. After all, when he completely discards the Ten Commandments of God on the authority of a taxi driver, Noble is only spreading the ideas that more reputable Reformed figures are teaching. |
A PENSIONER has described the "horrible" moment an large gull swooped through her hair while she stood talking to a friend in Worcester city centre. Chris Knight, of Randwick Drive, Warndon, was in Angel Place at around midday on Friday when the bird sped straight towards her. Although the 70-year-old had her back to the bird and didn't notice it swoop just inches from her head, she turned just in time to face it flapping towards her again. She said: "When it flew over my head the first time, I didn't take any notice but when it came back for me, and actually through my hair, that is when I sat up and took notice because I'm terrified of birds anyway. "I could see it was swooping so low and it went right through the top of my hair. It could have been really nasty. It could have scratched my head. "It was horrible. It just went through the top of my hair, if it had its claws out, it would have scratched." She explained seagull chicks were stood on the pavement, leading her to believe the bird which attacked her may have been protecting its young. However, she is now calling for the birds to be culled, adding that other people were also being attacked by the gulls, including people using mobility scooters. "I have never seen it this bad before," said Mrs Knight. "I have just come back from a week at the seaside and we didn't have the problem with seagulls we have here. I think they need to cull them." Worcester City Council spends thousands of pounds every year on tackling the seagull problem and uses a contractor to place fake eggs on roofs to deter gulls from leaving real ones. A city council spokesman said: "We are sorry to hear about this unpleasant encounter. "According to environmental health experts, the number of nesting pairs of gulls in Worcester has been reduced from approximately 300 to under 200 over the last ten years, representing an encouraging reduction. "This has been achieved through a gull control programme (which Worcester City Council contributes to) where real eggs have been replaced with dummy eggs on roofs which can be safely accessed. "Over time, this programme will lead to further reductions in the city’s gull population. We urge people not to drop food waste and packaging in the city, as this only exacerbates the problem. "All birds (included gulls) are protected under The Wildlife and Countryside Act and enforced by Natural England. This limits our control options. "Furthermore, gulls are not classified as a public health pest, hence there are no specific laws that place obligations on local authorities to deal with or eliminate gulls." The spokesman added private owners can take steps to make their buildings less attractive to nesting gulls. A range of advice can be found at worcsregservices.gov.uk/environmental-health/pest-control/gull-control/self-help.aspx |
After the University of Louisville men’s basketball team was linked to a widespread kickback scheme that federal officials have been investigating, as the U.S. attorney for New York revealed last week, the public pondered: Would the program, one of the top performers in the country, be killed? The National Collegiate Athletic Association hasn’t imposed the “death penalty” on a Division I program since 1987, when the football team at Southern Methodist University was punished for repeated violations over a number of years, including payments to players. But Louisville, at least on the surface, seems to fit the basic criteria -- multiple significant violations of NCAA rules -- for a competition ban, which usually lasts at least one season. It’s the most severe punishment the NCAA can hand down. Former NCAA officials and experts offered mixed assessments of whether the association has maintained the clout to carry out the death penalty now, or whether Louisville’s indiscretions would even warrant it. The New York-based United States attorney’s office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation shook college athletics last week by announcing corruption and bribery charges against high-ranking Adidas executives and four assistant or associate basketball coaches at major programs across the country. It also surfaced that Adidas, which sponsors Louisville's sports program, and others allegedly paid a six-figure sum to a high school recruit to direct him to Louisville. Louisville’s high-profile head coach, Rick Pitino, who led the Cardinals to the 2013 national title, was ousted. Though Pitino officially was placed on unpaid leave per the terms of his contract, which requires 10 days’ notice before he can be terminated, his lawyer said he is “effectively fired.” The athletics director, Tom Jurich, was also put on leave, and the five-star recruit referenced in the federal complaint, Brian Bowen, has been suspended from all athletics-related activities, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported. The NCAA already slapped the men’s basketball program with a four-year probation and gave Pitino a five-game suspension earlier this year, following revelations that a former Cardinals staffer sneaked escorts into university dormitories. The women were paid to strip and perform sex acts on potential recruits, some of whom were underage at the time. The association ordered certain games vacated, including, most likely, the national title. Initially, the university intended to appeal the NCAA ruling on the prostitution scandal and said it would “stand behind” Pitino, who has remained relatively quiet since the Adidas allegations were announced. Via his lawyer, he called the allegations “a shock” -- his only other public statement was a text message to a radio show host, posted to Twitter on Friday, saying this “had been tough.” “It’s been three days [and] I miss my players so much,” Pitino wrote in the text. NEW: Rick Pitino allowed me to share this text. pic.twitter.com/Eubgy2oyXR — Terry Meiners (@terrymeiners) September 29, 2017 But the death penalty requires more than a single corrupt coach, or one bad administrator, said Josephine Potuto, former head of the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I Committee on Infractions, which adjudicates cases of alleged rule breaking -- a program must be so infiltrated by abuse of the rules as to necessitate it being shut down. “The fact that they’re already on probation will be a factor, no question, but it’s got to be more than a one-off here, one-off there,” said Potuto, the Richard H. Larson Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Part of the reason the NCAA may be disinclined to stop a program, even for a season, is the ripple effect to other institutions -- other colleges that have never been implicated in anything would need to scramble to adjust conference schedules, and television contracts, set out years in advance, would also be affected, Potuto said. Some athletes would transfer, too, which research has shown often causes their grades to fall, Potuto said. Though a program might only be temporarily banned from competition, it’s hard for it to recover afterward, Potuto said, explaining how degraded the SMU football team was following the death penalty. The aftermath of the death penalty, when Southern Methodist players finally returned to the field in 1989, was called "devastating," with multiple teams inflicting terrible losses on the Mustangs. Most players transferred away from the institution, which had been placed on probation for several similar violations before the NCAA cracked down. The scandal reached all the way to the office of Texas's then governor, William T. Clements, who was involved in the payments. NCAA enforcers must sometimes operate with limited information when laying down their sanctions, Potuto said -- sometimes federal officials, particularly high-level ones, won’t share all the facts about a pending criminal case with the association, leaving them to function with what has been made public. A former NCAA investigator, J. Brent Clark, said he doubted the death penalty would be invoked at Louisville, though he predicted that the Louisville coaching staff and athletics director would be replaced, and some of the players kicked off. Clark said that the death penalty would “destroy” the program and, because the institution is still in debt on a new arena, without the money basketball brings in, Louisville could possibly default on its bonds. He cited the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill academic fraud as a case that deserved the death penalty more. Over a nearly 20-year period, some employees steered as many as 3,000 students -- half of them athletes -- toward no-show classes that never met and for which the only assignment was a single paper that received a high grade no matter the content. Because students there were “robbed” of an education and the case spanned both the academic and athletic sides of the institution, Clark said, the UNC basketball program should be disbanded -- even though it might not fit the NCAA rules of having multiple violations. UNC and the association remain locked in a battle over the allegations. Donna A. Lopiano, president of Sports Management Resources and a longtime women's athletics director at the University of Texas at Austin, said she hoped this scandal would prompt an overhaul of the NCAA system. The death penalty may not be appropriate for Louisville, she said, because by the time the NCAA can levy its consequences, most of the transgressors would likely have departed the institution. “I’m hopeful that this forces the NCAA to re-examine their whole system of under-the-table compensation. We can’t have coaches making five million bucks,” she said. (Pitino earns nearly $7.8 million annually.) Pundits and Kentucky locals -- even die-hard fans -- have called for the death penalty. Dalton Ray, sports editor of The Louisville Cardinal, the student newspaper, and a self-proclaimed “fan boy,” in a column advocated for Pitino’s exit, despite his golden record. “The program needs a culture change. Blow it up and start from scratch,” Ray wrote. “Who knows what will happen to the athletic department as a whole if the death penalty is the answer, but it’s becoming the final resort. The financial hit of a death penalty is one thing, but the hit to the fans is another. They need a fresh slate. Louisville fans deserve better.” College sports columnist Pat Forde wrote in a column that this scandal exposed the dirtiness of athletics programs across the country -- and that other coaches are “running scared.” “The damage to it will be immense and long-lasting,” Forde said of the impact of the FBI investigation on college basketball. “The NCAA will have a hard fight to make anyone believe in its breadwinner sport again. Which is why the first order of business needs to be blasting Louisville basketball into nonexistence.” “Shut it down.” |
Yay, finally finished Nevermore! Now for a look :) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Have you ever wondered why we remember the dead? Those that only live in memory, in writing, and in legacy? This is the work of the Scripter of the Dead. She is responsible for writing the stories, the life, and the memories of those that have passed into the flow of time, where they are preserved for all eternity. Without the Scripter of the Dead, our memories of the lost, the writings that record their accomplishments, the tales we tell to our young ones, would all be meaningless, they would be fiction without the history embedded in them. Without the Scripter of the Dead, the dead would be lost completely, in body and in mind. However, the Scripter is bound by a curse. Her own soul is drained to power this flow of knowledge and history. Each history she writes and records, of each passing soul, saps energy from her soul to infuse the soul of the dead into the flow of time. When the energy of her soul is depleted, she will fade, forgotten, only to be replaced by a successor. Everyone remembers that the Scripter exists, but no one remembers who the Scriptor was. That is the fate of the Scriptor of the Dead. Sarazelli Mortakasi is our Scripter as of now. She and her pet raven carry the burden of scribing those that have passed into history. Every morning, Sarazelli sends her raven to collect the souls of the newly dead, and each night the raven returns to the Scripter so she may write. She reads each soul at the conjuring altar in her lone tower in Ascalon, and weeps for each sad tale, griefed by the story of each host’s passing. Her tears are the ink, thick and black, of soul and blood, that flows into her ink holder. With those tears and a raven-feather quill, she begins to write, sapping her own energy as she weaves the tales of the lost into time itself. As time goes on, the words consume her. In grief and guilt the inscriptions manifest themselves in her soul, filling the gaps of sacrificed energy and enveloping her physical form in darkness. The words corrupt her dress, and slowly but surely the colors fade as the darkness sets in, eating away at the vivid cloth as the soul is depleted in this sacrificial task. Those words will one day cause Sarazelli Mortakasi to fade in totality. We give her all our gratitude as she sacrifices her own life, night after night, death after death, inscription after inscription, to preserve those that we have lost. May we remember her while her existence lasts, for soon she will pass and will be forgotten. |
Earlier this week, we published an exclusive interview with new Suicide Silence vocalist Eddie Hermida. Eddie went through the events that led him to becoming the new vocalist of the band and as he puts it, "being asked to step away" from All Shall Perish. After we published the interview, All Shall Perish founding member Mike Tiner reached out to us asking to give his side of the story to explain that the band had no choice but to "fire" Eddie after the demands made from his new band, Suicide Silence. Here is our email conversation: Mike, what was your initial reaction when you found out Eddie was joining Suicide Silence? It was a totally mixed bag. At first, it was excitement because this means our friends in Suicide Silence were going to be coming back into the scene. But then it made me wonder: 'What does this mean for All Shall Perish?' Suicide Silence is a bigger band than All Shall Perish and have a monstrous touring history and just a busy work schedule all around. I started to wonder how Eddie being in both bands would work. And that's when I got confused. You reached out because you wanted to give your side of the story regarding Eddie leaving. What happened? I reached out after reading what Eddie had said because I felt it necessary for the fans to know the truth about what's going on. I first heard of Eddie potentially joining Suicide Silence in March while we were on tour in Japan. When he first brought it up, he made it seem as if he was only considering recording with them, but then as he further explained everything, it became very clear that he wanted to join Suicide Silence. Everyone in that room had the same reaction: 'How are you going to possibly have time to do both bands?' Eddie reassured us a dozen times over that both bands would be able to coexist and work together with one another, with him as the vocalist of both bands. As we had always trusted Eddie before, after a lot of long conference calls, we gave him the benefit of the doubt and decided to wait till there was an actual scheduling conflict and cross that bridge then. We already had Metallica's Orion Music and our own MTL: South of the Border Tour on the books, so we went ahead with Eddie for those shows, and they all turned out very well. It seemed like maybe everything would actually work out OK. Then, after Eddie was officially in Suicide Silence (but before it went public), we got an offer from Death Angel to play two or three shows with them, all in California. Eddie in particular wanted to do these shows and pushed hardest for them, so we confirmed them. Then a week or two later he tells our management that he actually can't do the shows…because of Suicide Silence. That's when Suicide Silence's management informed us of all of the things All Shall Perish would and would not be "allowed" to do. All Shall Perish could not play a show until Eddie was well "established" as the new singer of Suicide Silence. Suicide Silence's management told us that they would have to be well into their new album and touring cycle before All Shall Perish could be seen again with Eddie. That is easily a year of All Shall Perish not being "allowed" to do anything; possibly more than a year. There were other rules, too, but this one was huge. When we heard this, we immediately all got on the phone with Eddie and asked him how him being in both bands could ever work, especially after this whole Death Angel thing. Eddie still insisted it could work but also maintained that Suicide Silence would be his priority. We asked Eddie if he was quitting and he said, "No, I'm not. If you want me out of All Shall Perish, you'll have to fire me." Now, I ask all of you reading this, both All Shall Perish fans and Suicide Silence fans: what would happen if you worked at Starbucks and you told your boss that you took a job at Coffee Bean across the street, that Coffee Bean would be your new priority and that you wouldn't be able to pickup a single shift at Starbucks for at least a year or more, followed by: "But I'm NOT quitting!" Did Eddie "quit" All Shall Perish or was Eddie "asked to leave" All Shall Perish? You tell me. Will All Shall Perish have auditions for vocalists? How do you plan on filling the position? Has any headway been made? The band has talked about many ideas including auditions and a couple people in particular but no idea has been decided on nor have any been set in motion. Before Eddie left for Suicide Silence, we already had about half an albums worth of material that we now have to rework, but we will. This setback won't kill us. We should have more answers soon and when we know, you will too. What is your message to fans who are skeptical about the band's future? All Shall Perish is no stranger to this kind of situation. We have come back every time we every time something or someone has tried to knock us down. We have come back and gotten better every time and this time is no different. So don't worry: WE got this! — Our hope is that both bands are able to continue on and find success in their own ways. Suicide Silence and All Shall Perish are two bands that mean a lot to us and we hope they both end up on their feet. How do you guys feel about this situation? Leave your comments below. Related Posts |
About eight months before Tupac Shakur was shot down during a drive-by in an intersection east of the Las Vegas Strip, videographer Gobi M. Rahimi got into a water gun fight with the rapper in an L.A. backyard. It was early 1996, and Rahimi—who, with his partner Tracy Robinson, worked on music videos for Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, and Pharcyde—had been called on to meet with Tupac. The rapper, his family, and members of his Outlawz crew were grilling in the backyard, smoking weed, and shooting each other with water guns. Pac took a break to talk money over the phone with Death Row Records boss Suge Knight. Rahimi decided to pick up his gun. He squirted it into the air, and within a few seconds, the Outlawz had him surrounded. They sprayed him; he tried to hit them back. And suddenly Tupac broke into the middle all of it. "'That's what I'm talking about. This motherfucker won't give up. All you motherfuckers are attacking him. That's a Crazy Iranian,'" Rahimi recalls Tupac saying. "That's the first time he called me the Crazy Iranian. And at that time I was like, 'I love this guy.'" In the months leading up to his death, then 30-year-old Rahimi worked on or directed most of Tupac's videos, including "2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted," "How Do U Want It," and the rapper's final video, "Made Niggaz." Today, he's working on a film called 7 Dayz about the final week of Tupac's life. Amid growing tension with Death Row Records, Suge convinced Tupac to go see Mike Tyson's fight against Bruce Seldon at the MGM Grand on September 7. That night, after a scrap in the MGM following the fight, Tupac and Suge made their way to a party at Knight's Club 662 in a black BMW 750. At 11:15 p.m., on the corner of Flamingo Road and Koval Lane, an unidentified white Cadillac pulled up to the right of the BMW and opened fire. Tupac was hit four times and rushed to University Medical Center. This is what happened, in Rahimi's words, between the shooting and Tupac's death in a hospital bed at 4:03 p.m. on September 13, 1996. September 7 was Tracy, my partner's, birthday. So I kind of convinced her and a few other production people to go to Vegas to celebrate. She was very against the idea because she didn't want to be around Death Row people and didn't enjoy the idea of Vegas. I kind of knew we had to be there for some reason. We made it out there. I tried to get us tickets to the fight, and I couldn't get into the fight, so we went to 662 because we planned on meeting Tupac there. We were hanging out in the club, and the atmosphere was just off. There was a bunch of gangbangers and policemen. The place was filled with cops and unsavory characters. I remember Nate Dogg was walking through the crowd up to every group of people he recognized, and he finally walked up to us and said, "Pac and Suge have been shot." Tupac Shakur and Marion Getty We found out that he had been taken to University Medical Center. We went there, and I remember one of the first things I saw was Kidada Jones and his cousin Jamala crying on the pay phones. Everyone else that was in the ER waiting room was Suge's people. It was his mom and dad, it was his lawyer, it was Reggie Wright—and there was no one there for Tupac. It was just us. Within an hour, the nurse came out and walked up to Suge's mom. Suge's mom said, "How's my baby, how's my baby?" And the nurse said, "Ma'am, your son's fine. He got hit with a piece of shrapnel. Probably a piece of glass. We're going to give him a couple of stitches, and he's going to be taken to a private room within an hour." Then she turned to us and said, "Unfortunately, for Tupac, it's not the same situation. His right lung was shot, so we had to remove it. There will be a series of reparative operations, and it will probably take 12 hours." I remember Nate Dogg was walking through the crowd up to every group of people he recognized, and he finally walked up to us and said, "Pac and Suge have been shot." Basically, that was the first night of me sitting watch from 12 to eight in the morning for the next six nights. The scariest thing about that night is that it was really just me and Tracy. We were the only ones from Pac's camp. His fiancée and his cousin were just bawling in the corner. They tried to get some Death Row security but couldn't find anyone who were normally his two security guards. We were just scared shitless. For me, it was like Enzo the baker in The Godfather. We had no clue what to do, but we knew we had to be there. The next day, we tried to get him moved from the first floor where you could see into his room, but we got no help from the hospital administration. It was the scariest six nights of my life. There were undercover FBI agents, the police weren't helping, I got one of the death threats. The marketing director came up to me on the third day and said, "They called the Row, they're going to come finish him off." Then he walked away. So I called Vegas PD and said, "Send the troops—they're going to come finish Tupac off." The lady came back on the phone and said, "Sir, we're a little understaffed right now, so if anything should happen, go get the foot patrol in the hospital." Immediately, I was like: Something's a little off here. I remembered that earlier that day we had a press conference, so I called all the local news stations and said, "Every hour there will be a news conference." And I thought, "At least there will be people here with cameras if shit should go down." The black car in which rapper Tupac Shakur was fatally shot by unknown drive-by assassins as he was riding with Suge Knight. Getty It was just chaos and no support. We didn't trust Death Row—we didn't trust anyone. After all of that happened, there was a southern old security guard in the corner, and he started chuckling and was like, "Son, I've got to tell you, last year there was a white rodeo star who broke his leg, and the Vegas Police Department gave him four policemen and six wagons for his family and friends to be comfortable." I thought, "Isn't that a bitch that the number one rapper in the world can be laid up in the hospital and can't get any sort of security." Part of that is indicative to all the racial divide in this country that's still going on today. Pac talked about all that, and I think he suffered from that as well. It was the scariest six nights of my life. There were undercover FBI agents, the police weren't helping, I got one of the death threats. Pac was in an induced coma the entire time, because every time he came to he'd try to pull the plug and get out of bed. I stayed every day, and I went to get his mom or whoever flew in from the airport. We had a hotel nearby where I shared a room with his biological father. I would stay there a few hours during the day and keep watch at the hospital at night. I was imagining that a bunch of gangbangers would run through there with Uzis and shoot the place up. I didn't grow up with guns or any of that shit, but I was a scrapper, and I felt that if there were any questionable people, I could attack them. There was a fat old white nurse that would come out and give me a progress report. One night she came out and said, "That Tupac, he's a fighter. I almost lost him and got him right back." I'm not 100 percent sure why—I had plenty of opportunities to go see him—but I didn't because I was afraid to see him. Then on the fifth night, that same nurse was like, "Baby, you've been here this whole time, why don't you go in and see your friend?" Following the Bruce Seldon vs. Mike Tyson match at the MGM Grand, a fight erupted by the gold tree in the hotel lobby between Tupac Shakur and Orlando Anderson, a Compton Crips gang member. The fight, which also involved members of Suge Knight's entourage, may have served as a catalyst to shooting of Shakur. Getty I went in there, and it was just me and him. It was a dark room, and he had the tube down his throat. He was basically naked except for the couple of sheets they had him covered with. His head was swollen twice the size, and everywhere there was a bullet wound—there was gauze on each and blood was seeping through. He was missing a finger, so that was bandaged up. I walked up to him, and I put my hand on his arm. He was ice cold, I'd imagine because of all the fluids going through him. I said a little prayer, and I walked out. And that was the last time I ever saw him. He was like my little brother. He was someone who I felt the responsibility to do whatever I could for him to survive. And I don't mean the shooting—I mean all the drama that he was surrounded with before with Death Row, and all the people he was surrounded with. On the sixth night was when the Fruit of Islam showed up, and suddenly everyone showed up. It seemed kind of crazy that it took that long, and everyone was like, "Let's go take care of Tupac." I sort of felt I couldn't do anything more there. Tracy had left a few days earlier to go back to L.A. On the sixth night, the nurse finally said that he was 13 percent better. That's when I decided to go back, because that's the first time I thought, "This motherfucker has nine lives. Maybe he is going to pull through." I went in there, and it was just me and him. It was a dark room, and he had the tube down his throat. He was basically naked except for the couple of sheets they had him covered with. I went back to LA, and the next day, I remember hearing Theo on The Beat say that Pac had passed. We were on our way to set, and everyone in the van started crying. I've heard all the rumors, from it could be Suge, it could be P. Diddy who paid for it, it could be the fight with Orlando Anderson. You know, at the end of the day, Tupac had a voice. The one thing he didn't have was subtlety. If he had continued on the same path he had been on, someone would have taken him out. He was disruptive, and he was a threat. He was a threat to the establishment. I don't know who took him out. But whoever took him out took out someone very important who could have done a lot for African Americans and humanity as a whole. At 25, he had accomplished more than some people do in a lifetime. One of the last meetings I had with him, he said, "People aren't going to recognize me in six months. I'm going to act like such an adult." He was ready for a transformation; he wanted to be more than a stereotype. |
