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"It's not Heaven or Hell or anything we've seen before," Millar says of his creation, which delves into the place we go to after death. Mark Millar, the prolific comic author who regularly sets up Hollywood deals for his creations, is back with a new creator-owned title this fall called Reborn. The comic, which is due in October from Image Comics, teams him with artist Greg Capullo, the penciller who worked with Scott Snyder on the acclaimed five-year run of DC’s Batman. And as Millar describes it, after tackling superheroes, secret agents, crooks and aliens, it’s his first real stab at fantasy. “Fantasy is completely new to me and I only wanted to do it if I could find a good human angle on it,” he tells Heat Vision. “That’s what’s generally turned me off fantasy growing up, the hooks rarely appealing. So I wanted to have a lead character we could relate to and plunge her into this place." Millar is keeping mum on the details but he did offer this: “It’s not Heaven or Hell or anything we’ve seen before. The idea simply is that when we’re done here, we show up somewhere else and our main character, Bonnie Black, has a stroke in the opening pages and suddenly finds herself in this magical place that’s a cross between Lord of the Rings and Mad Max. If you’ve lived a good life you appear in one territory, if you haven’t, you appear on the other, and both sides are in conflict with one another. This is where all our dead friends and relatives are waiting for us and Bonnie is thrown right into the mix.” Millar has attracted the top artists of the last decade (his Hollywood track record is one factor working for him) and he is nabbing Capullo at a career high, the latter having turned himself into an A-lister thanks to Batman. “If you want to do a story filled with monsters and darkness and impossibly cool visuals there’s nobody better than Greg,” Millar says. “I think it’s safe to say he’s the hottest artist in the industry at the moment, his Batman run with Scott Snyder just being universally beloved, so it’s amazing to get him and I’m delighted he responded to the material so well.” Speaking of art, Heat Vision has a glimpse of 12 gorgeous pages. Think of it as a teaser trailer where you get snippets of a story, without the lettering. Feel free to set your own music to it. |
CLOSE Conservative pundit Tomi Lahren said that she thinks being conservative is much harder than being a woman. Ryan Sartor (@ryansartor) has that story. Buzz60 Tomi Lahren (Photo: Colin Young-Wolff, Invision/AP) Outspoken conservative commentator Tomi Lahren admitted she still benefits from a feature of Obamacare while arguing against it during a debate with Chelsea Handler on Saturday. Lahren and Handler faced off at Politicon, a non-partisan event, which features debates, panels, film, and comedy. As expected, Lahren and Handler's conversation turned towards the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Lahren, who supports Trump, slammed Obamacare and told Handler that while she believes in her right to purchase healthcare, she doesn't "believe it's my right to pay for it for other people,"Fortune reported. While Lahren continued to rail on Obamacare, she admitted that she is still on her parent's health insurance plan because of it. "Do you have a healthcare plan or no?" Handler asked Lahren during the exchange, according to Fortune. "Well luckily, I'm 24, so I am still on my parents'," Lahren said. The comment quickly drew a response from the crowd, which cheered and clapped. A key component of the Affordable Care Act is that dependent children can stay on a parent's plan until age 26. On social media, many responded to the news and slammed Lahren for being hypocritical. Best part of #Politicon2017: finding out Tomi Lahren is 24 and still on her parents insurance because of #Obamacare 😂 — Megan Key (@megekey) July 30, 2017 tomi lahren: obamacare is in a death spiral also tomi lahren: i'm still on my parents' obamacare plan me: pic.twitter.com/TgxvlXeREs — Corey (@CJsucitymvp) July 30, 2017 Wonder if @TomiLahren is still eager to get rid of Obamacare now that the world has shared with her the news that she's covered on it. — Laurie Crosswell 🌞 (@lauriecrosswell) July 31, 2017 Lahren noted that she's aware there are certain aspects of Obamacare that are positive. "That's exactly what I'm saying," Lahren said. "To say there are things from Obamacare that are not positive, that's not true." More coverage: Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2wdBIqY |
Non-invasive brain stimulation over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex increases Conservative beliefs, according to a study published this January in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. The strength of political belief systems has been recently attributed to their ideological ability to reduce uncertainty. For example, an ideology is motivating because it offers a way of coping with anxiety and uncertainty, increasing feelings of security. Furthermore, the way in which people look at certain political issues, and possibly change their political beliefs, may be strongly influenced by the specific feelings aroused during the early stages of processing. Recent research has suggested that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex plays an important role in this process, due to its involvement with short-term memory and cognitive control. For example, brain imaging studies have found that increased dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation correlated with reductions in the preference for previously supported political candidates. The study, by Caroline Chawke and Ryota Kanai of the University of Sussex, aimed to clarify the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the alteration of political beliefs. They used a method of transcranial random noise stimulation (a non-invasive brain stimulation technique) on 36 students to enhance activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex while they watched either a liberal (labor party) or conservative party campaign. For the control condition, non-active sham stimulation was applied. All participants completed measures of political orientation, both before and after watching the advertisement. The results revealed that enhanced dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activity, for the students who watched the liberal campaign, led to a significant increase in conservatism or right-wing ideology. Surprisingly, for the students who watched the Conservative Party campaign, there was also a significant increase in conservative political beliefs. Therefore, the non-invasive brain stimulation over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex appeared to result in increased Conservative beliefs regardless of the political campaign students were exposed to. The authors suggested that, “These highly opposing values must somehow originate in different cognitive mechanisms underlying motivation toward uncertainty and threat reduction.” Further adding that, “enhanced DLPFC may have resulted in an increased preference for security, certainty, and social dominance; traits which have been proposed as the defining characteristics of a conservative or right-wing ideology.” The finding that non-invasive brain stimulation can alter political beliefs provides evidence of the instability of political support, as well as highlighting the powerful influence that reducing uncertainty has for strengthening an ideological/political system. |
If you live in a heavily populated area, you will inevitably be made to wait in a line at some point during the day. The post office, city hall, and the DMV are all notorious places for facing long, unpleasant waiting times. What’s worse, if you step out of line to use the restroom or are simply too tired to stand, you’ll lose your place and be forced to start standing at the back of the line all over again. However, a picture from Thailand has surfaced online that seemingly solves the problems most people face while queuing up: just let your shoes do the waiting. This single image has prompted over 1,917 comments on Reddit in eight days. Here are the highlights: This is fucking genius. But what happens when the next person is up? Do they have to move every pair forward? Does everyone have to get up and move their own pair, only to sit back down and do the same thing over and over until it’s their turn? And then some asshole goes through and kicks the shoes around. The number system is better IMO… Would you want to walk around barefoot in the dirty-ass DMV? How can human beings be so well mannered? The Russian system works best. You walk into the room and ask, “Who’s last?” That person acknowledges you and you sit down like a civilized person. Then when they go up, you know you’re after them. Everyone in the room is reasonably aware of the order, too, so if someone tries to go out of order, the group will shame them. Shame! In Israel no one will admit they’re last in line. If you ask, “Who’s last?” They will all answer, “YOU are!” They do this in Cuba too. I think communism forces you to find more efficient ways of waiting in line. In pubs in England there is no visible queue but everyone roughly knows their place in it. If you try jump the queue you will be shamed with a nasty glare and some vicious muttering. If they did this in my home country (Pakistan), some guy will not only cut in line, but also steal your shoes. Reddit users are all entitled to their own opinions, but what about the RocketNews24 nation? What do you think about the Thai style of waiting in line? Let us know in the comments section below. Source: Labaq |
Image caption Stephanie Booth was the star of the BBC series Hotel Stephanie A businesswoman who starred in a documentary about her hotel business has been killed in a tractor accident. Stephanie Booth, 70, was crushed when the vehicle overturned as she mowed grass at her farm near Corwen, Denbighshire, on Sunday evening. She was found by her husband David, 72, who went looking for her when she failed to return home. The Health and Safety Executive and coroner have been informed. Mr Booth said: "She was mowing ready to put sheep in one of our fields when she went too close to the top of a bank. "The tractor rolled down about 20ft and overturned. Stephanie was dead when I found her." Mrs Booth was born Keith Hull but went through gender reassignment in 1982 at London's Charing Cross Hospital. She was one of the first people in Britain to go public about her sex change and later launched a series of businesses for the transgender community. She also founded the Albany Clinic which gives specialist medical advice and guidance to transsexuals. The couple also ran a catering and hotel business and, in 2008, she starred in a BBC series about the industry called Hotel Stephanie. In 2011, Mrs Booth led a bid to buy Wrexham Football Club but later withdrew after claiming she received death threats. Later the same year her hotel business went into administration. After that, Mrs Booth led a less high-profile life, instead concentrating on her magazine Yattar Yattar and her transgender mail order business. |
"I love Fuji because of the natural colours and by overexposing it I can get those wonderful pastel tones that I really love a lot." Tell us about yourself. I'm 37 years old, I'm from Reguengos de Monsaraz but I currently live in Lisbon, Portugal. I'm a Professional Translator. When and how did the film journey begin for you? My film journey began around 1988, when my father bought a Minolta Maxxum 7000. I started shooting with it, and the more I shot, the more I became in love with photography. It was kind of hard to get good information on how to shoot film at the time, so I learned from trial and error. It was only this year that I decided to attend a course on film photography at NAF at Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon. What type of film do you usually shoot and what made you choose it? My favourite films are Fuji Pro 400H, Fuji Pro 160S and Kodak Tri-X 400, however I shoot other films as well. I'm currently exploring CineStill 800T. I love Fuji because of the natural colours and by overexposing it I can get those wonderful pastel tones that I really love a lot. What camera makes you click? My Pentax 67. I'm totally addicted to it. It's just great. The quality of the photos, the built, the aesthetic of the camera. Between black and white and colour film which would you choose? Definitely colour film, but it will all depend on the context. I mainly study and shoot portraits, so when confronted with a specific scenery and light, I usually decide on the spot. What lenses do you use? On the Pentax 67 I shoot with only one lens, the wonderful Pentax 6x7 Takumar SMC 105 f/2.4. On the Nikon F100 I shoot with several lens, namely: Nikon 50mm f/1.2 AI-S Nikon Q.C 135mm f/2.8 AI Nikon 28mm f/2.8 AI-S Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AI-S Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G DX (usable on full frame at f/1.8 with a little and nice vignetting) Nikon 105mm f/2.5 AI-S (this one just blows me away, it's great) Nikon ED AF NIKKOR 80-200mm f/2.8 Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8G Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 85mm f/1.8G (best lens ever) On the Minolta Maxxum 7000 I mainly shoot with the Minolta AF 50mm f/1.7. I recently bought a Kiev 4 from 1962 with the Jupiter-8M 50mm f/2 lens but I haven't tried it... yet. Do you make any experiments on film? Yes. Well, I sometimes do some extreme experiments to better understand how a specific film will look great and what I can do with it. The last experiment I did was kind of crazy. I took my Nikon F100 with the Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G DX to a friend's concert and a roll of CineStill 800T. I wanted to see how much detail I could loose on the shadows (intentionally) by underexposing them as much as possible, so that only the bright areas (where the subject was) would be visible. To do this I rated the film at box speed and I used the exposure compensation at -3EV, giving me a little more shutter speed and then I metered for the highlights. Amazingly, it worked as I expected, but the photos were very, very grainy. It allowed me to draw some important conclusions about CineStill 800T. I'll be shooting and experimenting more with it. It has a lot of potential. It would be great to have it on 120mm. You can find Daniel Pestana here: Flickr Facebook |
North Korea's hard-line army general, who is believed to have been responsible for attacks on South Korea in 2010 that killed 50 people, has been replaced by a relative unknown. The move has analysts reading the tea leaves. The consensus is that the reshuffle at the top of the People's Armed Forces is part of a larger effort by leader Kim Jong Un to consolidate power over the military. The promotion of Gen. Jang Jong Nam at the expense of now ex-Chief Gen. Kim Kyok Sik is "not thought to indicate a potential softening of Pyongyang's stance toward Seoul and Washington any time soon," according to The Guardian: "Outsiders do not know much about Jang, but analysts said it was unlikely that Kim Jong Un would name a moderate to the post at a time of tension with the outside world." The BBC says: "Officials in Seoul said they were aware of the personnel change, but would 'need more time to figure out the overall direction' and whether the change was significant. " 'We do not know if [Jang] is a less hawkish figure, but it appears that he is from a younger generation,' South Korean defense ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said. " 'Just because there is a new dot that does not mean that a whole line or landscape changes,' he added." It's not the first time there have been high-level changes in the military since Kim assumed leadership of the country after his father's death in December 2011. The Guardian says: "One of the most notable changes from Kim Jong Un was the replacement of the powerful military chief Ri Yong Ho, who was dismissed because of what Pyongyang called an unspecified illness. Outside observers speculated that Ri, who held a different post from the one Jang has been appointed to, was purged as Kim tried to put his stamp on his government. Ri was also replaced by a little-known general." Although tensions between North Korea on one side and the United States and South Korea on the other have ratcheted down in recent weeks, Pyongyang on Monday denounced Washington and Seoul over a new joint military exercise involving the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz. Copyright NPR 2019. |
AURORA | When thinking of Southlands in Aurora’s upmarket southeast corner, artisanal cups of joe don’t exactly jump to the front of that bourgeois mental schema. But a new specialty coffee shop at 24100 E. Commons Ave. — one complete with white-washed brick facades, tony lighting fixtures and well-groomed baristas — is aiming to bring a cosmopolitan dash of the city to Aurora’s far-flung suburbs. Legends Coffee, which opened in Southlands beside an AT&T Store and Chipotle April 16, is the shopping destination’s newest and, arguably, hippest tenant. The nearly 1,700-square-foot space is peppered with the trappings typical of the myriad caffeinated corridors spread across the metro region: looming walls of treated wood, funky filaments dangling overhead and, of course, hand-stamped bags of aromatic beans lining diffident shelves. Started as a mobile operation in 2014, Legends is attempting to bring to Aurora what is common in Denver’s buzzing urban core, according to husband-and-wife owners Tabitha and Jacob Wickline. “In the Denver metro there’s phenomenal eateries, great microbreweries and phenomenal coffee houses everywhere you turn, but out in the suburbs you have very few,” Jacob said. “You have many franchises, many corporate stores and … a couple mom-and-pops, but not with a whole lot of background in coffee. Coffee is what we lived and breathed and we knew we wanted to make it a full-time gig.” The Wicklines made their first foray into Aurora’s growing specialty coffee scene two years ago, when they began appearing at local farmers markets with what was “basically an espresso house on wheels,” according to Jacob. Their first ever appearance with the bijou enterprise was at the Southlands farmers market, which takes place weekly from May through September not 100 yards from the couple’s current brick-and-mortar shop. “We had a two-group machine, ran it off a generator, and we did cold brew, basically every type of espresso drink and made a couple in-house things,” Jacob said. “We’ve progressed quite a bit since then.” Longtime fans of the Wicklines’ work may remember their outfit as Boomtown Coffee, which was the original name of the espresso cart. But following the rise of and continued confusion with a Houston-based company of the same name, the couple decided to ditch the Gold Rush-era term for the Legends moniker. Following quick success with weekly trips to Southlands, Jacob said that the couple became inundated with emails asking where customers could grab their coffee during the week. “We were getting 20 or 30 emails a week asking us when we were going to open a brick-and-mortar, and that seemed so far-fetched to us,” he said. But after several months of working with the Small Business Administration in Lone Tree, numerous conversations with Southlands general manager Jeff Nemec and a loan from First National Denver later, Legends at Southlands was born, according to Jacob. The atmosphere in the shop is an amalgamation of Legends’ employees experiences at different coffee shops over the course of the past decade, according to Jacob. He grew up working at corporate shops spread across California and the Pacific Northwest, while Tabitha and bar manager Cisco Gonzalez come from bean houses with calmer vibes. “We transitioned this thing into exactly what we learned from all three of those backgrounds,” Jacob said. A longtime Aurora resident and graduate of Cherokee Trail High School, Tabitha met Jacob while attending Cavalry Chapel Bible College in Murrieta, Calif., on the far-southeastern edge of the L.A. metro area. The shop offers beans roasted at Jubilee Roasting Company in northwest Aurora, as well as blends from Corvus Coffee and MiddleState Coffee, which are both located in Denver. Their staple Legends Coffee blend comes from Jubilee, while espresso comes from Corvus. The Wicklines receive a handful of delicate, specialty roasts from MiddleState. Now living just two miles away from their new shop with two young sons, the Wicklines said that they’re excited to ride the still-growing wave and educate Aurorans on the intricacies of specialty coffee. “The more people understand specialty coffee, the more they can appreciate it,” Jacob said. “The more they develop a palate … the more they have an understanding of a cleaner cup of coffee and the more they can appreciate when they come in here and have to pay an extra buck, but they get that mind-blowing coffee experience, instead of that quick, grab-and-go coffee that they’re used to.” As of December 2015, the retail value of the U.S. coffee market totaled about $48 billion, according to the Specialty Coffee Association of America. Specialty coffee, which is defined by slightly more stringent parameters, accounted for about 55 percent of the value share of that total. “Coffee’s trending and it’s changing,” Tabitha said. “It’s definitely an industry that is evolving.” |
The Family Policy Institute of Washington recently spoke with some students from Seattle University and asked them simple questions about gender and the differences between men and women. Here’s a description from their blog: The second episode in FPIW’s wildly popular College Kids Say the Darndest Things series launched Monday afternoon, just hours after the federal government inserted themselves into the battle between the unrealistic social justice agenda and biological science. This episode, filmed near Seattle University, a Jesuit private school, asks college students if there is a difference between men and women. Some of the answers are hilarious, bizarre, and alarming. Is this really what our institutions of higher education are teaching? News radio KEEL gets into specifics: A new video of students at Washington’s Seattle University gives insight into how college age Americans view gender identity. Repeatedly, students insisted that “gender identity” chosen by a person is more important than biological differences the sexes. In fact, when asked if there is a difference between men and women, most seem truly stumped. Says one, “I don’t think there’s any one way to distinguish between men and women, and I don’t think it’s necessary.” And another says, “Gender is a societal construct.” Now watch the video and prepare to be amazed: Everyone is trying so hard to give politically correct answers that no one states the obvious. All I could think of was this classic scene from Kindergarten Cop: Was that so difficult? Featured image via YouTube. |
Michael Strickland UPDATE: Man accused of pulling gun on Portland protesters was armed with multiple magazines of ammo, prosecutor says *** Updated at 2:31 a.m., Friday, July 8 A man pulled a gun near hundreds of people taking part in a Don't Shoot PDX protest Thursday evening and was later taken into custody by law enforcement officers in tactical gear. Michael Strickland, 36, is facing misdemeanor menacing and second-degree disorderly conduct charges, according to jail records. He was booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center late Thursday night, and then released on his own recognizance, jail and court records show. Strickland will be arraigned Friday afternoon, Portland police said in a news release. Police identified Strickland as the man allegedly menacing people with a gun. The man explained his actions to The Oregonian/OregonLive by saying he was surrounded by "anarchists" who were pushing him and telling him he needed to go. He identified the gun as a Glock. The incident occurred as hundreds of people converged on downtown Portland Thursday night to express outrage and dismay after the deaths of two black men in back-to-back police shootings this week in Minnesota and Louisiana. Upward of 1,000 people were on hand for the demonstration that started at Pioneer Courthouse Square. A separate gathering and march drew about 200 to a Southeast Portland park. They all gathered to demand justice in the wake of the latest in a series of racially tinged police shootings. On Tuesday, 37-year-old Alton Sterling was fatally shot as he tussled with two white officers outside a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, convenience store in a predominantly black neighborhood. The shooting was caught on video and went viral online. The next day in Minnesota, Philando Castile, 32, was shot to death during a traffic stop in suburban St. Paul. His girlfriend posted live video of the aftermath on Facebook, insisting he had been shot "for no apparent reason" while reaching for his wallet. The deaths have sparked protests across the country, including one in Texas that set the stage for an ambush. Police say snipers shot and killed five officers and wounded seven others Thursday night. Three people were in custody and a fourth suspect was exchanging gunfire with authorities, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said early Friday morning. In Portland, the rally began at 7 p.m. in Pioneer Courthouse Square with people waving signs -- "My very existence is considered resistance," "#THIS STOPSTODAY -- and speakers urging the crowd to get involved. "As an individual, you can't do nothing," one person said. The crowd quickly took the streets, disrupting traffic on Southwest 6th Avenue and chanting "shut it down" while marching on the MAX tracks. When protesters reached the Justice Center, they repeated, "No justice, no peace." A man pulled a gun out near a group of six protesters close to the Justice Center, according to a Portland man in his 30s who said he was among the six protesters. The man with a gun, who was toting what appeared to be a video camera, told a reporter that he runs LaughingAtLiberals. The Oregonian/OregonLive couldn't immediately confirm the man's ties to the online outlet. Michael Strickland pulls out a gun in the street during a protest in Portland, Ore., Thursday night, July 7, 2016. Strickland displayed the gun during an altercation at the Portland rally for the deaths of two black men shot by police in Minnesota and Louisiana. Nobody was injured in the incident and Strickland was arrested and has been charged with menacing and disorderly conduct. (AP Photo/Diego G Diaz) The Portland man said that when the armed man was told he needed to go, the man "grabbed onto ... a sidearm in a aggressive manner." The Portland man said he did a sweeping push to get the man with the gun away from the crowd, touching him. Afterward, he said, the group tried to calm down the man with the gun. The man with the gun was eventually taken into custody near the Multnomah County Courthouse. Jessie Sponberg, a former Portland mayoral candidate, said he also tried to tried to get the man away from the crowd. Sponberg was later briefly detained by law enforcement officers who told him to get on the ground, he said later Thursday night. Sponberg said he complied and was handcuffed and searched before being released at the scene. Authorities also took down his information, he said. Strickland, identified by police as the man who pulled the gun, has no prior convictions, according to court records. He told court authorities he was videotaping the protest and protesters went after him, according to court documents. He said he was self-employed and part of his income comes from filming controversial events, the documents said. Two years after a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri -- sparking the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" movement -- the number of deadly police shooting has grown. According to an analysis by The Washington Post, 491 people were killed by cops in the first half of the year, a 6 percent increase from the 465 recorded during the same six months of 2015. The research also showed that more officers have been shot and killed in the line of duty. The number of cops being prosecuted over questionable shootings is also up. President Barack Obama on Thursday called on American law enforcement to root out bias in its ranks. He said all Americans should be troubled by the frequent police shootings of blacks and Latinos and said they were symptomatic of a "broader set of racial disparities" in the justice system. Portland's newly installed police chief addressed the Louisiana and Minnesota shootings in an internal message sent Thursday afternoon to bureau members. "While these shootings occurred thousands of miles from Portland, we live in an age of constant media and social media dialogue that raises emotions in our own community," Chief Mike Marshman wrote. "Those emotions are a reality that we need to acknowledge and then continue to talk to people about what we are doing here in our community." Marshman said he reached out to the city's black leaders Thursday "to let them know we understand the fear and anger these recent shootings and past shootings have raised." The protest dissipated by about 12:30 a.m. Friday, when law enforcement officers in tactical gear left a Morrison Bridge on-ramp where they stopped marching protesters around 10:10 p.m. Thursday. Around three dozen protesters remained on the on-ramp around 12:30 a.m. One hour before the downtown march started, some 200 people gathered at the basketball court on the southeast corner of Laurelhurst Park. Organizer Margaret Jacobsen asked for a moment of silence, then asked if anyone wanted to say a few words. Portland resident Josh Boykin, 28, spoke up first. He talked about his mother, and how they once thought the country had made great strides since the civil rights movement of the '60s. But that view has changed with each passing year of high-profile cases involving black men being killed by police. "I can't fully comprehend what it's like to lose a child," he said, "for the reason that they were born the wrong color." Police ask anyone who saw Strickland's alleged behavior or has photos or video footage of the incident to email CrimeTips@portlandoregon.gov. Eder Campuzano of The Oregonian/OregonLive and The Associated Press contributed to this report. -- Jim Ryan jryan@oregonian.com 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015 |