Arab women have announced the foundation of “Martyr Amara Arab Women’s Battalion” under the umbrella of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), ANF News said on July 12. Formed in 2015, the SDF is an alliance of progressive armed groups — the largest of which are the Kurdish-based People’s Defence Units (YPG) and Women’s Defence Units (YPJ), although including a growing number of other groups — that is subordinate to the grassroots structures of the Democratic Federation of North Syria. The new women’s battalion has been formed as a result of more Arab women joining the SDF. The battalion is a first in Arab history. Announcing its formation, the women stated that this was a first step and similar battalions will expand to other regions. SDF Commander Rojda Siyar said: “With this battalion, we will have shown all women of the Middle East that Arab women can also have a role in the military arena and can defend their lands. With Rojava, the Kurdish women created a great change and this change is taken as an example throughout all regions of Syria.” [Compiled from ANF News.] |
The Ferrari LaFerrari is already the over-powered Italian menace that rules the world of the prancing horse. But now there is a new king, and it's based on the old king. Please welcome the 1,035 horsepower Ferrari FXX K. The FXX K is the latest in a line of Ferrari uber-track specials, beginning with the progenitor of the group, the completely nuts Enzo-based Ferrari FXX. That was followed by an upgraded Ferrari FXX Evoluzione, with an even bigger dollop of power, and the Ferrari 599XX (accompanied by an Evo model of its own), which was fast enough to re-arrange your eyeballs, if it didn't make your ears spontaneously combust first. Advertisement The FXX K promises to be faster and louder than any of these. Or maybe quieter, thanks to its extremely race-oriented hybrid system, which is what the "K," or Kinetic Energy Recovery System, stands for. Instead of the little switch on the center console (known as the Manettino) giving you modes like "sport" and "race" and "wet," the hybrid system switch functions have changed, because the FXX K is about nothing but being on track. Now it gives you Qualify, for balls-to-the-walls performance over a short distance, Long Run to for grinding out laps over what would be a full race distance, and Fast Charge, for a fast recharge of the car's battery. Advertisement But I've saved best switch setting of all for last – Manual Boost. That pushes everything up to 11, giving you the hybrid system equivalent of electric afterburners for instant maximum torque delivery and an extremely fast pass maneuver. And because it's a Ferrari, and Ferrari loves fiddly little electronic switches these days, there's another Manettino on the steering wheel to control the E-Diff electronic differential, F1-Trac traction control, Racing SSC (Side Slip Angle Control) - now specially calibrated to suit the car's slick tyres - and the high-performance ABS. If you're wondering why all these electronic bits are featured so heavily in the FXX K, it's because it is fundamentally not a race car, but part of what Ferrari calls a "Client-Test Driver" program, like all Ferrari "XX" cars before it. It will essentially serve as a rolling laboratory, allowing Ferrari's paying customers to test out new ideas and techniques for the company out on race tracks. In that regard, it's a win-win for Ferrari, since it will give them a competitive edge when it comes to real racing, and they should be able to make some money off of the program, too. Advertisement But since it won't be racing in any sanctioned series, Ferrari gets to have some fun that wouldn't normally be legal under race standards. Along with the super-hybrid system ready to flatten your organs into pancakes every time you step on the accelerator pedal, it's got some innovative aerodynamic bits as well. I'll let Ferrari themselves explain how it all works: The front of the car is dominated by a twin-profile spoiler and a larger splitter, which is 30 mm lower, with a gap in its centre. This design is an application of the concepts developed to improve aero balance in the GT category of the WEC, which Ferrari has won for three consecutive years. Two pairs of vertical elements, an endplate and, externally, a dive plane, together with vertical fins channel the air towards the car's flanks, generating a longitudinal vortex that creates a localised depression. This in turn sucks the wake from the wheels to the outside of the aerodynamic underbody. Along with the side skirts that extend out from the sills, the vortex helps isolate the airflow from the underbody to boost its efficiency. The solutions on the rear of the car are highly sophisticated, too. The tail section is now higher and the mobile spoiler extends further for a total increase in extension of 60mm when fully deployed. A vertical fin and a small wing each side of the tail act as guide vanes in the low drag configuration and boost the spoiler's efficiency in the high downforce one. This system also creates considerable downforce at the rear of the car, allowing the use of an extreme diffusion volume for the rear diffuser which optimises air extraction from the underbody. The section of the flat underbody just ahead of the rear wheels is also exploited to the full to generate downforce thanks to the reduced pressure in the wheel arch guaranteed by the direct connection to the rear of the car by a by-pass duct. Advertisement All of that adds up to a 50% increase in downforce when it's in low-drag mode, and a 30% increase in downforce in high-drag mode. In short, it'll go like stink. Powered by a nuke. |
Meshuggah said they were planning to play North American festivals to celebrate its 25th anniversary. And now we know that one of those festivals will include Bonnaroo. Yet that’s just the icing on the cake, since also playing the four day music festival in Manchester, TN will be Mastodon and Deafheaven. The 2014 lineup was announced during the BLAM (the Bonnaroo Lineup Announcement Megathon) stream just minutes ago. The bands mentioned above join an oddball lineup that also includes Elton John, Kanye West, Jack White, Skrillex, Phoenix, Arctic Monkeys, Lionel Richie, Lauryn Hill, Cake, Avett Brothers, Vampire Weekend, Of Monsters & Men, Ice Cube, and many others. That’s right, Meshuggah and Mastodon are going to be playing a festival with Elton John, Lionel Richie and Kanye West. Mastodon and Deafheaven are no strangers to such festivals (with Mastodon once appearing at Bonnaroo in 2008). However, we’re definitely surprised to hear Meshuggah’s name. Granted, Bonnaroo are no strangers to having metal present at its festival (having had Metallica, Danzig, GWAR, Shadows Fall and countless other grace its billing). But we assumed that Meshuggah’s 25th anniversary teaser was implying touring festivals rather than something like Bonnaroo (and hell, maybe it still is). Whether this means Meshuggah will pop up on other big festivals like Lollapalooza, though, remains to be seen. Bonnaroo is taking place June 12 – 15 in Manchester, TN. You can check out the full Bonnaroo lineup over at the festival’s website. |
Through 20 games, the Washington Capitals are 10-9-1, which is nothing to be ashamed of, but also not quite the position they were hoping to be in at this point in the season. Of these 20 games, Philipp Grubauer has only played six. In those six games, Grubauer has a 0-5-1 record, with a 3.86 goals against average and a .876 save percentage. Both of these numbers are significantly lower than his career averages of 2.42 goals against and a .918 save percentage in 74 games (these stats have been hurt a bit due to his start this season). It’s still early, and Grubauer has the time and skill to turn his season around, but these numbers are something worth analyzing more by looking at a few of the games he has played so far this season. 4-3 OTL to Tampa Bay In a game where everybody was expecting a lot of goals and high-paced action, the score didn’t get too out of hand. For Grubauer, however, the score didn’t necessarily reflect his play. He did have a few timely saves, but some of the goals he allowed were ones that an NHL goaltender needs to save. The first goal against, off of an Alex Killorn one-timer, was a shot that beat Grubauer clean to the glove side. It wasn’t a terrible goal against, but the Caps’ netminder didn’t have to go very far to square up to the shot, and he really just ended up missing it. The second bad goal allowed was the Nikita Kucherov goal that everyone went nuts about. Kucherov walked right past Taylor Chorney and roofed it, once again high to the glove side. This was a very nice goal from a shooter’s standpoint, and it would’ve been nice to get some help on defense. If you look at it closely, however, Grubauer is off of his angle and never really sets his feet before the Lightning forward shovels the puck off of his backhand. The game-winning goal for the Lightning came in overtime and was one that can’t be blamed on Grubauer alone, but it was another where he should have at least gotten a piece of it. With the Lightning on the power play, the puck was passed from the top of the left circle to down below the goal line, and then back to the top of the left circle where Kucherov blasted a one-timer, again beating Grubauer to the glove side, this time to win the game. This one was a pretty good set-up by the Bolts and an even better shot, but Grubauer was very slow to get back to his angle to face the shot from Kucherov. Had he been faster to get into position, he might have had a better chance to keep the game alive. 8-2 Loss to Philadelphia This was a game that I was lucky enough to see life, and holy smokes was it an ugly one. There are way too many goals against to go over all of them, but there’s a couple worth highlighting. First, the Flyers’ second goal of the game came when Grubauer left the net to try to deny Scott Laughton a partial breakaway, dove at the puck and ended up giving Laughton a free tally. Being a goaltender myself, this drove me absolutely insane. I wouldn’t say that coming out to play the puck is the wrong move in that situation but, had Grubauer stayed on his feet or went to one knee to try to poke the puck away, or even attempted to bank it off the boards, that play probably wouldn’t have taken place. However, he slid to his stomach and only got the paddle of his stick on it, allowing Laughton to scoop it right off of him and tuck it into the gaping cage for an easy 2-1 lead. Laughton’s second goal of the game made the score 6-2 in favor of Philadelphia and was another shot that Grubauer should have stopped. Laughton, with two Caps’ defenders right in front of him, took the shot high to the blocker side of Grubauer from the top of the right circle and beat him cleanly. This was yet another example of a clean shot that an NHL goalie should stop. By no means was it bad but, when a shot comes in clean from that distance and the goalie can see it the whole way, there is no excuse for it to get to the back of the net. The last goal against for Grubauer may have been the worst of the eight. The initial shot came from the point and was very low to the ice. Grubauer got it with his stick but was unable to redirect the puck into either corner. Instead, the rebound popped way out to the slot, where it landed right on the stick of Claude Giroux, who had plenty of time to beat him low to the glove side. This is a rebound that can’t happen in the NHL, period. The shot wasn’t one that was uncontrollable and wasn’t deflected at any point on the way to hitting Grubauer in the stick, meaning that there is no reason for the rebound to be put back into the slot. Having watched the game live, there were a lot of mistakes that didn’t end up on the scoreboard for Grubauer. To be fair, he did not get any support in his defensive zone, and the team as a whole did not play well in the slightest, but there were simply too many times where he was caught out of position, giving up a bad rebound, or not getting behind the net to move the puck for his defensemen. 6-2 Loss to Colorado In a game against a struggling Colorado Avalanche team, the Capitals went into the Pepsi Center looking for a win on the shoulders of Philipp Grubauer, and, for the sixth time this season, came out empty. It is impossible to pin the loss of a game solely on a goaltender, but this was a game where it would have been nice to have your goalie make some timely saves. The first goal by Gabriel Landeskog was a shot that beat Grubauer clean. It was a very nice shot that just tipped the crossbar and went straight to the ice behind the goal line, so its hard to complain about that too much. The second goal against, however, which was scored by Nathan Mackinnon, was one which Grubauer wishes he could have back. Mackinnon broke in alone after a nice drop pass from his defenseman and beat Grubauer high to the glove side. In this goal, his glove hand positioning was simply bad. Rather than being angled down at the puck to take away the shooting angle, Grubauer’s glove is angled more down towards the ice and the center of his body. As a result, Mackinnon’s shot hits the outside of his glove and goes in, rather than hitting the face of his glove, which would (probably) have resulted in a very nice save to keep the score at only 1-0. The third goal against was another example of the poor rebound control Grubauer has exhibited as of late. Rantanen took a shot from the high slot that Grubauer failed to get his stick on, instead using his pad to give a rebound back out to Colin Wilson, who then tucked the puck into the back of the net. This is a basic principle of playing goalie that Grubauer failed to do once again: a goalie must always put rebounds into the corners, never the slot. This goal was a turning point in the game, as it made the score 3-0 and gave the Avalanche all the momentum that they would need to carry themselves to a win. Should this play from Grubauer continue, the Capitals will be in some serious trouble. They can only ride Holtby for so many games before he gets worn down, but it is hard to play a backup goaltender who isn’t getting the job done. If Grubauer can work to get into the proper positions more quickly, control his rebounds, and make saves on the shots that are deflection and screen free, then the German netminder will see his goals against dip and his save percentage rise. For now, the stats are poor, but only time will tell whether we see him return to form,or continue this slump. |
Occasionally I am asked the following question – how can I protect the messaging environment from a rogue administrator? There are essentially two concerns being asked in this question: How do I protect the data from being deleted by a rogue administrator? How do I protect the data from being accessed and/or altered by a rogue administrator? Sometimes this discussion leads to a discussion about only the chosen backup architecture. The reality is that whether you implement Exchange Native Data Protection or a third-party backup solution, a backup, by itself, does not protect you from rogue administrators; it only mitigates the damage they potentially cause. Any administrator that has the privileged access to the messaging data (whether it be live data and/or backup data), can compromise the system. Therefore, some operational changes must be implemented within the organization in order to reduce the attack surface of an administrator who has gone rogue. Important: This article is not intended to be a comprehensive set of instructions on how to restrict administrators. Instead, this article will highlight the principles and techniques that can be used. Immutable Laws of Security The Microsoft Security Response Center published the Ten Immutable Laws of Security. They are: Law #1: If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it's not solely your computer anymore. Law #2: If a bad guy can alter the operating system on your computer, it's not your computer anymore. Law #3: If a bad guy has unrestricted physical access to your computer, it's not your computer anymore. Law #4: If you allow a bad guy to run active content in your website, it's not your website any more. Law #5: Weak passwords trump strong security. Law #6: A computer is only as secure as the administrator is trustworthy. Law #7: Encrypted data is only as secure as its decryption key. Law #8: An out-of-date antimalware scanner is only marginally better than no scanner at all. Law #9: Absolute anonymity isn't practically achievable, online or offline. Law #10: Technology is not a panacea. These guiding principles are a cornerstone in how we secure Office 365 and are equally applicable to on-premises deployments. Active Directory Exchange relies on Active Directory, storing configuration data within the configuration partition and storing recipient data within the domain partitions. The forest administrators, who are members of either the Enterprise Admins group or the root Domain Admins group, control all aspects of the directory and control data stored in the directory (though they sometimes delegate specific rights to others so others can perform very specific actions that are usually narrowly scoped within a forest). Likewise, domain administrators in each domain partition own their respective recipient data. Companies normally restrict forest-wide and domain-wide actions to be exclusively performed by forest administrators because of the risk that configuration changes can have broad adverse impact. Many organizations today operate an Active Directory model with a least-privilege administrative model. If you are not operating in this fashion, this should be a top priority for your organization. Remember, any member of the Enterprise Admins or Domain Admins can alter messaging configuration settings on recipients and/or the Exchange configuration, without utilizing the Exchange Management Tools. For more information, see Best Practices for Securing Active Directory. In addition to operating Active Directory in a least-privilege manner, it is important to implement background checks and other processes to determine the trustworthiness of your administrators, otherwise Law #6 cannot be mitigated. In addition, you may want to consider investing in an identity management solution, like Forefront Identity Manager, to manage and audit administrative permission requests and approvals. Permissions Exchange administrators have a wide variety of tools that they potentially can utilize to manage a messaging environment. The preferred method is via Remote PowerShellas Exchange can then authorize access and audit any actions performed. However, if an Exchange administrator is granted additional permissions in Active Directory (e.g., the ability to modify any attribute on a user), then the administrator can utilize other tools (e.g., LDP, ADSIEdit, local PowerShell, scripts, etc.) to modify recipient and/or configuration data, bypassing the authorization and auditing checks built into the system. To effectively mitigate any possibility of modifications that could occur outside of the Remote PowerShell framework, it is imperative to follow Best Practices for Securing Active Directory, as previously mentioned. Often times, Exchange administrators are not evaluated with the same rigor as Active Directory administrators; therefore, Exchange administrators must not be granted permissions in Active Directory that allow them to circumvent Remote PowerShell (e.g., recipient modification). If Active Directory privileges are accurately and narrowly scoped, a rogue administrator will have difficulty making unauthorized changes no matter which tool he/she tries to use. PowerShell Exchange leverages Remote PowerShell which is a feature within PowerShell that lets admins run commands on remote systems. Remote PowerShell enables the functionality utilized by Exchange to audit cmdlet execution and enforce authorization through RBAC. One way to ensure that administrators can only manage the messaging environment through Remote PowerShell is to not allow the installation of the Exchange Management Tools on administrator workstations. Administrators are then forced to use the Exchange Admin Center or to connect to Exchange using Remote Shell. In addition, PowerShell 3.0 and higher provides robust audit capabilities when module logging is enabled. PowerShell Module logging captures pipeline execution events for specified modules, and records this data in Windows PowerShellEvent log. Among the events logged, Event ID 800 (Pipeline Execution Details) provides command line commands and a script name if one is used. If a script was used, the ScriptName value will be populated with the file name of the script that was executed and an event will be logged for each line in the script, with each event including the command from that line. The data recorded in the event log can be collected, analyzed, and provide auditing data by which an organization can determine what PowerShell operations are occurring in the environment. Mitigating Data Destruction An Exchange administrator has the necessary privilege to access and destroy Exchange data. The best way to protect the messaging data from an administrator is to: Shrink the window of opportunity for administrators to perform malicious activities. The mechanisms that can be implemented include removing local administrative access, deploying Applocker, removing access to destructive cmdlets, and deploying lagged database copies. Ensure all administrative actions are logged and implement alerting and reporting based upon monitoring of logged activities. Implement a least-privilege access control model whereby the elevation process grants access only to perform the intended activities. Even more effective is implementing an access control model whereby most or all administrative activities are done via a ‘control plane’ that is used by administrators to request that actions be performed against Exchange and the control plane can then implement business logic upon the request that will determine if the request will actually be executed. The business logic might include a request to a second person to review and approve the action or it might check an employee work scheduling system to see if the original requestor is on vacation, for example. Removing Local Administrative Access The majority of Exchange management tasks are accomplished via Remote PowerShell. As a result, the only time an Exchange administrator needs local administrative access to the Exchange server is to perform system updates (installing driver updates, installing Exchange cumulative updates, operating system updates, etc.). Therefore, local administrative access can be restricted and granted only when needed, for a specific period of time, after which access is revoked. Without local administrative access, administrators will be unable to obtain certain information about the Exchange server health that they may need to appropriately manage the environment. Therefore, administrators should be granted access to the following: File shares (secured via read-only access to the appropriate security groups) can be created to enable access to Exchange diagnostic logs (which by default, are located at %Program Files%\ Exchange Server\V15\Logging and %SystemDrive%\inetpub\logs ). and ). Read-only access to the event logs can be granted by adding the appropriate security groups to the member server’s local Event Log Readers security group. Access to performance counters can be granted by adding the appropriate security groups to the member server’s Performance Monitor Users security group. To allow administrators to schedule performance counter logging, enable and collect tracing, the appropriate security groups can be added to the member server’s Performance Log Users security group. In addition, local administrative access on the administrator’s workstations should also be removed. This ensures that administrators can only run approved applications and cannot bypass any security mechanisms you may put into place to audit and monitor their actions. For more information on running Windows in a least privileged manner, see Applying the Principle of Least Privilege to User Accounts on Windows. By removing local administrative access, Laws #2 and #3 are mitigated. AppLocker AppLocker provides organizations with a strong defense in the prevention of malicious software and unapproved applications from affecting your server environment. AppLocker can be used to limit the software that Exchange operators can use so that only an approved list of applications (e.g., Exchange Management Tools, approved PowerShell scripts, etc.) will run on a server where AppLocker policy enforcement is in effect. For more information, see the TechNet article on AppLocker. AppLocker allows you to mitigate Law #1. Removing Access to Destructive Cmdlets Both Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2013 include Role Based Access Control (RBAC), a mechanism by which administrators are authorized to perform certain administrative tasks. RBAC provides the capability for very granular control of managing the messaging environment – for example, restricting access to a particular cmdlet or to a particular property of a cmdlet. For more information on RBAC, please see the following articles: While Administrator Audit Logging will record the actions taken by administrators, it does not prevent the administrators from performing destructive actions if they are authorized to do so. Using RBAC, organizations can reduce the attack surface area by removing access to destructive cmdlets. A destructive cmdlet is any cmdlet that can access, modify, or delete messaging data. The below table identifies cmdlets and parameters that may be considered destructive (e.g., Remove-Mailbox). Each cmdlet should be evaluated to determine how it is used in your environment and whether it should be removed from day-to-day usage. Cmdlet Parameters Roles Add-ResubmitRequest Databases Disable-Mailbox Mail Recipients Move-ActiveMailboxDatabase MountDialOverrride Databases Mount-Database Force Databases Remove-AcceptedDomain Remote and Accepted Domains Remove-ActiveSyncDeviceAccessRule Organization Client Access Remove-ActiveSyncDeviceClass Organization Client Access Remove-ActiveSyncMailboxPolicy Recipient Policies Remove-ActiveSyncVirtualDirectory Exchange Virtual Directories Remove-AddressBookPolicy Address Lists Remove-AddressList Address Lists Remove-ADPermission Active Directory Permissions Remove-AuthRedirect Organization Client Access, Organization Configuration Remove-AuthServer Organization Client Access Remove-AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory Exchange Virtual Directories Remove-AvailabilityAddressSpace Federated Sharing, Mail Tips, Message Tracking, Organization Configuration Remove-ClassificationRuleCollection Data Loss Prevention Remove-ClientAccessArray Organization Client Access Remove-ClientAccessRule Organization Client Access Remove-CompliancePolicySyncNotification Data Loss