Growing criticism over practice of treating patients in corridors Updated The Australian Medical Association says the Government should be boosting hospital bed numbers instead of patients having to be treated in hospital corridors. It is not the only organisation critical of the practice with the WA nurses union labelling it degrading and dangerous. The AMA WA president Richard Choong says patients should not be treated in hallways. "Overcrowding has reached such a point that we've actually institutionalised it, we've made it normal by installing these facilities," he said. Dr Choong was referring to hospitals installing additional power points in corridors to be able to treat patients in ward hallways. The Australian Nursing Federation's Mark Olson says he has received emails from nurses complaining of patients being routinely treated in makeshift bays in corridors, marked with gaffer tape on the floor. "The government has normalised a practice that degrades and humiliates the patients," he said. "The government will have you believe these are emergency measures. "I'm sorry, these are measures which have been deliberately put in place because I'm sure if we didn't have a copy of that policy, then the government would deny that it exists." Mr Olson says the practice is dangerous. "This is how they have moved the problem from the emergency departments and filtered it up through the hospital," he said. "So, we have patients in corridors where there is no suction, there is no emergency equipment, where there is no electricity, and often they are in corridors because they waiting for a room." There have been reports of Perth hospitals being forced to install additional power points in ward corridors to treat patients in hallways. Earlier, the Premier Colin Barnett said patient care has not been compromised. Mr Barnett says while it is not ideal, WA patients are still receiving unrivalled care. "That's clearly undesirable but can I stress, and even from personal experience in my family, where that's happened there's been no lesser level of patient care," he said. The Opposition's Roger Cook says services are clearly being affected. "This is another sign the health system under the Barnett government is being mismanaged," he said. It comes as new figures reveal ambulances were ramped outside Perth hospitals for almost 1,600 hours last month, double the number recorded in June last year. Mr Barnett says concerns of overcrowding need to be kept "in perspective." He says growing demand on health services will be eased when new hospital services are rolled out. "We need more capacity but you can't create a hospital overnight," he said. "And, if I can say so, this government is building the greatest rebuild of new hospitals in the state's history and they will start to come online next year." Topics: health-administration, government-and-politics, perth-6000 First posted |
The naïve view of NHL referees is that they’re straight arrow, by-the-book automatons who carry no biases nor harbor retribution against those that embarrass them. This is, of course, idealistic nonsense. We’ve read how players are called out for diving by the League and we’ve read how NHL officials have hit lists for players. So it stands to reason that if you’re a diver, you won’t get the benefit of the doubt. And it stands to reason that if you’re a whiner – complaining about calls you’re not receiving, questioning the integrity of the officials – they’ll do you no favors, either. Scroll to continue with content Ad Which brings us to the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Pensblog found a clip of Bill Guerin, the team’s assistant general manager and former player, on Sportsnet’s Hockey Central (co-hosted by a lovely man named Jeff). During the interview, Doug MacLean – who interviewed for the Penguins head-coaching job, and likely offered this assessment to GM Jim Rutherford – told Guerin he believes the Pens whine too much to the officials: Doug MacLean: Your team whines quite a bit. Do you ever say what’s going on with our group? It’s hurt you at times in key situations, and I think it’s hurt you at playoff time. Bill Guerin: Yeah, I think it’s definitely an area that we’ve identified as being an issue at times. And you know what? We’ve put ourselves in that position, and we have to be better. There’s no question. The referees are out there, they do a fantastic job, the game’s faster than ever, and it’s really hard to pick things up sometimes with just the naked eye. These guys are human beings too. They’re out there doing tough job out there. And we just have to be better. We have to flat out be better. Watch it here: Story continues “It’s hurt you at times in key situations,” says MacLean, which is interesting. Looking back at the last four seasons, the Penguins’ power plays per game: 2011-12: 3.53 2012-13: 3.54 (lockout) 2013-14: 3.39 2014-15: 3.14 (so far) Now, that would appear to be a decline for the Pens, but keep in mind their average this season is still higher than the NHL average (3.10) and it was the same situation last season (NHL average: 3.27). But MacLean also mentioned the playoffs, and that’s an interesting theory, considering how Marc Staal acted like an amateur chiropractor all series against Sidney Crosby for the New York Rangers. Perhaps we’re burying the lede here: The assistant GM of the Pittsburgh Penguins, long considered one of the whiniest teams in the NHL, confirms they whine too much and to their detriment. Merry Christmas, Flyers fans … MORE FROM YAHOO HOCKEY |
GraphQL: A Year in Review GraphCMS Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 22, 2017 Guest Post by our community member Jesse Martin This is not a “what is GraphQL” post, you can find that here, here and here. This is a 10,000 foot look at the industry over the past year and some glimpses into the future of what might be. It’s been a wild year for the growing technology. Enterprise adoption continued to grow at a remarkable pace, the legal details which are oh-so-important to those SLAs and RFPs started to solidify and the stack of service providers became ever more robust. Whether you want to roll-your-own or you just want to roll-out in the next 5 minutes — there’s something for everyone. We Saw the Technology Mature The Specification Subscriptions Thanks to the work of some community heavy-weights, subscriptions are ever closer to officially landing in the spec. The PubSub model is a bedrock of realtime apps and getting a standardised spec around the issue will be monumental. For the javascript enthused, check out this tutorial for a nice introduction. Stitching The basic concept here is that you can combine multiple schemas into a unified layer. Think of it as composing micro-services into a single API where you need fine-tuned control in handling things like naming conflicts but don’t want to burden the backend team with having to create some monolith API that rules them all. You can query hobbits, dwarves and wizards as individually as you want, or you can abstract their individual parts into a master, middle-earth query layer without losing the agility of developing out your hobbit service independent of the other services. Check out this in-depth article by the Graphcool team for a more thorough introduction. Drama It wouldn’t be a real open source spec without a fair dose of drama. Boy did the community deliver! Joan Touzet kicked off the party back in early July by noticing issues with the patent rights of most/all of Facebook’s open source initiatives. The backlash was quick and wide spread. They even got Matt Mullenweg to chime in! All in all it seems to have blown over with some helpful summary explanation by Dennis Walsh here and here. TDLR: After some relicensing, you should be just fine to use React, GraphQL or any of the other technologies Facebook releases. The bee in your beer might still be clause 8.6 of GraphQL’s new licensing which basically says “he who fails to adopt the spec in one point, is guilty of all,” or something like that. #not-a-lawyer Company Adoptions LTLDR (Looks too long, didn’t read): http://graphql.org/users/ We saw some really interesting adoption of the spec this year, too! Early in the year, Github released v4 of their API with full GraphQL support. The New York Times did a nice write up about their transition which is part of an overall rewrite/redesign of giant news company. Twitch gave a talk at GraphQL Summit about their transition, as well as KLM and Bynder (for the enterprise minded people in the audience.) This is simply a short sample of some notable companies to join the club this year, but the amount of adoption this year and the total adoption over all is staggering. Again, see the curated user list at the official .org for more info. More companies enter the service space (and some leave) The Community Says Farewell… After pioneering the middle-layer, Reindex is shutting down its back-end as a service platform. They won’t be going far, though, as they are still committed to helping developers adopt the spec and will be open-sourcing much of their tooling in the future. The post mortem can be found here. The Community Says Hello! Contentful labs (a notable player in the headless CMS space) is rolling out a beta layer for GraphQL. We’ll be keeping an eye on them. :) The Community Says WOAH Amazon pulled a surprise card with the launch of AppSync that includes GraphQL support from the get-go. On the whole, Amazon’s adoption of a spec that Facebook has written is pretty much all the validation a technology could want. Only a fool argues with an 800lb gorilla. Nobody argues with two. The community says, “let’s do this again” GraphQL Summit returned for the 2017 edition and was generally raved about across the industry. With no shortage of heavy-hitters, the excellent playlist can be viewed here. But if you’ve read this far, you’ve probably already seen it. Good for you! 2018 is sure to be announced soon, so keep a close eye on the Twitterverse for the announcement. GraphQL Europe was also a strong representation with tour de force that rivals anything put out from the Valley. When you think about the many challenges that GraphQL can help solve and the intricate complexities of serving Europe’s some 730 Million users, you can see why this technology has really taken root! Not to mention some of the world’s best GraphQL companies are based here! And 2018 is announced already, so be sure to get your frühe Vogel tickets here. Tooling Increases Dear reader, I respect the community. And I love you. I will not provide a direct link to the Timebelle’s winning performance of Apollo at Eurovision. I just won’t, no matter how good the pun is. I will, however, gladly direct you to Apollo’s fantastic 2.0 launch of their client product! Seriously. Big Kudos from us here at GraphCMS. Particularly interesting is the ability to intercept the request and change where you are fetching your data from. This turns GraphQL into some kind of universal query language for the front-end. Graphcool is cooler than ever. We have a particularly fond relationship with the Graphcool peeps. Not just because our backend is built on their technology stack and we are both HQ’d in Germany, but their product is fantastic, too! They open-sourced their serverless-framework, which makes building out your own GraphQL service a short init away from reality. We highly recommend checking out their product. The “other” great Gatsby, while not new this year, is enjoying a considerable moment in the lime-light with many significant players in the front-end world adopting the platform for their websites. With an elegant API and the built in declarative beauty of GraphQL for your templating tasks, its hard to not get a little excited about this formidable entrant in the web maker space. Oh, and we have a plugin to interface with them directly! Where GraphQL is Going, What Problem is it Solving So GraphQL looks like it’s here to stay. What problem is it solving, where’s it going, why all the excitement? The Problem Being Solved Data transfer is expensive. The amount of data we are generating has been talked about at length. In one recent example, I downloaded my year-to-date Fitbit tracking data. Simply downloading less than 1 year of heart rate time-stamp data yields close to 15mb of data. That’s a big file! Now imagine you want to view a year overview of that data. Obviously, no developer is going to ship that much data down the pipe, which is why they build business-case abstractions into the API so you can query just the amount of data that’s needed. Maintaining all the endpoints adds an increasing amount of overhead, an expanding surface area for security issues and documentation to maintain. If it were switched to a GraphQL API, the various apps could simply request exactly how much data was needed for their individual tasks. Define the schema and every data point for every business case is handled. The Future The spec is evolving with subscriptions and additions like stitching will only increase enterprise adoption. SaaS providers like Graphcool, Apollo and GraphCMS are offering elegant solutions for companies of all sizes to get started today. API driven business is here to stay. No one is arguing anything different. Private and public APIs from financial services to postal services have revolutionised our productivity and created a level of expected ability that we can’t return from. But many of these APIs are built on large and ageing infrastructure. Consumers want fast and new. Mediated APIs, the middle layer between older monoliths and the newer platforms are on the rise. A notion confirmed by Mark O’Neill, research director at Gartner, at the recent API Days Conference. GraphQL is an excellent entrant to this mediated API space because it allows for endless new implementations without adding the overhead of introducing new endpoints to the existing systems. For a more in depth take on GraphQL in the market place, you really don’t need to look further than this resource. Wrapping Up The one inherent issue with GraphQL is that it’s flexible to a fault. Authentication, data-modelling, redundancy, caching and all the other requirements for the typical database service are more or less up to your fancy. Sometimes choice is a curse. So what’s a dev to do? Fortunately that’s exactly the kind of problem we at GraphCMS are trying to solve. Sign up for an account, let biz-dev define the data model in a WYSIWYG editor and have a fully fleshed out schema ready to go with all the wonderful perks of GraphQL. What does it matter if they stuff extra fields of data in the backend that will never be used in a hundred years? With GraphQL you get what you ask for, not what the server feels like giving you. With GraphCMS it’s never been easier to get started. Sign up for a free account today to start playing around with the power of GraphQL and let us handle details for you. Once you try GraphQL’s powerful new primitive on data interchange, you won’t want to work with anything else! Thanks for reading! |
Like this? Share it. “200 Bitcoins” Represents First Contemporary Artwork for Digital Currency The Dollar was painted many times, by John Habele, Otis Keye, Victor Dubreuil, John F. Peto just to name a few. William Michael Harnett painted the dollar so realistically that he was arrested for counterfeiting. But nobody connected money and creativity so consequently like Andy Warhol. His Print “200 one dollar bills” was sold for many times its face value. Bitcoin is a rather young currency and hasn’t experienced such an endorsement by an contemporary artist, until now. German artist Kuno Goda has been inspired by Andy Warhol’s print and the Bitcoin movement. The result is “200 Bitcoins”, selling for 199 BTC. 200 Bitcoins Dedicated to Satoshi Nakamoto Signed Canvas Print One-of-a-kind 23.6 x 47.2 inch / 60 x 120 cm Price: 199 btc (negotiable) Inspired by the Bitcoin movement and Andy Warhol’s “ 200 One Dollar Bills “.Dedicated to Satoshi NakamotoSigned Canvas PrintOne-of-a-kind23.6 x 47.2 inch / 60 x 120 cm The artist’s note on this work: A banknote is a piece of paper we assign a certain value to. So are artworks. So are bitcoins. Minus the paper. Below is a gallery showing the work hanging on a wall. |
My phone started going off on February 17th, 2017 with friends texting me photos of singer-songwriter Joy Villa wearing a pro-Donald Trump “Make America Great Again” dress on the Grammy Awards red carpet. With my wonderfully strange and varied group of friends, I was only mildly surprised to soon find out that the designer was someone I had not only profiled for magazines before, but who I also considered a friend: Andre Soriano. I consider myself incredibly wealthy when it comes to my friends. People from all walks of life, backgrounds, and everything in between make up a collage that surprises even me at times. If “six degrees of separation” was a contest or game, I would be someone who accidentally won all the time. Call it bragging, but it has its downsides. I have close friends on both sides of the political spectrum. This wasn’t necessarily by choice, but it has worked out pretty well when it comes to understanding the current political mood. This can be a gift or a curse. In the case of knowing the designer behind the “Make America Great Again” dress, it has proved to be an almost numbing experience. It is a very strange feeling when half of the people you know are yelling for a friend’s head on a platter and the other half are suddenly praising him like a God. Like I said: it made me feel numb and, frankly, it paralyzed me for a few months. It’s been almost five months since the “MAGA-dress” made its debut. I still find it fascinating that it is a continued point of discussion on both sides of the aisle. This may have to do with the fact that, in general, there has been a lack of protest art against Trump. I’m not saying that it doesn’t exist, but it is startlingly low in volume when compared to other “anti” periods in history. I think the dress is such a hot-button topic because here was an artist not doing protest art, but instead pro-Trump art. Like most things with the election, people’s response to Soriano’s dress was extreme on both sides. People hated it. People loved it. The positives were extremely positive for Villa and Soriano: Villa’s album skyrocketed to become number one on the music charts. The negatives were ugly: Soriano and Villa both received death threats. It was bizarre for me to watch, as someone who knows Soriano. We hadn’t spoken too much in the year prior to the election, save for the obligatory “Happy Birthday” and fill-in-the-blank holiday greeting. But that’s not to say that my exchanges with Soriano were just rote. With kiss emojis and hearts, Soriano’s effervescent and loving personality always shines through his communications—even through text and email. Andre Soriano and my fiancé, Solly Hemus at the 2015 Catalina Film Festival As someone who writes about entertainment and politics, Soriano was already a fascinating subject to me. He is, unlike me, an immigrant and, like me, he happens to be a gay man. But that isn’t what interested me in him when we were originally introduced. We first met at the 2015 Catalina Film Festival, where he was dressing many of the women in some of the most eye-popping gowns I’ve ever seen. We immediately clicked upon being introduced. My fiancé, Solly, was with me, and along with Soriano’s assistant, we all spent the following five nights hanging out and having a great time. You are, quite literally, trapped on a small island during the Catalina Island Film Festival (and it’s wonderful), so fast bonding is quite common. Soriano is one of those people who everyone wants to be friends with: he’s kind, warm, and welcoming. I found it fascinating that, the first week we ever spent time together, a group of people would always form around him. He has that indescribable warmth and glow about him, yet he is incredibly down to earth. As a writer, it fascinated me that people from every walk of life were drawn to him. He has an effervescent charm and his artistic eye and fashion designs appeal to many people. He blasted onto the fashion scene during a stint on Rihanna’s “Styled To Rock” television series. Since then, he has been an in demand designer, creating clothes for some of Hollywood’s bigger stars. By the end of the festival, I found myself doing an unplanned profile of Soriano for another outlet I write for—he was, truly, that interesting and magnetic. We remained friends, but in the absolute chaos that was the 18-month-long election season, we never discussed politics. I didn’t really question who most of my LGBTQ friends from Hollywood were voting for—silly me. I now know my assumption that Donald Trump’s noncommittal stance on LGBT issues, combined with his appointments to his cabinet who are seriously anti-LGBT, did not necessarily mean that all who identify as such, would be anti-Trump. When I first became aware that Soriano was behind the Make America Great Again dress, I didn’t want to write about the dress, mostly because everyone else already had. Everyone was so divided. He was getting covered in every outlet imaginable. Then, he told me that he had begun receiving death threats—this bothered me. He is a storyteller. An artist. My friend Tyler Lyle recently said “The problem with being an academic is that you can’t publicly disagree with yourself whereas the artist is defined by his contradictions.” To many, the fact that this dress was designed by Soriano: a gay, (legal) immigrant was, in many ways the ultimate artistic contradiction. How could he justify supporting Donald Trump? Why was this dress still such a topic of discussion? I set out to answer these questions and get the definitive story behind what is quite literally one of the most controversial political and entertainment fashion statements in recent history. What I learned in the end was enlightening. But, what I was surprised to learn in the beginning, was that this dress design started because of Madonna. Well, Madonna said something at the record-shattering Women’s March that greatly upset one of her ardent fans—Andre Soriano. “Yes: I’m angry. Yes: I am an outraged. Yes: I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House. But I know that this won’t change anything. We cannot fall into despair. As the poet W.H. Auden once wrote on the eve of World War II: ‘We must love one another or die’. I choose love.” Madonna spoke these words, often quoted without the full context provided above, at the Women’s March the day after the Presidential Inauguration of Donald Trump in Washington D.C. On the other side of the country, Soriano, a longtime fan of Madonna and other celebrities speaking at the march, was distraught at what he was hearing and seeing. “At the Women’s March in Washington, there [were] a lot of iconic people [who were] also my role models ever since I was [living] in the Philippines before I migrated here (to the United States). When I was a teenager…younger, actually, before I was a teenager… I looked up to a lot of celebrities like Madonna, Meryl Streep, Ashely Judd, Robert DeNiro and they were totally, instead of being a good role model, they were creating hostility and hatred towards the new President.” It was 22 days before the 59th Annual Grammy Awards Show and Soriano had already been hard at work on a dress for singer-songwriter Joy Villa, who was out of the country at the time. “I was overseas, and we had been talking back and forth on different looks for my Grammy’s 2017 dress, and after sending him my The Static Remixes album and my ideas, we settled on a fiery, phoenix-like look.” Villa explained. Soriano said that, as he watched the speeches at the Women’s March, he eventually had enough. He picked up the phone and called Villa. “I was sobbing. I said, ‘Oh my God, Joy, how come everyone is so full of hatred? Why are they dividing this beautiful country?’ Andre explains of his call: “I [asked Joy] ‘Hey did you vote for Donald Trump?’ And she’s like ‘Yes, silly, of course I have! I’m one of those hidden, closet Trump [supporters] that never really spoke about it because of Hollywood’. I told her, ‘Joy: I’m changing the design for your gown.’ So, I went to the front porch of my house, and took the Trump campaign flag and bedazzled it. She came down here for a fitting and viola, it fit her like a glove!” Soriano and Villa have been friends since 2015 when her old stylist introduced them and she considers him a great friend. “Every Grammys I go to only one designer: Andre Soriano. He listens to my music, knows my taste and my body and always comes up with something exciting and perfect for the moment. “He called about 3 weeks before the Grammys with a wild idea, a “Trump Dress”. I had no idea what it would look like in it’s final stage. Was it Trump’s face? Golden like the Trump Towers? But I knew I trusted Andre. [W]e both had a firm belief that we need[ed] to show love towards our President after the gruesome hate directed at him from the Women’s March and other news hits. (When he called) I said, ‘Let’s do it!’ and history was made.” In the days before their history was made, both Soriano and Villa were aware that the dress might cause some backlash. Andre’s own neighbor, visiting his house to see what he was making, pointed out a potential problem: “We have a neighbor, Lynne, who lives down the street. [T]his is like, at least 3 days or 4 days before the Grammys, and Joy came over and Lynne [said] ‘Oh My God, Andre, this gown is not gonna make it through the parking lot in Hollywood!’ And, I’m like ‘You’re right, Lynne’ so I made a cape [to] cover it so that that once she got in there she wouldn’t get booted out….” When many of his friends in the fashion industry asked him what he was designing for this year’s Grammy Awards, Soriano would deflect. He laughs about it now. “I was so silly, so I said (joking) ‘She gained a lot of weight’ so I texted them [a photo of] the cape gown… no one really knew that there was a dress underneath. And then, before she even made it to the main carpet, MTV News said she was the worst dressed of the Grammy’s. Then, when she revealed the dress underneath, everyone was like, you could hear the people’s reactions—I was like “Oh my God, here it is…” Villa had originally not planned to wear the cape for as long as she initially did: “It was added as a last minute addition just for the limo ride over, but I decided why not wear it through all the interviews and only reveal it at the last spot of the Grammy’s carpet.” “I wasn’t nervous, I was excited. I rehearsed that moment in my mind in Andre’s studio and we both knew it would be a shocker, we just didn’t know how much. I did think that it could potentially be dangerous for me, but I was willing to take the risk. In the end the cape protected me from any attacks and was a fitting touch to the big reveal. I love seeing the video footage of me smiling and hearing the photographers cheer me on!” Villa explained. The reaction, regardless of which political side you sit on, was immediate and deafening. Piecing together the 24 hours immediately following the moment Villa pulled off the cape and revealed the dress can be both intimidating and confusing. Villa took to Instagram the night of the Grammy Awards to write “Go big, or go home. You can either stand for what you believe or fall for what you don’t. Above all make a choice for tolerance and love. Agree to disagree. See the person over the politics, carry yourself with dignity, always. Life is made to be lived, so go boldly and give no effs (sic).” Not all of her fans were happy, with fans commenting things like “..so sad when you support your own oppressors…” Comments like that flooded Villa’s Instagram following the dress reveal. However, for any fans Villa may have lost, she appeared to gain legions of Trump-supporting fans overnight. By some estimates, her Twitter followers climbed from 20,000 to 100,000 people overnight. Within less than 24 hours of pulling the cape off of her body to reveal the bedazzled-campaign-flag dress that once hung on Soriano’s front porch, Villa’s album skyrocketed to number one on iTunes and Amazon. Her album, “I Make The Static” beat Bruno Mars, Adele, and Beyonce’s record-shattering “Lemonade” album. Villa’s February 13th Instagram post stated to her fans: “We did it! iTunes #1!! Your support and love have changed the nation’s dialogue from one of hate to that of love and acceptance.” Comments accusing Villa of using Trump for her own personal gain were not uncommon. That didn’t seem to matter. The real question was, regardless of what Villa said, did the dress change the dialogue from hate to love? MAGA Monroe Both Villa and Soriano were suddenly the unexpected darlings of the conservative media. Villa and Soriano—a multiracial (African American, Native American, and Italian) woman and a gay immigrant—were suddenly front and center on conservative-leaning programs like FOX and Friends and Alex Jones’ Infowars. Soriano appeared on Fox and Friends with Villa wearing a pro-Trump “Make America Great Again” red hat. The article that still accompanies the video on FOX Insider’s website reads “Joy Villa: Trump-themed Grammys Gown Was a ‘Statement of Love’” One thing that has remained consistent is Villa and Soriano’s insistence on the messaging of the reason for not only the dress, but the act of wearing the dress to the Grammy Awards. Villa tells me the dress represents: “Hope. Unity. Love for Country and genuine respect for our President, who Andre and I believe is truly a great leader for our nation. It represents American pride and a desire to really forward this country to greatness through love, not hate. It doesn’t attack anyone else, there is room for all of our beliefs. It merely praises President Trump and his fight for the American people.” When speaking to Soriano, he is, like Villa, insisting that the message of the dress was unity and love. “Regardless of who the President is, we have to be behind the pilot of our country. I think it’s just like solidarity, at least give him four years.” Not everyone bought the idea that the dress was a message of unity, peace, or love. Former Congressional candidate, current medical researcher and wife of former Congressman Alan Grayson, Dr. Dena Grayson, believes there were other options: “Soriano put Trump’s campaign slogan—not a national slogan—on his dress. ’MAGA’ is not a national slogan of our country…instead, that is a political slogan on the dress. By definition it’s not going to be a unifying message. It’s just not.” Grayson continued: “If the true stated goal was—‘I am a gay immigrant [and a] pro-Trump voter, and I wanted to send a message that brings people together by designing an amazing dress’—[then] instead of designing a dress that had Trump’s campaign slogan on it—Make America Great Again—“MAGA” – [you have to see that] a lot of non-Trump supporters view that as a divisive statement. Instead, if [Soriano] had come up with a beautiful rendition of our amazing American flag as a dress—that would have been a unifying message. [T]hen, if he said ‘I did this because I’m a pro-Trump gay immigrant, and I wanted to show [it] in a way that we can all come together as a country with our new President’, I think that probably would have been a more powerful message.” Conservative radio host Alex Jones had a completely different take on the situation. When Villa appeared on his daily program, Jones himself seemed starstruck: “Joy Villa, a few weeks ago, went from being a popular star, who was on the charts, to being number one on the Billboard Rock—above the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Metallica right now—her new album is out—and number twelve on the Billboard 200—and I gotta say she is the ‘MAGA Monroe’ make America Great Again—she’s got that Marilyn Monroe figure, I really like it, I will, uh, say that right now, I like that dress, obviously, I guess I’m a married man, I can’t say that. Make America Great Again… she is the ‘MAGA Monroe.’” Watching the video, it is clear Villa loved the new monicker. For those on the conservative side of the spectrum, they only see positivity. Dr. Gina Loudon is a psychology and behavioral expert who hosts America Trends with Dr. Gina. Her political and psychological analysis and conservative-leaning views are frequently featured on multiple national TV news networks such as CNN, FOX News, and MSNBC. Dr. Loudon is a close friend of Soriano and was a Trump surrogate during the 2016 Presidential campaign. When Dr. Loudon and I discussed the impact of the dress, I asked her why she believes voices like Soriano’s, a gay, legal immigrant, are important in the current political climate. “The Trump dress that Andre designed had so much impact because America loves our right to speak out minds, to express our beliefs. The First Amendment is totally unique to America, and it guarantees our right to say what we think. Some who say they believe in freedom would shut people like Andre down for his own creative expression. That isn’t right, it isn’t who we are, and it isn’t where we are going in America.” Andre and I talked about his many friends who are democrats and/or Clinton supporters. I asked him if there had been any backlash. Andre Soriano with Rumiko McCarthy, Producer and Owner of Chess Knight Productions, at the 2015 Catalina Film Festival “I have most of my friends who are civil. Because I have my political opinions doesn’t mean they would disown me, though there are some friends that did. However in my social media, when someone would not agree with President Trump, my Democratic friends are the ones saying things to people bashing me like ‘you really don’t know Andre to say these things’ [and], ‘I may not agree with Trump, but I don’t agree with you bashing Andre.’” During our talk, he talked about his friend, Daphna Edwards Ziman. Ziman is famously close with the Clintons and even referred to Hillary Clinton as a “mentor and dear friend” in an LA Times article during the 2016 election season. Ziman and her ex-husband Richard Ziman, are well-known Clinton mega-donators and supporters. One thing that many reporters questioned after the MAGA dress was unveiled was whether or not the support for Trump was genuine or a stunt. Less than nine months before the election, in February of 2016, Ziman held a much-publicized gala benefit and Academy Awards viewing party in support of Children Uniting Nations (“CUN”). CUN was founded by Ziman in 1999 along with honorary chairs Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton to connect mentors with foster children. Soriano attended the gala event, which, in and of itself doesn’t automatically imply he supports Clinton. But, it has drawn more than a few raised eyebrows from his Democrat friends in Hollywood—including Ziman. When I contacted Ziman about her relationship with Soriano and her thoughts on the MAGA dress, she sent me the following statement: “Andre Soriano is a very talented designer. I personally believe that art, music, film and fashion is the universal language of global unity. I do not believe that politics has any room in such creativity. Andre obviously wanted to gain attention with the Trump dress. Negative or positive, he managed to get attention.” Openly gay and famed character actor Jasper Cole (“The Purge: Anarchy”, “American Horror Story”, and a million other projects) echoed Ziman as well as many others I spoke with in the LGBTQ community I talked with about the dress. “First of all, I had never heard of Joy Villa or the designer, so it seems to me both only used the MAGA dress to get press. So, I’m sure they think it was a positive impact for them. In fact, Joy has been quoted as saying how much her social media following increased two fold after she wore it. However, I think it had a negative impact on THEM from the LGBTQ community and made both of them look the opportunists they are. They spouted some BS how this dress was all about love and unity and yet they supposedly support a sexist, racist, unqualified hate monger for president. I think our community is too smart to be bamboozled by these nobodies because quite frankly, I don’t believe either truly have a shit about the election, one way or the other.” Villa herself was called out by other outlets for deleting old pro-Bernie Sanders tweets once the MAGA dress became part of the national conversation. Regardless of whether or not Democrats believe Villa and Soriano are truly Trump supporters, Republicans, and even Trump’s own family have embraced both of them. Sara Galliano, an avid Trump supporter and volunteer from New Orleans, Louisiana, believes Soriano’s voice is important for Trump supporters who identify as LGBTQ. “Andre’s voice is important as a citizen first and foremost. But to have a gay, minority citizen express his voice for Trump makes it even more important in my opinion. Many believe Trump is against immigrants and gays but they are incorrect. Andre’s voice shows support that legal citizenship is appreciated by Americans of all races, and the fact he is gay and supports Trump really isn’t that surprising to me.” “Lots of gay men and women I know support Trump because they know he is about equality across the board, and he can care less who you love, but rather how you contribute to society. Responsible people are supporting Trump who want to see America flourish and Andre’s voice is one standing out because liberals feel he shouldn’t be on the conservative side. I think it’s time to look beyond politics and look at people. Andre isn’t being politically correct or incorrect, he is being human and expressing his interest in being a leader in his community instead of a sheep following the path.” Dr. Louden shared similar sentiments, telling me, “The politically elite in this country want to paint some people into victimhood status, to enslave them so that they can control them. But people like Andre expose their plot, because he breaks every mold they want to put him in. That’s what I love about Andre and that’s what I love about America!” Just a few weeks after the Grammy Awards, a group (that many say breaks stereotypes) called “Gays For Trump” held a rally in Washington D.C. where both Soriano and Villa were keynote speakers. Soriano is adamant when it comes to the President’s support of the LGBTQ community. Though these interviews were conducted before the President’s announcement he intended to ban trans members of the military. Soriano told me, “[Trump] is the first Presidential candidate (in the GOP) to really support the LGBT community—that’s not reported. There are so many things he supports about the LGBTQ [community].” Dr. Grayson feels otherwise: “Having a gay immigrant design this dress as a way to show somehow that people in the LGBTQ and immigrant communities suddenly think Trump is for them, I think it’s like putting lipstick on a pig. I think the vast majority of the LGBTQ community know that the Trump regime, including number two—the former Governor of Indiana Mike Pence—are NOT espousing viewpoints and policy positions that are really welcoming the community in this country.” When I asked Soriano if he has had any pushback from the LGBTQ community originally, he mentioned RuPaul Drag Race Season Three winner Raja Gemini as being vocally opposed to him once she discovered he was the designer of the MAGA Dress. On a Facebook post, Gemini posted a photo of Villa in the dress with the following caption: “I found out who made this idiotic pile of trash, but I won’t mention it’s(sic) name. Damn… say goodbye to your fashion “career” you whack ass loser. Why does this person keep getting invited? #BOOT” One thing that struck me as strange was that many of the most outspoken critics of Soriano were unavailable or unwilling to speak for this article, Gemini included. I attempted to contact Gemini eleven different ways over the course of three weeks before I heard back from a representative telling me Gemini was declining to be a part of this story. Soriano noted this phenomenon when we spoke. To him, he expressed wanting to have a dialogue with his detractors, while they seemed to not even want to hear his side of the story. Fleeing A Real Dictator One thing I found fascinating when reading most articles about Soriano, Villa, and the dress was that most reporters were missing what may be a crucial key to understanding Soriano’s beliefs: Andre Soriano and his family actually grew up under the oppressive hand of dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. His mother escaped with Soriano and his siblings under cover of night. Many un-informed people like to immediately label President Trump as a dictator without doing much homework on what a real dictator is…something Soriano knows all to well. America, from Soriano’s perspective, regardless of who is in charge, is always America. Throughout our talks, Soriano repeated to me more than once that America is freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. America is not a dictatorship, despite what a few ultra-left (and ultra-right) people on social media may want you to believe. To understand Soriano’s support of Trump may be to understand his family fleeing an awful dictatorship. I asked him what it was like growing up under a real dictatorship and how he escaped. “It’s so crazy because Benigno Aquino (husband of future President Corazon Aquino—who led the opposition against the dictator Marcos) studied here in America. I believe he went to one of the prestigious schools here and wanted to bring that back to the Philippines. So, when he came back to Manila—he wanted to transform the Philippines because of the dictatorship that the Marcos’ did.” Soriano’s voice quiets when he tells this story. It is an obviously emotional subject for him to discuss. “So meanwhile, that’s happening because there [was] a civil war [coming] in the country. A friend of my mother’s said ‘Hey, you have to think of your kids’ future.’ That’s why she relocated us here to America: me, my brother and sister. [At this point], there was civil war in the Philippines and you could see tanks and people stopping the tanks to have peace and everything because they assassinated him (Marcos). The [people] wanted better things for the country and were fed up with the corruption. “It’s always the people’s power. It’s almost like what’s happening in America where there is no civil war or anything. Its all talk, talk, talk—which is great, [but no one] is reporting anything that is right…I’m glad they didn’t go harsh like that (civil war), however, people woke up and said ‘I live in this country and I want the best for this country’ and there is a better chance that Trump is going to change our country for the good.” Soriano’s enthusiasm about being an American is most evident in when he talks about his speech at the Gays For Trump event in Washington D.C. “I’ve only been to Washington, D.C. once, and after my speech, a lot of Americans were just coming up to me and saying, ‘Oh my God, Andre, now I get it!’ I’ve never felt like such a bonafide American as when I spoke in front of the Washington monument… it’s so moving and then a lot of people said ‘Oh my God, Andre, now I can understand your love for our country.” I asked him if he feels anger when people call Trump a dictator on the level of Hitler. “Well, I don’t even believe the fake news anymore. I actually like the frog news…however, those are just words. If people are really sane, they will ignore them (The people who say Trump is a dictator) and they know its not true.” A Problem With A Frog? Speaking of frogs, Soriano enthusiastically told me about the MAGA Awards, whose website’s background images prominently feature the controversial “Pepe The Frog” meme that was labelled as a white supremacist symbol of hate by Hillary Clinton and the ACLU. A quick peek at the website shows an email address for a woman named Viktoria Colvin, who was recently featured on an episode of “MAGAOneRadio”, hosted by Peter Boykin, President of Gays For Trump. Soriano explained, “The MAGA Awards—It’s all about Americans who have made a difference in our beautiful nation. The organizers are having a fashion show and also presenting an award to the people that really made a difference. MAGA means “Make America Great Again”—it was used by Ronald Reagan, it was used by Bill Clinton and now it’s being used by Donald Trump. It’s a word (phrase) that’s already been out there, right? It’s not just like it came to the surface because of Trump. It’s about uniting Americans all together… this group is awarding them with something great for doing something great for this country. On top of that I am really grateful and honored to be presented and have my own fashion show!” For some I spoke with, Soriano and Villa’s enthusiastic support of the MAGA Awards is where the questions begin again. Dr. Grayson explained, “We have the First Amendment, and it’s critical because it allows people to express views with which we may not agree or we may find offensive. There are First Amendment protections for a reason. All viewpoints are welcome as long as they’re not damaging somebody else. But, when it comes to artistic expression and rewarding that, to me—art—including design and entertainment—should be judged on its merits. [T]his kind of seems like a pushback or reaction to ‘You know Hollywood is so liberal, so we have to have our own awards because they only reward liberal artists’, which is nonsense. Does this mean now that any conservative who won an Academy Award [will have it taken away]? [Will the] Academy say ‘Oops, sorry Clint, we are taking back your Oscars!’ No, that’s crazy.” So, I hope that our side doesn’t respond with the ‘Leftie Awards’ .. You know ‘I’m a left-handed progressive liberal, we will have the Leftie Liberal Artist Awards!’ I mean WHY? Let’s have awards that value people on the merits for the artistry that they show and the talents that they possess. People have a right to do what they want, but I believe that we have too much of this ‘us and them’ and last time I checked, our flag was red, white, and blue—and we are all Americans.” Full Circle In June, Villa attended the Faith and Freedom Coalition where the president spoke. Afterwards, she was invited to the White House by Jennifer Korn, Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director for the Office of Public Liaison. On Villa’s YouTube, in a video she explains how wonderful the visit was, only to be topped of with a one-on-one session with Ivanka Trump. According to Villa, the visit was wonderful. She spent two and half hours in the White House meeting the likes of Andrew Giuliani and she walked out of the West Wing and suddenly Kellyanne Conway stepped out of a black SUV, as Villa puts it, “in all of her fabulousness”. Conway, according to Villa, loved her tattoos and they talked for awhile. But Conway wasn’t the only Trump-level celebrity Villa was to meet. In Villa’s own words, “On the way out, I hear ‘Joy!’ and guess who comes running up to me? Ivanka Trump! She is so incredible, such an awesome person, she’s just a big, glowing, like the sun. She’s just like sunshine. She throws her hands around me and gives me a big bear hug and she’s like ‘Oh my God, it’s so great to see you! I remember when you wore that dress and we are so happy and we were celebrating! We just loved it and you made us so happy, you made us smile, how are you doing? Did you fly from Los Angeles?’ She’s just so interested and so curious and beautiful and we were just getting together like girlfriends.” While both Villa and Soriano continue to receive press from the MAGA dress, the LGBTQ community—both against and for the President—are faced with a conundrum. Though the President may have never come against the L’s, the G’s, or the B’s – in recent weeks, remarks about the T’s – the trans members of the LGBTQ community have raised new concerns. On July 26th, 2017, President Trump said in a series of three tweets (combined for ease of reading): “After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow….......Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming…......victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you.” Peter Boykin, the President of “Gays For Trump” who starred in a March 9th, 2017 video with both Villa and Soriano, hosted a founder of the aforementioned MAGA Awards, Viktoria Colvin, on his July 31st, 2017 “MAGAOneRadio” show. On the show, Boykin calls Colvin on his phone and has a private conversation where he responds to a question, after telling her he wanted to talk about the trans issue, and says “Did I say we have to be nice?” before putting Colvin on speaker phone. Boykin explains that he has a special guest on the phone who is going to talk about the “transgender issue with us” and “it’s not going to be so friendly”. He then adds, “We never said our show was going to be friendly”. Boykin and Colvin exchange pleasantries before getting down to Boykin’s main theme. He explains to Colvin that they are going to discuss how there is no right or wrong answer to the transgender people in the military, but they want to talk about elective surgery. Colvin says: “Yeah, there is no real answer. There is no true answer. There’s no right or wrong. But, um, many people have issues with things that you can’t have: you can’t have flat feet if you go in [to the military]. You can’t be allergic to bees and join the military because it puts you or people around you in harms way should you get stung by a bee. And.. if you’re a transgender and you’re taking hormonal medication and you don’t have access to it, you could potentially have a problem. Um, and, as far as the transgender surgery goes, that’s technically an elective surgery. If you claim that you’re going to kill yourself or you’re going to have some mental breakdown because you don’t have your transgender surgery that’s stating you have a mental problem, and you cannot have a known mental problem and be in the military. And.. elective surgery, you know, I was in the military for the army for eight years and I couldn’t go get a boob job, and have the army pay for it, even if I was a little bit overweight and maybe not the weight standard…” “You mean you could tell them that you envision yourself as a woman with bigger breasts and that’s what you feel like you want to be—an uber woman?” Boykin asks. “Yeah, well, yeah, you can’t claim that and say that’s what is going to make me healthy and mentally healthy and fit…” She continues to explain that if you can’t pass your weight standard in the military and want liposuction, the army will, essentially, laugh you out of service. She ends her statement with “Why should we pay for people to have transgender surgery when technically its an elective surgery? You’re choosing not be the sexual format, um, whether it is in your head or its a mental thing or not, but, if you’re gonna claim that hey, you’re gonna have mental problems, Lady Gaga posted that you just singled out, 45% of the people you just singled out commit suicide in that age bracket, and that was exactly, you know, committing suicide is a kind of mental distress, mental disorder, mental problem of some sort…” The conversation moves on and Boykin has a personal observation: “I would actually truthfully say a lot of the women join the military because they are more on the butchier (sic) side because of the working out.” Regardless of this conversation, Boykin has a voice on what his supporters call the “Trump Train” from his radio show, support of the MAGA Awards with Colvin, and being the President of Gays For Trump. When it comes around to the original question about Soriano—how can a gay immigrant justify not only being a Trump supporter, but also design a dress that many say normalizes Trump, the answers vary. Sometimes, the answers to the harder questions end up coming from the most logical sources. Erin Berg is the co-founder of Kipper Clothiers. Kipper Clothiers was born following the repeal of Proposition 8, out of a need to create clothing that inspires pride and confidence within the LGBTQ community. Berg was frustrated by the lack of options for transgender men and lesbian women looking for high-quality, custom-fitted suits. So, Berg decided to start Kipper Clothiers to provide a comfortable and safe space that catered to every body type, despite gender identity. As a fellow fashion designer, Soriano’s choice to create the MAGA dress and the implications that followed, were layered. Berg explained, “I think that all voices need to be raised within the LGBTQ community, but not at the expense of those that are most oppressed within the community—my thoughts are taken right to LGBTQ folks who are on Medicaid and rely on the government assistance. Trying to normalize a Trump administration through this type of over-the-top nationalism is not what the LGBTQ community stands for…” When I asked Berg about how it made him feel that an LGBT immigrant designed the dress, his response was among the most poignant of everyone I spoke with: “I think that it gave me some pause of the harsh critiques the dress was getting, but my sentiment is still the same. ‘MAGA’ as a concept is racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, anti-immigrant that at its core is against everything America is. How can a dress glorifying the current administration be a symbol of unity and love? Also, why does a Women’s March critiquing a current administration get seen as harsh and separatist? I think we are running up on an old narrative that women’s voices across the country need to be silenced by the voice of one man. How is that a symbol of unity?” I think that after Trump’s win, many of his supporters have become emboldened and are starting to show their true colors more, even within the LGBTQ community. However, with this has also come a large spike in hate crimes. If LGBTQ Trump supporters are in the closet, it is because they are ashamed of siding with an administration that is unabashedly holding up their anti-immigrant, racist ideals.” When it comes to the MAGA dress, no matter which side you stand on, most people are drawn to a few questions: 1.) Is the dress art? 2.) Is the dress an attempt to normalize someone that progressives feel is radical? 