Prevention Remove-ContentFilterPhrase Exchange Servers, Transport Hygiene Remove-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup Database Availability Groups Remove-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupConfiguration Database Availability Groups Remove-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupNetwork Database Availability Groups Remove-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupServer Database Availability Groups, Exchange Servers Remove-DataClassification Data Loss Prevention Remove-DeliveryAgentConnector Exchange Connectors Remove-DistributionGroup Distribution Groups, Security Group Creation and Membership, ExchangeCrossServiceIntegration Remove-DlpPolicy Data Loss Prevention Remove-DlpPolicyTemplate Data Loss Prevention Remove-DynamicDistributionGroup Distribution Groups Remove-EcpVirtualDirectory Exchange Virtual Directories Remove-EdgeSubscription Edge Subscriptions Remove-EmailAddressPolicy E-Mail Address Policies Remove-ExchangeCertificate Exchange Server Certificates Remove-FederatedDomain Federated Sharing Remove-FederationTrust Federated Sharing Remove-ForeignConnector Federated Sharing Remove-GlobalAddressList Address Lists Remove-GlobalMonitoringOverride Organization Configuration, View-Only Configuration Remove-GroupMailbox ExchangeCrossServiceIntegration Remove-HybridConfiguration Database Copies, Federated Sharing, Mail Recipients Remove-IntraOrganizationConnector Federated Sharing Remove-JournalRule Journaling Remove-Mailbox Mail Recipient Creation Remove-MailboxDatabase Databases Remove-MailboxDatabaseCopy Database Copies Remove-MailContact Mail Recipient Creation, ExchangeCrossServiceIntegration Remove-MailUser Mail Recipient Creation, ExchangeCrossServiceIntegration Remove-MalwareFilterPolicy Transport Hygiene Remove-MalwareFilterRule Transport Hygiene Remove-ManagedContentSettings Retention Management Remove-ManagedFolder Retention Management Remove-ManagedFolderMailboxPolicy Retention Management Remove-ManagementRole Role Management, UnScoped Role Management Remove-ManagementRoleAssignment Role Management, UnScoped Role Management Remove-ManagementRoleEntry Role Management, UnScoped Role Management Remove-ManagementScope Role Management Remove-MapiVirtualDirectory Exchange Virtual Directories Remove-Message Transport Queues Remove-MessageClassification Transport Rules Remove-MigrationEndpoint Migration Remove-MigrationUser Migration Remove-MobileDeviceMailboxPolicy Recipient Policies Remove-OabVirtualDirectory Exchange Virtual Directories Remove-OfflineAddressBook Address Lists Remove-OrganizationRelationship Federated Sharing Remove-OutlookProtectionRule Information Rights Management Remove-OutlookProvider Organization Client Access Remove-OwaMailboxPolicy Recipient Policies, Mail Recipients Remove-OwaVirtualDirectory Exchange Virtual Directories Remove-PolicyTipConfig Data Loss Prevention Remove-PowerShellVirtualDirectory Exchange Virtual Directories Remove-PublicFolder Public Folders Remove-PublicFolderDatabase Databases Remove-ReceiveConnector Receive Connectors Remove-RemoteDomain Remote and Accepted Domains Remove-RemoteMailbox Mail Recipient Creation Remove-ResourcePolicy WorkloadManagement Remove-ResubmitRequest Databases Remove-RetentionPolicy Retention Management Remove-RetentionPolicyTag Retention Management Remove-RoleAssignmentPolicy Role Management Remove-RoleGroup Role Management Remove-RoleGroupMember Role Management Remove-RoutingGroupConnector Exchange Connectors Remove-RpcClientAccess Organization Client Access Remove-SendConnector Send Connectors Remove-ServerMonitoringOverride Exchange Servers, View-Only Configuration Remove-SettingOverride Organization Configuration Remove-SharingPolicy Federated Sharing Remove-SiteMailboxProvisioningPolicy Team Mailboxes Remove-StoreMailbox Databases Remove-ThrottlingPolicy Recipient Policies, WorkloadManagement Remove-TransportRule Transport Rules, Data Loss Prevention Remove-UMAutoAttendant Unified Messaging Remove-UMCallAnsweringRule UM Mailboxes Remove-UMDialPlan Unified Messaging Remove-UMHuntGroup Unified Messaging Remove-UMIPGateway Unified Messaging Remove-UMMailboxPolicy Database Copies, Unified Messaging Remove-WebServicesVirtualDirectory Exchange Virtual Directories Remove-WorkloadManagementPolicy WorkloadManagement Remove-WorkloadPolicy WorkloadManagement Remove-X400AuthoritativeDomain Remote and Accepted Domains Set-Mailbox Database, ArchiveDatabase Disaster Recovery Set-MailboxDatabaseCopy ReplayLagTime Database Copies Set-TransportConfig Journaling, Organization Transport Settings Search-Mailbox DeleteContent Mailbox Search, Mailbox Import Export Set-ResubmitRequest Databases Update-HybridConfiguration Database Copies, Federated Sharing, Mail Recipients Update-MailboxDatabaseCopy Database Copies, Databases Note: The above table does not include the cmdlet list identified in the section “Removing Access to Data Access Cmdlets” below, but they should also be considered as those cmdlets provide access to messaging data. For example, if I wanted to ensure that my administrators cannot remove database copies and manipulate the lagged database copy’s configuration, I could remove those cmdlets by using RBAC in the following manner: Create two new role groups: Protected Organization Management and Protected Server Management. $ORoleGroup = Get-RoleGroup “Organization Management" New-RoleGroup "Protected Organization Management" -Roles $ORoleGroup.Roles $SRoleGroup = Get-RoleGroup “Server Management" New-RoleGroup "Protected Server Management" -Roles $SRoleGroup.Roles Remove the Database Copies role from the protected role groups. Get-ManagementRoleAssignment -RoleAssignee "Protected Organization Management" -Role "Database Copies" -Delegating $false | Remove-ManagementRoleAssignment Get-ManagementRoleAssignment -RoleAssignee "Protected Server Management" -Role "Database Copies" -Delegating $false | Remove-ManagementRoleAssignment Create a Protected Database Copies role. New-ManagementRole –Parent "Database Copies" –Name "Protected Database Copies" Remove the Remove-MailboxDatabaseCopy role entry from the Protected Database Copies role. Remove-ManagementRoleEntry "Protected Database Copies\Remove-MailboxDatabaseCopy" Additionally, you can also remove access to the ReplayLagTime parameter from the Protected Database Copies role, thereby ensuring administrators cannot disable the lagged database copy. Set-ManagementRoleEntry "Protected Database Copies\Set-MailboxDatabaseCopy" –Parameters ReplayLagTime -RemoveParameter Add the Protected Database Copies role to the protected role groups. New-ManagementRoleAssignment –SecurityGroup "Protected Organization Management” –Role “Protected Database Copies" New-ManagementRoleAssignment –SecurityGroup "Protected Server Management” –Role “Protected Database Copies" Add users to the protected role groups. $OrgAdmins = Get-RoleGroupMember "Organization Management" $SrvAdmins = Get-RoleGroupMember "Server Management" $OrgAdmins | ForEach {Add-RoleGroupMember "Protected Organization Management" –Member $_.Name} $SrvAdmins | ForEach {Add-RoleGroupMember "Protected Server Management" –Member $_.Name} Remove the desired users from the Organization Management and Server Management role groups. You can repeat the appropriate steps for each destructive cmdlet that needs to be restricted. Use the following cmdlet to determine which roles contain the desired cmdlets: Get-ManagementRoleEntry "*\<cmdlet>" | fl name,role Lagged Database Copies A lagged database copy is a rolling point-in-time (up to 14 days) copy of the database. Lagged database copies were first introduced in Exchange 2007 and have evolved considerably since then. Lagged database copies are part of The Preferred Architecture. While the primary reason for deploying a lagged database copy is protection against rare, catastrophic logical corruption events, lagged database copies can be used to recover mailboxes and/or items that have been deleted by a rogue administrator. By implementing the access control mechanisms previously discussed, the lagged database copy is protected from destruction by a rogue administrator. Mitigating Data Access There are several mechanisms you can implement to mitigate unwarranted data access within your messaging environment. These mechanisms include auditing, using Bitlocker to encrypt the disk drives, and removing access to certain cmdlets that enable administrators to gain access to user data. Auditing There are several different forms of auditing that can be implemented in the messaging environment. Within Exchange, you can enable Administrator Audit Logging. Administrator Audit Logging captures all operations that are performed within the Exchange Management Shell (EMS) or Exchange Admin Center (EAC). By default, all cmdlets, except Get- or Search- cmdlets are logged in the audit logs. You can change the cmdlet logging via Set-AdminAuditLogConfig; for example, since Search-Mailbox includes the ability to delete content, you will want to add that cmdlet to the list. Audit logs are stored in an arbitration mailbox. Reports can be accessed via the Search-AdminAuditLog, New-AdminAuditLogSearch cmdlets, or via EAC. In addition to auditing the actions taken by Exchange administrators managing the service, you will also want to audit server operation events (e.g., logon events). For more information, see the Windows Server Security Auditing Overview article and the Audit Policy Recommendations article for securing Active Directory. Bitlocker Another way to reduce the attack surface area is to use Bitlocker to ensure that operators with physical access to the servers cannot remove disk drives and access the data contained on them. As mentioned previously, separation of roles is imperative, otherwise Law #7 cannot be mitigated. As Bitlocker recovery information is stored in Active Directory (specifically the msFVE-RecoveryInformation attribute), delegation of this data must not be granted to Exchange administrators. Removing Access to Data Access Cmdlets Using RBAC, organizations can reduce the attack surface area by removing access to cmdlets that allow access to mailbox data. The below table identifies cmdlets that grant access to data, or enable administrators to hide their tracks. Each cmdlet should be evaluated to determine how it is used in your environment and whether it should be removed from day-to-day usage. Cmdlet Roles Add-ADPermission Active Directory Permissions Add-MailboxFolderPermission Mail Recipients Add-MailboxPermission Mail Recipients Add-PublicFolderClientPermission Public Folders Export-Mailbox Public Folders Export-Message Transport Queues New-MailboxExportRequest Mailbox Search, Mailbox Import Export New-MailboxSearch Mailbox Search, Legal Hold New-MoveRequest Move Mailboxes New-InboxRule Mail Recipients Search-Mailbox Mailbox Search, Mailbox Import Export Set-AdminAuditLogConfig Audit Logs Set-InboxRule Mail Recipients Set-JournalRule Journaling Set-MailboxExportRequest Mailbox Search, Mailbox Import Export Set-MailboxFolderPermission Mail Recipient Creation Set-MailboxSearch New-TransportRule Transport Rules, Data Loss Prevention New-JournalRule Journaling New-MailboxRestoreRequest Mailbox Search, Legal Hold To remove access to the above cmdlets, follow steps 1-7 from the “Removing Access to Destructive Cmdlets” section. Requesting Elevation Over time, administrators will require access to restricted cmdlets to perform a necessary operation (e.g., disabling mailboxes, removing unnecessary transport rules, etc.). There are many ways you could go about this. For example, you could simply build RBAC roles for each individual cmdlet (and/or property) that you restrict; when elevation is required, you add the administrator to the appropriate role group, granting them access, and then remove the administrator when the task is complete. Or you could develop a process and workflow that includes the following: A means by which an administrator may submit a request for elevated access. The request needs to include specifics like the cmdlets being requested, the targeted servers/users/etc., and the length of that time elevated access is required. The request can either be implicitly approved based on the requested action, or it can require human approval. All actions must be logged once elevated access has been granted. Elevated access must be removed once the time period has expired (either based on the request or based on a default time period for access elevations) or the task has been completed. How is this addressed in Office 365? Exchange Online implements a variety of mechanisms to prevent rogue administrators from accessing or destroying data. Perry Clarke and Vivek Sharma recently discussed Lockbox, a mechanism we use to enforce no standing access, in the article From Inside the Cloud: Who has access to your data within Office 365? In particular, Exchange Online personnel do not have persistent access to the service or servers; instead, administrators (who have undergone background checks) have to request specific access (to servers, cmdlets, etc.) and can only perform the requested tasks during a specified timeframe. Additionally, for requests for elevation to a role with access to customer data, approval must be performed by another human being and the ability to approve this type of request is restricted to a smaller set of more senior personnel. We also use other mechanisms to protect the service and customer data. For example, Bitlocker is used to encrypt all disks that contain customer data. When the disks are end-of-life they are shredded, thereby ensuring the data cannot be accessed. Conclusion While this article covers the basics, there are many other mechanisms you can implement in your environment to reduce the surface attack area within your messaging environment. For more information about security mechanisms protecting Exchange Online that can be used in on-premises deployments, see the MEC session Exchange Online service security investments: you CAN and SHOULD do this at home. Ross Smith IV Principal Program Manager Office 365 Customer Experience |
Paying off your bounty never results in being transported to another location. Getting away with crimes is now more challenging: guards who make the remark "Wait... I know you" will force the player into dialogue. (Violent crimes will get the "stand fast" dialogue.) Exiting this dialogue will be considered resisting arrest. The greeting distance for all NPCs has been greatly reduced so that you almost need to physically bump into a guard in order to be caught. Crimes totalling less than the "petty crime threshold" won't put you on their radar (unless they are alerted.) Guards who catch you in the act of accidentally attacking someone (even themselves) and then surrendering will immediately let you go. Sheathing your weapons will prevent normally-friendly NPCs from attacking you in return under most circumstances, and accidental violent crimes will be forgiven. (Exceptions are when you've committed an act of cannibalism or when your violent crime fines exceed a threshold.) Being caught by the guards gives the player a 50% chance of getting the "I don't have time for this..." response, which means that you'll be allowed to leave without paying a fine. (This chance only happens if you run into a non-alerted guard.) Aela, Farkas, Skjor, and Vilkas can now arrest the player or demand bounty payment. This fixes the "endless forcegreet" bug which is present in vanilla Skyrim. Stealing: 5 x item value Stealing a horse: 500 Becoming a werewolf: 1500 Attacking a citizen: 200 (forgivable - see below) Escaping jail: 500 (negated upon escape, see below) Murder: 2000 Pickpocketing: 50 Trespassing: 300 Crime alert distance: 1000 Petty crime threshold: 300 Non-violent crimes bribe/arrest-on-site threshold: 1000 Violent crimes bribe/arrest-on-site threshold: 2000 Number of hits allowed in non-combat to friends and allies: 3 (this setting may or may not be having a noticeable effect - it seems to be preventing citizens from going aggro when attacked, and I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing, so opinions are welcome) ATTACK FORGIVENESS THANESHIP MURDER DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200 JAILBREAK I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS, DO YOU? The player may be let go due to a low bounty (not guaranteed) or because the guard doesn't feel its worth their time The guard will treat the player as if they are resisting arrest The guard will take the player immediately to jail UPGRADING MOD COMPATIBILITY Unofficial Skyrim Patch: Place Crime Overhaul lower than the USKP (or USLEEP) in your load order. Guard Dialogue Overhaul: Compatible. Higher Bounties For Crimes: The effects will stack and you will get extremely high bounties. RECOMMENDED MODS Blocksteal Redux : Prevents accidental theft of items when not in sneak-mode. Provides a double-click action as well, and a basket in which you can place junk items you want blocked under any circumstance. Prevents accidental theft of items when not in sneak-mode. Provides a double-click action as well, and a basket in which you can place junk items you want blocked under any circumstance. Player Knockout : Gives the player a chance to survive attacks by adding a damage threshold. Stops citizens and guards from attacking the player after incapacitation. Gives the player a chance to survive attacks by adding a damage threshold. Stops citizens and guards from attacking the player after incapacitation. NARC: Prevents animals from being able to report crimes. Crime Bounty Decay: reduces bounties while the player is outside of any given hold. TROUBLESHOOTING Testing with all other mods disabled. Placing Crime Overhaul as low on your load order as possible. Crime Overhaul makes changes to the way criminal activities are handled by Skyrim guards:In addition, the values for crimes and other settings have been altered to the following:Any time you accidentally attack a normally friendly NPC that belongs to any crime-reporting faction, you can stop yourself from being attacked in return by sheathing your weapons. The fine for attacking will be forgiven if you don't already have a violent crimes bounty that exceeds the petty threshold. At that point, there is a 30 second window in which subsequent attacks will be fined. Sheathing your weapon will continue to stop attacks, but if you accrue more gold in violent crime charges than the petty crime threshold (see above), you will have to answer to the guards and further charges will not be forgiven until your fines are paid in full.Attacks for theft and other crimes can also be stopped by sheathing, but the penalties for those crimes will not be forgiven. Attack forgiveness is disabled during jailbreak. (See below.)If you are the thane of a hold, you are allowed a one-time-per-week option to get away with any amount of nonviolent crime or violent crime up to the arrest-on-sight threshold. This dialogue option is reset after sleeping once every seven in-game days. (All holds are reset at once, and using the option does not affect the cycle.)The default number of seven days can be changed by altering the global variable "CrimeOverhaulDaysUntilResetThane". This change will only take effect after the next reset date has passed and the player has rested.The seven-day cycle runs according to the calendar and is not reset by sleeping. It is literally "once a week".High violent crime bounties are no longer payable by fines. To change this, set "CrimeOverhaulMurderPay" to 1.Violent crimes and high bounties for non-violent crimes now have a chance of sending the player directly to jail upon arrest.The jailbreak system has been overhauled so that escaping from jail is actually rewarding. Going to jail resets your bounty to half the arrest-on-site threshold. Escaping from prison now has two objectives; retrieving your gear (optional), and getting out of the jail and out of combat. If the optional objective is achieved (or never triggered), escape from jail results a low bounty (the petty crime threshold). If jail is escaped with the optional objective still active, the bounty is set to just below the arrest-on-sight threshold.In order to complete the final objective, you must be outdoors and not in combat. Which means you must either sneak out, dispense of all guards inside, win the battle, or run far enough away to escape being chased.Escaping from the primary jail cell (which normally triggers the optional goal) without the optional goal being already achieved will put the guards on total alert and you will be either attacked or re-arrested on sight. Retrieving your items will make escape from this point slightly easier.Greeting distance for NPCs is also raised during jailbreak. Achieving the optionalgoal will reduce the distance slightly, and escape will return it to its default (which is itself drastically reduced). The effect of this is that evenif the guards aren't on full alert, they will still force you into an arrest dialogue if you venture too closely to them.Combat forgiveness (the sheathing effect) is disabled during the quest.Unless the player's bounty is over the arrest-on-site threshold, the dialogue option for "I don't have time for this, do you?" will produce one of several potential results (depending on how high the bounty is and of what type).This makes it possible for players without a high speechcraft level or the bribery skill to take a (frankly poor) chance of escape from arrest, but at the cost of a chance of resisting or going to jail.If you are upgrading Crime Overhaul at any time, it is best to first deactivate it and then create a "clean" save before installing the latest version, or to start a new game.Most mods that make changes to guards don't edit the arrest dialogues. If you have mods that edit the values of crime gold and you prefer those values (such as Requiem ), load those mods after Crime Overhaul.If you really want to find out if a mod is compatible/incompatible, use TES5Edit . Anyone modding Skyrim on a PC should know how to use this tool. The first step is comparing them in the program, the second is actually testing. Without user feedback, I usually won't know what the effects of using two mods together are, especially if I'm not a user of the second mod in question.Don't install this mod mid-game after getting a bounty. Standard practice is always to start a new game after installing or uninstalling any Skyrim mod.If you are experiencing problems with the mod, make sure you've tried the following: |
Codi Wilson, CTV News Toronto Editor's Note: Court documents obtained by CTV News Toronto show the suspect named in this article pleaded guilty to the lesser included offence of assault. He was not found guilty of sex assault. Police say an arrest has been made after a woman was allegedly sexually assaulted in the city’s Newtonbrook neighbourhood last week. Investigators say it happened near Yonge Street and Steeles Avenue at around 12: 45 p.m. on Feb. 16. According to police, a man approached a woman walking along a pathway near a shopping plaza in the area and sexually assaulted her. The female screamed for help and police say the man fled. Police were notified about the incident and a suspect was arrested in connection with the case the next day. Gursharan Singh, a 23-year-old Toronto resident, has been charged with two counts of sexual assault. Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact investigators at 416-808-3200 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416-222-TIPS (8477). |
Clashes have erupted in central Tunisia between police and demonstrators as instability continues to plague the North African country. Dozens of protesters tried on Wednesday to force their way into the offices of the ruling Islamist party Ennahda in the town of Kasserine, but were pushed away by tear gas fired by police, an AFP journalist reported. Central Tunisia has long suffered from neglect and a lack of opportunity, which were driving factors behind the popular uprising that began in nearby Sidi Bouzid in 2011, when a young street vendor set himself on fire in protest at his impoverished circumstances. It was on Wednesday exactly three years ago that the first protester was killed in Kasserine during the uprising in the Arab Spring’s birthplace that toppled the long-time ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Kasserine is one of the poorest regions of Tunisia and was a hotbed of unrest during the revolt. In the village of Thala, which lies in the Kasserine region and had already witnessed clashes on Tuesday evening, protesters attacked a police post, partially burning it and driving away the security forces, witnesses said. Shops and public offices remained closed in Kasserine as hundreds protested in the streets on Wednesday. They shouted slogans such as "The people want the fall of the regime", the rallying cry of the Arab Spring. A policeman was injured during the clashes after he was hit by a tear gas canister fired at him by one of his colleagues. Al Jazeera’s Youssef Gaigi, reporting from Tunis on Wednesday, said conditions had not improved since the 2011 mass protests. "People continue to pay a very high price for the revolution. Unemployment is high and conditions have worsened," he said. The better living conditions sought by many young Tunisians have failed to materialise, resulting in discontent over new taxes and government shortcomings. Anger has been growing of late over proposed 2014 budget, which is critics say will negatively affect the middle and working classes through increases in taxes and cuts in subsidies. |
Mozilla Corporation has pushed back the release of the third, and possibly final, beta for Firefox 3.1 by a week to allow the firm to fix some bugs in the upcoming version of its open source browser. The beta had been expected to land on 26 January, but Mozilla has delayed the release to 2 February to allow it time to fix some glitches in the InternetExplorerChromeSafari rival surfing tool. "Due to the large number of outstanding P1 blockers, we are declaring a code slip," Mozilla said on its website earlier this week. “P1” is Mozilla lingo for the worst offending glitches that remain unsolved in its browser. However, despite the minor delay, Mozilla insists it’s still on target to ship Firefox 3.1 late in the first quarter. Of course, the firm originally – somewhat optimistically – earmarked late 2008 for the release of the latest version of its browser even though Firefox 3.0 wasn’t unleashed onto the interwebs until June last year. There are 15 P1 flaws, including issues with its “Private Browsing” mode, waiting to be fixed by Mozilla developers before the third beta can be released. In July last year, Mozilla claimed that the transition to Firefox 3.1 wouldn’t be “a major pain-in-the-ass” and pledged developers wouldn’t be hit by “surprises along the way”. |
In 2008, Obama for America broke down barriers with their website format which mirrored Facebook (and was in fact designed by one of the founders of Facebook) and in doing so appealed specifically to younger voters. This year, the Obama campaign is leaps and bounds ahead of Team Romney when it comes to the effective use of social media. Today they have launched a great new interactive site in response to Mitt Romney’s now infamous (and a popular GIF’d “gaffe”) 47% video which shows America which campaign is FOR ALL which is intended to target voters between the ages of 18-29 (for a second I’ll pretend that I’m 29). The images will appear on the Obama 2012 Instagram and everyone can participate by instagramming their images with the issues that matter to them whether they be women’s rights, marriage equality, or worker’s rights with the hashtag #forall. The site is already filling up with moving images of everyday folks, campaign volunteers, staffers, and celebrities. I need to go find myself a permanent marker! |
I felt like a god as I realized the feature I had just added to Netflix was finally working. Being able to modify a multi-billion dollar company’s flagship product is immensely gratifying. Sharing your modifications with others is even more so. Inception I was on Netflix watching The Aviator, an epic biopic on Howard Hughes that stars Leonardo DiCaprio. Leo had just been flying an experimental high speed plane when the engine died and he was forced to dramatically crash land in a beet field. I missed some of it as I glanced away to give my dog a treat, and wanted to quickly rewind to the beginning of the scene. Unfortunately, short rewinds can be a complicated matter on the Netflix web player, as you have to slowly scroll through the timeline to find the right spot, unlike Hulu which incorporates a 10-second rewind button. I felt like Netflix could use a button like that. Feeling inspired, I knew I would be capable of adding it myself with a bit of research. I paused the movie and started to work. Hour 1 — Workflow Research Since I’d never written a Chrome Extension before, I needed to find what an adequate workflow looks like. Not much came up, but I did find two options for generating the boilerplate code, the basic code that extensions all share. Yeoman is a downloadable suite of tools, and Extensionizr is a web app. I like the simplicity of web apps and not having to download or run anything, so I went with Extensionizr. Being pronounceable is also a plus. Now with the initial code out of the way, I needed two things: the right code editor, and a way to reload my extension quickly every time I edited something. Through my research I found that Atom by Github is a popular code editor for extensions, and Extensions Reloader adds a toolbar button for quick extension updates. Hour 2 — Adding a Button The grind had begun, and the refresh count started climbing quickly. At this moment I thought of a famous quote by Bruce Lee. “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” — Bruce Lee When learning something new it takes a lot of practice. For me, the Bruce Lee technique means writing a little bit of code, and then testing it. Never going more than a few lines of code before finding out if they compile and work. I had started on my journey for this one button, and I wouldn’t finish until hours, and hundreds of refreshes later. First thing I figured out was that the extension manifest is very important. It describes your extension, and what files and permissions it needs to accomplish its goal. I wasted a lot of time troubleshooting before I realized that the reload toolbar button I had downloaded doesn’t actually reload your manifest, you have to do that manually from Chrome’s extensions window whenever you modify it. Injecting Inspecting the Netflix web player I found what the element that displays the pause button is named, and with that information I added a function that detects when that element is added to the page. On detection, I had my script add a basic button right after the pause button. When I refreshed Netflix and saw my basic button for a first time it gave me a huge energy boost and I felt that it was my mission to have this ugly button looking pretty and actually working by the end of the day. The ugly prototype Hour 3 — Making The Button Actually Do Something The button was visible, but it didn’t actually do anything at this point. I used the web developer tools that come with Chrome to inspect Netflix’s javascript. It’s all minified, so reading through it is a pain and a guessing game. Having been minified, most of the variable and function names have been replaced with gibberish to save space, but luckily as I searched for the keywords “seek” and “time” I found that miraculously, the exact functions I needed still had their original names. I quickly wrote a function that takes the video player’s current time variable, subtracts 10 seconds, and then tells the player to seek to that time. I hooked up my button to it, and freaked out when it actually worked! I was almost ready to release! Except the button still looked ugly. Hour 4 — Extreme Makeover It was time to make my button beautiful. I figured I’d start by downloading the graphic for the play button, inspecting the format, and then working on a design from there. So I loaded up the developer tools again, and selected the play button. Then I inspected the styles applied to it, looking for an image. I couldn’t find one. One small part of the Netflix font I searched continuously for twenty minutes for the image of the play button, but then I stumbled across something interesting. The play button had a custom font. That’s when I realized that the button wasn’t actually linking to an image, but was showing a letter from a font! I don’t make websites, so I didn’t realize that was a possibility. I looked up an online service for displaying all the font glyphs inside of a web font, and when I loaded up the Netflix font I quickly realized that it actually contains an image for a 10 second quick rewind! This would make things a lot easier. I added a stylesheet for my ugly button, setting the font to display the correct glyph, and suddenly my creation looked a lot better. The final, beautiful version Hour 5— Finishing Up Just a small bit of polish was needed before publishing. To add configurability, I used a framework called Fancy Settings for the extension’s settings page so users can toggle between 10 second rewinds and 30 second rewinds. I named my extension Netflix Pro, made a not-so-pretty icon in Sketch 3, and then uploaded the source code to GitHub at github.com/JohnCoates/NetflixPro. On the Chrome Store I took a couple screenshots, and then uploaded the extension to the Chrome Web store for others to enjoy. Looking to the future, I think that re-designing the entire Netflix player to make it a little more pleasing to the eye would be a great goal for the project. I discovered that it’s pretty easy to make a Chrome extension. Not only that, but this experience has made me realize how fun it can be to change my favorite websites, and I look forward to doing it again. If you liked this article I’d appreciate if you’d hit the recommend button! (The cute little heart below.) |
Social media lit up with jokes Thursday night after White House adviser Kellyanne Conway cited a nonexistent "Bowling Green massacre" to defend President Trump's immigration order. ADVERTISEMENT In an interview with MSNBC's "Hardball" on Thursday, Conway said that the Obama administration had imposed a six-month ban on refugees from Iraq following a "Bowling Green massacre," though no such massacre occurred. She later tweeted to say that she meant to say "Bowling Green terrorists," referring to two men from Iraq who were living in Bowling Green, Ky., and indicted for attempting to send weapons to al Qaeda in Iraq. But Twitter users quickly mocked Conway's original claim, sending the hashtag #BowlingGreenMassacre to the top of the trending topics list. Here is a sampling of some of the tweets about it: Saddened and sickened by Frederick Douglass' silence surrounding the Bowling Green Massacre. — Natasha Rothwell (@natasharothwell) February 3, 2017 Out of curiosity, I googled “Bowling Green massacre” and was directed to a now-closed haunted house. https://t.co/PqvphJZpbH — Zach Lowe (@zlowe) February 3, 2017 Do you remember the Bowling Green Massacre? pic.twitter.com/32YwmTMcPf — Demetria Obilor (@DemetriaObilor) February 3, 2017 shame on Kellyanne Conway for attempting to politicize the Bowling Green massacre, in which I was killed — PAPPADEMAS (@PAPPADEMAS) February 3, 2017 One still shudders to think how bad the Bowling Green massacre would've been if not for the heroic intervention of Fred Douglass. — Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) February 3, 2017 I was the @bgdailynews' city editor when the Bowling Green Massacre didn't happen. — Daniel Pike (@DPikeBGDN) February 3, 2017 The Bowling Green Massacre was a very serious massacre that did an amazing job of massacring and is getting recognized more and more — ☕netw3rk (@netw3rk) February 3, 2017 Please donate anything you can spare to Nigerian Prince Emmanuel's fund for the victims of the Bowling Green Massacre. — Eli Matt Pettersen (@mecdemonde) February 3, 2017 Finding these Bowling Green Massacre jokes to be a little too soon. Out of respect, we should wait until it takes place. — Justin Shanes (@justinshanes) February 3, 2017 Chelsea Clinton also weighed in to mock Conway's claim. Clinton's tweet also referred to news that a French soldier shot a knife-wielding man outside the Louvre in Paris, saying she was "grateful" no one was seriously injured and making a plea not to "make up attacks." |
The Fox Theater at 19th and Telegraph, in the center of downtown Oakland. Sergio Ruiz/SPUR The East Bay hub is poised for an economic boom, but the city needs to overcome a deep-seated resistance to growth. For an urban downtown, Oakland’s city center has long sat strangely empty. Only a handful of buildings rise above ten stories; 40 acres of vacant spaces or parking lots litter the city. After working hours end, the streets fall quiet. CityFixer Solutions for an Urbanizing World Go But many recent media portrayals paint Oakland quite differently. Starting in the mid-2000s, the city began to crawl toward something of a renaissance. Then-Mayor Jerry Brown’s efforts to bring 10,000 new residents to the downtown area ushered in a boom in the local culture and retail scene. About five years ago, news outlets began to take notice: The New York Times ranked Oakland fifth among the top 45 global travel destinations of 2012, teasing that “new restaurants and bars beckon amid the grit.” But the city’s plentiful cultural moments—a new bar opening, a monthly arts festival that draws crowds of 20,000 people—mask a more pernicious truth: development-wise, Oakland is stalled. Between 2000 and 2015, only two commercial office buildings and 5,000 housing units were built in Oakland, according to a report from SPUR, a nonprofit urban planning organization headquartered in the Bay Area. In the same time period, Oakland’s population soared by 8,000. Before the early 2000s, poor planning and a reputation for crime had gutted Oakland of industry and inhabitants. That the city could accommodate such population growth—as well as dozens of new businesses—without substantial structural expansion is the testament to how much property had previously sat empty. But Oakland is quickly reaching capacity. With Uber set to move into the old Sears building on Broadway at the end of 2017, the city is poised for another influx of residents and retail. The City of Oakland Planning Department in the process of finalizing a strategy for a revamped downtown area. But implementing it will require the city to evolve in many ways it has long resisted. Why It’s Tough to Build in Oakland Development in Oakland, says Robert Ogilvie, the Oakland director for SPUR, is caught in a catch-22. The city has not attracted enough large anchor tenants to reliably fill new buildings, making it hard to justify building on speculation. That has constricted available property, in turn making Oakland undesirable for small, fast-growing firms looking for adequate space to expand. Those companies have looked across the Bay, to San Francisco. Commercial rents in Oakland, while rising, are still lower than the cost of high-rise office building construction in the Bay Area, which sits at around $5 per square foot per month. Many developers feel it’s not worth it to push projects at this rate without complete confidence that buildings will be filled. In San Francisco, where commercial space rents for around $5.75 per square foot per month, developers are much more comfortable throwing up a building and waiting for tenants to file in, Ogilvie says. Cities are changing fast. Keep up with the CityLab Daily newsletter. The best way to follow issues you care about. Subscribe Loading... In addition to Oakland’s lackluster track record of commercial development, the city has a reputation for crime and poverty that sets financial backers on edge, Ogilvie says. “Some investors, especially those whose perception of Oakland depends on the public narrative, have hesitated to invest capital into downtown without more compensation for the risk they’re taking,” the SPUR report notes. As a result, job growth has been slow, and consequently, the incentive to add housing in the city has lagged. The media narrative nowadays, Ogilvie says, tends to position Oakland as the Brooklyn to San Francisco’s Manhattan: the inevitable heir to San Francisco’s tech-driven economic upswing. But coverage tends to overlook one crucial difference: Brooklyn and Manhattan fall under the same government; Oakland and San Francisco do not. The same tides that have bolstered San Francisco’s growth will not automatically spill over to pull up Oakland. To ensure Oakland effectively cashes in on its increasing economic opportunities, it will have to devise its own way forward, which will mean coming to terms with the fact that in the case of growth, the city is its own worst enemy. Blocking the Path Forward Risk-averse investors are not alone in their hesitancy to build in Oakland. “The political bent in the Bay Area is anti-growth,” says Mike Ghielmetti, the president of Signature Development Group, who has worked in retail and residential development in the Bay Area for the past 25 years. “There’s a weird kind of progressive alliance—and I say progressive, though I don’t actually believe it is—that has advocated failed policies for the past 35 years,” Ghielmetti says. They emphasize maintaining a certain quality of life, “which is code for no new housing or retail, which pushes newcomers away by keeping property values high through artificial constraints on supply,” Ghielmetti adds. The lines of resistance around development are drawn demographically. On the anti-growth side are the Baby Boomers, who “have moved out to the suburbs, gotten used to property lines and fences, and haven’t really bought into the urban atmosphere, even though they still control the cities politically,” Ghielmetti says. Building tall, in particular, draws controversy. The Bay Area’s history of earthquakes has made locals skittish of towers, a fear made largely irrelevant by advances in construction. Yet the concern persists: the City of Oakland is consulting with SPUR in finalizing its specific plan for the downtown area; Ogilvie, who arrived in the Bay Area by way of New York, says that much of the two organizations’ back-and-forth has revolved around building height. In the Bay Area, a penchant for tall, dense cities is a distinctly Millennial attitude, and one that Ghielmetti says Oakland needs to welcome. The city’s current policies and prices have effectively locked out young people from becoming homeowners or renters—which will prove a detriment to the region, Ghielmetti says. “I view Millennials as the future of our cities,” he adds. “Our cities will die without them.” What Needs to Be Done That’s where people like Sonja Trauss come in. She’s 34, and the founder of the SF Bay Area Renter’s Federation (or BARF)—one of several pro-housing, “YIMBY” organizations to spring up in the region in response to a desperate for growth. Trauss is pro-building, of every variety. Speaking to The New York Times, she said: “You have to support building, even when it’s a type of building you hate. Is it ugly? Get over yourself. Is it low-income housing? Get over yourself. Is it luxury housing? Get over yourself. We really need everything right now.” The need for affordable housing in Oakland—as in San Francisco—is undeniable, Trauss says, but it should not be tackled in isolation from the rest of development. The City of Oakland recently introduced an impact fee on market-rate housing projects, which will require developers to pay the city between $750 and $7,000 per unit toward an affordable housing fund. Trauss supports this tactic because the fee is low enough that it won’t preclude developers from moving ahead with their current projects. What has landed cities like Oakland and San Francisco in their current housing binds, Trauss says, is “an assumption that new, high-income people moving there would not have come if the new, expensive housing hadn’t been built.” The resistance to accommodating the upper end of the tax bracket, Trauss says, stems from the same aversion to change Ghielmetti has encountered in his work. But the naysayers, Trauss says, are missing a crucial fact: “At least in San Francisco, 84 percent of the people who move into new housing, once it’s built, were already living in San Francisco,” she says. And 99 percent of high-income people move into pre-existing housing. “It’s ridiculous to fight [the influx of high-income people]: their presence, and the jobs they create, are happening whether you build or not,” Trauss says. And though it may sting the holdouts from a previous time, building more is the only way to ensure that everybody who wants to stay in the Bay Area will be able to do so. The East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation is working to ensure that longtime residents—especially in some of the city’s most impoverished areas—will not be forced out by the waves of change. Sabrina Chin, the communications manager for EBALDC, says that the organization takes a neighborhood-centric approach to development, recognizing that building for mixed-income communities is the only way to maintain both the integrity and the livelihood of the city. To that end, EBALDC is working with private investors to buy up pre-existing buildings and stabilize the rents to ensure they will remain available for low-income tenants and for local nonprofits, even as construction grows up around them. “Longtime residents are assets to the city,” Chin says. “We’re not here to bulldoze them out, or price them out—we’re here to give them the option to stay.” The arrival of Uber at the end of next year will bring at least 600 new residents to the East Bay, many of them coasting in on tech-industry salaries. Trauss says the crucial switch for the city will be embracing the company’s arrival for the subsequent boost in taxpayer revenue that Oakland desperately needs. “I feel so strongly that it’s crazy to oppose newcomers,” Trauss says. Oakland is already set on the path to change; what needs to happen now, Trauss says, is for people to change their minds about how they feel about it. |
Delta 2 rocket erected to launch SMAP mission BY STEPHEN CLARK SPACEFLIGHT NOW Posted: September 2, 2014 United Launch Alliance ground crews have erected the two-stage Delta 2 launcher that will carry NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive mission into orbit this winter. The rocket is perched at Space Launch Complex 2-West at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., for liftoff as soon as mid-December with the $490 million science mission. SMAP will measure soil moisture and freeze/thaw states with an L-band radar and radiometer from a 422-mile-high orbit, covering the globe every two or three days. The data will improve weather and climate models, aid in flood prediction and drought monitoring, and help researchers better understand the links between Earth's water, carbon and energy cycles. A month after the last Delta 2 lifted off from Vandenberg, technicians hoisted the SMAP launcher's teal first stage on the launch pad Aug. 4. The first stage is powered by an Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-27A main engine that burns rocket-grade kerosene and liquid oxygen to produce up to 237,000 pounds of thrust in vacuum. The Delta 2 team also lifted the rocket's interstage adapter into the launch pad's mobile gantry and bolted the spacer atop the first stage. Two halves of the rocket's clamshell-like 10-foot-diameter nose shroud were hoisted into the mobile service tower Aug. 7. Workers will enclose the SMAP satellite inside the fairing when it arrives at the launch pad a few weeks before liftoff. The Delta 2's three solid rocket boosters were added around the base of the first stage Aug. 18. Manufactured by ATK, the solid-fueled motors will help propel the 125-foot-tall rocket off the launch pad, firing for the first minute of the flight as the Delta 2 soars south from Vandenberg. The build-up of the Delta 2 concluded Aug. 20 with the addition of the rocket's second stage with an Aerojet Rocketdyne AJ10-118k engine, which consumes Aerozine 50 and nitrogen tetroxide. The images below show the Delta 2's first stage, interstage, fairing, boosters and second stage going up on the launch pad. Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Tony Vauccin, USAF Credit: NASA/Tony Vauccin, USAF Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin |
Photo credit: The Goldwater Tensions in the Pacific have reached a new level, with reports now that North Korea has detonated a 1 Megaton Thermonuclear Warhead. China and South Korea both confirmed that an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 was recorded at a depth of zero kilometers in Northeastern North Korea, which China called a “collapse”. Jeffrey Lewis, a director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program, said on Twitter on Sunday that the size of the earthquake indicated that the explosion approximated one megaton. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">CONFIRMED: North Korea has just detonated a 1 Megaton (1 million tons of TNT) thermonuclear warhead, triggering a 6.3 magnitude earthquake <a href="https://t.co/7bqGkWvTuO">pic.twitter.com/7bqGkWvTuO</a></p>— Jacob Wohl (@JacobAWohl) <a href="https://twitter.com/JacobAWohl/status/904205177019707392">September 3, 2017</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> China's earthquake administration also stated that a second tremor came eight minutes after the first at nearly identical coordinates, which was recorded at a magnitude of 4.6 in an apparent sign of the aftermath of a detonation. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Report of 6.3-magnitude earthquake in North Korea. Notice the location? Centered (red pin) in same location as nuclear test last year. <a href="https://t.co/yJyKSyeBbR">pic.twitter.com/yJyKSyeBbR</a></p>— John Dissauer (@johndissauer) <a href="https://twitter.com/johndissauer/status/904195371982884864">September 3, 2017</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> South Korea’s Military confirmed that the first quake was artificial, while also reporting that the first tremor was located near the North's nuclear test site used in previous experiments. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="in" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/earthquake?src=hash">#earthquake</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/%EC%A7%80%EC%A7%84?src=hash">#지진</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/%E5%9C%B0%E9%9C%87?src=hash">#地震</a> ird2017rfxe (tmp) North Korea mb 6.3 2017/09/03 03:30:03 <a href="https://t.co/JlIL2ZDWhR">https://t.co/JlIL2ZDWhR</a> <a href="https://t.co/zzAWqYh3xB">pic.twitter.com/zzAWqYh3xB</a></p>— Earthquake watch SWP (@NCseismicobserv) <a href="https://twitter.com/NCseismicobserv/status/904185763960520704">September 3, 2017</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> It has become abundantly clear that Kim Jong Un is not only a threat to his neighbors in the Pacific but to the entire world. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">President Trump Warns North Korea Will Be Met w/ ' Fire and Fury' The Likes Of Which The World Has Never Seen<br><a href="https://t.co/6Z7ROQL1mT">https://t.co/6Z7ROQL1mT</a> <a href="https://t.co/VF88PZ4Aqh">pic.twitter.com/VF88PZ4Aqh</a></p>— Red Pill (@IWillRedPillYou) <a href="https://twitter.com/IWillRedPillYou/status/895063476095385600">August 8, 2017</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> It looks like the Norks really want to be met with “Fire and Fury” the likes of which the world has never seen. After repeatedly ignoring the pleas of the civilized world, it's now time to act and stop the madman of the North Korean regime before millions lose their lives. Source: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/09/02/north-korea-shaken-by-strong-tremor-which-could-signal-a-weapons-test-reuters.html —<i>[email protected]</i> <i>On Twitter:</i> <a href="https://www.twitter.com/IWillRedPillYou">@IWillRedPillYou</a> Tips? Info? Send me a message! |
Richard Jay Mathews, leader of the early 1980’s white supremacist terrorist organization “The Order,” saw multiculturalism as a scourge. The dystopian future he imagined, he wrote in a letter shortly before his death, was one where his son “would be a stranger in his own land, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aryan in a country populated mainly by Mexicans, mulattoes, blacks, and Asians.” This troubled Mathews so much that his group advocated for an entirely white region through mass extermination. As in Nazi Germany or the mythical 1850s North Carolina in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, The Order wanted to get rid of all non-whites in the Pacific Northwest. Responsible for numerous robberies as well as the religiously-inspired murder of Denver radio personality Alan Berg, The Order was the loose inspiration for the 1988 Costa-Gavras film Betrayed, in which an FBI agent is sent to investigate a midwestern farmer (played by Tom Berenger) for the murder of a prominent Jewish radio host. They called the creed they subscribed to the “Northwest Territorial Imperative.” A concept popular amongst white nationalists, the Imperative sought to make the five-state region of Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming and Western Montana into a “White American Bastion.” The group was ultimately destroyed in a series of federal round-ups and raids, which led to 75 convictions; Mathews himself was shot dead in his burning home during a standoff that found echoes in the infamous Waco siege a decade later. When The Order was in its heyday one could count the number of armed white supremacist groups in America on two hands. Now, there are at least 600. In Oklahoma City, Barak Goodman’s exhaustively-researched new movie, this history is just a tiny sliver of the background to the worst act of homegrown terrorism this country has ever seen. On April 19, 1995, former soldier Timothy McVeigh—a lifelong mediocrity who had grown up in the lily-white suburbs of Buffalo, New York—parked a Ryder truck containing a five ton fertilizer bomb in front of the Edward P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. McVeigh lit a fuse and fled to a getaway car he had stashed several blocks away. Unfortunately for McVeigh, the car didn’t have license plates on it and he was arrested after a routine traffic stop for a completely unrelated and far less serious crime. One of the dozens of shocking details Goodman’s movie reveals is how close McVeigh was to being released before the FBI tracked him down at the nearby jail with questions about his involvement in the bombing. When The Order was in its heyday one could count the number of armed white supremacist groups in America on two hands. Now, there are at least 600. There is a grisly timeliness to Oklahoma City’s release now, when the far right is at a turning point. Revisiting this story of homegrown American terror feels as zeitgeisty as both of 2016’s televised accounts of the O.J. Simpson tragedy did. Are there more Richard Jay Mathewses lurking out there in the American night, emboldened by a political moment when their views are receiving broader mainstream media coverage and are tacitly embraced in the corridors of power? Or will they find themselves cast out into the fringes of American society, to strike at the system in the vicious, subterranean ways our leaders like to associate with Islamic extremists? |