3.) Is a dress, sometimes, just a dress? When Jasper Cole was asked if the dress was art, he said, “Clearly from my answers so far I don’t consider that dress art. Rather, I think it’s propaganda. But they say, ‘Art is in the eye of the beholder’—but Hitler loved art as did many other hateful horrible people!’ Designer Erin Berg had similar sentiments, telling me, “No—it is a theatrical piece of politics that did nothing to forward any conversation around the LGBTQ community in the days of Trump. I believe it is just another distraction as Trump tries to disenfranchise the weakest among us.” Yet, one of the most fascinating aspects of working on piecing together what quite possibly is the most interesting pop culture aspect to emerge out of the Trump era was the clear, and surprising, disconnect that both “sides” had with one another. When I spoke with people who did not support Trump, their anger revealed less of an anger towards the dress and Soriano and Villa, but more towards the fact that Donald Trump is President of the United States. When I spoke with pro-Trump supporters, the conversation became more about the “bravery” of Villa and Soriano or the fact that they were gay, minorities, immigrants (or some combo therein), and less about the dress. So, perhaps, the original question isn’t how Soriano can justify being a pro-Trump supporting immigrant and gay man. Instead, perhaps the question is: how can everyone on both sides of the aisle figure out how to start having a proper conversation with each other about Donald Trump being President? The dress accomplished something, whether Democrats or Republicans want to admit it: it allowed what is already a contentious and heated debate to ground and center itself around something. An object. A dress, of all things. Cole explained, “The whole idea that Andre says his dress was a sign of ‘love and unity’ is hilarious. It certainly unified our community in protest against the dress and the hate that it really represents. For the designer to even reference something as magnificent as the women’s march in the same breath as this MAGA dress is just ludicrous. It only shows just how uninformed he and Joy Villa are. The thing that really back fired on them was that the majority of the LGBTQ community felt the dress was a slap in the face of all the true activists who have marched and fought and bled for this community against the hate and bigotry that this administration stands for.” While Dr. Louden, when asked how she deals with hearing negativity about her good friend Soriano, told me “I don’t hear negative things about Andre, honestly. I don’t look for it, but I don’t hear it. As someone in the public eye myself, I know that haters gonna hate. That’s what they do. It says more about them than the target of their intolerance. “ Are either of them incorrect in what they say? The answer is no—what their answers are, however—is revealing of how disconnected we all have become due to what feels like not just the political marathon of our lives, but the Olympic marathon of our time on Earth. The truth is, Villa gained supporters, but supporters are different than fans. But, more than anything, shocking as it may be, the Trump supporters and non-supporters, at the end of the day, seem to genuinely have common ground. Galliano (the Trump volunteer and supporter) told me, when asked if she is now a fan of Villa: “I had never heard of Joy before this event. I did look her up afterwards and I’m not a fan of her music, but I do appreciate the individualism she exhibited by stepping out of the comfort zone and I commend her for that. I believe people do become fans based on the trends, but that’s just not who I am. Either I like your music or I don’t, which doesn’t translate to I don’t like you as a person if I don’t. I do support her future ventures because I think everyone should live the American dream: the pursuit of happiness and freedom to succeed. She did a brave thing that others would be scared to do.” Dr. Grayson, Congressional candidate and wife of a former Congressman, told me: “I respect the First Amendment and definitely respect the freedom of artists to express themselves—that is one of the things that makes our country great, and even if I don’t like the message—I can appreciate art for what it is.” Whether the world believes Soriano’s dress was art, the point is that it began a discussion. What America is to one person is completely different to another. What the United States means to a gay immigrant who fled a dictator in the Philippines is going to be different from a 7th generation American immigrant. Because, as Dr. Grayson told me, almost everyone here in America is an immigrant. Two quotes from one man, Ronald Reagan, kept running through my mind during the weeks I worked on this article. The first one is this: “Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again.” And, perhaps more poignantly: “Too often character assassination has replaced debate in principle here in Washington. Destroy someone’s reputation, and you don’t have to talk about what he stands for.” Perhaps it’s time we all start listening to why we stand for what we do? |
The Central Valley prepares for an unprecedented shortage. Photo © Matt Black / Circle of Blue A drying irrigation ditch on the edge of the historic Tulare Lake Basin in California’s Central Valley. Click image to enlarge. By Brett Walton Circle of Blue Another historically dry year in California is leading to unprecedented water restrictions for some of the nation’s most productive farmland. For the second consecutive year, farmers with contracts from the Central Valley Project, a large federal irrigation system, will receive no water, according to a preliminary forecast announced on Friday by the Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the project. Cities and industries will get 25 percent of their full contract allocation, to ensure sufficient water for human health and safety. “Given the hydrology, the announcement is not unexpected, but it’s pretty depressing to go into a second year of zero allocation.” –Lon Martin, assistant general manager San Luis Water District “We are bracing for a potential fourth year of severe drought, and this low initial allocation is yet another indicator of the dire situation,” said Reclamation Mid-Pacific Regional Director David Murillo. “Reclamation and the Department of the Interior will continue to work with the State of California and our water users to do everything possible to increase water deliveries from the project as we move yet another difficult year. Our economy and our environment depend on it.” The Central Valley Project (CVP) plays an outsized role in U.S. agriculture. Stretching some 645 kilometers (400 miles) through the heart of California, the project delivers water to more than 1.2 million hectares (3 million acres) of farmland and to six of the country’s seven most productive farm counties by sales. It supplies water to federal wildlife refuges and nearly a million households as well. The political pressure to release more water for Central Valley farms is intense as water managers attempt to balance the needs of agriculture, fisheries, and cities during an ecological and social crisis. Two huge pumping stations pull water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the state’s imperiled water hub that is home to several endangered species, and push it through a web of canals that crisscross the valley floor. In January, the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife approved a Bureau of Reclamation petition to increase the number of Delta smelt, a federally protected fish, that can be killed by the pumping stations. Also in January, the State Water Resources Control Board loosened pumping restrictions to allow Reclamation to divert more water from the delta during rainstorms. California’s congressional delegation, after failing to reach a compromise last year, continues to work on legislation that would increase farm water deliveries. Still, farmers supplied by the CVP will get none of the canal water they requested. Because of the zero allocation, farmers will turn elsewhere to keep their businesses alive. Some will tap supplies they saved in reservoirs from previous years. Others will pay steep prices to buy water on the market. But, like last year, few supplies will be made available as potential sellers seek to protect their own operations. Instead, most farmers will again rely on groundwater wells to produce a crop. A savoir for almonds and oranges, groundwater is nonetheless under immense stress. So much water was pumped from underground last year that more than one thousand residential wells went dry in the San Joaquin Valley, leaving thousands of families without running water. The Legislature passed a new law last year to tighten restrictions on groundwater use, but its deadline for balancing groundwater supply and demand is two decades in the future. Groundwater, however, is not a universal option. For instance, farmers in the San Luis Water District, which covers 65,000 acres on the westside of the valley, rely on the CVP for 95 percent of their irrigation water. There is no aquifer beneath their land. Lon Martin, the district’s assistant general manager said that roughly 8,000 acres of orchards would perish this year for lack of water. About half the district’s acreage will be fallowed and the rest will be irrigated with the little amount of water it has stored in San Luis Reservoir. “Given the hydrology, the announcement is not unexpected,” Martin told Circle of Blue. “But it’s pretty depressing to go into a second year of zero allocation. It puts the final nail in the coffin of growers who are barely surviving last year.” Reclamation’s initial forecast is a conservative estimate that can be raised if late-season rains arrive, but it is unlikely to increase by much. Snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains, which fills reservoirs when it melts, is worse than in 2014, which was the third-lowest snow year on record. Economists at the University of California, Davis, estimated that the drought in 2014 cost the state $US 2.2 billion in agricultural losses and 17,100 jobs. |
Britain warned Russia on Sunday against intervening in Ukraine's "complex" crisis, saying London wanted to contribute to an international economic program aimed at shoring up the "desperately difficult" situation of the Ukrainian economy. Also on Sunday, Ukrainian parliament voted to appoint Oleksandr Turchinov, the closest confidante of freed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, the role of president following Sunday's ouster of Victor Yanukovych. Ukraine's parliamentary speaker and newly appointed interim president told deputies to agree on the formation of a national unity government by Tuesday. "This is a priority task," Turchinov said. In comments that may anger Moscow, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said his government was in regular contact with the Russian government to try to persuade it that closer ties between Ukraine and the European Union should not worry it. "If there's an economic package, it will be important that Russia doesn't do anything to undermine that economic package and is working in cooperation and support of it," Hague told BBC TV. When asked if he was worried that Russia might "send in the tanks" to defend the interests of Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine, Hague warned against what he called "external duress" or Russian intervention. "It would really not be in the interests of Russia to do any such thing. We have to keep up the communication with Russia as we are doing ... so that the people of Ukraine can choose their own way forward. There are many dangers and uncertainties." Keep updated: Sign up to our newsletter Email * Please enter a valid email address Sign up Please wait… Thank you for signing up. We've got more newsletters we think you'll find interesting. Click here Oops. Something went wrong. Please try again later. Try again Thank you, The email address you have provided is already registered. Close Ukraine's parliament voted to remove President Viktor Yanukovych on Saturday after three months of street protests, while his arch-rival Yulia Tymoshenko hailed opposition demonstrators as "heroes" in an emotional speech in Kiev after she was released from jail. The crisis began as protests against Yanukovych's decision to abandon a trade agreement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia, which promised to lend Ukraine $15 billion euros. Ukraine needs the money -- foreign investment inflows fell by almost half last year, to a net $2.86 billion from $4.13 billion in 2012 skip - Britain has so far assumed a lower profile on Ukraine than countries such as Germany and Poland, though Prime Minister David Cameron spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin last Thursday about the situation there and Hague said he'd be talking to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday. Hague said the priority was to persuade Moscow that the fate of Ukraine - a country that was part of the Soviet Union and has been within Russia's sphere of influence for decades - was not what he called "a zero-sum game" and that closer ties with the EU were not a bad thing. "It's in the interests of the people of Ukraine to be able to trade more freely with the EU. It's the interests of the people of Russia for that to happen as well." He said he didn't know what Russia's "next reaction" would be, but he pushed the Ukrainian opposition to move urgently to form a government of national unity, agree arrangements for new elections, and to crack on with shoring up the economy. "While all this has been happening, the Ukrainian economy is in a desperately difficult situation," Hague said. "And they need an economic program that the rest of us, through the International Monetary Fund and other institutions, can support so that they can stave of an even more serious economic situation." A woman poses for a picture with the figures of Soviet soldiers at the base of the Soviet Army monument, parts of which have been painted in the colours of the Ukranian flag. Reuters skip - |
The FBI continues to fully investigate the Clinton Foundation. ( Reuters photo ) Regardless of what you might have heard from the liberal mainstream media, the FBI continues to investigate the pay-for-play schemes of Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. As The Daily Caller reports, it's "full bore ahead": FBI agents across the country are continuing to actively pursue a broad political corruption investigation of the Clinton Foundation, a probe that is consuming the resources in the FBI's Little Rock, Ark., field office where every agent assigned to public corruption matters now is working on the case, The Daily Caller News Foundation's Investigative Group has learned. "Everybody's working the foundation in Little Rock," a former senior FBI official told TheDCNF. There at least 10 agents involved, but it's possible the Little Rock field office is "pulling bodies from other programs." ... Little Rock is important to the investigation because the Clinton Foundation was founded there in 1997 in that state's capital where Bill Clinton served multiple terms as governor. The controversial charity was originally registered there and was granted federal tax exemption solely for the purpose of building and operating Clinton's presidential library. Get Spirit-filled content delivered right to your inbox! Click here to subscribe to our newsletter. Great Resources to help you excel in 2019! #1 John Eckhardt's "Prayers That..." 6-Book Bundle. Prayer helps you overcome anything life throws at you. Get a FREE Bonus with this bundle. #2 Learn to walk in the fullness of your purpose and destiny by living each day with Holy Spirit. Buy a set of Life in the Spirit, get a second set FREE. See an error in this article? Send us a correction |
Giuseppe Sergi (March 20, 1841 – October 17, 1936) was an Italian anthropologist of the early twentieth century, best known for his opposition to Nordicism in his books on the racial identity of Mediterranean peoples. He rejected existing racial typologies that identified Mediterranean peoples as "dark whites" because they implied a Nordicist conception of Mediterranean peoples descending from whites who had become racially mixed with non-whites which he claimed was false. His concept of the Mediterranean race, identified Mediterranean peoples as being an autonomous brown race and he claimed that the Nordic race was descended from the Mediterranean race whose skin had depigmented to a pale complexion after it moved north. This concept became important to the modelling of racial difference in the early twentieth century. Life [ edit ] Born in Messina, Sicily, Sergi first studied law and then linguistics and philosophy. At the age of 19 he took part in Garibaldi's expedition to Sicily.[1] He later took courses in physics and anatomy, finally specializing in racial anthropology as a student of Cesare Lombroso. In 1880 he was appointed as professor of anthropology at the University of Bologna. At this time the discipline of anthropology was still associated with the literature faculty. In the following years, thanks to the activity of his laboratory of anthropology and psychology, he helped establish the discipline on a more scientific basis. In 1884 he moved to the University of Rome where he developed a program of research into both anthropology and psychology. On 4 June 1893, the Sergi took the lead in founding the Roman Society of Anthropology (now the Italian Anthropological Institute (Istituto Italiano di Antropologia).[2][3] He also began the journal Atti della Società Romana di Antropologia (now the Journal of Anthropological Sciences). Both the society and journal were associated with the University. He was initially assigned temporary premises in the School of Application for Engineers in San Pietro in Vincoli but in 1887 moved to the old building of the Roman College, where Sergi dedicated part of the space to the creation of an anthropological museum. Internationally renowned for his contributions to anthropology, he also succeeded in establishing the International Conference of Psychology in Rome, 1905, under his presidency of the Society. He died at Rome in 1936. His son Sergio Sergi (1878–1972), also a noted anthropologist, developed his father's theories. Racial theories [ edit ] Sergi's initial contribution was to oppose the use of the cephalic index to model population ancestry, arguing that over all cranial morphology was more useful.[3] However, Sergi's major theoretical achievement was his model of human ancestry, fully articulated in his books Human Variation (Varietà umane. Principio e metodo di classificazione) and The Mediterranean Race (1901), in which he argued that the earliest European peoples arose from original populations in the Horn of Africa, and were related to Hamitic peoples. This primal "Eurafrican race" split into three main groups, the Hamites, the Mediterranean race and the north European Nordic race. Semitic people were closely related to Mediterraneans but constituted a distinct "Afroasian" group.[3] The four great branches of the Mediterranean stock were the Libyans or Berbers, the Ligurians, the Pelasgians and the Iberians. Ancient Egyptians were considered by Sergi as a branch of the Hamitic race. According to Sergi the Mediterranean race, the "greatest race in the world", was responsible for the great civilisations of ancient times, including those of Egypt, Carthage, Greece and Rome. These Mediterranean peoples were quite distinct from the peoples of northern Europe.[3] Sergi argued that the Mediterraneans were more creative and imaginative than other peoples, which explained their ancient cultural and intellectual achievements, but that they were by nature volatile and unstable. In his book The Decline of the Latin Nations he argued that Northern Europeans had developed stoicism, tenacity and self-discipline due to the cold climate, and so were better adapted to succeed in modern civic cultures and economies.[3] These theories were developed in opposition to Nordicism, the claim that the Nordic race was of pure Aryan stock and naturally superior to other Europeans. Sergi ridiculed Nordicists who claimed that the leaders of ancient Greek and Roman civilization were Germanic in origin and argued that the Germanic invasions at the end of the Roman empire had produced "delinquency, vagabondage and ferocity". Sergi believed that the Aryans were originally "Eurasiatic" barbarians who migrated from the Hindu Kush into Europe. He argued that the Italians had originally spoken a Hamitic language before the Aryan (Indo-European) Italic language spread across the country. Some Aryan influence was detectable in Northern Italy, but, racially speaking, southern Italians were unaffected by Aryan migrants.[3] Sergi expanded on these theories in later publications. Despite his denigration of Aryans and emphasis on Mediterranean racial identity, he denied that he was motivated by national pride, asserting that his works had the "goal of establishing the veracity of the facts without racial prejudice, without diminishing the value of one human type in order to exalt another one."[3] His last book, The Britons (1936) sought to trace the rise of the British Empire to the Mediterranean component of the British population.[3] Theory of emotions [ edit ] Giuseppe Sergi, concurrent with William James and Carl Lange (the three independently), developed a theory of emotions[4][5] according to which emotion is the mind's perception of physiological conditions that result from some stimulus. Works in English translation [ edit ] (1894). The Varieties of the Human Species . Washington: The Smithsonian Institution. . Washington: The Smithsonian Institution. (1901). The Mediterranean Race: a Study of the Origins of European Peoples . London: Walter Scott. . London: Walter Scott. (1911). "Differences in Customs and Morals and their Resistance to Rapid Change," Papers on Inter-racial Problems. London: P. S. King and Son. See also [ edit ] Notes [ edit ] Further reading [ edit ] Luca Tedesco, "Latin and Nordic Eugenics in the Project of Racial Improvement Set Up by Giuseppe Sergi, Founder of the Comitato italiano per gli studi di Eugenica". In Popolazione e storia, 2016, 1 Luca Tedesco, Giuseppe Sergi e "la morale fondata sulla scienza". Degenerazione e perfezionamento razziale nel fondatore del Comitato Italiano per gli Studi di Eugenica. Milano, Unicopli, 2012 Luca Tedesco, "L'antropologia positivista italiana e la questione sarda: la peculiarità della riflessione di Giuseppe Sergi". In Giampaolo Atzei - Tania Manca - Alessandra Orlandini Carcreff (a cura di), Paolo Mantegazza. Dalle Americhe al Mediterraneo, Monaco, Liberfaber, 2014 |
When Mayor Murray announced two weeks ago that a delegation from the renowned Urban Land Institute (ULI) would visit and advise on what to do with Seattle’s Rainier Beach neighborhood, it alarmed some wary Southeast Seattleites, for two reasons. First, because of the ULI’s history. It was created by the real estate industry in 1938 to advocate “urban renewal,” which all too often translated into urban removal. And it has more recently endorsed the use of eminent domain for private redevelopment, a very fraught subject in Southeast Seattle following the Nickels Administration’s efforts to deploy it there. And second because of the announced goal of the year-long consultation that the Land Institute would provide the city: “To review and comment on plans for transit oriented development and job growth in Rainier Beach.” Transit-oriented development (TOD) is another fraught subject down here; one stop up the light-rail line at Othello Station, it neglected neighborhood needs and went bust. Patricia Paschal, a longtime Othello activist, summed up the apprehension: “Light rail has been operating for six years and none of the promised prosperity has materialized. How much of our tax money will this review cost? Maybe the City should take the focus off transit-oriented [development] and put it on strengthening the existing community.” Paschal wasn’t among the dozens of citizens and officials the Land Institute delegation interviewed last week. But aside from the question of city funds (the Land Institute pays its way and covers the city’s costs to participate), her critique was prophetic. After three days exploring Rainier Beach, the delegation of design and development experts and officials from other cities came to exactly the same conclusion: Forget, for now anyway, about trying to lure developers to put up Othello Station-style midrise TOD. Concentrate on what the neighborhood needs and wants now. Which means (what a concept!) listening to it. To understand how this change of focus came about, let’s go back to how this visitation came to be. Six years ago, with the National League of Cities lending its imprimatur, the Urban Land Institute founded the Daniel Rose Center for Public Leadership. Its declared mission: “To empower leaders in the public sector to envision, build, and sustain successful 21st-century communities.” (Why mayors rather than ordinary citizens need empowering, especially in cities like Seattle with strong-mayor charters, isn’t immediately clear). But as the Rose Center’s homepage goes on to explain, it’s really about supporting “excellence in land use decision making.” You can see why some wary residents worry about this being a stalking horse for big development. The Rose Center’s approach is however more nuanced. Each year it offer mayors and key staffers in four cities the chance to become “Rose Center fellows” and receive year-long consultation on some major development or redevelopment challenge. This consultation comes not just from house experts but from past fellows, making it a sort of on-the-ground exchange program between cities. Many of the fellowships have gone to cities such as Detroit. Philadelphia, Hartford, and Memphis that have suffered significant economic and/or population declines. But the Rose Center had wanted from the start to come to Seattle. “We like a mix of strong and weak markets,” says Gideon Berger, the program’s senior director, “and it’s hard to find a stronger market than Seattle.” Furthermore, Berger says, “we like to work with mayors when they’re newly elected. They seem most eager to get advice when they’re new in office.” Finally, the fellowship program looks for “stability” – i.e. mayors who will be around long enough and have enough clout to act on what they learn. “There seemed to be a lot of mayoral instability before,” Berger says diplomatically of Murray’s one-term predecessor, Mike McGinn. By contrast, “Mayor Murray has had some early successes.” Translation: this mayor seems worth the investment. The Rainier Beach focus reflected Murray’s declared equity agenda and promise to do more for Southeast Seattle. What the visiting Rose Fellows and development experts saw at Rainier Beach was a Seattle far removed from the prevailing narrative of Shanghai-pace growth at South Lake Union and nosebleed housing prices in once-sleepy neighborhoods like Ballard. Their preliminary findings, PowerPointed last Thursday at the downtown library, were a catalog of deferred action, missed opportunities, unmade connections, and enduring potential. One thing to defer: TOD dreams. Light rail can hardly seed new development when it hasn’t rooted in the existing neighborhood. Rainier’s Beach’s commercial and civic life lies a half-mile away on Rainier Avenue. Henderson, the street connecting them, is a dreary gauntlet of worn low-rise apartments, vacant lots, and cracked sidewalks, passing under ominous high-tension wires. Rainier Ave’s transit lifeline, the Route 7 bus, bypasses the station; other, less frequent routes from Renton do connect along Henderson Street, but that compounds commute time and trouble. Some of the out-of-towners seemed surprised to find no park-and-ride lot, or even kiss-and-ride dropoff, at the rail station. Here, as elsewhere along the Link line, the city forbade station parking to discourage driving, even driving to take transit. (Tukwila didn’t, so suburban trainriders get 662 free parking spaces, while Seattleites who can’t walk or bike to the stations play park-and-hide on city streets, wait for connector buses (if any), or just give up and drive. And struggling restaurants and other businesses near Othello Station miss out on an influx of potential park-and-ride customers.) At the same time, the delegation noted some important assets at Rainier Beach that have been underexploited and often unappreciated. One, the area’s rich ethnic diversity, gets much lip service. Others, less appreciated, are its natural beauty and water access, with a beachfront facing Mt. Rainier and flanked by a public high school and relatively inexpensive apartments and condos. This is one stretch of Lake Washington shoreline that hasn’t gone Gold Coast. Surely the Seattle Parks Department and others could do more to exploit these advantages. How about kayak and paddleboard rentals, perhaps a human-powered boat fair to counter the Seafair thunderboats to the north? It’s not fair to say that the public sector hasn’t invested in Rainier Beach. The school district installed a topflight Performing Arts Center at Rainier Beach High in 1998. Mayor McGinn persevered to fulfill a promise to replace Rainier Beach’s decrepit community center and swimming pool at Rainier and Henderson, even as he had to slash the overall city budget. A contracting snafu delayed construction, and Rainier Beach languished without swimming, basketball courts, and other activities for three years. Maybe it’s just coincidence that street shootings spiked then. Maybe not. But the new community center may be the snazziest in town; its excellent swimming and play pools (I hate to publicize this) attract swimmers from across town. All this, plus the rail station and beach park and a new library one block down Rainier, ought to form the armature of a vital pedestrian district. But grim sidewalks, scanty and scary pedestrian crossings, chainlink fences, and bank-branch and fast-food parking lots. As the ULI/Rose Center presentation notes, there’s no “coherent sense of place,” no there between the amenities – “lots of open space but no common ground.” The not-so-inviting view down Henderson from the Rainier Beach rail station. “We heard about diversity,” Rose fellow Karen Abrams, who heads Pittsburgh’s Redevelopment Authority, told Murray and the other locals assembled last Thursday. “But we didn’t feel it when we got off at the light rail stop. We wanted to see a lot more public art there.” (Other light-rail stations have prominent artworks celebrating their environs.) Rather than grand redevelopment, she (and the delegation as a whole) urged the city to go for “low-hanging fruit” and other measures that “could be implemented immediately”: art and way-finding signage, which is currently poor to nonexistent. Relocate Route 7 layovers to the rail station. Fix and maintain pedestrian infrastructure. Beautify the streetscape. Private decoration on Henderson, in the absence of civic beautification. “Activate open space” – say, with community cookouts on vacant lots. Encourage street food. Here, Seattle’s already ahead of most cities; Pittsburgh’s Abrams marveled at what she called a “food bus,” a.k.a. a taco truck. After last Thursday’s presentation, I chatted with another attendee, architect and development strategist David Harmon. He thought the ULI team missed an important piece: low-cost venues for fledgling retailers who can’t afford the storefronts in conventional TOD projects. For a model, Harmon suggested, look to the Pike Place Market. At its founding 108 years ago, it provided just the sort of entrée for Italian and Japanese immigrant farmers that today’s immigrants could use. Indeed, why not a farmer’s market in Rainier Beach? It’s farther from Columbia City’s market than the Queen Anne and Fremont farmer’s markets are from each other. And many Rainier Beach lots are actually big enough for truck gardening. All this, plus concerted graffiti removal, would serve an essential need to, in the ULI panel’s words, “change the perception of public safety.” The panel noted receiving three environmental design plans to that end from the Seattle Neighborhood Group. They join other plans that have been thoughtfully developed and thoughtlessly neglected over the years. Foremost among these is the well-regarded Rainier Beach Neighborhood Plan completed in 2004 and updated in 2012. It identifies many of same needs as the envisions a welcoming, tree-lined “gateway to Seattle” on MLK Way and “grand boulevard” along Henderson Street, plus downzoning Henderson to encourage neighborhood business and forestall Othello-style midrise TOD. But as for implementation, “the plan is stuck,” the ULI panel’s co-chair Nadine Fogarty, a Berkeley-based TOD expert, told the Seattleites Thursday. “I would go further,” Murray responded. “It’s actually broken.” He noted diplomatically that while “two of the last four mayors were engaged” in neighborhoods like Rainier Beach, two (presumably Paul Schell and Greg Nickels) took a “more diffused” view. The result: “Our departments are very siloed.” Transportation doesn’t talk to Planning and Development, and so on and on. “Lack of integration is the problem we’re dealing with. We need not just a philosophical but a structural reset.” So hizzoner gets it. Whether or not he learns anything new from this exercise, it ought to help concentrate his and his staff’s minds. But “structural reset” raises a familiar question: As City Hall sets out to fix itself, will it once again forget to fix up Rainier Beach? |
In an unusually direct and at times tense interview with Denver local news station KUSA, President Barack Obama on Friday admitted on two occasions that he doesn’t know whether the administration denied requests for military assistance by the U.S. Embassy in Libya when it was besieged on Sept. 11. “Were the Americans under attack at the consulate in Benghazi Libya denied requests for help during that attack? And is it fair to tell Americans that what happened [in Libya] is under investigation and we’ll all find out after the election?” anchor Kyle Clark asked at the top of the interview. “The election has nothing to do with four brave Americans getting killed and us wanting to find out exactly what happened,” Obama replied. “Nobody wants to find out more what happened than I do. But we want to make sure we get it right.” “Were they denied requests for help during the attack?” Clark asked again, referring to reports that the U.S. military could have intervened before militants killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. (RELATED VIDEO: Father of slain Navy SEAL accuses White House of murder) “Well, we are finding out exactly what happened,” Obama repeated. “I guarantee you that everyone in the State Department, our military, the CIA, you name it, had number one priority making sure that people were safe. These were our folks and we’re going to find out exactly what happened.” WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH KUSA’S KYLE CLARK: Clark then focused the interview on stimulus spending. “In a national address, you touted the stimulus money going to Abound Solar – a Colorado company connected to one of your billionaire fundraisers,” Clark began. “Now, as you may know, Abound Solar is out of business and under criminal investigation. The jobs are gone and taxpayers are out about 60 million dollars. How do you answer critics who see Abound Solar as Colorado’s Solyndra – a politically connected clean energy company that went under and took our money with it?” At that point, beginning to sense the interview would take on an aggressive tone, Obama laughed nervously. “Well, Kyle, I think that if you look at our record that these loans that are given out by the Department of Energy for clean energy have created jobs all across the country. … And these are decisions, by the way, that are made by the Department of Energy, they have nothing to do with politics.” Clark ended with one more question about what he claimed was the president’s apparent hypocrisy. “Mr. President, you’ve called for more civility in our nation’s political conversation – and much has obviously been made about the tone of this race. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, you called Governor Romney a ‘bullshitter.’ What did you mean and why did you choose that word?” “You know, this was a conversation after an interview, a casual conversation with a reporter,” Obama said. “The basic point that I’ve been talking about throughout this campaign, is people know what I mean and they know that I mean what I say and what I care about, who I’m fighting for and you know a major issue in any election is can you count on the person you’re putting into the Oval Office fighting for you having a clear set of convictions that they believe in.” The uncomfortable interview was unusual, given that the president rarely allows the press the opportunity to ask him tough questions. According to ABC, a university professor found that Obama has been less accessible to the media — both at informal press pool events and press conferences — than his predecessors. In some ways, the Friday interview resembled the widely publicized grilling Vice President Joe Biden received in 2008 at the hands of a local Florida news anchor. (RELATED VIDEO: Biden asked whether President Obama is a Marxist) In that interview, which took place just prior to Election Day in 2008, Biden also laughed off many of the anchor’s aggressive — and, according to many observers, loaded — inquiries. At one point, an exasperated Biden remarked, “Is that a joke?” and “I don’t know who’s writing your questions.” Follow Gregg on Twitter |
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Apple Inc. shares are down after hours after the company reported fiscal first-quarter earnings that beat the Street pretty handily, but revenue and some of the innards of the report were less than investors expected. This report, and importantly, the outlook for the next quarter, aren’t going to do anything to break the impression that Apple’s competitors are finally gaining ground, after years of flailing helplessly while the geniuses from Cupertino ran roughshod over the tech world. For some reason, the reality that Apple can’t be a company as big as it is and grow as fast as it was growing is coming as a shock in some quarters. Apparently, earning $13.1 billion in three months – the fourth-largest quarterly profit ever, mind you – is somehow a disappointment. Shares are down 6.3% in late trading amid heavy volume at $482. For perspective sake, that $13.1 billion profit represents the fourth-largest quarterly profit ever, by any company, bested only Exxon ($14.8 billion in the third-quarter 2008) and Royal Dutch ($15.68 billion in the second-quarter 2008) and Gazprom ($16.24 billion in the first-quarter 2011). |
As traditional sources of revenue for news dry up, some Minnesota news operations are developing stronger ties to partisan donors and political operatives. Shawn Towle once enjoyed the same access as other reporters covering Minnesota's Senate. Then Republicans called him out after discovering he was a paid consultant to Senate Democrats. "I'm effectively a one-man operation," Towle said of supporting his left-leaning website Checks & Balances with partisan consulting work. "To be able to survive in an online world you have to do more than just one thing." Lawmakers didn't see it that way. This year, the Senate changed its media rules so people paid by political parties couldn't get access to the chamber. It left Towle without press credentials — and rekindled the debate about who is a journalist and whether it matters who's paying journalism's bills. In a media environment where Fox News, MSNBC and other prominent national news organizations have reputations for bias, there's nothing exceptional about having a point of view. But as traditional sources of revenue for news dry up, some Minnesota news operations are developing stronger ties to partisan donors and political operatives. In some cases, tax rules allow these news outlets to shield their donors. Traditionally, news outlets have been private companies, such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the St. Paul Pioneer Press and WCCO. Others, including MinnPost and MPR News, are nonprofits. MPR posts major donors and board members on its website (.pdf). MinnPost does the same on its site. But generally, tax laws don't require nonprofits to make their donors public. Increasingly, tax-exempt groups fund media sites that trumpet and reinforce the views of a particular candidate or wing of a party as a key part of a sophisticated campaign operation, said former IRS official Marc Owens. "It all operates as an organized, focused effort to identify voters who will vote and find the messages that will get them out of bed on a cold November morning," said Owens, who is now a partner with Loeb & Loeb in Washington. Watchdog.org For one Minnesota-based group, the money trail intersects with a handful of conservative donors, including Charles Koch, a wealthy libertarian businessman who, along with his brother David, is reshaping the way politics and elections operate. Seeing a dwindling supply of local reporting, in 2009 the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity launched Watchdog.org, a network of state-based media sites that provide "non-partisan journalism" meant to "hold politicians and bureaucrats at all levels accountable for their handling of taxpayers' dollars and to promote individual liberty and free markets." That network now includes the Watchdog.org Minnesota bureau. Most of the website's content is reported by former television reporter Tom Steward and concentrates on stories about labor issues, education and the use of taxpayer money. (Steward was on vacation and unavailable for comment.) Steward has political ties. He worked for both former Minnesota Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and former Republican presidential candidate John McCain. The Franklin Center, which funds the Minnesota Watchdog bureau, has political ties, too. Tax documents show that the group has received nearly $22 million between 2011 and 2013 from the Donors Trust, a philanthropic organization that donates exclusively to groups "devoted to supporting organizations that promote liberty," and the affiliated Donors Capital Fund. The Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund are supported by an array of conservative groups, including the Knowledge and Progress Fund, a nonprofit founded by Charles Koch. Since 2005, Koch's foundation has contributed more than $13 million to the Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund. In 2013, roughly 75 percent of the Franklin Center's $8 million in revenue came from the Donors Trust network, according to an MPR News analysis of public records. But Watchdog.org Editor Will Swaim said the money has no bearing on the group's reporting. Swaim, who built his career working for alternative weekly newspapers, said the money comes in because libertarian donors like what Watchdog.org does. And Swaim said he's skeptical of journalists who don't embrace their biases. "I don't believe reporters are objective, because they are human," he said. "A dangerous reporter is one who doesn't understand their own biases." A 2011 Pew Research Center for Journalism and Media study found that Watchdog.org sites are not very transparent about their donors and highly ideological. (A liberal news network that oversaw the now-defunct Minnesota Independent was found to be even more ideological than the Watchdog sites.) Amy Mitchell, director of journalism research at the Pew Research Center, said state news networks funded by a single donor, like the Franklin Center, tend to be less transparent about their funding sources. That may confuse consumers about who is behind the news, Mitchell said. "Transparency enables the consumer to make a judgment for themselves about what they want to do with that information — to embrace it, to read it, to know where it's coming from," she said. "The first place to start is by sharing that information." The UpTake News outlets on the left have ties to party officials and donors, too. And like their conservative counterparts, they say funding doesn't influence their writing. Towle, who's consulted for Democrats and Republicans, said his consulting work informed his writing but that he never planted stories on his blog at the request of his clients. Seed money was critical to the video streaming service The UpTake, which broadcasts political events and meetings at the Minnesota Capitol. The initial grant came from the Alliance for a Better Minnesota to cover the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul. The Alliance for a Better Minnesota is a liberal group that uses money raised from well-heeled liberal donors and unions to help elect Democrats, including Gov. Mark Dayton in 2010 and 2014. The UpTake says it no longer gets Alliance money. The UpTake lists its major donors on its website. Among them is Voqal Fund, which donates to progressive groups, including the Alliance for a Better Minnesota and TakeAction Minnesota, a group that was instrumental in defeating the voter ID amendment in 2012. Most recently, Voqal Fund gave The UpTake $30,000 to cover the Legislature. The UpTake's Executive Director Jeff Achen doesn't deny the organization's left-leaning reputation and said the group seeks money from foundations that share its priorities. "The progressive funds say, 'We want to fund coverage of immigrant rights and labor equality,' and a lot of liberal issues," Achen said. "We're saying, 'Those are the things we are passionate about covering as a news organization.' That's why we've earned a reputation for being a more liberal news source." Alpha News While Watchdog.org and The UpTake get money from partisan donors, the money trail behind five-month-old Alpha News is much more difficult to track. Its website says nothing about its donors or editorial process, but does carry ads and asks readers to donate. One thing is certain: Alpha News has ties to a prominent Republican donor and the political group he founded years ago. Business filings show that Alex Kharam incorporated Alpha News. Kharam also works as executive director for the Minnesota Freedom Club, a political group that supports conservative candidates and was founded by and largely bankrolled by Republican donor Robert Cummins. Kharam did not respond to emails or phone calls to discuss Alpha News. Reporter Julia Schliesing, who goes by the name Julia Erynn while on the job, declined to talk about Alpha News because of a non-disclosure agreement she signed when she took the position. Schliesing did speak earlier this month with conservative talk radio host John Gilmore about the project. "I like to think that at Alpha News, we cover the things that people aren't covering," Schliesing said. Schliesing, a 2014 graduate of the University of Minnesota, said she worked for two conservative groups — the Leadership Institute and Turning Point USA, a student group that promotes free-market principles — before "auditioning" for Alpha News. She also said that Alpha News applied for but did not get credentials at the State Capitol. Capitol officials said Alpha News hasn't been around long enough to determine whether it qualifies for access. Alpha News stands out for a number of reasons; some stories carry no bylines, are scarce on quotes, often aggregate facts and information from other news outlets, and tout non-scientific Facebook polls. The Society for Professional Journalists sets out standards for identifying sources and attribution in its code of ethics. Schliesing defended Alpha News' approach. "I don't think it's fair to say it's cowardly that we don't use bylines, especially when the intent is not to hide," Schliesing said. "The intent is to focus on the content." |
The University of Tennessee had quite the scandal last week when a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity was accused of butt chugging wine. The alleged butt chugger was hospitalized with a reported .4 BAC, and the fraternity was eventually suspended. Today, the entire fraternity held a press conference to deny accusations that the accused butt chugger, Alexander P. Broughton, actually butt chugged any wine. As Outkick the Coverage notes, it's hard to determine which part is the funniest/most shameful for the fraternity and their lawyer, Daniel McGehee. But I'm going to go with the part where, within the first two minutes, McGehee adamantly denies that that the alleged butt chugger is gay. "Mr. Broughton denies each and every allegation whatsoever that has been infered that he may have been a gay man. He is a straight man. And he thinks the idea and concept of butt chugging is repulsive." Whatever you say, McGehee. He then goes on to accuse the University of Tennessee, the police and the media of being irresponsible. "Shame on you for reporting lies about my client." He also says butt chugging is two words, which is debatable. All the while, the rest of the fraternity stands there in the back, very stoic, as if they were at a funeral or something. How they managed not to laugh at every mention of butt chugging is beyond me. The whole video is amazing. Watch below. |
It's been a bad month for classical record labels, hundreds of whom are now scrambling to see how they will continue to distribute their physical products to merchants and retailers around the world. In the shortest time, three major distributors have gone out of business, leaving artists and labels in the lurch as they try to sell their CD inventory. Which companies are closing their doors? Who's left, and what does it mean? For independent labels that see their role as spotting talented artists, securing the master recording, producing artwork, printing CDs, and then shipping to a distributor, the options are slim. Naxos is among the best options. But in the face of declining sales of classical CDs - a trend that is likely to accelerate as services like Spotify gain popularity - the distribution options are only going to get thinner rather than fatter. Physical distribution is consolidating more and more onto mega sites like Amazon, and all the rest is digital distribution. For thousands of artists who were slowly recouping the investments they had sunk into making that all-important CD recording, who may have anywhere from 100 to 1000 CDs sitting in a label's fulfillment center, sending them out in a slow trickle year after year, they can now look forward to their release being taken off the market and deemed out of print. The money once invested in printing the CDs is now a business loss. Only the healthiest labels will succeed in finding new distribution. The others will close, and inevitably a large number of recordings will become unavailable, out of print, or at least hard to find (in physical form). One thing is clear: artists and labels who want to thrive in today's world have to master the art of selling digital copies of their recordings online. |
Shares of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMD ) have been under heavy selling pressure of late, falling almost 14% from $14.16 on April 5 to last week’s low of $12.22. The reason? Goldman Sachs analyst Toshiya Hari, downgraded AMD stock to “Sell” with a $11 price target. Source: Shutterstock AMD shares closed Friday at $12.31, suggesting there’s possible downside of almost 11%. Despite acknowledging the strong execution AMD has delivered under CEO Lisa Su, Hari noted strong competitive threats from the likes of Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC ) and Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA ). All told, the analyst — who expects AMD to earn just 2 cents per share in fiscal 2017 (versus consensus of 8 cents) — believes any good news about Advanced Micro Devices is already priced into the shares. But that’s where he’s wrong. I expect AMD stock, which has fallen 12% in thirty days, to reach $16 in 2017, delivering 30% gains on the back of greater GPU adoption and rising profit margins. The Bull Case for AMD Stock The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chip company, which has come back by almost 400% over the past two years to prove doubters wrong, is set to report first quarter fiscal 2017 earnings results in a couple of weeks. For the quarter that ended March, Wall Street expects the company to report a loss of 4 cents per share on revenues of $984.38 million. This compares to the year-ago quarter when the company lost 12 cents per share on $832 million in revenue. For the full year ending in December, AMD is expected to earn 8 cents per share, versus a loss of 14 cents a year ago, while full-year revenue of $4.74 billion would mark an increased of the 10.9% year-over-year. The significant fiscal year expected improvements — particularly in EPS — presents an opportunity for both investors and traders take advantage of the recent pullback in AMD stock, caused strictly by Goldman’s downgrade. Not only does AMD continue to benefited from strong growth in its popular Radeon line of GPUs (Graphics Processing Unit), there are also signs that the declines in PC sales have begun to stabilize. And thanks to the company’s recent partnership with Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL ), where its FirePro server GPUs will power Alphabet’s cloud platform in 2017, AMD’s revenue growth should accelerate in the quarters ahead. Bottom Line With AMD stock skyrocketing some 355% over the past year, it’s understandable to question how much more runway is left for the stock to fly, which seems to be the basis for Goldman’s downgrade. But with Advanced Micro’s GPU strength still gaining traction, combined with recent bets on VR/AR, AMD stock should be owned, not sold. As of this writing, Richard Saintvilus did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. |