What most Americans don't know about " Mortgagegate" is that "robo-signing" of foreclosure documents is the tip of the iceberg. The breadth and depth of this newest mortgage crisis is so dangerous that the U.S. Federal Reserve last month pre-announced another potential round of quantitative easing (pundits are calling it "QE2") to address "potential negative shocks." In fact, the fallout potential is so numbing and the actions that birthed it so scandalous that commentators have given the crisis the Watergate-esque title of " Mortgagegate" (or, as some prefer, "Mortgage Gate"). Here's what the news-story headlines aren't telling you. Foreclosure Follies The Fed can't admit that the potential shocks it's worried about have already materialized, because that would trigger the very panic the central bankers hope to avoid. But the odds that a financial tsunami will result from Mortgagegate are building each day. If this storm strikes with its full fury , it could be the kind of credit-crisis aftershock that undermines the tentative handhold that the U.S. recovery is so desperately clinging to. On the surface, the problem looks like foreclosures have been conducted based on improperly processed paperwork. That is a gross understatement. Here's what's wrong. When a homeowner buys a property with a mortgage, the property title lists them as the rightful owner and their lender as the mortgage-holder. The named lender possesses an encumbrance on the title. If the homeowner doesn't pay his or her mortgage, the lender can rightfully repossess the property and sell it. In order to take the home back, the lender must first foreclose on the property. The problem begins with the fact that lenders, in order to make trading mortgages between themselves easier so they can be packaged into mortgage-backed securities (MBS) pools and sold to investors, assign their rights on titles to a "nominee." (How that happens is the part of the story that news outlets aren't talking about and will both shock and sicken you). To take homes back, lenders or mortgage services start by filing court documents in "judicial foreclosure states" (most states in the U.S. require foreclosures to be court-processed). Filings against homeowners must include signed affidavits attesting to the relevant facts and demonstrating the lender's legal status to foreclose. Affidavits must be notarized. But here's what's been uncovered: The people who are signing the necessary documents on behalf of the lenders aren't even reviewing documents - which means there's absolutely no way they followed the pre scribed procedures. It turns out that signers are basically "rubber-stamping" legal documents. In the case of IndyMac Bank FSB (since purchased by a private equity group and renamed OneWest Bank), The Wall Street Journal reported that Erica P. Johnson-Seck routinely signed as many as 6,000 documents a week. In another instance, employees of GMAC Home Mortgage and the mortgage unit of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) admitted in sworn testimony that they each signed 10,000 documents per month, without properly reviewing and notarizing them. Similar instances of what's become known as "robo-signing" are now coming to light in relation to hundreds of thousands of other documents. And by the time it's all said and done, it's likely that we'll be talking about millions of documents. Fraud was clearly rampant in the notarization of documents that were part of the foreclosure process. The fact that document signers weren't reading and reviewing the paperwork, and weren't contacting homeowners - all of which was mandated by lenders - there clearly was no way that the proper due diligence was observed. Questionable legal notarizations include pervasive findings that documents were notarized even before they were signed and dated. A notary is legally designated to verify the identity of the signer of a document and affix their notary stamp along with their signature that they have witnessed the signer executing the document, and that the signer is who they say they are. Some notarizations on suspect documents are affixed by notaries that don't live or work anywhere near where documents were signed. Indeed, many of them live across state lines. That makes it highly unlikely that signers were verified or that the documents properly notarized by law. Congress, in its inimitable way, was made aware of this problem. Legislators tried to solve the problem by ramming through - without debate (highly unusual, but they did it) - legislation that partly addressed some of the notary issues. In a bill that was supposed to facilitate interstate commerce, our elected representatives made it legal for notarizations to be accepted across state lines. How high up is the knowledge of this crisis? Apparently pretty high. After all, it was none other than U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-V T, the chairman the Judiciary Committee, who on Sept. 27 rammed through the Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act, the bill in question. In case you miss the egregious irony of the timing of the bill, it came up for a vote only a couple of weeks after the initial disclosure in courts around the country that GMAC had robo-signers falsely notarize foreclosure documents. Last Thursday, U.S. President Barack Obama refused to sign the bill. Circle of Deceit Here's a key question: If these foreclosures aren't being legally executed, are homeowners being kicked out illegally? And what about the buyers of foreclosed properties: Are they rightful owners if the previous owner still has a legal claim to the home? Is everyone going to sue everyone? What will a nationwide moratorium on foreclosures do to the inventory and prices of unsold homes? And what e ffect will all this have on homes situated near foreclosed properties? What will happen to all the mortgage-backed securities that contain all these properties and that banks still hold? What will happen to the economy if these problems take years to work through? And that's not even the worst of it all. There's actually a much deeper problem that could lead to troubles far worse than anything you can imagine. The whole mess begins at Square One. And "Square One" is a circle of fraud and deceit so large that if civil and criminal charges and fines were eventually levied against the perpetrators, there isn't a big bank in this country that wouldn't be insolvent. Naturally, it's about money. Frightening Fallout In order to easily buy and sell mortgages between themselves so that these loans might be repackaged, securitized and then sold to investors as mortgage-backed securities, banks and other lenders needed a quick way to "trade" individual mortgages. They created a company called Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS). This group includes Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), GMAC LLC (NYSE: GMA), Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC), Washington Mutual (now owned by JPMorgan Chase), the United Guaranty Corp. unit of American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG), Fannie Mae (OTC: FNMA), Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC), mortgage-servicing companies and other similarly interested members. You may not realize it, but at your home-purchase "closing," you sign a document that appoints MERS as the "nominee" for the lender that granted you a mortgage. That gives the nominee the right to flip your mortgage to any other bank or lender it chooses. That's how banks move mortgages around to package them into different securities. But that brings us to the crux of the controversy: Every time there's change on the title (a change occurs when the nominee switches the lender on your title out for another), local governments require that a new title be recorded. Of course, those governments - the county or municipality that you live in - also charge a "recording fee." MERS also charges a fee, but it's a lot less than government recording fees. Here's the problem. In creating MERS, these institutions actually changed the land-title system that this country - for much of its history - has relied upon to determine legal ownership status of land titleholders. Not only did the lenders sidestep (read that to mean avoid) paying billions of dollars in fees to local governments, they paid themselves from the fees that MERS collected. MERS is facing class-action lawsuits and civil racketeering suits around the country and their members are being individually named in all these suits. One suit alleges that MERS owes California a potential $60 billion to $120 billion in unpaid land-recording fees. If suits against MERS and all its members are successful, unpaid recording fees and fines (that can be as much as $10,000 per incident) would make every one of them insolvent. And you wonder what the Federal Reserve meant when it warned of "potential negative shocks?" The bottom line for investors is that until all these issues are cleaned up (which might take years, or even decades) - or until there's perhaps some sort of legislative clarity that eases uncertainty - investors face the threat of a severe "correction" in any or all of the markets that have risen on the hope that the long-hoped-for U.S. recovery is finally taking hold. It makes sense, as it almost always does, to have stop orders in place on all your investments and consider the ramifications of these problems whenever your investments have real-estate (or mortgage) exposure. |
I had a whale of a time with XCOM 2: War of the Chosen [official site] (out today), despite finding its tonal ping-ponging between gritty resistance saga and preposterous superheroics a little jarring. Speaking of the latter, here’s a video I made showing just how off-the-chain crazy the various new abilities, weapons and features can be. In the space of a single turn (the first turn of a mission), one soldier covers almost the entire length of the map, ‘wakes’ pretty much every enemy on it, kills around 15 of them, winds up at the main mission objective and then proceeds to take zero damage on the alien turn. Meanwhile, most of his team never even leave their starting position. All in one turn. It’s bonkers. This is War Of The Chosen. If you’re an XCOM or XCOM 2 player, you’ll know that usual state of affairs is something like 1-4 kills per turn, inching across only a fraction of the map each turn and very rarely having anything happen during the first turn. Each soldier broadly gets to move once and shoot once per turn, and that’s it. This is… different. What we have here is a very high-level soldier, backed up by a veteran team of various classes and abilities (the net result of 40 hours put into the campaign), able to use a wide and wild range of skills both new and old to achieve what, before today, was simply impossible in XCOM-land. Two things to note before you watch this. Firstly, this isn’t even as well as it could have gone. I made a couple of minor errors of judgement that denied me a couple more kills, and there are two gunshots that missed despite good odds. Doesn’t make much difference to the lie of the land at the end of turn one really, but I’d have loved a perfect run. Secondly, you’ll notice that our mass-murderin’ hero Ranger, Graham ‘Bandit’ Smith, begins the turn standing on top of a bus shelter, a few squares away from the rest of his team. This is because, just before I thought to start recording, I decided to use his Snake Suit’s grappling hook to have a ‘free’ move to higher ground, but like an idiot moved in the wrong direction. Again, no biggie, but if I hadn’t done that I might have been able to move even further forward than I did in the initial sprint, and thus possibly have used one of the action points for another kill or two. C’est la vie. Right, here we go. I’ve added narration to try and explain what’s happening and how the hell it is happening at all, but that stuff isn’t my usual ballpark so please go easy on my muttering: (FWIW, this mission was wrapped up without any fatalities on my team three turns later). |
After 47 hearings and almost one year of investigating how car manufacturers in Europe cheated on emissions, the European Parliament's inquiry committee adopted its final report. The committee on the Dieselgate scandal wrapped up its work on Tuesday (28 February) when a large majority of 37 MPs endorsed its findings. Student, retired or simply can't afford full price? No worries. The committee chaired by Kathleen Van Brempt (l) held 47 hearings and examined minutes of backroom meetings and e-mails. (Photo: European Parliament) It concluded, based on minutes of backroom meetings, e-mails from EU civil servants, and wide-ranging interviews, that maladministration by national governments and by the European Commission created a favourable environment for emissions cheating. It blamed Italy, Spain, France, Slovak Republic, Romania, and Hungary delays in setting up real driving emissions tests that would have reduced opportunities for fiddling. If member states and the European Commission had followed EU law, the Volkswagen emissions fraud would have been detected in Europe instead of in the US, the committee's chairwoman said at a press conference after the vote. “This is a report that cannot be ignored”, said chairwoman Kathleen Van Brempt, a centre-left Belgian MEP. German centre-right MEP Jens Gieseke, who co-wrote the Dieselgate committee’s report, said: “Many things went wrong, at commission level, at member state level, industry did many things wrong." Dutch Liberal MEP Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy, the other co-writer, said the issue at stake was a health risk rather than consumer deception. “The biggest victims of this scandal are not Volkswagen or Volkswagen car owners, it's the people who live in the streets where these cars drive and where they emit 20, 30, 40 times the legal limits,” he said. The report is non-binding, but Gerbrandy said it had political weight. “This is the final report of an inquiry committee, the first inquiry committee in 10 years,” he said. The committee’s conclusions are now final, but its recommendations may still be amended in a plenary session, probably in April. It recommended that “only stronger oversight at EU level can ensure that the EU legislation on vehicles is properly enforced”. It also called for “a European Vehicle Surveillance Agency” that would double-check national certification procedures and would have the power to do its own car tests. The agency proposal was less popular than the conclusions and scraped through by 23 votes against 21. German eurosceptic MEP Hans-Olaf Henkel told EUobserver he voted against the report. “I have nothing against oversight, but I don't think we need a European agency, with a lot of people at the expense of the taxpayer,” he said. The committee’s work was politicised in other ways. A Dutch Green MEP had wanted to include a critical reference to the role of former EU industry commissioner and current EU parliament president Antonio Tajani. But the reference was quashed by Tajani’s centre-right EPP group and by an abstention from the centre-left S&D faction. The committee chairwoman, the S&D’s Van Brempt said that to single out Tajani would have amounted to a “political game”. Gerbrandy, the Liberal co-author of the final report, said the focus should stay on the overall conclusion. “Dieselgate could have been avoided if member states and the commission had followed European law. That is quite something,” he said. |
Few gardening pursuits are as rewarding as growing your own plants from seed. As the nursery manager at the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants at Monticello, I have started thousands of ornamental and vegetable plants from seed. Growing plants from seed is not always an easy task, and over the years I have developed and adopted the following techniques to ensure that seeds get a healthy start. Videos Further reading For links to articles, blog posts, and videos on starting vegetable and flower seeds, see All About Starting Seeds. 1. Keep records to allow for better planning An often overlooked aspect of plant propagation is the art of record keeping. Whether you are producing a few plants for your home flower and vegetable gardens or working at a larger-scale nursery, developing a propagation journal will prove indispensable. Here at the Center for Historic Plants, we record when seeds are sown, the germination date and success rate, and when seedlings are ready for transplanting each year. At the end of the year we evaluate the timing of our production schedule, noting what went right and what went wrong. These observations help us make adjustments for next year to ensure that we are growing our plants under optimum conditions. We also keep track of where we purchase seeds, as their quality and reliability may vary by source. 2. Store seed properly to maintain viability Seeds are a fragile commodity, and if not treated properly, their viability will sharply decline. While some seeds may survive for thousands of years under the proper conditions, others will lose viability quickly, even when properly stored. To maintain dormancy, keep seeds in a cool, dark location with low humidity, like a refrigerator. I recommend labeling them (seed name, source, year) and storing them in a small reclosable bag or empty film canister that is, in turn, kept in a larger plastic container. Once you are ready to sow, you can test the viability of many, but not all, seeds by soaking them in water for a few hours. The seeds that are still living will sink to the bottom, while the dead ones will float on the surface. This test generally works better for larger seeds, but there are no absolutes. 3. Use wide, flat containers to avoid overcrowding Plastic pots or containers are preferable to clay pots when starting seeds, as they retain moisture more consistently. Wide, shallow containers prevent both overcrowding of seedlings and excessive moisture around fragile, young roots. Plants that resent root disturbance when transplanted are best sown into small, individual containers like cell packs or plug trays. Recycled plastic containers, like empty yogurt or margarine tubs, work well, too, provided you’ve poked holes in the bottom for drainage. No matter what type of container you use, it must be clean and free of pathogens. To sanitize a container, soak it in a 10 percent bleach solution for 15 minutes and let it air dry. 4. Tamp seeds down to make direct contact with the soil Use a kitchen sieve to spread soilless seed-starting mix evenly over the top of the seeds to the depth of two times the seed diameter. Very small seeds and those that require light to germinate should lie directly on the surface. Whether covered with planting medium or not, each seed must be in firm contact with the moist surface to begin germinating. Use a pestle or even the bottom of a glass to gently tamp down the surface. 5. Prevent disease by providing air flow and drainage The fungal infection often referred to as damping-off is usually caused by excessive moisture and poor air circulation. However, there are a few cultural techniques that will help to keep fungal agents at bay. After covering the seeds with planting mix and tamping them down, spread a thin layer of 50 percent milled sphagnum and 50 percent starter chicken grit (finely ground stone) over the surface to keep the soil around the emerging shoots dry and provide an inhospitable environment for pathogens. To promote good air circulation, place a small fan near your seedlings. Keep the fan on low and direct it to blow across the containers at the soil level where air may become trapped and stagnant. 6. Cover trays with plastic wrap to keep the moisture level constant Seeds are very sensitive to the extremes of overwatering and underwatering. In addition, heavy-handed watering can disturb newly germinated seedlings. Securing plastic wrap over the surface of a freshly sown seed pot can help to keep the moisture level constant. However, the pot must still be checked daily for moisture and germination. If you find that you need to rehydrate your seed container, place the entire pot in a basin with 2 to 3 inches of warm water and allow the planting medium to wick moisture from the bottom. If just the surface has dried, you can lift the plastic covering and spritz the surface with water from a spray bottle. As soon as the seeds germinate, remove the plastic wrap. 7. Keep seeds warm to encourage germination A heat mat speeds germination. Most seeds require temperatures of 65° to 75°F to germinate. Placing seed containers near an existing heater or using a space heater with the proper precautions can raise the ambient temperature as needed. In addition, a heating pad designed for plant use placed directly under the seed containers will warm the planting mix and encourage germination. When using any additional heat source, be sure to check for moisture often, since the seed containers may dry out more quickly. 8. Turn seedlings daily to keep stems strong Most seeds will not germinate without sunlight and will perform best with 12 to 16 hours each day. Indoors, place seed containers in a sunny, south-facing window and give the container a quarter turn each day to prevent the seedlings from overreaching toward the light and developing weak, elongated stems. Also, gently brush the palm of your hand against the tops of the seedlings to encourage strong stem growth. 9. Feed them well After true leaves develop, it’s time for a little fertilizer. Proper nutrition at a consistent rate will keep your seedlings growing strong. When the embryo inside a seed is developing, it relies on food stored in the endosperm to fuel its growth. As the shoot emerges from the soil and the true leaves develop, the initial nutrients supplied by the endosperm will be depleted and supplemental fertilization is then required. Most seed-starting mixes contain a small nutrient charge to help make this transition while not burning the developing roots. However, once the true leaves emerge, it is time to begin a half-strength liquid fertilizer regimen on a weekly basis. 10. Acclimate seedlings to direct sunlight Hardening off in a cold frame acclimates the seedlings to conditions outdoors. Photo/Illustration: Gary Junken Before seedlings can be planted outdoors, they need to be hardened off, or acclimated to direct sunlight and fluctuating temperatures. It is best to do this over a three-day period by placing them in direct sunlight during the morning only of the first day, then increasing their time outside by a few hours each day until they are vigorous enough to be transplanted. For more seed-starting tips Most seeds germinate readily, but others may require a few extra steps to achieve good results. To see how I use the techniques of warm soaking, scarification, and stratification for seed starting, watch my video, Seed-Starting Pre-Treatments. |
The Battle of Kostiuchnówka was a World War I battle that took place July 4–6, 1916, near the village of Kostiuchnówka (Kostyukhnivka) and the Styr River in the Volhynia region of modern Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. It was a major clash between the Russian Army and the Polish Legions (part of the Austro-Hungarian Army) during the opening phase of the Brusilov Offensive. Polish forces, numbering 5,500–7,300, faced Russian forces numbering over half of the 46th Corps of 26,000. The Polish forces were eventually forced to retreat, but delayed the Russians long enough for the other Austro-Hungarian units in the area to retreat in an organized manner. Polish casualties were approximately 2,000 fatalities and wounded. The battle is considered one of the largest and most vicious of those involving the Polish Legions in World War I.[3][4] Background [ edit ] In World War I, the partitioners of Poland fought each other, with the German Empire and Austro-Hungarian Empire aligned against the Russian Empire. The Polish Legions in Austro-Hungary were created by Józef Piłsudski in order to exploit these divisions, serving as one of his primary tools for restoring Polish independence.[5] The Polish Legions first arrived in the vicinity of Kostiuchnówka during the advance of the Central Powers in the summer and autumn of 1915, taking Kostiuchnówka on September 27, 1915.[6] That autumn they experienced heavy fighting, with each side trying to take control of the region; a less known battle of Kostiuchnówka took place from November 3 to 10; the Russians managed to make some advances, taking the Polish Hill, but were expelled by the Polish forces on September 10.[4] Polish forces held Kostiuchnówka, and due to their successes in defending their positions, several landmarks in the Kostiuchnówka region became known as "Polish" (called such by Polish as well as by allied German-speaking troops): a key hill overlooking the area became the Polish Hill (Polish: Polska Góra), a nearby forest – the Polish Forest (Polski Lasek), a nearby bridge over the Garbach – the Polish Bridge (Polski Mostek), and the key fortified trench line – Piłsudski's Redoubt (Reduta Piłsudskiego).[6] Polish soldiers built several large wooden camps; the larger of which was known as Legionowo (where the Polish HQ was located).[4] During the preceding late autumn, winter and spring there were no major moves by either side, but this changed drastically with the launching of the Brusilov Offensive in June 1916.[6] It would be a major Russian victory, and the greatest of Austro-Hungarian defeats.[7] Opposing forces [ edit ] Facing the major Russian offensive, the II Brigade of the Polish Legions was deployed out of Kostiuchnówka, at Gruziatyn and Hołzula.[2] The I Brigade held the lines advancing down the Polish Hill, Kostiuchnówka village; the III Brigade, positioned to its left, held the lines near the Optowa village; the Piłsudski's Redoubt was the most advanced Polish position, just about 50 metres (164 ft) facing head on the most advanced Russian redoubt, called the "Eagle's Nest".[2] Further down the Polish Hill the Hungarian 128th Honvédség Brigade took positions opposite the Polish right flank, the Hungarian 11th Cavalry Division opposite the left flank.[2] Two Polish fall-back lines were drawn beyond the first line of defense: one drawn through the Polish Forest and the Engineer's Forest, and the second one through the villages of Nowe Kukle, Nowy Jastków, the camp of Legionowo and Nowa Rarańcza. The Polish Legions at Kostiuchnówka numbered from 5,500[1] to 7,300 (6,500 infantry and 800 cavalry), with forty-nine machine guns, fifteen mortars and twenty-six artillery units.[2] The Russian forces, composed of the most part of the 46th Corps (primarily the 110th and 77nd Infantry Division[clarification needed]), numbered 23,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry and were backed up by a larger artillery force consisting of 120 units.[2] The battle [ edit ] Map of the battle Starting on June 6, a major Russian push was directed against the 40 km line between Kołki and Kostiuchnówka,[4] with the aim of taking the position and then advancing towards Kovel.[2] With Polish legionnaires staying put and holding the ground, more Russian reinforcements were thrown in, while the battle of Kostiuchnówka had become one of the major struggles in the area during World War I.[2] Polish forces launched a counterattack, pushing back the Russians – who had not expected such a bold move – on the night of June 8 and 9.[2] The major Russian push came on July 4, after a major artillery pre-emptive assault.[8] The advancing Russian infantry, numbering around 10,000, faced about 1,000 Polish troops in the front lines (the rest were held in reserve), but the Russians were stopped by heavy machine gun fire and forced to retreat.[8] The Hungarian forces at Polish Hill were pushed back, however, and the Russians advancing on the Poles' right flank, threatened to take the high ground in the area.[9] A counterattack by the Poles was not successful; as the Hungarian units were retreating, the Polish forces sustained very heavy losses and had to fall back either to the remaining part of the first defense line or, in the area of Polish Hill, to the second line.[9] Another Polish counterattack, launched during the night of July 4/5, was also beaten back.[9] Throughout the day, the Russian offensive managed to push the Polish forces further back; although the Poles managed to temporarily retake Polish Hill, a lack of support from the Hungarian forces once again tipped the battle towards the Russians, and even German reinforcements – deployed after Piłsudski sent a report to the army's headquarters about the possibility of a Russian breakthrough – failed to turn the tide away.[10] Eventually, on July 6, the Russian offensive forced the Central Powers' armies to retreat along the entire frontline; Polish forces were among the last to retreat,[10] having sustained approximately 2,000 casualties during the battle.[3] Aftermath [ edit ] Brusilov's offensive was stopped only in August 1916, with reinforcements from the Western Front. Despite being forced to retreat, the performance of the Polish forces impressed Austro-Hungarian and German commanders, and contributed to their decision to recreate some form of Polish statehood in order to boost the recruitment of Polish troops.[3] Their limited concessions, however, did not satisfy Piłsudski; in the aftermath of the Oath Crisis he was arrested and the Legions disbanded.[3] The presence of Piłsudski, who would later become the dictator of Poland, during the battle, became a subject of several patriotic Polish paintings, including one by Leopold Gottlieb, then also a soldier of the Legions,[11] as well as of another painting by Stefan Garwatowski.[12] Wincenty Wodzinowski created a series of drawings and sketches on the dead and wounded from the battle.[12] During the Second Polish Republic, several monuments and a mound were raised nearby to commemorate the battle. A 16 m mound with a stone obelisk and a museum with two additional obelisks were raised during the years 1928–1933;[13] a military cemetery was also built.[10] They fell into disrepair during the rule of the Soviet Union (which often purposefully tried to erase traces of Polish history – the mound was for example lowered by 10 m). In recent years restoration work has taken place through various Polish-Ukrainian projects, with notable projects carried out by Polish boy scouts.[10][13] The battle is considered one of the largest and most vicious of those involving the Polish Legions in World War I.[4] Piłsudski in his order of July 11, 1916 wrote that "the heaviest of our current fights took place in the recent days."[3] Notes [ edit ] References [ edit ] Further reading [ edit ] |
Hi friends. So I’m not one to ask for money lightly, but I have a cool opportunity to make something awesome – and I’d love some more funds to make it more awesome. So I’d like to ask y’all to see if you can help. I was recently contacted by Mayfield Primary School in Ōtara, asking if I would like to give a talk to the students about my art. This school is categorised as Decile 1, which means the school’s catchment area is one of the poorest in the country. After a quick google, I also realised that this school was in the news last year after their ex-Principal stole $30,000 of their operating budget and spent it on overseas holidays! They haven’t had the best luck recently. So I decided to go one better than speaking to the kids; I offered to paint the school a mural, if they could cover the cost of the paints. Then I visited the school, and afterwards I wanted to spend longer than one morning painting their walls. The school grounds have seen a lot of use, and the few murals they have are looking faded and decrepit. So now I want to get $500+ worth of paints, and spend at least five days painting two large murals in the school grounds – more, if I have any paint left. They have offered to put some money towards the paint, but I don’t want to ask them to pay for my time as well – it wouldn’t feel right asking for more funds from the school when it is money that should be going towards much-needed teaching resources. And the more funding I get, the more walls I can paint! Obviously I could do this via a crowdfunding site, but I did that before and it kinda blew up in my face – I still haven’t finished that project (another two boxes!), and I haven’t finished sending all the rewards I promised (but I will!!). So I’m going to do this one in a much more straightforward manner: please give me money so I can make cool art for these kids. That’s all. (–Bank details removed as the project is complete. Thank you!) I’m also not going to promise rewards for giving me $x, because I want to spend my time painting instead of making thank you gifts and waiting at the post office. All you’ll get in return is the satisfaction that you helped brighten the lives of a couple of hundred kids in what may well be Auckland’s poorest suburbs. And, really, there’s no reward I could possibly give that can match that feeling. any questions, hit me up: paul@paulwalsh.co.nz. peace P |
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More from Devon Black available More fromavailable here A lot has changed over the last 30 years. Between an increased capacity for data storage and the speed with which the Internet lets us share that data, the way we manage our lives — and our offices — has completely changed. I can now scan a document and email it with the same cell phone I use to play Angry Birds. It would be ridiculous to run a 1980s-style office in 2014. Unless, of course, you’re the federal government. Canada’s Access to Information Act came into being in 1983. At the time, it was a cutting-edge piece of legislation, giving Canadians brand-new tools to learn what their government was getting up to. But what was cutting-edge in 1983 hasn’t exactly stood the test of time. Canada’s Access to Information Act has barely been touched since it was first enacted. While the way our government does business has undergone a complete transformation — especially when it comes to handling information — the tools citizens have to monitor that work are hopelessly out of date. The Centre for Law and Democracy currently ranks Canada’s access to information regime at 57th out of 89. We lag behind Ethiopia, Yemen, and Russia — countries not exactly known for their strong democratic institutions. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In 2012, the Treasury Board launched its first ‘Open Government’ plan. That initiative was going to make government more transparent and accountable, in part by making more government data available to the public. Since then, Canada has actually dropped in the access to information ratings — from 40th place in 2011, to 55th in September 2012, to 57th now. In a tragicomic turn of events, the government’s response to its pathetic access to information ranking in 2012 only came out five months after an Access to Information request was submitted to obtain it — four months longer than the 30 day deadline that is supposed to apply in nearly all cases. Far from being an exception, that kind of delay is actually par for the course on access requests. Canada’s information commissioner, Suzanne Legault, actually took the Department of National Defence to court when it granted itself a three-year extension on an access to information request about sales of surplus military assets to Uruguay. The Treasury Board issued a directive in 2013 letting political staffers make decisions about whether documents requested from ministers’ offices should be released at all. The Federal Court ruled that it didn’t have jurisdiction to hear an application for judicial review in the matter. While a three-year delay might be unreasonable, the Access to Information Act doesn’t provide for any real remedy — the information commissioner is basically limited to issuing strongly-worded reports. (The Federal Court’s decision is being appealed.) To be fair, the government has taken some administrative steps to make it easier for Canadians to get access to information. One useful tool is the Access to Information online portal, which the government launched last year. Yes, it took until 2013 for Canadians to be able to submit access to information requests online — but at least we have an online request form now. But while the website for the form says the cost of a request is only $5.00, it doesn’t mention the potentially prohibitive fees involved in getting an answer. For instance, let’s say you want a document that doesn’t exist yet, but could be compiled from existing government data. You absolutely have the right to access that information — at a cost of $16.50 per minute for the cost of the “central processor,” and $5.00 for every 15 minutes a person spends “programming a computer” to get that information to you. By comparison, photocopies cost 20 cents per page; for non-computerized records, applicants can only be charged once the time spent on the search exceeds five hours. It’s no wonder, then, that requests for information that should be readily available can end up costing thousands of dollars. After all, how many government offices still print off and compile their data into paper documents? But let’s say you’re willing to wait, and you’re willing to pay. The government might still try to make an end-run around your request. The Treasury Board issued a directive in 2013 letting political staffers make decisions about whether documents requested from ministers’ offices should be released at all; according to Legault, some departments have not even bothered to review documents before deciding to exclude them from access to information requests. These problems are not exactly impossible to overcome. Putting a cap on search fees, or waiving them for applications that serve the public interest, would help deal with the cost issue. Stronger penalties for unreasonable delays would lead to more timely disclosure. Oh, and making sure the information commissioner’s office is adequately funded would go a long way, too. Unfortunately, the second round of Open Government initiatives, released last Thursday, doesn’t include updates to the Access to Information Act. According to Treasury Board president Tony Clement, the Access to Information Act is “a good piece of legislation.” And so it would be — if we still used typewriters to get things done. Access to information is a basic requirement for a healthy democracy. We need to know what our government does on our behalf, so that we can hold it accountable. The proactive disclosure touted in the Open Government plan is good, but it isn’t enough. We need a way to get at the information the government doesn’t want to share — and for that, we need an Access to Information Act with teeth. Devon Black is studying law at the University of Victoria. In addition to writing for iPolitics, Devon has worked for the Canadian International Development Agency, Leadership Africa USA and RamRais & Partners. The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics. |
One Laptop Per Child won't use Microsoft's Windows OS on its upcoming XO-3 tablet, which will run Linux, OLPC's CTO said Thursday. OLPC's chairman Nicholas Negroponte last year said that the organization was "urging" Microsoft to make a full version of Windows available for the earlier XO-2, which was also based on the Arm processor. The XO-2 was later canceled. The XO-3 will also use an Arm processor, but OLPC is ruling out loading multiple versions of Windows on the tablet, said Ed McNierney, OLPC's CTO, by e-mail Thursday. "We have no evidence that Microsoft will make full-featured Windows 7 available on Arm, and that's their decision," McNierney said. Arm processors can run the Windows Mobile OS, but Windows Phone 7, Microsoft's upcoming mobile OS, was also rejected by McNierney. "Our XO tablet will be a full-function computing device, not a smartphone or a PDA. Windows Mobile was designed for those markets, not general-purpose computing, and it's just not useful to us," McNierney said. Existing XO laptops, whose primary audience is children in developing countries, come with x86 chips and offer Linux and Windows operating systems. But OLPC and its partners like Sugar Labs have made progress in developing power-management features in Linux and that is the OS of choice for XO-3, McNierney said. "Our ability to achieve our low power goals depends on being able to make appropriate changes throughout the operating system, and that's just not possible except in an open source environment," McNierney said. An XO-3 prototype will first be displayed at the Consumer Electronics Show early next year running Google's Android OS, Negroponte said in an e-mail. By January 2012, XO-3 will likely run a different Linux OS. Current XO laptops run Linux with the Sugar platform, which provides an education-specific user interface. Sugar development is being managed by Sugar Labs, a nonprofit organization. McNierney said the company plans to stick to Sugar, but developers will need to adapt it for multitouch input capabilities to conform with XO-3's tablet design. Developers may also need to come up with alternative desktop interface ideas, McNierney said. |
The funny thing about racsism, is it can never be killed, ideas cannot be destroyed. I for oNE would love to racism gone, it wont be squashed. For this key reason, racism is just a learned behavoir, (factor in that 10% of the population is just too stupid to hear reason.) it stems from upbringing for sure. But let's go to that generation that I stilled racsim. Why are they racist? Well let's just say they were the first in the family life e to hate another race, that means an action they observed, somewhere along the lines they saw repeated behavoirs by a group of ethnically identical individuals breaking the social norms that we try to cultivate. I'm cutting this short so I can stop writing, if we truly want to end racsim we need to fix our selves, our family structure, and then conform to the laws set aside by the majority vote. Democracies advance through majority votes, not suckling up to the few who can't make it. |
Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, signaling that Republicans may revive last year’s battles over offsets to disaster aid relief, says he expects that any package to help Northeast states hit by the superstorm Sandy will have to including matching cuts in spending elsewhere in the federal budget. “We always help communities during disasters,” he said Wednesday after having met earlier in the day with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is pushing for quick passage of an aid package. “The difference you have got now is that it is going to have to be offset.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he does not expect to have a confrontation with GOP members over aid. “This is something that I think is important that we do as soon as we can. We want to make sure that the numbers are basically in the ballpark,” the Nevada Democrat said. “I’ve been told that the Republicans in the House agree that this is something that need not be paid for, and I hope that, in fact, is the case because if there were ever an act of God, an emergency, this is it.” Lawmakers are waiting to see how much the White House will seek for an initial disaster relief package to aid communities hard-hit by Sandy, which devastated portions of coastal New Jersey and metropolitan New York City. Officials from the region said in meetings on Capitol Hill on Wednesday that they want the White House to seek an $80 billion aid package for the region. Spearheading efforts for a large disaster aid package, and one to be moved through Congress without offsets, is the No. 3 Senate Democrat, Charles E. Schumer of New York. Schumer and other senators met Wednesday evening with acting Office of Management and Budget Director Jeff Zients. Schumer said he also met with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan late Tuesday. Schumer, who believes several disaster bills may be needed to address the recovery, said he thought the formal aid request would come by Dec. 4 and that it would include a request for substantial funding and the ability to ease some current funding restrictions. “We are laying out to the administration specifically what we need in terms of the number, but also in terms of flexibility,” Schumer said. “We have 300,000 badly damaged houses. The maximum that FEMA gives, $31,900, won’t rebuild those houses for people who don’t have insurance or whose insurance doesn’t cover it, and we need ... flexibility, which we can’t propose anymore under the earmark rules, and the administration has to.” But a larger measure almost certainly will be more difficult to pass, especially as leaders in Congress and the president are trying to negotiate the big tax and spending measures around the fiscal cliff. Budget hawk Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said the way the package is designed will determine how much resistance it encounters. “It depends on how they go about doing it. There needs to be an assessment of what the real need is,” he said, adding there will need to be savings found elsewhere to make up for new spending. “There’s going to be an effort on my part to pay for it.” Conservative Republicans lost last year on a bid to build offsets into proposed fiscal 2012 supplemental disaster aid, and it’s far from clear they can prevail in a similar bid this year. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., a senior appropriator whose state also was hit by Sandy, said she expects the disaster aid package to pass, especially with families who lost their homes and suffered other losses still struggling to recover. “People will see how really serious this is, and I think we are going to be able to get it through,” Mikulski said. “We are going into the holidays. The poignancy of this disaster at this particular season should soften even the tightest grip on the wallet.” It’s unclear how the disaster aid bill will move through Congress. Leaders might opt to put it forth as a stand-alone bill. The package also could be added to a lame-duck measure meant to buy Congress more time to negotiate a major deal on the budget that would seek to push the scheduled automatic spending cuts under sequester into next year. A third option would be to attach the disaster aid bill to a catchall fiscal 2013 spending bill, which appropriators in both parties and chambers hope to clear in December. The chances for an omnibus appear slim, with leadership aides in both parties and chambers noting Congress must first deal with the fiscal cliff before returning to unfinished fiscal 2013 appropriations. |
More options: Share, Mark as favorite Toyota’s announcement on Monday to move its headquarters and 3,000 jobs from Torrance, California to Plano, Texas has been in the news this week, here’s one report: Toyota delivered a surprise pink slip to California on Monday, announcing the company would move its U.S. headquarters and about 3,000 jobs from the Los Angeles suburbs to the outskirts of Dallas. The world’s largest automaker will keep a foothold in the Golden State – about 2,300 jobs will remain in California after the company settles into its new corporate campus in Plano, Texas. But the announcement is an economic and symbolic slap for California, a historic center of American car culture that has been trying to shake its reputation as a frustrating place to run a business, whether that involves shooting a film or selling a Prius. Toyota’s announcement comes about two months after Occidental Petroleum Corp. disclosed it was moving its headquarters to Houston from Los Angeles. “When you look at the whole package, it’s difficult to be a business here,” lamented Torrance Mayor Frank Scotto, whose community on the edge of the Pacific will suffer as the jobs migrate to Texas. The Torrance mayor is right about the difficulty of being a business in California. According to Forbes, California ranks as the 12th worst state in the country for doing business, while Texas ranks as the 7th best state for business overall, and No. 1 for “economic climate.” The Tax Foundation ranks Texas No. 11 for state tax climate, while California ranks second-worst in the country at No. 49. An interesting and revealing market-based measure of the relative attractiveness (and migration patterns) of the two states is to compare the cost of a one-way U-Haul truck going from California to Texas vs. the cost going in the other direction. To rent a 26-foot truck one-way, here are the current prices being quoted by U-Haul for June 18: Torrance, CA to Plano, TX: $2,626 Plano, TX to Torrance, CA: $1,264 Los Angeles, CA to Dallas, TX: $2,558 Dallas TX to Los Angeles: $1,232 Bottom Line: The cost of a one-way U-Haul truck leaving California for Texas is more than twice the cost to rent that same truck going from Texas to California, suggesting that there are twice as many trucks and people leaving California for Texas than vice-versa. Based on the huge difference in demand for one-way truck rentals, there is a premium of more than 100% for Californians to rent trucks going to Texas, and large discounts for trucks going in the opposite direction to California. U-Haul’s market-based pricing seems to confirm the California exodus to Texas of jobs, people and businesses like Toyota and Occidental. |
Hi all, It’s been a while since I posted a new article. This is because I have ventured into the exciting field of Machine Learning and have been doing some competitions on Kaggle. In this quick post I just wanted to share some Python code which can be used to benchmark, test, and develop Machine Learning algorithms with any size of data. In other words: this dataset generation can be used to do emperical measurements of Machine Learning algorithms. The code has been commented and I will include a Theano version and a numpy-only version of the code. Numpy dataset generator def load_testing(size=5, length=10000, classes=3): # Super-duper important: set a seed so you always have the same data over multiple runs. np.random.seed(123) # Generate random data between 0 and 1 as a numpy array. # The size determines the amount of input values. x=[] for i in range (0, length): x.append(np.asarray(np.random.uniform(low=0, high=1, size=size), dtype='float64')) # Split up the input array into training/test/validation sets. train_set_x = x[:int(len(x)*0.6)] test_set_x = x[int(len(x)*0.6):int(len(x)*0.8)] valid_set_x = x[int(len(x)*0.8):] # For each input in x, we will generate a class for y. # If classes is set to less than or equal to 1, it will output real numbers # for regression. y=[] for row in x: row_tmp = list() for i in range(0, len(row)): row_tmp.append(row[i] * 2. - 1) row_tmp[i] = (np.tanh(row_tmp[i])) * (i+1) output = np.sin(np.mean(row_tmp)) # If classes > 1 we will output classes, else we output real numbers. if (classes > 1): classnum = 0 # Generate class limits depending on the amount of classes you want. classranges = np.arange(-1,1,(2./float(classes)))[::-1] for i in classranges: if (output >= i): y.append(classnum) break classnum = classnum + 1 else: y.append(output) # Convert Y to a numpy array and split it up into train/test/validation sets. y = np.asarray(y) train_set_y = y[:int(len(x)*0.6)] test_set_y = y[int(len(x)*0.6):int(len(x)*0.8)] valid_set_y = y[int(len(x)*0.8):] # Return the dataset in pairs of x,y for train/test/validation sets. rval = [(train_set_x, train_set_y), (valid_set_x, valid_set_y), (test_set_x, test_set_y)] return rval Theano dataset generator import numpy as np import theano import theano.tensor as T def load_testing(size=5, length=10000, classes=3): # Super-duper important: set a seed so you always have the same data over multiple runs. np.random.seed(123) # Generate random data between 0 and 1 as a numpy array. # The size determines the amount of input values. x=[] for i in range (0, length): x.append(np.asarray(np.random.uniform(low=0, high=1, size=size), dtype='float64')) # Split up the input array into training/test/validation sets. train_set_x = x[:int(len(x)*0.6)] test_set_x = x[int(len(x)*0.6):int(len(x)*0.8)] valid_set_x = x[int(len(x)*0.8):] # For each input in x, we will generate a class for y. # If classes is set to less than or equal to 1, it will output real numbers # for regression. y=[] for row in x: row_tmp = list() for i in range(0, len(row)): # Normalize from -1 to 1 and take the hyperbolic tangent of the separate values. # Note: we do "* (i+1)" on each value to give a different importance to the input variables. row_tmp.append(row[i] * 2. - 1) row_tmp[i] = (np.tanh(row_tmp[i])) * (i+1) output = np.sin(np.mean(row_tmp)) # If classes > 1 we will output classes, else we output real numbers. if (classes > 1): classnum = 0 # Generate class limits depending on the amount of classes you want. classranges = np.arange(-1,1,(2./float(classes)))[::-1] for i in classranges: if (output >= i): y.append(classnum) break classnum = classnum + 1 else: y.append(output) # Convert Y to a numpy array and split it up into train/test/validation sets. y = np.asarray(y) train_set_y = y[:int(len(x)*0.6)] test_set_y = y[int(len(x)*0.6):int(len(x)*0.8)] valid_set_y = y[int(len(x)*0.8):] def shared_dataset(data_xy, borrow=True): #Create a shared dataset. This is only if you are using Theano data_x, data_y = data_xy shared_x = theano.shared(np.asarray(data_x, dtype=theano.config.floatX), borrow=borrow) shared_y = theano.shared(np.asarray(data_y, dtype=theano.config.floatX), borrow=borrow) return shared_x, T.cast(shared_y, 'int32') if (use_theano): # Convert the numpy arrays into theano datasets, IF using theano. train_set_x, train_set_y = shared_dataset((train_set_x, train_set_y)) test_set_x, test_set_y = shared_dataset((test_set_x, test_set_y)) valid_set_x, valid_set_y = shared_dataset((valid_set_x, valid_set_y)) # Return the dataset in pairs of x,y for train/test/validation sets. rval = [(train_set_x, train_set_y), (valid_set_x, valid_set_y), (test_set_x, test_set_y)] return rval Have fun with these snippets! |
The 14th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks was marked with tributes and vigils last week, but this week troubling new information has come to light surrounding comedian Steve Rannazzisi and his ongoing tale of escaping the World Trade Center on that fateful day. The New York Times reports that the factuality of Rannazzisi’s account, which he has talked about in numerous interviews, was questioned recently, causing The League star, 37, to admit he’d lied. PHOTOS: Biggest celebrity scandals “I was not at the Trade Center on that day,” he said in a statement from his publicist, Matthew Labov. “I don’t know why I said this. This was inexcusable. I am truly, truly sorry.” “For many years, more than anything, I have wished that, with silence, I could somehow erase a story told by an immature young man,” Rannazzisi’s statement continued. “It only made me more ashamed. How could I tell my children to be honest when I hadn’t come clean about this?” Rannazzisi’s lie first surfaced in 2009, when he told a reporter, “I was there and then the first tower got hit and we were like jostled all over the place.” PHOTOS: Celeb flubs on live TV The actor claimed he worked for Merrill Lynch on the 54th floor. Years later, he altered his story, saying he was outside the building when the plane hit. In reality, the stand-up comedian was working in Midtown at the time. In 2011 he gave another interview where he mentioned the attacks, saying, “I’ve spoken about it before. I just don’t ever want to feel like, anyone, I am cashing in or anything like that.” Rannazzisi has often credited the events of that day for inspiring him to move to Los Angeles and start his career in entertainment. Already his endorsement deal with Buffalo Wild Wings is being questioned. PHOTOS: Celebrity feuds “We are disappointed to learn of Steve’s misrepresentations regarding the events of September 11, 2001,” the company said in a statement. “We are currently re-evaluating our relationship with Steve pending a review of all the facts.” The star seemed sincere in his statement, adding, “It was profoundly disrespectful to those who perished and those who lost loved ones. The stupidity and guilt I have felt for many years has not abated. It was an early taste of having a public persona, and I made a terrible mistake. All I can ask is for forgiveness.” Sign up now for the Us Weekly newsletter to get breaking celebrity news, hot pics and more delivered straight to your inbox! Want stories like these delivered straight to your phone? Download the Us Weekly iPhone app now! |