SIMON MAINA via Getty Images Pope Francis (C), flanked by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta (L) walks to board his plane on November 27, 2015 in Nairobi on his way to Kampala, Uganda. NAIROBI, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Pope Francis urged young Kenyans on Friday not to yield to the sweet lure of corruption, and urged them to help those tempted by "fanatical" ideologies. The pope made his appeal in unprepared remarks at his last event in the Kenyan capital before flying to Uganda where he started the second leg of his first trip to the continent. Arriving in the Ugandan capital of Kampala on Friday evening, he received a tumultuous welcome from ululating dancers and President Yoweri Musevini, wearing his tradmark wide-brimmed hat. Tens of thousands of people lined his route into the city in the biggest crowds of the trip so far. Addressing Musevini and diplomats at State House, Francis spoke of the world refugee crisis and said how the world handles it will be "a test of our humanity, our respect for human dignity and above all our solidarity with our brothers and sisters in need." The high point of the pope's third day on the continent came earlier in Nairobi, where he scrapped a prepared script to address a packed stadium with the down-to-earth and spontaneous style that has endeared him to Catholics and others around the world. "The spirit of evil takes us to a lack of unity. It takes to tribalism, corruption and drugs. It takes us to destruction out of fanaticism," the pope said, urging young people not to give in to these vices. "Let's hold hands together, let's stand up as a sign against bad tribalism," he said, grasping the hands of two young people on stage. Tribal loyalties often trump political allegiances in Kenya, and some other African nations, sometimes sparking violence. After being welcomed into the stadium with rapturous singing and dancing, including by President Uhuru Kenyatta, the first lady and clergy, the pope was cheered throughout his speech. The president reshuffled his cabinet this week after several ministers were embroiled in corruption allegations. Corruption "is like sugar, sweet, we like, it's easy," Francis said. "Also in the Vatican there are cases of corruption. "Please, don't develop that taste for that sugar which is called corruption." In Kenya, the target of a spate of deadly attacks by Islamist militants, the pope has called for inter-faith dialog, said God's name can never be invoked to justify violence, and urged world leaders to tackle climate change. Lack of education and work was a "social danger," pushing some to radical ideologies. "God is much stronger than any recruitment campaign," he said, adding youths should help potential victims by bringing them into groups or even asking them "to come and watch some football ... Don't allow them to remain on their own." Earlier he addressed resident of a Nairobi slum of potholed roads, open sewers and rough shacks. He told slum dwellers, charity workers and clergy in a small church their situation was one of the "wounds inflicted by minorities who cling to power and wealth, who selfishly squander while a growing majority is forced to flee to abandoned, filthy and run-down peripheries." Francis will stay in Uganda until Sunday, when he is due to travel to the war-torn Central African Republic - his final stop in Africa. |
Japanese nuts ‘n’ bolts It wasn’t like this when Soichiro was alive. Mr Honda, Japan’s very own equivalent of Enzo Ferrari, had a passion, an understanding of what it takes to be a Formula 1 top dog: power. Respected engineers – hungry for success – fettling the maximum-horsepower engines sitting snugly in the race cars of grand prix and title-winning drivers. Richie Ginther, John Surtees, Keke Rosberg, Nigel Mansell, Nelson Piquet, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna make for quite a list of F1 racing legends. They all tasted the sweet taste of grand prix winners’ champagne in no small part courtesy of Honda power. I know Jenson Button did too – but, seriously, one victory in the eight years JB was slowly pushed along by Honda is woeful. How times change – and the warnings were there for all to see. Trumpeted by all ‘n’ sundry – from the Woking boardroom itself to pliant editorial puff-pieces and clamorously optimistic online forums – as the reawakening of the all-conquering alliance of the late ’80s/early ’90s, the latest partnership between McLaren and Honda has been little short of calamitous. Ferrari? Farrago, more like. The commentators, more keen on the sound of their own voices than the accuracy of that which they expound, appeared blindly ignorant of the Japanese manufacturer’s almost totally wretched F1 involvement from 2000 to 2008 – first as an engine supplier to the British American Racing team and then as owner of the Honda F1 Racing Team debacle. I know we all have short memories these days, but how could anyone so quickly have forgotten the Earth Dreams project?! From the get-go the McLaren crew were nervous. Waving cheerio to the mighty Mercedes and their High Performance Powertrains guys, they ‘greeted’ the Honda boys. And boys are what appeared to arrive! Honda make road cars, so, understandably, they have a desire to educate their younger staff in the ways of the world and how competitive automotive sport can improve the brand. Everyone in F1 gets that. But what no-one got, and least of all the experienced and successful McLaren mechanics and engineers, was the arrival of what looked like a work experience outing from the local college! Honda engine nuts ‘n’ bolts rolling across the spotless McLaren garage floor – only noticed by the ‘kids’ from Japan when handed back to them by a McLaren mechanic – soon became the norm. Many within the team’s pit box were left slack-jawed at the ineptitude of their new partners. Maybe it’s admirable to have an attitude of promoting solely from within, but in the ultimately cut-throat, dog-eat-dog world of Formula 1 it’s more likely just plain ignorant. Honda’s policy of never poaching their competitors’ top technical talent is short sighted and utterly naïve. So Honda are off, off to Faenza, and oh my lord what a mess that will likely be… Toro Rosso are a proper little F1 team staffed by racers who try hard, but, try as they undoubtedly do, the reality is they’re headed only one way. The guys who do the hard work, the mechanics, are a down-in-the-mouth bunch right now. They know full well just how difficult it’s been for their pitlane neighbours from Woking, and boy are they dreading the arrival of the Honda novices. Team principal Franz Tost puts on a stoic and brave face, but is surely dreading regular, and regularly depressing, telephone calls to his ultimate boss and team owner, Red Bull main-man Dietrich Mateschitz. A miserable 2018 campaign could be fatal for the proud Italian team. A lack of power, relentless unreliability, curfew-busting all-nighters, untold penalties and driver dissent will likely spread a fissiparous mood throughout Toro Rosso. Maybe - as some suggest - the plan is for Honda to buy the team, but whatever the strategy it’s likely to be a season of abject failure. If you were a multi-billionaire who already owns a world championship-winning team – Red Bull – with the most exciting driver pairing in the sport – Verstappen and Ricciardo – would you keep a bunch of going-nowhere no-hopers? Thought not! With Stoffel Vandoorne now starting to deliver on the pace he so promised and Fernando Alonso hell-bent as ever to get back on the podium, and both sat in a top-drawer chassis powered by a race-winning Renault power unit, McLaren are surely headed for happier race weekends than of late. Toro Rosso, not so much. NOW CLICK HERE! Get the blog straight to your inbox |
A Pennsylvania man who always joked that he wanted to take something to eat when he died has gotten his wish. Richard Lussi’s family buried him with two cheesesteaks from Pat’s King of Steaks in Philadelphia — topped with Cheez Whiz but no onions. His grandson, Dominic, tells The Philadelphia Inquirer when the family asked what he wanted, his grandfather replied: “What do you think? Pat’s cheesesteak! Pat’s Whiz without onions because they’ll come back to haunt me.” The Plains Township resident would often challenge family members to drive two and a half hours to Philadelphia and back to get the sandwiches. The 76-year-old father of four died of heart complications on Oct. 10. His son, grandson and two friends drove to Philadelphia the day before his funeral and picked up two cheesesteaks for the coffin. |
As The Diplomat reported on Tuesday, Russia has decided to lift its long-standing, self-imposed embargo on weapons deliveries to Pakistan in an unexpected move. Sergei Chemezov, the head of Russia’s state-owned defense technology corporation Rostec, announced the decision. Chemezov further confirmed that Russia and Pakistan are bilaterally negotiating the sale of Mi-35 Hind attack helicopters. The move is a surprising paradigm shift in Russian policy. The obvious question most commentators have already raised is the prospect of this decision upsetting India. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), India, the world’s largest defense equipment importer by a long shot, relied on Russia for over 75 percent of all of its imported weaponry in the 2009-13 period. With that sort of dependence on Russian weaponry, even if India were to be antagonized by Russia reversing its embargo on Pakistan, there is likely little New Delhi could do to exert leverage on Moscow to prevent this deal. Despite the reasons for India to be apprehensive about this development in Russia-Pakistan relations, it is likely that Moscow at least consulted New Delhi about the prospect of eventually selling arms to Pakistan. Even if this wasn’t the case, consultations between Pakistan and Russia have been taking place for some time now as relations between those two countries have slowly grown warmer. Relations between Russia and Pakistan, of course, have a storied history going back to the Cold War, including the relative antagonism between NATO-aligned Pakistan and the Soviet Union. Following the Indo-Soviet pact of 1971 and the India-Pakistan War that same year that resulted in the independence of Bangladesh, Pakistan’s military grew particularly skeptical of Soviet intentions for South Asia. This skepticism intensified during Zia ul-Haq’s military dictatorship in the 1980s as the Soviets carried out their campaign in Afghanistan. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, relations between contemporary Russia and Pakistan normalized and began to warm in the 1990s. For Russia, Afghanistan’s fate is inextricably linked to Pakistan and its policy towards that country. While Pakistan’s military establishment strives to convert Afghanistan into a weak client state, the Kremlin likely sees proximity with Pakistan’s civilian government as opportune as NATO prepares to withdraw from the country at the end of this year. As Zach briefly outlined in his report, lifting the arms embargo will not only bring the two countries together but also serves Russia’s national interest in terms of making Afghanistan and Central Asia more generally less hospitable to Islamic terrorism. The Mi-35 negotiations support this hypothesis as they could be used by Pakistan’s military in its domestic fight against the Taliban. Lifting the arms embargo thus allows the Kremlin to play a positive sum game in South Asia without significantly threatening its important relationship with India. The decision to lift the arms embargo may also likely be motivated by India’s election of Narendra Modi, who has said that he would focus on reducing India’s reliance on imports. Even a modest reduction in Indian demand for Russian hardware could be problematic for Russia, hence the need for alternate markets. Beyond South Asia, broader geopolitical dynamics may have also pushed the Kremlin’s hand in lifting the arms embargo. Most notably, the deal comes as Russia’s relations with the West are at an all-time post-Cold War low owing to Russia’s recent actions in Ukraine and its insistence on supporting Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. The latter conflict may have influenced Moscow’s decision more than some might admit. One of Moscow’s primary anxieties in the Syrian conflict has been the prospect of losing Bashar al-Assad not only as an important strategic partner in the region — granting Moscow access to the Mediterranean — but losing al-Assad as a weapons customer. Given the al-Assad government’s inability to pay for weapons, Russia has been forced to tolerate a non-profitable state of affairs. While losing Syria as a customer wouldn’t crush Russia’s defense industry, opening up access to Pakistan hedges losses in Syria and elsewhere. One final point worth mentioning is that the deal could be intended to lower the incentives for Pakistan to pursue its own indigenous manufacturing projects that could compete with Russian offerings. One notable example is the JF-17 Thunder (also known as the FC-1 Xiaolong in China) multirole fighter which Pakistan is jointly developing with China. While the JF-17 is being manufactured in relatively modest numbers compared to similar Russian offerings, Pakistan allegedly has a wide range of interested customers (although it hasn’t finalized any deals yet). By granting Pakistan direct access to aircraft of a comparable cost without the high fixed costs of investing in domestic manufacturing, Moscow could maintain its competitive advantage in the global defense market. Overall, the Kremlin had good reasons to lift its self-imposed embargo on arms exports to Pakistan and stands to reap a wide range of benefits. One shouldn’t overplay the negative impact this might have on Russo-Indian ties, which will likely continue to remain strong even as New Delhi bolsters its indigenous manufacturing capabilities and diversifies its import sources to include Israel, France, Britain and the United States. |
Before leaving for Finland I setup this little project, but didn’t have time to finish (see what I did there?) it. Now that I’m back, between writing my Netduino book, I sometimes have time to play! In the video, I drew shapes in the playback mode, and then recorded them being played. I used After Effects to make a time-lapse to see that it does in fact draw the shapes. The overall shapes are bad because my drawing’s were terrible, and the little angles are because the servos are cheap, and should be much better. At our local “china-mall” I found one of those old laser pointers (with all the different lenses) going for about $0.5. I also still had the servos from the maze project setup. So what does this make? An electronically directed laser beam of course! The objective was to make a multi-direction laser pointer positioned by 2 servos 90 degrees to each other, connected to a Netduino, and controlled from a Windows Phone over Bluetooth. Bonus points for a cool video. What you need: Netduino 2 servos – the more accurate the better 330 ohm resistor 4.8v battery pack Bluetooth module Laser pointer P2N2222A transistor Mechanism: This works pretty much exactly like the maze. You have two servos connected together but at right angles to each other, and then the laser is connected to one of them. This gives you X and Y movement. The image above is straight from the maze post, and the laser is placed where the white bracket is. Netduino: The electronics are pretty simple. Two servos are connected up to the Netduino with a separate battery pack (with the grounds tied). and then the laser is powered directly off the 3.3V pin, and can be turned on and off from the Netduino because with the NPN transistor. In the diagram above, I’ve used an LED to represent the laser. I won’t go into detail about getting Bluetooth hooked up – go back to this post to see how to do that. Above the Main method we need to create some class variables: static SerialPort _bt; static Servo _servoX; static Servo _servoY; static OutputPort _laser; 1 2 3 4 static SerialPort _bt ; static Servo _servoX ; static Servo _servoY ; static OutputPort _laser ; And then inside the Main method we initialize them: _bt = new SerialPort(SerialPorts.COM1, 9600, Parity.None, 8, StopBits.One); _bt.DataReceived += new SerialDataReceivedEventHandler(rec_DataReceived); _bt.Open(); _laser = new OutputPort(Pins.GPIO_PIN_D11, true); _servoX = new Servo(Pins.GPIO_PIN_D5); _servoY = new Servo(Pins.GPIO_PIN_D9); _servoX.Degree = 90; _servoY.Degree = 90; 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 _bt = new SerialPort ( SerialPorts . COM1 , 9600 , Parity . None , 8 , StopBits . One ) ; _bt . DataReceived += new SerialDataReceivedEventHandler ( rec_DataReceived ) ; _bt . Open ( ) ; _laser = new OutputPort ( Pins . GPIO_PIN_D11 , true ) ; _servoX = new Servo ( Pins . GPIO_PIN_D5 ) ; _servoY = new Servo ( Pins . GPIO_PIN_D9 ) ; _servoX . Degree = 90 ; _servoY . Degree = 90 ; Notice that the laser is controlled by switching digital pin 11 high and low. To control the servos I used a nice little class by Chris Seto. The final part of the Netduino code is to make stuff happen when the phone sends various messages through. Each message will either be an “off”/”on” command which should turn the laser off or on, or an X and Y value (comma separated) to move the servos. So here is the code that takes care of the messages that the BT module receives (check source for rest of BT code): switch (str) { case "on": _laser.Write(true); break; case "off": _laser.Write(false); break; default: string[] numbers = str.Split(new char[] { ',' }); if (numbers.Length >= 2) { int x = Int32.Parse(numbers[0]); int y = Int32.Parse(numbers[1]); _servoX.Degree = 90 + x; _servoY.Degree = 90 + y; } break; } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 switch ( str ) { case "on" : _laser . Write ( true ) ; break ; case "off" : _laser . Write ( false ) ; break ; default : string [ ] numbers = str . Split ( new char [ ] { ',' } ) ; if ( numbers . Length >= 2 ) { int x = Int32 . Parse ( numbers [ 0 ] ) ; int y = Int32 . Parse ( numbers [ 1 ] ) ; _servoX . Degree = 90 + x ; _servoY . Degree = 90 + y ; } break ; } And that’s all for the Netduino! Windows Phone: The Windows Phone app has two functions; “Live” mode where you move your finger on the screen and the laser will move around in real-time, and “playback” mode when you can first draw something, then hit the play button in the AppBar to playback. The UI consists of two radio buttons, a really jarring red InkPresenter (I made it so bright to show up nicely on the video), and an AppBar with a play button. The AppBar will only appear when playback is selected. Input is gained through the InkPresenter which is a very easy control to draw lines onto, and has the standard UIElement touch events. To track movement we listen to three events: MouseLeftButtonDown, MouseLeftButtonUp, and MouseMove. [Yes, your finger is a mouse due to legacy SL stuff]. When the finger goes down we start tracking it, and capture it’s movements to the InkPresenter (no other control will get touch events even if the finger moves off the element), and release the capture when the finger leaves. Each movement fires the Move event, so we record the new position and add the point as a StylusPoint to a stroke (to display the line in playback mode). If live mode is selected then instead of recording the strokes, we just send the position to the Netduino. private void drawingSurface_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, System.Windows.Input.MouseButtonEventArgs e) { if (playbackCheck.IsChecked.Value) { drawingSurface.CaptureMouse(); _currentStroke = new Stroke(); _currentStroke.DrawingAttributes.Color = Color.FromArgb(255, 255, 255, 255); drawingSurface.Strokes.Add(_currentStroke); } } private void drawingSurface_MouseLeftButtonUp(object sender, System.Windows.Input.MouseButtonEventArgs e) { if (playbackCheck.IsChecked.Value) { drawingSurface.ReleaseMouseCapture(); _currentStroke = null; } } private void drawingSurface_MouseMove(object sender, System.Windows.Input.MouseEventArgs e) { var pos = e.GetPosition(drawingSurface); if (liveCheck.IsChecked.Value) { WritePoint(pos); } if (_currentStroke != null)//if recording { _currentStroke.StylusPoints.Add(new System.Windows.Input.StylusPoint(pos.X, pos.Y)); } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 private void drawingSurface_MouseLeftButtonDown ( object sender , System . Windows . Input . MouseButtonEventArgs e ) { if ( playbackCheck . IsChecked . Value ) { drawingSurface . CaptureMouse ( ) ; _currentStroke = new Stroke ( ) ; _currentStroke . DrawingAttributes . Color = Color . FromArgb ( 255 , 255 , 255 , 255 ) ; drawingSurface . Strokes . Add ( _currentStroke ) ; } } private void drawingSurface_MouseLeftButtonUp ( object sender , System . Windows . Input . MouseButtonEventArgs e ) { if ( playbackCheck . IsChecked . Value ) { drawingSurface . ReleaseMouseCapture ( ) ; _currentStroke = null ; } } private void drawingSurface_MouseMove ( object sender , System . Windows . Input . MouseEventArgs e ) { var pos = e . GetPosition ( drawingSurface ) ; if ( liveCheck . IsChecked . Value ) { WritePoint ( pos ) ; } if ( _currentStroke != null ) //if recording { _currentStroke . StylusPoints . Add ( new System . Windows . Input . StylusPoint ( pos . X , pos . Y ) ) ; } } In playback mode, when the user hits the play button, we loop through all the previously recorded strokes, and their StylusPoints and send each one to the Netduino. Because each stroke was done as a separate movement (they lifted their finger), when moving onto the next stroke we need to instruct the laser to turn off > move to the start of the next stroke > wait a bit > turn the laser back on. All of this is done in a DispatcherTimer. private void playBtn_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (drawingSurface.Strokes.Count > 0) { CurrentLaserState = LaserState.On; _playbackTimer = new DispatcherTimer { Interval = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(15) }; _playbackTimer.Tick += _playbackTimer_Tick; _playbackTimer.Start(); } } void _playbackTimer_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (_shouldWaitExtra) { CurrentLaserState = LaserState.Off; } else { _playbackTimer.Interval = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(15); if (CurrentLaserState == LaserState.Off) { CurrentLaserState = LaserState.On; } } Stroke curr = drawingSurface.Strokes.FirstOrDefault(); if (curr == null || curr.StylusPoints.Count == 0) { _playbackTimer.Stop(); } else { var pos = curr.StylusPoints.FirstOrDefault(); WritePoint(new Point(pos.X, pos.Y)); if (_shouldWaitExtra) { _shouldWaitExtra = false; _playbackTimer.Interval = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(300); } curr.StylusPoints.RemoveAt(0); if (curr.StylusPoints.Count == 0) { drawingSurface.Strokes.RemoveAt(0); _shouldWaitExtra = true; } } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 private void playBtn_Click ( object sender , EventArgs e ) { if ( drawingSurface . Strokes . Count > 0 ) { CurrentLaserState = LaserState . On ; _playbackTimer = new DispatcherTimer { Interval = TimeSpan . FromMilliseconds ( 15 ) } ; _playbackTimer . Tick += _playbackTimer_Tick ; _playbackTimer . Start ( ) ; } } void _playbackTimer_Tick ( object sender , EventArgs e ) { if ( _shouldWaitExtra ) { CurrentLaserState = LaserState . Off ; } else { _playbackTimer . Interval = TimeSpan . FromMilliseconds ( 15 ) ; if ( CurrentLaserState == LaserState . Off ) { CurrentLaserState = LaserState . On ; } } Stroke curr = drawingSurface . Strokes . FirstOrDefault ( ) ; if ( curr == null || curr . StylusPoints . Count == 0 ) { _playbackTimer . Stop ( ) ; } else { var pos = curr . StylusPoints . FirstOrDefault ( ) ; WritePoint ( new Point ( pos . X , pos . Y ) ) ; if ( _shouldWaitExtra ) { _shouldWaitExtra = false ; _playbackTimer . Interval = TimeSpan . FromMilliseconds ( 300 ) ; } curr . StylusPoints . RemoveAt ( 0 ) ; if ( curr . StylusPoints . Count == 0 ) { drawingSurface . Strokes . RemoveAt ( 0 ) ; _shouldWaitExtra = true ; } } } The formatting of the positions before sending is done in this method: private void WritePoint(Point pos) { Write(-(int)((pos.X / 10) - 24) + "," + -(int)((pos.Y / 10) - 24)); } 1 2 3 4 private void WritePoint ( Point pos ) { Write ( - ( int ) ( ( pos . X / 10 ) - 24 ) + "," + - ( int ) ( ( pos . Y / 10 ) - 24 ) ) ; } First we divide by 10 (to scale the movement down), and then minus 24 because we want the full swing of the servos to be 48 degrees, and the center being 0. And that’s it! Download the source below to see the code that wasn’t discussed here, or if you’re confused. WP + Netduino Source code: Click Me If you’ve got question you can ask me here or on the Twitter machine: @roguecode |
‘Body Slammed’ CNN Lashes Out at POTUS Trump: ‘Juvenile Behavior Far Below Dignity of His Office’ CNN released a statement in response to President Donald Trump’s tweet Sunday morning of a mock video showing him body slamming CNN. The video has gone viral with over two million views since it was posted at 9:21 a.m. EDT. CNN’s statement was posted to Twitter by CNN media reporter Brian Stelter just over one hour later. CNN statement responding to the president: "We will keep doing our jobs. He should start doing his." pic.twitter.com/Gn1YRA2DRG — Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) July 2, 2017 “It is a sad day when the President of the United States encourages violence against reporters. Clearly, Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied when she said the President had never done so. Instead of preparing for his overseas trip, his first meeting with Vladimir Putin, dealing with North Korea and working on his healthcare bill, he is instead involved in juvenile behavior far below the dignity of his office. We will keep doing our jobs. He should stat doing his.” Then-CNN host Kathy Griffin upholding the dignity of the office of President of the United States. |