Running back Theo Riddick has become a vegan in an effort to maintain a healthy diet. (Photo: Daniel Mears, Detroit News) Allen Park — In the first week of Lions training camp, running back Theo Riddick has been untouchable. It’s not about his sleek shifts in the backfield or fleet footwork, which has made him one of the most intriguing and productive players in the Lions’ offense. Along with the quarterbacks, Riddick is wearing one of the red practice jerseys, signifying that he’s not to be hit, as he looks to protect his right wrist. Riddick had surgery last season and missed the last three games, after a promising start to last season. He’s worked to stay in shape and has returned to training camp with a new regimen: he’s cut out red meat and is now a vegan. “I turned vegan over the summer. I’ve noticed a difference just with my energy level,” Riddick said Friday. “I’m not a junk-food type of eater. I’m like a smoothie guy; I do a lot of fruit and throw my kale and all my protein in there and that’s how I get everything.” At 5-foot-10 and about 200 pounds, Riddick has tried to find a delicate balance between strength and speed, as one of the ascending pass-catching running backs in the league. Riddick, 26, is entering his fifth season and on the heels of the wrist injury, is looking to bounce back along with Ameer Abdullah, to add more punch to the run game. The big change didn’t come as a mandate from the team or even from a dietician or nutritionist. In fact, it was a bit closer to home. “My lady,” Riddick said. “It was from reading documents and watching documentaries (such as Netflix’s ‘What the Health’). “Watching things like that is alarming on a lot of levels because of a lot of things you don’t know in terms of things you eat on a daily basis such as chicken and drinking milk has no nutritional value. You have to be conscientious of what you’re putting in your body.” For all of the offseason, the Lions have kept a watchful eye on Riddick, taking a more cautious approach to ensure that he doesn’t sustain a freak injury before the preseason even gets started. Riddick did individual work throughout organized team activities earlier in the summer and his conditioning has kept him in shape and ready to go. Donning the red jersey is just another checkpoint on the way to being back at full health for Riddick, dodging any final obstacles along the way. It’s just a couple weeks until the preseason opener on Aug. 13 and the regular-season opener on Sept. 10. “He’s coming along well in terms of cardiovascular shape; he’s in good shape and moving around out there,” coach Jim Caldwell said. “The only thing we’re not allowing him to do is have contact. He went to the ground one time but other than that, he’s making good progress.” Riddick had his best season in 2015, when he played all 16 games and totaled 80 catches for 697 yards and three touchdowns. Paired with a healthy Abdullah in the backfield, the tandem could bolster what was one of the worst rushing backfields in the league last season. Only time will tell — and the first contact from a hit after the red jersey comes off. Rod.Beard@detroitnews.com Twitter: @detnewsRodBeard |
U.S. president Martin Van Buren (Photo: Library of Congress) When Crescent Ballroom owner Charlie Levy of Stateside Presents announced an online contest for the naming of his latest downtown music venue on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Van Buren Streets last fall, hundreds upon hundreds of suggestions poured into the Stateside Facebook page. “There were a lot of good names,” Levy says, “and a lot of stinkers.” One suggestion really grabbed him, though. “The Van Buren was a simple name that just kept popping up,” he says. “It was a name that everyone at Stateside thought would fit the venue. Obviously, in Phoenix, Van Buren has a lot of connotations. Historically, it was the first paved highway that connected the East Coast to California. People used to drive through Phoenix on their way across the country. It was where all the hotels were, the center of town. And then, obviously, in the more recent past, it had a different connotation.” Part of a downtown Phoenix resurgence Photo of the site of Crescent Ballroom owner Charlie Levy's latest music venue as it looked in in the 1940s. (Photo: Pat Cantelme) Now, of course, it’s in the middle of a huge downtown resurgence – “between the Welnick building that will be next door that Pat (Cantelme) and Jim (Kuykendall) own to obviously the Crescent Ballroom, the Praise Sanctuary Church project, ASU and all the other things that have been happening on Van Buren.” But “the cherry on top,” Levy says, was when the Stateside crew got a good look at President Martin Van Buren and those hipster-friendly mutton chops. “We really liked the way he looked,” Levy says. “He had a really cool, stylish look. So it was like a logo was already made for us.” At this point, the Van Buren is set to open at some point in mid-2017, but Levy is already talking up a party to be held there on Dec. 5 – Van Buren’s birthday. “We talked to the Martin Van Buren National Historic site about doing a big party on his birthday,” Levy says, “where if you’re sporting mutton chops, you get discounts on your drinks that night.” The Van Buren historical site reached out to Levy. Birthday bash on Dec. 5 “We received an email from the Martin Van Buren National Historic site from Miss Patricia McKay in Kinderhook, N.Y., reaching out to offer her congratulations and seeing if there was any way that they could help out and be part of it. So hopefully, we’ll use that, maybe get some really cool information and some photos that we can put up. We were talking about how we can do a contest and fly people out to the residence of Martin Van Buren in Kinderhook, which would be pretty fun. I can’t wait to go. “ In the meantime, he says, they already made mugs for the office with a picture of Martin Van Buren on one side and the venue name on the other. 'We’re on schedule' for construction A rendering of how the Van Buren music club in downtown Phoenix will look after it opens later this year. (Photo: Stateside Presents) The venue will be housed in a 20,000-square-foot building that was once home to the Phoenix Motor Company dealership. “The owners of the building approached us about two years ago,” Levy told us in October. “And I think back then the timing just wasn’t right. But they came back to us about three months ago, and we revisited and decided that it was a good thing to do. We’re getting the Stateside team and the Valley Bar and Crescent gangs and Tucker (Woodbury). I can’t do a venue without Tucker. He’s our Yoda. And we’re gonna put some shows on down the road.” Construction has been going great, Levy says. “We’re on schedule. Every day, we’re moving forward. We brought in Patch & Clark Design from Tucson. They did the design for the Valley Bar, so we brought them on as consultants to give the Van Buren a little extra love, which I’m very excited about. We can’t wait for it to be open and get some shows in there and have people open the doors. The waiting is the hardest part, as Tom Petty would say.” MORE AZCENTRAL ON SOCIAL: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest NEWSLETTERS Get the Things to do this weekend newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Best Things to do this weekend Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-332-6733. Delivery: Thurs Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Things to do this weekend Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495.Twitter.com/EdMasley. Read or Share this story: http://azc.cc/2jI8QnF |
Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither? from the efficiency-lags-change dept Robots : The idea here is that automation has meant fewer jobs, and thus has held down wages and kept the supply of workers high. This is an old argument, of course, but perhaps one worth thinking about. We'll discuss it more below. : The idea here is that automation has meant fewer jobs, and thus has held down wages and kept the supply of workers high. This is an old argument, of course, but perhaps one worth thinking about. We'll discuss it more below. Robber barons: That is, monopolists. The argument here is that when you see an aggregation of wealth to "capital," it suggests that the free market is somehow "stuck," and one possible reason is that the "owners of capital" have effectively created monopolies, allowing them to retain more than a free market might allow, via monopoly rents. Barry Lynn and Philip Longman have argued that we're seeing a rapid rise in market concentration and market power. The thing about market power is that it could simultaneously raise the average rents to capital and reduce the return on investment as perceived by corporations, which would now take into account the negative effects of capacity growth on their markups. So a rising-monopoly-power story would be one way to resolve the seeming paradox of rapidly rising profits and low real interest rates. For reasons that I do not fully understand, Paul Krugman is a name that gets peopleworked up for often irrational reasons -- mostly having to do with red team / blue team political arguments that have little bearing on actual economics. My personal preference is to ignore the whole somewhat meaningless "left/right" dichotomy (no matter where a particular economist is normally associated) and focus on the actual economics being discussed. And, recently, Krugman has been doing some deep thinking on what he's referred to as the question of robots or robber barons . The issue may be a little deep in the weeds for folks who aren't econgeeks, but it is both really interesting and really important to think through.The short version -- hopefully translated sufficiently via my "econgeek to normal people" translator -- is that there are economic metrics out there suggesting that things should be much better than they are: in particular, companies are making massive profits. But, at the same time,are not showing any sort of increase. Krugman uses this graph to demonstrate the point:As the graphic shows, as a percentage, wages ("labor") have been dropping. If the output is not going to wages, where is it going? Krugman uses the term "capital," which, basically (in this case), just means return on investment for assets: that is, if you own stuff, you're getting a return on it, which is going into your pockets rather than to people doing work. Of course, when you look just at percentages of a single factor, things can quickly get misleading -- and at least some have suggested that looking at just the percentage going to labor may be exaggerated by a hidden third factor, such as land . While using terms like "labor" and "capital" are standard in economics, I find that they actually can distort the conversation (and even Krugman notes that some of the discussion veers into what sounds like "Marxist" discussions on "capital" and "labor").A simpler and perhaps more useful way of looking at things is: Where is the money going and how is it spent? And, as it stands now, over the past ten years, the amount of money going to wages, as a percentage of money being made, has been going down. So what's it all mean? Krugman has two theories -- both of which may actually be true to varying degrees.If you think both of those suggestions sound somewhat anachronistic, you're not wrong. Both of those possible arguments sound quite similar to the complaints people made a century or so ago. And, as with that situation, I'd argue that the two explanations that Krugman puts forth may both have some element of truth, but also may not tell the whole story by a long shot.Let's start with the robots. For years, many have suggested that greater productivity from automation leads to lower demand for human employees, thus creating less demand for workers -- leading to lower salaries, high unemployment and all that jazz. Many people (myself included) have often used the term "luddites" for this, after the original followers of Ned Ludd, who believed that the industrial revolution was destroying jobs, leading to the "Luddites" smashing machines. The term is used pejoratively, because the original Luddites, for the most part, weren't just wrong but were ridiculously wrong. Far from destroying jobs, automation eventually created many new jobs.And, instinctively, I have the same reaction to the argument when put forth here. We've heard this claim for so long, that greater productivity leads to fewer jobs -- but in practice it has never come true. It has, certainly, meant that there has been job, and potentially a shift in-- which can be very difficult for those whose skills are no longer relevant. But, in the longer term, such automation has always created more jobs.Does that necessarily mean that this shall always be the case? Not necessarily, but I'd argue that the long history of it being true suggests that you would need very, very strong evidence to back up the claim this time around -- and I'm not convinced we've seen that. Of course, playing devil's advocate to myself, I can see one plausible argument that someone could make (even if I don't think it's true): automation in physical work increased demands for jobs in other sectors -- such as services and information processing (desk jobs). But therevolution has now started to automate many ofjobs as well, and it's not clear where we move along the spectrum from there. That is, as the argument goes, that new jobs have always been created further along the spectrum from manual labor to services to information processing, but we've more or less hit the end of the line.I find this difficult to believe for a few reasons. First, the same argument was made in the past every time some new fears about automation came along. And every time it turned out that there were new job opportunities. I can't see that changing now. At all. If it becomes true that labor is really increasingly available or cheap, that will create all sorts of new opportunities to make use of it. The news that Apple is going to start making some computers in the US is just a small indication of that possibility coming true. And, yes, even if they're using a robot-centric process, they're still creating domestic jobs. But, further on that, there's tremendous opportunity coming out of disruptive innovation to create new jobs where none really existed previously. The number of people making a living by selling goods on things like eBay, Etsy or Amazon is astounding. Even newer tools like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are creating additional possibilities, and we write about all sorts of interesting business models all the time -- creating new opportunities. Similarly, we've seen things like distributed call center services, such that people can work from home and be productive. In fact, this could help explain some aspects of wage decline, as some people, who might have formerly not been in the workforce at all, can now work part time from home.But, of course, job displacement is messy, and figuring out where the new job opportunities are, and how they apply on a wider scale, is not a smooth process at all. It takes time to work out the kinks -- and that could explain the lag in wages. It could simply be the dip in efficiency as we enter that chaotic period of experimentation and attempts at new things before it becomes more clear where the new job opportunities will be.The "robber baron" argument makes a lot more sense to me -- and it even appears that Krugman may be leaning bit more that way, after hearing from some other economists:Of course, I think that the use of the term "robber barons" is potentially misleading as well. This isn't necessarily a case of the Andrew Carnegies, JD Rockefellers, JP Morgans and Cornelius Vanderbilts of old. Instead, it often seems that what we're dealing with are less super greedy "robber barons" (and yes, I know some people will point to examples that suggest otherwise -- especially on Wall Street) and more of a fightinnovation. This goes back to my recent discussion on corruption laundering , in which companies are able to secure favorable regulations that actually help them against disruptive upstarts by arguing that allowing the upstarts will harm "jobs" or will upset the economic apple cart.In the end, that leads me to wonder if what we're really seeing is a third thing, which can account for both the "robots" and "robber barons" story lines and tie back to that corruption laundering situation: the rise of what Andy Kessler has referred to as political entrepreneurs vs. market entrepreneurs. In that scenario, you have companies who aren't quite robber barons, but are adept at using the political system to engage in a form of "corruption laundering" to put in place regulations that limit true competitionthe kind of innovation that helps to speed up the creation of new jobs.In some sense, we've discussed this before , in noting that politicians often fear disruptive innovation because it "destroys jobs" even as it's creating new ones. So they pass regulations that hinder disruptive innovation, in an attempt to "protect jobs." But the end result is that the few larger players in the industry tend to suck up control of that industry and, as such, limit job growth (and begin to profit by being able to capture the monopoly rents). They can employ greater automation to suck more profits out of their own business, but also can hold back the disruptive innovation that creates new jobs.So, in that scenario, you get higher profits and fewer jobs -- with increasing automation. But you're missing out on the important disruptive innovations that help create the new jobs. Part of the problem with the "robots" storyline from Krugman is that it assumes all technological advancement is equal: that big companies automating is the same thing as disruptive innovation that enables new jobs. I don't think that's true. Either way, these are certainly big and important questions worth thinking about and exploring. Filed Under: automation, capital, corruption, disruption, economics, innovation, jobs, labor, paul krugman, regulation, robber barons, robots, wages |
The sun, the moon and the planet Earth haven't aligned perfectly since 1982, and won't again until 2033, making tonight's total lunar eclipse of a supermoon a particularly special occasion. Andrew Fazekas, the Night Sky Guy and science writer, said the total lunar eclipse just so happens to coincide with the perigee moon — the one night a year when the moon is closest to Earth, otherwise known as the supermoon. "What you're going to be seeing is basically the earth's shadow being cast on the surface of the moon, and this happens when the sun, the earth and the moon align perfectly. You get to see the shadow creep across the surface. It takes an hour and a half to happen, and then when the moon enters the deepest part of earth's shadow, that's when it turns that beautiful orangey-copper colour, or sometimes blood red colour," Fazekas said. Watching the supermoon in Montreal He said the show starts at 9:07 p.m. ET on Sunday, when the moon will begin to be covered by Earth's shadow. At 10:11 p.m., the moon will begin turning red — a phenomenon Fazekas said is caused by the way the sun's light is bent by the particles in Earth's atmosphere, causing it to hit the red end of the spectrum. The eclipse should wrap up around 10:37 p.m. Fazekas said anyone in the Montreal area with a clear view of the moon and the eastern skies should be able to see the eclipse, whether it's from your bedroom window, a rooftop, the Montreal Planetarium or the Morgan Arboretum in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue — the latter of which is where Fazekas will be. |
“Toys have a very short shelf life,” he said. “On Dec. 26, they’re not really useful to retailers anymore, so they have to get rid of it and start slashing prices early in December.” And it is a precise window of opportunity. In the week or so before Christmas, toy prices shoot back up, Mr. de Grandpre’s tracking shows, as last-minute shoppers come stampeding for Barbies and Lego sets and stores are less desperate “because they’ve been able to reduce their inventory.” The added value Professor Etzioni brings to price discussions is the computer crunching of the trove of data provided by online prices — and specific recommendations about when to make a purchase. Photo Following the approach of Farecast, now part of Microsoft’s Bing search engine, the professor’s start-up company, Decide.com, studies current and historical prices, information about new models and rumors about new product introductions to figure out the best time to buy. Type in the name of a product — a Soundcast SurroundCast speaker system, for instance. Decide.com will pull prices from around the Web, and tell you to buy or wait. In the SurroundCast case, it showed this week that prices were at $150 in early September and had now gone up to $160. The verdict: wait. Decide.com said it was 96 percent confident that prices for the speaker system would drop within two weeks. Introduced this summer, the Web site predicts prices for consumer electronics only, though Professor Etzioni says there are plans to expand to categories like cars and potentially even clothing in a couple of years. In the meantime, others are making educated guesses about when it is best to spend money on variety of products. Advertisement Continue reading the main story James C. Bieri, who heads a Detroit-based real estate firm that leases to retailers, has determined there are far better times than the Friday after Thanksgiving to make most apparel purchases. Many stores offer steep discounts on products other than clothing, he said, to get shoppers into their stores. Photo “They’re going to use apparel to get some of the margins back on the stuff they’re giving away,” he said. Better times to make apparel purchases include back-to-school and post-holiday clearance sales, and it is an area where coupons, friends-and-family discounts and the like are big money-savers. Assuming fruitcake and candy canes still sound good after the holidays, sales of gourmet food and candy should be postponed until then, advised Brad Wilson, of BradsDeals.com, because prices drop drastically. As for appliances, major retailers like Sears tend to discount those at the end of their fiscal quarters (Sears’s next quarter ends Jan. 31.) But Mr. de Grandpre said that this year, the deals in the weeks before Thanksgiving had been as good as he could remember, especially from retailers like Lowe’s and Home Depot, and brands like LG and Samsung. Retailers do discount smaller appliances on the Friday after Thanksgiving. “You’ll see small kitchen electronics under $20, sometimes under $10 — blenders, toasters,” he said. “But it’s low-end, cheap Chinese knockoffs that are heavily discounted — often there’s a mail-in rebate hassle that goes with it — but it’s a very, very low price.” That is true of most of the biggest deals on that Friday, he said. Because retailers want to impress shoppers with very low prices, the quality of the discounted items can be low. Photo For higher-end electronics, Mr. de Grandpre’s trends show, shoppers should wait until the week after Thanksgiving. “Black Friday is about cheap stuff at cheap prices, and I mean cheap in every connotation of the word,” Mr. de Grandpre said. Manufacturers like Dell or HP will allow their cheap laptops to be discounted via retailers on that Friday, but they will reserve markdowns through their own sites for later. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “Their best promotions happen during Cyber Monday week,” he said, referring to the marketing name drummed up by online retailers for the Monday after Thanksgiving. Did Decide.com agree with the laptop advice? It did. A low-end Dell laptop had dropped to $249 at Amazon this week, and Decide said to buy it now. But for a more feature-heavy laptop, priced at $1,528 at Sears and $1,541 at PCNation, Decide said to wait, as it expected prices to stay flat or decline by up to $339 within two weeks. On Friday, “there will be big sales, but are they big sale on the items you want?” Professor Etzioni said, over his remarkably clear cellphone connection from Bali. “Look at all the amazing volatility, and wait for the price drops.” If some consumers insist on shopping on Friday, Professor Etzioni and Mr. de Grandpre have some suggestions. Movies, music and books are among the few categories that reach their lowest prices starting the week of Thanksgiving, Mr. de Grandpre said. And for online shoppers, the professor’s Decide.com could spot a good deal in a holiday special of smartphones for 1 cent from Amazon. “Buy,” the Web site advised, “before prices rise.” |
Connacht Rugby has been shocked by the sudden retirement of long-serving prop Brett Wilkinson. The popular 30-year-old has been forced to retire from the sport immediately as a result of a recent neck injury. The South African-born player, who has 183 caps for Connacht, damaged a neck ligament during Connacht’s final Heineken Cup game against Saracensand the medical advice was to immediately stop playing any contact sport. Having joined the province eight years ago, Wilkinson established himself as a first choice prop since his debut against the Borders. He was also capped five times for the Irish Wolfhounds. Although selected to travel to New Zealand with Ireland in 2012, his only game for his adopted country was in an uncapped friendly with the Barbarians. “I’m devastated that I won’t play again, but the nature of my injury was very serious and I have to appreciate that I have my health,” said Wilkinson. “I have had time to get over the initial shock and I am just real grateful for all the opportunities I have had through rugby. “Connacht has been building and building every year and, while I am sad I won’t be a part of it in the same way anymore, I’m excited to follow its progress as a supporter and a friend.” Having worked under Michael Bradley, Eric Elwood, and now Pat Lam, Wilkinson paid special thanks to assistant coach Dan McFarland whom, he said, had “influenced my game in so many ways”. Lam described Wilkinson as a “true team man” and added: “He is not afraid of hard work, and represents what it is to be a Connacht man and wear the Connacht jersey. “The work he did this season with Dan (McFarland) to improve his game was phenomenal and he has been so reliable for us on and off the pitch. For now, he will remain a big part of the squad as we look to finish the season on a high.” From the Eastern Cape in South Africa, Wilkinson won a scholarship from school to the University of Cape Town, but has played all his club rugby with Connacht. Engaged to an Irish woman, he was granted Irish Citizenship last year and plans to remain in Ireland |
Story highlights Demonstrators let city workers enter central government offices Key road near protest site reopens to traffic Monday morning Student group says it has met with government representatives Crowds remained on the streets early Monday, the day authorities had set as deadline Pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong ignored a deadline given by the government to disperse but allowed city workers to enter offices that had been blocked last week. There were no apparent signs of any police action against the demonstrators early Monday, and the protest sites were populated but peaceful. The protesters, many of them students, have blocked major highways in several key districts for the past week, challenging a decision by Beijing about how elections will work in the semiautonomous Chinese territory. Hong Kong's top leader, Chief Executive C.Y. Leung, had called on the demonstrators to disperse by Monday so that classes can resume at schools and government employees can go back to work at offices surrounded by protesters. JUST WATCHED Violent outbursts caught on camera Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Violent outbursts caught on camera 02:10 JUST WATCHED Generational gap in Hong Kong protests Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Generational gap in Hong Kong protests 02:45 JUST WATCHED Who are powering the Hong Kong protests? Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Who are powering the Hong Kong protests? 02:06 JUST WATCHED Hong Kong protestors hacked through app Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Hong Kong protestors hacked through app 03:01 By Monday morning, a key road adjacent to Leung's office reopened, although some 100 students remained camped out in front, according to a CNN staffer on the scene. The protesters did not block the paths of Hong Kong government workers, allowing them to enter the Central Government Office Building through a corridor the students formed. Workers could be seen entering the building without incident. Talks planned The Hong Kong Federation of Students said at a press conference it had met with three representatives of the government to try to pave the way for future talks with Hong Kong's Chief Secretary Carrie Lam, the territory's second in command, to potentially defuse the crisis. Lester Shum, the deputy secretary general for the students' federation, told reporters that the two sides had failed to reach an agreement, but had agreed to continue the dialogue, which both parties said would be direct and mutually respectful. He said the students laid out three conditions for future talks: that the dialogue must be ongoing, that the student leaders must be treated as equals, and that real political change must emerge from the talks. He said the student protesters would continue the protest until they had a productive dialogue. Addressing crowds at the protests, the federation's secretary general, Alex Chow, repeatedly called on protesters to "add oil" -- a phrase meaning "keep it up" -- as he urged the movement to continue. The federation also said in a statement that the government needed to take violence against the protesters seriously, and refrain from forcefully clearing the sites -- or the occupation would "certainly continue." 'You can see we all want to stay' There was confusion Sunday evening as to whether protesters would leave two major protest locations to consolidate their efforts at the main demonstration site in the city's Admiralty district. The protest group Occupy Central with Love and Peace said on its Twitter account that demonstrators had decided to withdraw from outside the chief executive's office, a key point of tension with authorities. But after the tweet was sent, crowd numbers at the site grew rapidly, according to CNN staff present, with protesters yelling that it was false information that they were leaving. Occupy Central also said that demonstrators at the Mong Kok protest site, where clashes have taken place with opponents of the movement, would relocate to the main protest site on a multilane highway near the government headquarters in Admiralty. But other protesters did not want to comply with Occupy's announcement. They sat on the ground, and barricades were not moved. Gary Yuen, 30, who has been at the Mong Kok site since the protests started, told CNN that less than 20 people had relocated to Admiralty. "Today there are lots of supporters," he said. "You can see we all want to stay." Chow, of the students' federation, told Hong Kong's public broadcaster RTHK it was up to individual protesters to decide if they would remain at the Mong Kok protest, but those who decided to stay should take care for their safety. Earlier clashes in busy area Dozens of people were injured as scuffles broke out Friday and Saturday at the protest site in Mong Kok, a tightly packed district of shops and residences surrounding one of the city's busiest intersections. Hong Kong government figures show that 165 people -- 120 male and 45 female -- have been injured since the protests started last week. Students and other protesters have accused police of failing to protect them from attacks by people who want an end to the demonstrations. Police have rejected the accusations, calling them "totally unfounded and extremely unfair to police officers who faithfully and diligently performed their duty at the scene." The protesters had broken off previously planned talks with the government because of the violence. Roots of unrest Demonstrators are upset with a decision this summer by China's ruling Communist Party to let a committee stacked with Beijing loyalists choose who can run as a candidate for the chief executive role in the 2017 election. A new electoral system will, for the first time, let the city's 5 million eligible voters pick a winner rather than the largely pro-Beijing committee of 1,200 members that has chosen past leaders. But critics argue that the right to vote is pointless if the candidates are handpicked by Beijing. They complain the Chinese government is encroaching too heavily on the affairs of Hong Kong, which has been governed according to the "one country, two systems" policy since Britain handed it back to China in 1997. Support for the protest swelled last Sunday, when police used tear gas and pepper spray in a failed effort to disperse demonstrators. The use of such heavy-handed tactics shocked many residents in Hong Kong, where protests usually unfold peacefully. The Chinese and Hong Kong governments have declared the demonstrations illegal. Beijing has heavily restricted the flow of information on the Chinese mainland about the protest movement. |
Federal agents have arrested an Iraqi refugee in Sacramento on a charge that he lied to immigration authorities over his ties to terror groups and travel to Syria, where he allegedly fought before returning to the United States in 2014. Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, 23, an Iraqi-born Palestinian, is named in a criminal complaint filed Wednesday in federal court in Sacramento and unsealed late Thursday as word of his arrest began to spread. He is to appear in federal court on Friday at 2 p.m. “Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab allegedly traveled overseas to fight alongside terrorist organizations and lied to U.S. authorities about his activities,” U.S. Assistant Attorney General John Carlin said in a statement. “The National Security Division’s highest priority is protecting the nation from terrorism, and we will continue to hold accountable those who seek to join or aid the cause of terrorism, whether at home or abroad.” Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to The Sacramento Bee Word of the complaint came amid reports of terror-related investigations in Milwaukee and Houston and the announcement of another Iraqi refugee being arrested in the Texas city. The arrest of Al-Jayab, who is being held in the Sacramento County jail without bail, was confirmed by U.S. Attorney Ben Wagner’s office in Sacramento. “According to the allegations in the complaint, the defendant traveled to Syria to take up arms with terrorist organizations and concealed that conduct from immigration authorities,” Wagner said. “While he represented a potential safety threat, there is no indication that he planned any acts of terrorism in this country.” The criminal complaint and 18-page supporting FBI affidavit say Al-Jayab emigrated from Syria to the United States in October 2012, where he initially lived in Tucson, Ariz., and then moved to Milwaukee before traveling overseas. While he was living in Milwaukee, Al-Jayab allegedly began communicating with individuals in Syria about traveling there and about his past experience fighting overseas, the complaint says. “America will not isolate me from my Islamic duty,” Al-Jayab allegedly wrote on April 8, 2013, to one acquaintance. “Only death will do us part. My only wish is to see you and start the action.” At one point, Al-Jayab wrote to another person that “I am at the shooting club. I want to learn long-range shooting,” and sent photos from a gun range in Wisconsin as well as photos of himself with various weapons, the complaint states. Investigators say Al-Jayab received about $4,500 from an auto insurance claim in November 2013 and bought an airline ticket from Chicago to Istanbul, Turkey, from which he crossed the border into Syria. While he was overseas, he allegedly communicated with associates and relatives about traveling to Syria to join up with terror groups to fight with them. In January 2014, Al-Jayab returned to the United States on a flight from London to Los Angeles and, later, Sacramento, the criminal complaint states. Upon entering the country in California, the complaint states, Al-Jayab listed only Jordan and the United Kingdom on a customs form listing where he had traveled. He was interviewed by immigration authorities in July 2014 and said he had traveled to Turkey about six months earlier, the complaint states. Al-Jayab was interviewed again in October 2014 and told authorities he had gone to Turkey to visit his grandmother but said he had not provided any assistance to terror groups, the complaint states. In June 2015, Al-Jayab was interviewed again by FBI agents and told them “voluntarily and without solicitation from the FBI” about travel problems he was having at an airport, the complaint says. “During that interview, Al-Jayab stated he had traveled to Turkey for a vacation,” the complaint states. “He denied traveling to Syria.” Based upon Al-Jayab’s statements and evidence gathered by federal agents, there is “probable cause to believe” he went to Syria and was a member of a rebel group and provided material support to a terror group, the complaint states. Al-Jayab, who has relatives in Sacramento, faces up to eight years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted. Word of his arrest, his contacts in Wisconsin and another arrest in Texas spread quickly Thursday, with the Houston Chronicle reporting that officials in that state had been briefed on the matter. The U.S. attorney’s office in Houston said Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, 24, was charged in a three-count indictment with lying to government agents and with providing material support to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. That suspect also was an Iraqi-born Palestinian who came to the United States in 2009 as a refugee. He was accused by federal authorities of associating with Islamic State members and sympathizers throughout 2014. Neither the complaint nor the indictment say how the two men are connected. Concern about Syrians and other immigrants coming to the United States has been the subject of fierce rhetoric in this election year, with many governors saying they do not want to admit them to their states and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump calling for a temporary ban on all Muslim immigrants. The Houston Chronicle quoted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday as repeating his call for a refugee ban. “This is precisely why I called for a halt to refugees entering the U.S. from countries substantially controlled by terrorists," Abbott said in a statement. “I once again urge the president to halt the resettlement of these refugees in the United States until there is an effective vetting process that will ensure refugees do not compromise the safety of Americans and Texans.” California Gov. Jerry Brown’s office declined to comment and referred inquiries to the FBI. California is the site of the latest and deadliest terror attack – the Dec. 2 slayings of 14 people in San Bernardino last month by two Islamic State supporters – since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The California attack came one day after a Lodi-area man, Nicholas Teausant, pleaded guilty in federal court in Sacramento to attempting to provide support to a terrorist organization. Prosecutors say Teausant, 22, tried to travel to Syria to join the group. He faces sentencing March 8 and could be given up to 15 years in prison. |
AE9/11 Truth supports Truth Walk 9/11! Learn more about Truth Walk 9/11, a 500 mile journey for truth and the U.S. Constitution. This trek includes an exciting film documentary project as well! Please support Truth Walk 9/11 at www.qmamedia.com Truth Walk 9/11: A Journey for Change As they travel, Meiswinkle and Senzee will be filming a documentary, in which they hope to bring out the crucial — as well as inspiring and uplifting — message that our inherent rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are unalienable, inviolate, and are core to all peoples on earth. ATTORNEY AND ACTIVIST TEAM UP FOR TREK INTO PAST THAT CHARTS A NEW COURSE FOR OUR FUTURE By AE911Truth Staff Dave Meiswinkle and Pam Senzee are walking for truth, liberty, and freedom for all peoples the world over. Next month, two AE911Truth friends, ex-cop and current criminal defense attorney David Meiswinkle and activist Pamela Senzee, will embark on a several-hundred-miles-long journey — on foot. They're calling the trek Truth Walk 9-11! Their sojourn will span the entire region where the crimes of 9/11 took place — the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the World Trade Center in New York City. The 9/11 Survivor Tree lives on as a testament to the spirit of growth in the face of overwhelming adversity. While in the Washington, D.C., area, they will visit the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial. They will also pay homage to our Founding Fathers at historic sites in Baltimore, Maryland; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Trenton, Morristown, Princeton, and Newark, New Jersey. Their final stop: the 9/11 Memorial and Museum at Ground Zero in NYC. The journey will end at the 9/11 Survivor Tree. As they travel, Meiswinkle and Senzee will be filming a documentary, in which they hope to bring out the crucial — as well as inspiring and uplifting — message that our inherent rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are unalienable, inviolate, and are core to all peoples on earth. They aim to make clear that the loss of our constitutional rights, by way of the Patriot Act and other draconian post-9/11 legislation being enforced in the United States and around the world, is directly related to the fraudulent official account of 9/11. In their film, they want to draw under one banner leaders from both the truth and peace movements, including architects, engineers, and other science and technical experts, as well as scholars, philosophers, psychologists, religious leaders, grassroots activists, law enforcement officials, journalists, bloggers, politicians, and just plain folks who they meet along the way. The idea is to explore all the avenues and actions by which citizens of all nations can restore liberty and therefore build genuine and lasting solutions. The pair also hopes to shed light on the means by which we can transform society at every level. They envision exploring the historic, political, social, philosophical, and metaphysical roots of our current world condition. And they intend to invite leaders in various fields to probe the possibilities for transformation. Richard Gage, AIA, in the halls of the U.S. Senate in Washington, D.C. AE911Truth fits into their plans in a couple of ways: On their walk they will distribute AE911Truth DVDs and literature, and in their film they will feature the organization's founder, Richard Gage. Senzee and Meiswinkle are also engaging in what they call a "spirit quest." That is, they seek practical spiritual answers to overcoming, both individually and collectively, the world's current plight, in which lies, cover-up of lies, and denial of lies seem to have the upper hand over truth and the freedom that truth brings to all. Gage sums up the deeper spiritual motivation engrained in the Truth Walk 9/11 mission during one of his appearances on Quantum Matrix Radio, when he says (at the 70:54-minute mark): “There are millions of people in the truth movement. We have to take comfort that we are not alone . . . . There’s a force that is building, and there are unseen forces at work . . . . We are riding a wave of history in time.” * Be part of an historic transformation. Join AE911Truth in supporting Truth Walk 9/11. Thanks! *Richard Gage’s philosophical comments begin at the 66:02-minute mark. http://www.ae911truth.org/news/219-news-media-events-truth-walk.html |
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Cesar Miguel Penaloza Santana was the mayor of Cocula when 43 students disappeared from nearby Iguala A court in Mexico has charged the former mayor of Cocula, Cesar Penaloza Santana, with links to organised crime. The town hit the headlines last year when local police officers were linked to the disappearance of 43 students. The government said corrupt officers from Cocula and nearby Iguala abducted the 43 and handed them over to a local drug gang, that then killed them. The case highlighted high levels of corruption not just in the local police force but also in local government. 'Criminal ties' Mr Penaloza Santana was arrested on 16 December on suspicion of having links with "a criminal group which operates in northern Guerrero state", the prosecutor's office said. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Cocula is not far from Iguala, from where 43 students went missing in September 2014 Officials did not give any further details, but local media reported that a suspect in the students' disappearance had linked Mr Penaloza Santana to the Guerreros Unidos (United Warriors) drug gang, The 43 students from a teacher training college went missing on 26 September 2014. THE MISSING 43: AT A GLANCE Image copyright AP Who are they? The 43 were all students at an all-male teacher training college in the town of Aytozinapa, in south-western Guerrero state. The college has a history of left-wing activism and the students regularly took part in protests. What happened to them? They disappeared from the town of Iguala on the evening of 26 September 2014 amid a confrontation between municipal police and the students in which six people were killed. Have any of them been found? Independent forensic experts have matched charred bone fragments reportedly found at a rubbish dump near Iguala to Alexander Mora, one of the 43 missing students. They also say there is a high probability another set of remains could belong to Jhosivani Guerrero de la Cruz, another of the students. However, experts from the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights say the chain of evidence was broken and they could not be sure the bone fragments had been found at the dump. What is the government's version of events? According to the official report, the students were seized by corrupt municipal police officers who handed them over to members of a local drugs gang. The gang mistook the students for members of a rival gang, killed them and burned their bodies at the dump before throwing their ashes into a nearby stream. Why do the families not believe the official report? They think officials have failed to investigate the role soldiers from a nearby barracks may have played in the students' disappearance. The government has refused to let the soldiers, who were in the area at the time of the disappearance, be questioned by anyone but government prosecutors. The families also point to the report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights which said that there was no evidence the bodies of the 43 were burned at the dump. A government investigation concluded that they were seized by corrupt municipal police officers, who handed them to members of the Guerreros Unidos. According to the investigation, the students were killed by the gang, who mistook them for members of a rival group. Their bodies were then burned at a rubbish dump outside of Cocula, the report said. DNA tests revealed that bone fragments police said they had found at the rubbish dump were those of one of the missing students, Alexander Mora. However, an independent investigation into the students' disappearance has since rejected the government's account of events. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said in September that it had found no evidence that the bodies were incinerated. The commission urged the government to continue looking for the missing students but did not offer any further clues as to what might have happened to them. |
"I may be a mime, but I still know what Netflix is, you turd!" The angry street performer then proceeded to punch to girl several times, then proceeded to punch to girl several times, grabbed her by the ponytail , and threw her to the ground. At about the point that this poor girl probably thought she was involved in the most bizarre Juggalo-related incident in history, 39-year-old Dwight Eberhart was passing by in his truck and observed the assault taking place. He stopped his car in the middle of the road, got out, and chased the mime down the street where he eventually tackled her to the ground. Police arrived on the scene and arrested the not-so-silent clown, who turned out to be 37-year-old Stephanie C. Walker . Walker was charged with battery and taken to the Clarke County Jail. ...where she most likely did not exercise her right (and theatrical duty) to remain silent. Please feel free to leave a comment below. If you'd like to sing my praises or tell me how terrible I am more personally, I can also be found on Twitter. At approximately 11:00 AM on March 20, 2013, a 20-year-old University of Georgia student was walking to class when something completely unexpected (and unwanted) occurred. Out of nowhere (which is a hard place to define on a college campus), a woman appeared dressed in all black and and with her face painted completely white.This would normally be the time when just about anyone else would expect an impromptu performance of "trapped inside an invisible box" to commence. Unfortunately for this college student, however, the mime she had encountered was not of the friendly variety.The oddly dressed woman started things off by breaking the first rule of miming and screaming at the bewildered coed. She also ratcheted up the crazy quite a bit by accusing the girl of having watched her on television The girl tried to explain that she didn't even own a television , but that just seemed to anger the already unstable mime even more. |
As I have noted before, over the past few years, Malaysia has been grappling with the rather grim reality of a military that needs urgent modernization amid rising manifold threats on the one hand and a political and economic environment that is not conducive to funding much-needed capability boosts on the other (See: “What Does Malaysia’s New Defense Budget For 2016 Mean?”). New defense programs and even some capabilities mulled to help close gaps had been shelved due to budgetary constraints; last year’s defense budget saw the largest cut since 1998 when Malaysia was reeling from the Asian Financial Crisis (See: “Where Are Malaysia’s New Warships in its Military Modernization?”). And with the country gearing up for elections within the next year or so, major new acquisitions are less likely to be made in the immediate future. The Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) is not immune to these challenges. And unless things change dramatically for the better, Air Force Chief Affendi Buang, who was appointed last December in a series of key reshuffles in the country’s armed forces, will have to face all this during his tenure (See: “Malaysia’s New Air Force Chief Makes First Singapore Visit”). Earlier this month, just before the Paris Air Show, Affendi spoke to Shepherd Media about the new military equipment that the RMAF is prioritizing, subject, of course, to the availability of funding allocations by the Malaysian government. The list of new items, as opposed to ongoing upgrades, is not entirely surprising. One of the key items on it is new maritime patrol aircraft (MPA). As I have noted before, that is an acquisition that would make sense. Even though Malaysia’s Beechcraft B200T aircraft do have maritime patrol capabilities, these are aging aircraft and the country needs more planes and ships to monitor its vast waters. There had been reports earlier this year that Japan might give used patrol aircraft to Malaysia, which Affendi dismissed as a potential rumor (See: “Will Japan Give Malaysia Maritime Patrol Aircraft?”). He told Shepherd Media that the RMAF is “considering a few options,” and is also looking at interim measures like modifying and integrating some of its CN325 medium transport aircraft with the AMASCOS surveillance system from the B200T. Another item that was mentioned as a possibility was new multi-role combat aircraft (MRCA). The RMAF’s fleet consists of a mix of combat aircraft, including MiG-29s, Sukhoi Su-30s, and F/A-18Ds. Affendi said rather bluntly that with the MiG-29 fleet aging and technological advancements in areas like weaponry and sensor fusion, Malaysia was starting to see “an increase in capability gap.” The MRCA replacement program has been talked about for years now, with serious doubts about whether it will be approved in the next year or two. BAE Systems’ Eurofighter Typhoon, Dassault’s Rafale, and Saab’s Gripen have been said to be the main contenders to meet Malaysia’s requirement for up to 18 new aircraft. It was no surprise, then, that Affendi declined to elaborate on what exact response the RMAF had in mind, merely saying that the RMAF was being forced to consider “the available options” for future operations of the MiG-29 and that certain measures had been proposed to the Malaysian government. Even as Affendi has quite clear about the constraints that Malaysia faces in acquiring these new equipment, he has been equally blunt about its capability gaps in this as well as in other engagements. For instance, on the sidelines of the Paris Air Show, he told Malaysia’s national news agency Bernama that the acquisition of new, highly-capable assets was an even greater priority now following the inking of the trilateral patrol agreement with Indonesia and the Philippines (See: “What’s Next for the New Sulu Sea Trilateral Patrols?”). |
The Liverpool boss will meet with the England manager to discuss the 19-year-old this weekend. Liverpool boss Brendan Rodgers is finally set to meet Roy Hodgson at Loftus Road this Sunday. Rodgers' side will face Queens Park Rangers in west London and England manager Hodgson intends to attend the game. As such, the Three Lions coach will seek the Northern Irishman out to discuss the now infamous Raheem Sterling situation. The 19-year-old Liverpool and England winger apparently complained to Hodgson that he was tired and didn't want to start for the national team against Estonia. And, according to the Daily Mail, Sterling will top the agenda when Hodgson plans to speak with the Reds boss. Meanwhile, striker Daniel Sturridge, who could feature at QPR after returning from a spell on the sidelines with a thigh injury, will also be discussed by the two coaches. Sturridge picked up his injury while training with the England squad and Rodgers had implied that the national setup could have handled the 25-year-old's fitness better. |
Jan 2014 Eric Drexler about his book Radical Abundance: How a revolution in nanotechnology will change civilization. Eric shows how rapid progress in the molecular sciences will enable the development of high-throughput atomically precise manufacturing, a technology with the power to produce radically more of what people want, and at a radically lower cost. The result will shake the foundations of our economy and our relationship to Earth’s environment, enabling us to make products of all sorts cleanly, inexpensively, and on a global scale. Radical Abundance allows us to envision a world where high-performance solar arrays cost no more than cardboard and aluminum foil, and billion-processor tablet computers cost about the same. Radical Abundance describes a world on a path to an unexpected future, and raises key questions about implications for global problems and global governance. |
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