Photo: Maya Robinson and AMC, HBO, and Netflix Emmy nominations were announced this morning, and Jon Hamm has again been nominated for outstanding lead actor in a drama series for his riveting work on Mad Men. This is his seventh nomination in the category, and the nods are all richly deserved. Except … Jon Hamm has never won. (He’s been nominated three times for his guest work on 30 Rock, too. And he didn’t win those times, either.) Might this be his year? Let’s look at the competition. Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad Why Cranston might win: Emmy voters have been in Cranston’s corner since the get-go. His first win for his portrayal of Walter White came in 2008, when BB was not on many people’s radar, and he won twice more since then. This is Breaking Bad’s final hurrah, so voters might be swayed by the fact that this is their last chance to honor the one who knocks. Plus, in this final arc of episodes, Cranston was terrifying, vulnerable, manipulative, and resigned — and sometimes all four at once. When you think of what lead actors in TV dramas were asked to portray this year, he might have had the hardest to-do list. Why he might not: Well, he hasn’t won since 2010. Since then, Kyle Chander, Damian Lewis, and Jeff Daniels have all beat him. Maybe voters have adopted a more “share the wealth” approach. Jeff Daniels, The Newsroom Why Daniels might win: He won last year. (No, that shock has not yet worn off.) The Newsroom is one of those shows that Emmy voters are looking for ways to honor because it seems like an Emmy-bait show — HBO and Aaron Sorkin and the soaring music and the rhetoric about America, etc., etc. It sort of just feels inevitable for someone from that show to win something, and if it’s gotta be someone, it might as well be Daniels. Why he might not: Because The Newsroom is not very good, and Daniels’s Will MacAvoy could be described as “like Keith Olbermann, but shoutier and with more self-regard.” Kevin Spacey, House of Cards Why Spacey might win: Like The Newsroom, House of Cards really seems like an Emmy kind of show, and Spacey’s a serious actor with a lot of cred built right in — even though in this race he feels sort of like an underdog, which could endear him to voters. His Frank Underwood is kind of evil, something voters have been drawn to in the past; but he’s also entrancing. And he talks right to us! Why he might not: Spacey’s great and all, but watching the show, it’s hard not to think that Robin Wright is really more of the star. Woody Harrelson, True Detective Why Harrelson might win: True Detective picked up 12 Emmy nominations, and the series might as well have come in a box stamped “Prestige Show.” Harrelson’s tortured, violent Marty Hart grounded the entire series, bouncing between scary snarls and snappy zingers, but holding everything together while the rest of the show swirled around him. Plus, this is his one and only chance to win for the role — so voters might feel a sense of urgency. Why he might not: He and McConaughey could split the TD votes. Or voters could realize that True Detective is a goddamn miniseries and shouldn’t be competing in this category at all, and thus punish Harrelson, McConaughey, and HBO for category-fudging. Matthew McConaughey, True Detective Why McConaughey might win: Have you heard people quote that “time is a flat circle” line? Yeah, so has everyone else. The McConaissance is a powerful force, and Emmy voters could get swept along by its current. Also, McConaughey was fantastic on TD, making a lot of the dreamy — bullshitty? — dialogue for Rust Cohle seem worthwhile and even profound. He can play super-scraggly drunk hobo and super-skinny clean-cut sad cop with equal aplomb, and Emmy voters can only praise that this one time. Why he might not: Alright, alright, alright, same reasons as above: True Detective should be competing in the miniseries categories, and voters might reasonably be split between Harrelson’s and McConaughey’s performances. Some people are impressed by the guy flying the kite, and some people are impressed by the kite itself. So where does that leave Hamm? Same place as always: as a very worthy contender who is probably still going to lose. He had a strong season, though compared to other Mad Men outings, this wasn’t the craziest year for Don — we’ve seen Hamm do heavier lifting. He’ll have another chance of being nominated (or even winning) next year, with Mad Men’s final season, at which point Cranston, Harrelson, and McConaughey will be out of the running. Let’s call it now for Hamm in 2015, folks. Long-awaited victory will feel twice as sweet. |
10.7K Shares Pin Romania, and Bucharest specifically, is something of a travel blogger’s digital fantasy come true. Walk down most streets, stop on any corner, whip out your smart phone and more often than not you’ll find a wireless connection. That’s open. No password required; generally because a commodity as common as an Internet connection here isn’t worth stealing. In fact, Romania has the world’s second fastest Internet at about 15 megabits per second (Mbps), second behind only South Korea. To put that in perspective, that’s nearly 5 times the average connection an American has in their home. So how does a country with less than 1% of the United States GDP and 50th on the Human Development Index (HDI) – compared to South Korea’s number 15 ranking – jump to the front of the online race? Yes, there are the technological components for those binary bits to run along but it’s who’s behind those wires and how they got there that’s a more interesting story. More Than Nuts And Bolts There’s a natural tendency for most of us to think that Romania was probably a late newcomer to the digital revolution and therefore had the benefit of installing the latest equipment. If that reasoning were true, then Bhutan, the latest country online would have the world’s fastest Internet. (And America, where the Internet was invented, would be creeping along at 13kbps like Congo, the current world’s slowest.) Internet speed has a lot to do with good infrastructure but even the best equipment in the world won’t help without well trained engineers who can organize those online connections efficiently. Going Geek Starts At An Early Age Romania’s fast Internet may seem like an anomaly at first – until you take a look at its neighbors. Bulgaria has the world’s 3rd fastest connection and Ukraine 8th. Go a bit north and you’ll find Latvia and Lithuania taking up the 4th and 5th spots respectively. Much like Romania, these countries have a tradition of a mathematics and science-heavy curriculum in their education process beginning early on. The typical Romanian student sees more than 2.5 times the amount of mathematics education and nearly 8 times the amount of computer training than an American by the time the reach high school [PDF]. There is also some anecdotal evidence that Romanian classrooms get more girls involved in the sciences and math [PDF]. Some consider the ‘hard’ sciences to have been an intellectual outlet during the repressive years under Communism. The exact set of circumstances that have created this tilt are complex but the results are clear – Romania has the most certified information technology (IT) specialists in the European Union (EU) and are 6th worldwide [PDF]. Those of you running Windows 7’s default anti-virus suite should know your computer is being protected by a program developed by Romanian software engineers. Now that you have the base of engineers – or Romanian geeks as I’ll affectionately call them – let’s look at the unique landscape they’ve helped create and operate in. The Straight Ethernet Lines From Communism To Capitalism Romania might have one of the world’s fastest Internet connections but it has a mediocre broadband penetration rate; about half that of the EU average. Only 14% of the population, roughly 2.9 million people in a geographically small area. That geographic area is also remarkably unregulated in telecom terms which is probably why Romania has had a somewhat rotating theater of hundreds of Internet service providers over the last 12 years. This remarkable ad-hoc form of competitive capitalism is one of the reasons why Internet bandwidth is incredibly cheap in Romania. You have telecoms and ISPs laying down wires, or raising them depending on the situation; practically no regulation of the market, relatively few people getting online, plus a high nerd-to-population ratio. When they come together here’s how you get the world’s second fastest Internet. Romania’s Layer Cake Of Connectivity Major fiber optic connections connect Romania to the rest of the world; these connections being more-or-less owned and maintained by large service providers. Within neighborhoods you tend to have relatively smaller local Ethernet local area networks (LANs) that metaphorically sit between a Romanian computer in a house and the major service provider. There are thousands of these throughout the country – there has to be as although the connection is fast, is doesn’t go very far. These LANs act as middlemen to the Internet in a sense; the benefit being they can all negotiate with the major ISPs, forcing prices down. This is what happens when you don’t regulate your nerds. This arrangement wouldn’t work in the United States for several reasons. Rules and laws would certainly get in the way and you couldn’t realistically run this type of Ethernet patchwork system over the much larger distances you find in America. Also, there is very little competition between ISPs since most run a practical monopoly in most parts of the country. It is also worth noting that there are about 150 more computer engineers per person in Romania than there are in the US. That would make it difficult to find enough people to run such networks, let alone foster an environment that would create innovative ways to connect them. I’ve left out many technical details and this is something of an over-simplification; I focused on conveying the major points in response to the question of why Romanians have such a (damn) fast Internet connection. |
Regime confirms sixth nuclear detonation following earthquake that was detected by China, South Korea and the US North Korea says it has tested a powerful hydrogen bomb that can be loaded on to an intercontinental ballistic missile, in a move that is expected to increase pressure on Donald Trump to defuse the growing nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula. In an announcement carried on state TV, North Korea said the test, its sixth since 2006, had been a “complete success” and involved a “two-stage thermonuclear weapon” with “unprecedented” strength. There has been no independent verification of the North’s claims that it has achieved a key goal in its nuclear programme - the ability to miniaturise a warhead so that it can fit on a long-distance missile. Hours earlier, the regime released footage of what it claimed was a hydrogen bomb that would be loaded on to a new ICBM. The TV announcement – accompanied by patriotic music and images of North Korean scenery and military hardware – said the test had been ordered by the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un. The explosion was heralded by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake about six miles (10km) from North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site in the north-east of the country. It was felt over the Chinese border in Yanji. South Korea’s meteorological administration estimated the blast yield at between 50 to 60 kilotons, or five to six times stronger than North Korea’s fifth test in September last year. Kim Young-woo, the head of South Korea’s parliamentary defence committee said later that the yield was as high as 100 kilotons. One kiloton is equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT. The previous nuclear blast in North Korea is estimated by experts to have been about 10 kilotons. North Korea: earthquake signals nuclear explosion – live Read more Sunday’s test – the first since Trump took office in January – offers further evidence that North Korea is moving perilously close to developing a nuclear warhead capable of being fitted on to an ICBM that can strike the US mainland. Since it conducted its first nuclear test just over a decade ago, the regime has strived to refine the bombs’ design and reliability, as well as increasing their yield. Hydrogen bombs are far more powerful than the atomic weapons the North is believed to have tested so far. Whatever its eventual yield, Sunday’s test was “a staged thermonuclear weapon” that represents a significant advance in Pyongyang’s weapons programme, said Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies. As the US and countries in the region analysed data resulting from the quake, Japan’s government was the first to state publicly that it was confident the shockwaves came from an underground nuclear explosion in North Korea. The US Geological Survey and China’s Earthquake Administration said they had detected a suspected explosion that caused a 6.3-magnitude earthquake. The USGS said the tremor was located 24km north-east of Sungjibaegam in North Hamgyeong province. “It’s an explosion rather than an earthquake,” said Jana Pursley, a USGS geophysicist. The Chinese earthquake administration said in a statement on its website that the shock, which occurred around 11.30am local time, was recorded at a depth of zero metres. China’s foreign ministry said in a statement: “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has once again conducted a nuclear test in spite of widespread opposition from the international community. The Chinese government resolutely opposes and strongly condemns it.” South Korea was convening an emergency meeting of its national security council to discuss the possible cause of the quake, according to local media. Japan’s government said it would lodge a strong protest pending confirmation that the quakes were caused by nuclear tests. “If North Korea has indeed gone ahead with a nuclear test, it is completely unacceptable and we must lodge a strong protest,” said the prime minister, Shinzo Abe. His defence minister, Itsunori Onodera, said “sniffer” planes capable of detecting radioactive fallout had been deployed to monitor the aftermath of the blast. “We’ll do our best to collect information,” he said, according to public broadcaster NHK. South Korea’s meteorological administration later challenged reports that a second earthquake had occurred near the same nuclear test site. Earlier reports citing China’s earthquake agency said a second quake had been detected eight minutes after the first. The agency later said the second tremor could have been caused by a cave-in near the underground nuclear test site. Zhang Zhiyuan, a journalist for the Chinese newspaper Yanji News, said he had felt the earthquake caused by the nuclear blast. “I was having lunch in a restaurant when the lights just started shaking,” Zhang, who lives and works near China’s border with North Korea, told the Guardian. “People here have all run outside of their apartments.” Trump last month threatened to unleash “fire and fury” against the regime if it continued to threaten the US and its allies with ballistic missiles. In a telephone call on Sunday morning Japan time, Trump and Abe “reaffirmed the importance of close cooperation between the United States, Japan, and South Korea in the face of the growing threat from North Korea”, according to a statement. Sunday’s tests again demonstrated North Korea’s ability to skirt sanctions targeting its missile and weapons technology. UN security council measures ban the regime from testing nuclear or ballistic missile technology, but that did not prevent it from carrying out two nuclear tests and launching more than 20 ballistic missiles last year alone. North Korea in 2016 conducted its fourth and fifth nuclear tests, saying the fourth in January that year was a successful hydrogen bomb test, although experts questioned whether it was a fully fledged hydrogen bomb. The fifth nuclear test, in September 2016, was measured to be possibly North Korea’s biggest detonation ever, but the earthquake it caused was still not believed to be big enough to indicate a full thermonuclear test. The regime detonated its first nuclear device in 2006, followed by tests in 2009 and 2013. Hours before reports of Sunday’s nuclear test emerged, the regime said it had developed a more advanced nuclear weapon that had “great destructive power”, and that Kim had inspected a hydrogen bomb that would be loaded on to a new ICBM. Pyongyang test launched two ICBM-class missiles in July that potentially had a range of about 10,000km (6,200 miles), putting the mainland US within reach. Under Kim, North Korea has defied several rounds of UN sanctions and ploughed resources into building working nuclear weapons and missiles with enough range to deliver them as far away as the US mainland – a development that would considerably strengthen Pyongyang’s hand in any negotiations with Washington. The North’s official KCNA news agency said the hydrogen bomb showcased in photographs at the weekend was adjustable to hundreds of kilotons in explosive power and could be detonated at high altitudes, with its indigenously produced components allowing the country to build as many nuclear weapons as it wants. Kim visited the country’s Nuclear Weapons Institute and “watched an H-bomb to be loaded into new ICBM”, KCNA said. “All components of the H-bomb were homemade and all the processes … were put on the Juche basis, thus enabling the country to produce powerful nuclear weapons as many as it wants,” said the KCNA. Juche is North Korea’s homegrown go-it-alone ideology that is a mix of Marxism and extreme nationalism preached by state founder Kim Il-sung, the current leader’s grandfather. Kim had “set forth tasks to be fulfilled in the research into nukes”, KCNA said, but it made no mention of plans for a sixth nuclear test. Sunday’s nuclear detonation is expected to raise pressure on the US to address the demonstrable advances the North is making in its missile and weapons development. While it is difficult to independently verify North Korean claims about its missile and nuclear weapons programmes, no one doubts that it is improving its capability with each new test. However, the extent of its ability to consistently miniaturise nuclear warheads so they can fit on long-range missiles remains unclear. “Though we cannot verify the claim, (North Korea) wants us to believe that it can launch a thermonuclear strike now, if it is attacked,” Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, told Associated Press. “Importantly [North Korea] will also want to test this warhead, probably at a larger yield, to demonstrate this capability.” Trump has said that all options remain on the table, but last week appeared to rule out any contact with the regime, declaring: “Talking is not the answer.” Other administration officials quickly stressed that dialogue with the regime was still the preferred option. James Mattis, the defence secretary, flatly contradicted the president’s statement, telling reporters: “We’re never out of diplomatic solutions.” With additional reporting by Wang Zhen in Beijing. |
My biggest impulse buy: hot dog buns. Sometimes I’ll buy the buns and no dogs. They’re great with all sorts of fillings. Peanut butter. Lettuce and cheese. Butter. (Or margarine, if you’re off dairy. And if you’re off dairy, you have my sympathy. That’s hard. I tried nut cheese for a week. Not because I have a problem with dairy, I just wanted to be able to empathize with those who do. Rough week. Turns out I have a mild nut allergy.) Sloppy joe. Mac & cheese—look out, it’s a carb bomb! (Sorry, I know that sounds like car bomb, and I don’t mean to sound flippant about the Middle East. Car bombings are tragic. I realize I would not be a good suicide bomber.) Ham and pickles. Turkey chili. Curveball: fruit and whipped cream (two-minute shortcake!). |
I live in Houston and I don’t own a car. I know, I know: If there is a more hard-to-believe statement to make about any American city with a straight face, I don’t know what it is. But it’s true. Last fall, after three decades of living in Southern California, I moved to Houston to take over Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research. I had given up my car a few years ago, and now I was moving to the most sprawling, car-centric city in America, a place where well over 90 percent of all residents drive to work in automobiles. Houston is twice the size of New York City, with only a quarter of the population -- and that’s just the central city, not counting the suburbs. Yet like so many American cities, Houston is changing. It’s a diverse and sophisticated place with a lot more urban energy than you might expect, especially inside the region’s core, the Interstate 610 “Loop.” In fact, the Loop sometimes seems like a different city altogether from the rest of Houston. It’s accessible, with an extensive bus system and a new light rail system that has very high ridership. It’s expensive -- some neighborhoods feature California prices. It’s dense and getting denser, containing most of the major job centers in the region and a growing number of walkable urban neighborhoods. In other words, the Loop is where Houston’s suburban past is meeting Houston’s urban future. It’s a lot of fun to watch, because nowhere in America is a free-market approach to growth and development running head-on into a growing desire to up the city’s quality of life. Just since I arrived, something like 40 multifamily housing projects have begun construction -- all market-rate, some high-end. The Texas Medical Center -- the largest medical center in the world -- proposed an enormous innovation campus in what is currently a surface parking lot. And an Urban Land Institute panel came to town to figure out how to turn the 350-acre Astrodome site -- with a parking lot visible from space -- into a more urban, 21st-century place. Most of these projects are located within walking distance of the light rail line. Yet there’s pushback. Houston has a longstanding reputation for favoring business over neighborhoods and jobs over people, and of course it famously has no zoning. So a lot of people simply don’t believe that more density will mean better places. Neighbors are resisting additional density, only to find that there’s no way to stop it. So that’s Houston’s urban challenge: How to manage urban growth in a way that makes the city better, but does it without the in-your-face government intervention you’ll find in New York and San Francisco. A lot of it actually will depend on the city government, which is preparing its first general plan. A lot will depend on the leadership of developers and architects, who will have to find solid market reasons to create better urbanism. And a lot will depend on public and institutional landowners, who will have to raise the bar themselves. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. But it’s great fun watching it from aboard the light rail and local buses, tooling around on one of Houston’s shared bicycles or from the window of a newly legalized Uber ride. |
“I’m optimistic about the future, and the events of the last week give me great reason to be even more optimistic,” said Steven Plofker, an alumnus of Rutgers and its law school and a donor who had been critical of the previous athletic director, Julie Hermann. “We know it takes a long time to build things. We just want things moving forward in a positive way.” Rutgers has long been able to attract good faculty members, not least because of its proximity to New York. But it has been overshadowed by the glut of other prominent institutions in the Northeast, unable to command the reputation or fund-raising of private universities or its public peers in other states. With its big-name schools and its own television network, the Big Ten looked like a solution. Rutgers would get a cut of the revenue and the branding benefits of its name on screens across the country. Joining also made Rutgers a member of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, which offers students and faculty members the ability to take courses and do research with other well-regarded members, such as Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But the league does not give new members their full cut of the revenue until the sixth year — in Rutgers’s case, 2021. And universities have to spend to get it: Big Ten coaches demand higher salaries, bigger staffs and better facilities. A new physical master plan for the university projects more than a dozen new buildings or renovations for athletics. The initial projects are expected to cost about $100 million, but Dr. Barchi said in unveiling the plan this year that “it wouldn’t be out of context” to spend about $300 million, money he expects to come largely from fund-raising. Dr. Barchi has said that within seven years, the profits will cover athletic costs and help pay for academic programs. But for now, the university subsidizes more than half of the athletic department’s $70 million annual operating budget. That has produced ambivalence and even animosity from some faculty members. The university declined to make Dr. Barchi or Mr. Hobbs available for interviews. But Dr. Barchi has said that Rutgers’s eventual full share of the Big Ten revenue is expected to be more than $40 million a year as the league earns more money from new cable subscribers in East Coast television markets. |
The US Justice Department today officially kicked off a $20 million grant program designed to improve the FBI's national background check system for purchasing guns. The idea is to increase the amount of data states share with the federal government on "dangerous individuals," who are prohibited from buying guns under federal law. The amount for the program was first announced in January as part of President Obama's proposal to improve gun control, but now the details of what the money will be used for have been made clear. Increasing data sharing on "dangerous individuals" The Justice Department is asking governments, private companies and nonprofits to develop easier ways for state agencies to submit electronic criminal records, mental health records such as "involuntary commitments to mental health facilities," and electronic fingerprints to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) database. The database has been online since 1998, but a recent report from the Mayors Against Illegal Guns, an advocacy group made up of sitting mayors from around the US, found it to be sorely lacking in mental health and fingerprint data. The report concluded this was due to a variety of problems unique to each state in how they handle their own records and how quickly they've been able to switch over from paper to digital systems. The hope is that three new grants will spur dramatic improvements in the comprehensiveness of the NICS database by a deadline of early 2015. But it's hardly the first time the Justice Department has thrown money at the problem: A report last year from the Government Accountability Office found that the Department had awarded $40 million in grant money to state governments since 2009 to improve the database, but that "most states have made limited progress" in providing mental health records, in part due to technological issues and privacy concerns. It remains to be seen how the program announced today will avoid some of these pitfalls. The Verge has reached out to the Justice Department for more information and will update when we hear back. |
A cyberattack at the River Cree Resort and Casino in Enoch resulted in the theft of customer and employee information. River Cree president Robert Morin, in a written statement, said the attack occurred Monday. It did not include theft of information from the casino floor. “We wanted to alert anyone potentially affected quickly and directly. We are in the process of contacting those patrons and employees whose information may have been compromised, and will provide them with recommended steps they can now take to protect themselves,” he said. The Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission is now investigating. Morin said the resort has also consulted with cybersecurity experts at Mandiant, the RCMP and have notified the Alberta Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. “River Cree values the trust our patrons place in us and are strengthening our data security practices.” The resort has set up a hotline and will be begin taking calls from patrons at 11 a.m. Friday. The number is 780-930-2596. |
1.10 PATCH NOTES Safety Car - Fixed the falling too far back system so it will no longer give penalties incorrectly. Safety Car - Lapped cars will no longer be able to overtake cars that have lapped them. Fixed a bug that meant players could be disqualified when someone behind them did a jump start and drove through them while ghosted. Increased the terminal damage threshold from ~7m/s to 15m/s. (The terminal damage threshold is the speed below which you cannot terminally damage your car). Fixed a minor graphical issue on the Ray Ban sponsor on the Ferrari. Fixed a bug that caused the delta to stop working during a virtual safety car period. Fixed a bug that could cause cars to become desynchronised during multiplayer sessions. A red “disconnected” cross icon is now displayed next to the name of any player who has not sent network information recently to warn you that there is a connectivity issue. Hey all,Patch 1.10 is now out on PC. Below are the notes for this patch:Something mentioned above not working as it should do? Let us know below! |
National Union of Students launch 'decapitation' strategy aimed at ousting Nick Clegg and other top Liberal Democrats in protest at the party's U-turn on tuition fees The National Union of Students will launch a "decapitation" strategy aimed at ousting Nick Clegg and other top Liberal Democrats from parliament in protest at the party's U-turn on student fees. The move aims to build on anger about coalition policies – which spilled over into violence on Wednesday – in Lib Dem-held constituencies with large student populations. The key targets will be Clegg in Sheffield Hallam, Simon Wright in Norwich South, Stephen Williams in Bristol West and Don Foster in Bath. Aaron Porter, president of the NUS, said the campaign would aim to force out Lib Dems who break their pre-election pledge to oppose any rise in tuition fees. The move has echoes of the Lib Dems' own "decapitation strategy" in 2005, when the party threw resources into efforts to oust leading Tories with narrow majorities, including Michael Howard and Theresa May. Porter said the NUS will make use of a coalition idea for holding MPs to account that was championed by Clegg himself. The "right to recall" initiative, which has yet to became law, proposes that a byelection can be called if an MP is judged guilty of serious wrongdoing and 10% of constituents want him or her removed. More likely is that the NUS could mobilise support against selected MPs ahead of the next election. Extra efforts will be made in the four target seats – with 1,000 students taking to the streets of Sheffield in an attempt to get 10% of Clegg's constituency to sign a petition. The Lib Dem leader, who held Sheffield Hallam with a majority of 15,284 at the May election, has around 10,000 students in his constituency. Others could be more vulnerable, such as Wright, who beat Charles Clarke in Norwich South by just 310 votes. Porter said: "It will serve to undermine the wafer-thin mandate this government has on university cuts and debt." Students will not target MPs who have promised to vote against the policy to raise fees to as much as £9,000, such as Tim Farron, who has just been voted Lib Dem president. Farron opposes the rise but insists the Lib Dems had made it a fairer package than it would have been under either Conservative or Labour. Evan Harris, the former Lib Dem MP who topped the elections for the party's federal executive, attacked the campaign as a "partisan stunt". He pointed out that manifesto promises could only be fulfilled if a party won a majority and said the NUS never suggested voting against, "let alone recalling", Labour MPs who broke election pledges on top-up fees. However, Caroline Dowd, Sheffield Hallam University's student union president, said her members were livid. "We could not get [Clegg] out of our union before the general election. He came and spoke about how MPs should not make promises and then break them, about how fees were wrong." She said there were 1,000 students in Sheffield prepared to take to the streets to gather names for a petition and there would be a protest outside Clegg's constituency office on Thursday. Clegg's problems mounted as the Guardian revealed secret documents showing that he and other senior Lib Dems were preparing two months before the election to drop their promise on fees in the event of a coalition.. John Denham, the shadow business, innovation and skills secretary, said Clegg had no "credibility" left on the issue. "This week he said he should have been more careful before promising he would vote against fee increases, but now we know he was planning to drop his policy long before he made this promise." A Lib Dem spokesman said: "What we have achieved is a system that is fairer than the one that exists now which means the poorest 25% of graduates will pay less, and those who go on to earn more pay more." The controversy comes as police arrested a 57th person in connection with last week's student march through London, which ended in violent scenes. As police face continued criticism for failing to control the march, the Observer has learned that defence firms are working closely with UK armed forces and contemplating a "militarisation" strategy to counter the threat of civil disorder. The trade group representing the military and security industry says firms are in negotiation with senior officers over possible orders for armoured vehicles, body scanners and better surveillance equipment. The move coincides with government-backed attempts to introduce the use of unmanned spy drones throughout UK airspace, facilitating an expansion of covert surveillance that could provide intelligence on future demonstrations. Derek Marshall, of the trade body Aerospace, Defence and Security (ADS), said that such drones could eventually replace police helicopters. He added that military manufacturers had discussed police procurement policies with the government, as forces look to counter an identified threat of civil disobedience from political extremists. Meanwhile police sources say they have detected an increase in the criminal intentions of political extremists and are monitoring "extreme leftwing activity" in light of last week's student protest. The office of the National Co-ordinator for Domestic Extremism (NCDE) said it was feeding information to Scotland Yard's National Public Order Intelligence Unit, which holds a database of protest groups. NCDE, which in turn works closely with the Confidential Intelligence Unit that monitors political groups throughout the UK, said it had already recorded a rise in politically motivated disorder. An NCDE insider said: "Over the past year there has been an increase in the criminal activity committed by such individuals but this is committed by a very small minority". An internal Metropolitan police report is expected to be completed this week into why senior officers failed to anticipate the violence during last Wednesday's student demonstration. |
Background: Low back pain is an extremely common presentation to US Emergency Departments (EDs) representing 2.4% or 2.7 million visits annually. The vast majority of presentations are benign in etiology but can be time consuming and frustrating for both patients and physicians. For patients, most will have persistent symptoms a week after presentation and many will have continued functional impairment months after symptom onset. Physician frustrations are multifaceted – preoccupation for finding the rare dangerous back pain patient (the one with an epidural abscess or vertebral osteomyelitis), difficulty in relieving pain and concern for secondary gain (i.e. opiate abuse or diversion). Post-ED analgesia regimens range from NSAIDs and acetaminophen to muscle relaxants (i.e. cyclobenzaprine) to benzodiazepines and opiates. Previous work from this group demonstrated a lack of benefit for adjunct cyclobenzaprine or oxycodone/acetaminophen to naproxen. Now, they turn their eye to the use of diazepam in addition to naproxen. Article:Friedman BW et al. Diazepam is no Better Than Placebo When Added to Naproxen for Acute Low Back Pain. Ann Emerg Med 2017. PMID: 28187918 Clinical Question: Does the addition of diazepam to naproxen in patients presenting with acute, nontraumatic, nonradicular low back pain improve functional outcomes at 1 week? Population: Adults aged 21 to 69 years of age who presented to a single urban ED for the management of acute low back pain (lower border of the scapula to the upper gluteal folds). Patients had to have functionally impairing back pain (score > 5 on the Roland-Morris Disability Questionnaire (RMDQ)) and had to be discharged home. Intervention: Naproxen 500 mg PO Q12 PRN pain + diazepam 5-10 mg PO Q12 PRN pain Control: Naproxen 500 mg PO Q12 PRN pain + 1-2 placebo pills Q12 PRN pain Outcomes: Primary: Improvement in the RMDQ score between ED discharge and 1 week follow-up. Secondary: Pain intensity at 1 week and 3 months measured on a 4-point descriptive scale. Design: Prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled comparative efficacy study Excluded: Presence of radicular pain, pain greater than 2 weeks in duration, baseline low back pain frequency of once per month or more, presence of a nonmusculoskeletal cause of back pain (i.e. pyelonephritis), patients with direct trauma, pregnancy or breast feeding, chronic fatigue syndrome and those unavailable for follow-up. Primary Results: 545 patients screened for enrollment 114 patients included based on inclusion criteria No significant difference in baseline demographic characteristics between the two groups 112/114 patients (98%) were followed up at 1 week Critical Findings (95% CI) Strengths: Study asked a simple, clinically relevant question with a patient centered outcome Randomization and blinding were appropriately performed The functional assessment tool (RMDQ) has been previously validated All study medications were supplied prior to discharge (no question of whether prescriptions were filled or went unfilled) Dosing was designed to avoid side effects where possible and use the minimum necessary dose while allowing for up-titration if necessary All patients were given a 10-min educational intervention on back pain prior to discharge Follow up was near complete at 1 week and remained excellent at 3 months Limitations: While the study sought to include a broad representation of patients with musculoskeletal back pain, almost 80% of patients approached were excluded prior to enrollment The study was conducted in a single urban hospital. This limits generalizability Many of the inclusion/exclusion criteria are susceptible to recall bias (i.e. pain greater than 2 weeks) The presence of radicular pain led to exclusion but this can be quite subjective. There was no mention of inter-rater reliability for this criteria Unemployment, a known factor involved in recovery from back pain, was more common in the naproxen + diazepam group (19% vs. 5%) Although use of medication was asked at 1 week and 3 months follow up, it is difficult, if not impossible, to know if the reported use was accurate There is no mention of medications used in the ED for back pain prior to discharge. Additionally, it’s unclear how this would have affected outcomes. Authors Conclusions: “Among ED patients with acute, nontraumatic, nonradicular low back pain, naproxen + diazepam did not improve functional outcomes or pain compared with naproxen + placebo 1 week and 3 months after ED discharge.” Our Conclusions: In this single center study, the addition of diazepam to naproxen did not improve functional outcomes in patients presenting with acute nontraumatic, nonradicular low back pain. Potential to Impact Current Practice: Based on the best available data, it does not appear that diazepam should be routinely added to an NSAID for outpatient management of acute, nontraumatic low back pain. Clinical Bottom Line: The addition of diazepam to naproxen does not appear to improve acute nontraumatic low back pain outcomes. While side effects were not significantly increased, the absence of benefit should limit this practice. Further multi-center data validating these results would be helpful. Checkout More on This Topic at: Core EM: Treatment of Acute, Non-Traumatic Low Back Pain Post Peer Reviewed By: Salim Rezaie (Twitter: @srrezaie) |
This was posted on Tuesday, August 1, 2017 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog After a blockbuster enterprise piece in Buzzfeed alleged that R&B star R Kelly has been keeping women as sex slaves in a "cult," a local woman began pressuring Atlanta radio stations to stop playing his music and Wolf Creek Amphitheater to cancel his upcoming concert. As part of a #MuteRKelly campaign, the petition notes: "We are INCENSED--given Atlanta's place as the SEX TRAFFICKING CAPITAL OF THE US-- that the Fulton County Board of Commissioners Office would issue a contract with promoter, Live Nation, to host R. Kelly at the Wolf Amphitheater on August 25, 2017!" The petition has attracted about 800 names as of Tuesday, August 1. Another petition pressuring Sony to drop him from its label has collected nearly 35,000 names. Oronike Odeleye, managing director of Atlanta arts organization Creative Currents Artist Collaborative, said there have been allegations and accusations against R. Kelly regarding young women for many years. He married 15-year-old Aaliyah in 1994, but the marriage was quickly annulled. Years, later he was indicted on child pornography charges but was found not guilty by a jury. "The courts haven't been able to do anything," Odeleye said. "It really kind of came to me. If we are going to shut this man down, we're going to have to take things into our own hands." So far, Odeleye has had no luck getting the Atlanta concert nixed, but the R&B singer has cancelled at least four concerts without explanation: Los Angeles, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, La., and Dallas. TMZ said ticket sales were slow, and a recent Virginia Beach concert was barely half full. Three local radio stations -- Kiss 104.1, V-103 and Majic 107.5/97.5 -- played R. Kelly songs over the past week, according to Mediabase 24/7, which tracks radio airplay. Fifteen songs featuring R. Kelly were spun, including "Happy People" eight times, "Step in the Name of Love" and "It Seems Like You're ready" both six times and "Ignition" five times. Kiss played him 19 times, Majic 18 times and V-103 five times. In total, you could hear him about once every four hours on Atlanta radio. Majic program director Derek Harper said as long as Kelly hasn't been convicted of anything, he didn't feel right pulling R. Kelly's songs. "If and once he's convicted, then we'd have a different conversation," he said in an interview with me. He was the only program director to speak to Odeleye directly. Tony Kidd, who oversees Kiss, declined to comment. He responded to Odeleye: "Thank you for the email. We will keep an eye on this situation." Reggie Rouse , program director at V-103, didn't respond to my inquiry but did send Odeleye this note acknowledging that the station has talked about the R. Kelly issue extensively but has no plans to boycott his music: Thank you for your email. We respect your organization’s position on this topic and appreciate you sharing your viewpoint. As a local radio station, one of our goals is to play the music our listeners want to hear, however, doing so does not mean that we endorse or support any individual’s actions or decisions. As it relates to covering the news and updates of urban music and artists, we present the stories and encourage listeners to decide for themselves what they listen to, watch, read, whom they support and whom they don’t. To that end, our coverage of this story has included an interview with the Savage family on V103. Kiss 104.1 and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution are both part of Cox Media Group. |
Relative charged in knife attack on boy and his sister Boy fights off knife attack and helps his sister A relative of the children is charged and held without bail Regina Umagat Regina Umagat Photo: Harris County Sheriff's Department Photo: Harris County Sheriff's Department Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Relative charged in knife attack on boy and his sister 1 / 1 Back to Gallery A 10-year-old boy managed to call for help while he consoled his younger sister after both were stabbed by a relative at a northeast Harris County home, officials said. Regina Umagat, 28, is charged with two counts of injury to a child with serious bodily injury, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office. She is being held at the Harris County jail on no bail and is scheduled to appear in court on Friday. Officials said she is being evaluated for mental competence. Investigators said the stabbings occurred at the home of the children's grandparents in the 8100 block of Greens Road about 8 p.m. Wednesday. Umagat is the niece of the children's grandmother. The boy was alert and talking with investigators and the 9-year-old girl was in critical condition with a punctured lung Thursday at a hospital, officials said. Deputies were dispatched to a neighboring house after the resident told 911 operators that a woman was banging on a her door and screaming that she had “stabbed the children,” said Deputy Thomas Gilliland, spokesman for the Harris County Sheriff's Department. The woman was bloody, Gilliland said. Girl stabbed twice Deputies found Umagat lying in the driveway of the neighbor's home, her hands folded behind her head, officials said. She told deputies that she had stabbed the children. Houston Child Protective Services visited the children, said agency spokeswoman Estella Olguin. She said the wounded boy was able to call his grandparents, who had gone to the store and left the children in Umagat's care. The grandparents, who are in the process of adopting the children, took them to a nearby hospital, and they were flown by helicopter ambulance to the Medical Center. Gilliland said they were both in critical condition. The boy was stabbed between five and seven times and had wounds in the hands and forearms, as if he had tried to fend off the blows, as well as his chest. The girl was stabbed twice, in the right cheek and upper chest. She underwent surgery, Olguin said. Deputies found a sharp-edged weapon at the scene that appears to have been used in the stabbings. Further attacks thwarted The brother, who in addition to calling his grandparents on their cell phone and comforting his bleeding little sister despite his own wounds, is a “resourceful little boy,” said Olguin, who indicated he did other things to thwart further attacks. She did not offer specifics. Garett Epps, a neighbor, said the family is from the U.S. territory of Guam and had moved to the home from San Diego about four years ago. The children's biological parents are not stateside, Olguin added. Olguin said that CPS never had been called to the home. A 17-year-old boy also lives in the two-story home, set in a subdivision along a quiet residential section of Greens Road, officials said. He was not at home when the stabbings occurred. Suspect called quiet Olguin said relatives indicated the niece never had shown any signs of violence. Epps, 50, who said he knows his neighbors well, agreed and said the woman was quiet, although he said her family told him that she has a mental health issue. The woman often would chat or play basketball at his house, said Epps, who has three school-age daughters. “It was just shocking to me,” Epps said. “It almost traumatized me because those kids are like my kids.“ dale.lezon@chron.com |
Scientists at the University of Sussex have discovered how just two neurons in the brain hold the key to explaining how complex behavioural decisions are made. In the first-of-its-kind study, published in Nature Communications, scientists from the University studied the brain activity of freshwater snails and discovered how a circuit comprising of just two neurons can drive a sophisticated form of decision making. Scientists, from Sussex Neuroscience, monitored the snails' behaviour whilst they made decisions in their search for food (in this case lettuce). The researchers then measured the activity in the snail's brain by using electrodes to record small electrical changes, called action potentials, in individual neurons. They discovered a controller type neuron which lets the snail's brain know potential food is present and a second neuron which transmits signals telling the snail's brain what it's motivational state is, i.e., whether it's hungry or not. The scientists also reveal how the system, created by the neurons, enables the snails to save energy by reducing brain activity when food is not found. Professor George Kemenes, of the University of Sussex, who led the study, said: "What goes on in our brains when we make complex behavioural decisions and carry them out is poorly understood. "Our study reveals for the first-time how just two neurons can create a mechanism in an animal's brain which drives and optimizes complex decision making tasks. It also shows how this system helps to manage how much energy they use once they have made a decision. "Our findings can help scientists to identify other core neuronal systems which underlie similar decision making processes. This will eventually help us design the 'brains' of robots based on the principle of using the fewest possible components necessary to perform complex tasks." Food-searching is an example of a goal-directed behaviour which is essential for survival. During goal-directed decision making, such as searching for food, animals must integrate information about both their external environment and their internal state in order to find food whilst using minimal energy. |
BitKan Adds Bitcoin Cash, ETH to P2P Trading Platform Off-exchange trading for Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum is now easier, after BitKan added the currencies to its mobile platform. Users can hold BCC, BTC and ETH, and search BitKan’s database for a buyer (or seller) in their preferred currency to trade with directly. Also read: SEC Suspension Won’t Stop Our Growth, Says First Bitcoin Capital BitKan users who held Bitcoin balances in their wallets at the time of the hard fork will have an automatic Bitcoin Cash balance. Even though the company added BCC support over three weeks later, it calculated from the BTC balance each user held on 1st August. In a signal it plans to expand its P2P trading network further, BitKan also quietly added ETH support. BitKan’s Sandy Liang told Bitsonline her team sees the cryptocurrency trading market diversifying. “We think the cryptocurrency market is very active this year, users’ demand is growing too. We see the OTC market should be pluralistic.” Off-Exchange Trading for Everyone The app functions as an “over-the-counter” (OTC) exchange for everyday users. The software matches individual buyers and sellers like Uber matches riders and drivers — who then trade directly with each other. Crypto funds are kept in escrow to ensure no-one gets cheated. The software holds no fiat currency balances. In China, it’s popular with people using platforms like WeChat to send money. In the West, it’s usually PayPal or direct bank transfers. It’s an attempt to decentralize the cryptocurrency trading experience. It also simplifies things for users, who don’t always want to use (or trust) large online exchanges to store their dollars as well as cryptos. The mobile app also features live price charts for multiple currencies, mining statistics and cryptocurrency news. It’s localized in most major languages. Have you ever traded off-exchange? What features and services would you like to see? Let us know. Images via BitKan, Jon Southurst Note: BitKan is a strategic partner of Bitsonline. |
Ramen is on the rise in San Diego; established names like Ramen Yamadaya and RakiRaki are working on new locations and while Jinya Ramen is prepping for local entry. The next ramen brand opening here is Nishiki Ramen, which was established over 20 years ago in Japan; the group's first restaurant in the United States will land in July 2015 at 8055 Armour Street in the same plaza as Mitsuwa Marketplace. Mike Furuichi, who along with Nishiki Ramen owner Takashi Endo is spearheading the new stateside expansion, says that Nishiki's outposts in Japan sell over 80,000 bowls of ramen a month; during the Tokyo Ramen Show (pictured above), the Nishiki stand served 2,000 bowls a day. Satoshi Ikedo of custom noodle-making machine, where diners can watch the ramen noodles being made fresh every day. of Ikedo Design is working on the design of 1,608-square-foot Kearny Mesa space, which will serve an entirely new menu for the U.S. market, from meat to seafood-based ramen. Furuichi tells Eater that the Nishiki's menu will be healthy and use no MSG or preservatives, with a soup base that manages to be low in fat while maintaining a smooth and creamy texture. Unique to local ramen restaurants is a, where diners can watch the ramen noodles being made fresh every day. |
Nissan boss, Carlos Ghosn, has said that the next generation of Nissan electric cars – the next LEAF is due in 2016 – will have an official range of 250 miles. We’ve never been a fan of electric cars as a replacement for the ICE car because they are incapable of offering the flexibility and practicality an ICE car manages, but that may be close to changing. Carlos Ghosn, Nissan boss, has told an interviewer on Tokyo’s Business News that the next generation of electric cars from Nissan – the new LEAF is due in 2016 – will come with a range of 250 miles, at least double the theoretical range of the current LEAF EV. We can’t find a clip of the interview where Ghosn made his assertion, but Tokyo’s Daily Kanban claim to have seen it and confirm the claim by Ghosn If it’s true, it’s a major step in making EVs a true alternative to ICE cars, especially if, as is claimed, the new battery technology that enables the much greater range is both lighter and cheaper to build. Of course, having a greater range is a big help, but it is only of limited use if the number of recharging stations is greatly expanded and recharging technology advances to be comparable with refuelling an ICE car. But even that seems to be in the works. And if it is, we may have to look at batters electric cars with new eyes. Source: Car & Driver |
Honestly, I don't expect this when do that long ass loading, I thought its a full 3D game, its not like what I expected.... but damn, the soon everything revealed, its BEAUTIFUL!! In the matter of graphic, I am speechless. It was more than just those astonishing 3D background, this is simple even better than other 3D movies on newground! However, as a movie it would be boring, but it was fine for game, since all that is beautiful is the backrgound graphic etc. Nice decision! The gameplay is....meh, I dont know....non existence or really just additional one? The lag is intense, you can't move to forward or backward, just jumping. Not to mention that the platform didn't really work fine. The glitching after dead also tad annoying. The main spotlight is the music, honestly, it fits before the lyric kick in. When it do, I was like...."ugh, not another typical modern american casual music with casual lyric...." they're too focus on lyric and have no meaning or melody to support it, unlike pop or rock. Even reggae, blues, or jazz was better than a blatant lyrics which is more like focus on the message than the melody itself. This is music. Anyway, ignore my rant if you like the music. Everyone have different taste. I was just telling a honest opinion, which is true anyway. If I judge only from gameplay and music, and the rest, this game won't even have 3 star. Its really not focus on the gameplay and the features, not to mention that it too focused on the advertising, which already obvious, if not annoying. However, the masterpiece, divine godlike graphic of the backrgound and everything about it is beautiful, grande and ethereal. It was inspiring and mesmerizing, that I could forgive even all glitch and mistake of the game. (if there is any) Good job on this, you really create a 3D environment of a professional class. Definitely not on Newground class, but on PS4 class! |
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