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George Osborne is admired in the Treasury for his capacity to delegate. Civil servants like to be left alone and memories are fresh of the black days of Gordon Brown's maniacal control. By contrast, the current Chancellor is happy to let the bean-counters do their thing while he trots over to Downing Street for daily war games, plotting ways to secure a Tory majority at the next election. There is no laziness involved. Osborne works hard, it's just that he has two jobs: running the economy and devising Conservative party strategy. They often look like the same thing but tensions arise. If he were preoccupied exclusively with opinion polls, he would not have cut the top rate of income tax from 50p to 45p. This was the policy beacon that shone through the blizzard of measures announced in the Budget on 21 March. Even as coalition ministers insist that the rich are being made to pay in other ways, a tax break for people earning over £150,000 a year is emblematic. It is hugely unpopular and seems tailor-made to reinforce public suspicion that Tories cannot resist cosseting tycoons. It was the hope of flushing out that toxic impulse that led Brown to create the 50p rate in the first place. Until now, Osborne has refused to oblige. Why does he now let himself be flushed? The Chancellor's image in Westminster as a fanatical Machiavellian invites elaborate explanations involving bluffs and traps. The reputation is partly justified. Those who work with Osborne in the Treasury report a formidable capacity to fillet a heap of data for political messages. He never has to be briefed twice. Instant gratification At the same time, Whitehall is not persuaded that there is much of a long-term strategy. "He is a shrewd tactician," says one Treasury veteran, who has observed up close how the Chancellor works. "He doesn't think more than a few steps ahead. He doesn't feel he needs to because he's so confident that when the time comes he'll think of something." Osborne is a chancer. Despite the risks, there is instant political gratification to be had from cutting the top rate of tax. It reinforces the Chancellor's credentials as a torch-bearer for authentic Toryism when the Prime Minister is seen as ideologically contaminated by coalition. As one government adviser puts it: "At a stroke, you buy yourself a lot of room with the right of the party, with donors and with the press." But Osborne has only taken that opportunity because he judges that Labour is weak. The budget gives Ed Miliband ammunition to accuse the government of crimes against solidarity but it also challenges the opposition to declare what it would do differently and, in particular, whether it would restore the 50p rate. (Ed Balls has said he cannot yet be sure.) Besides, Labour has been attacking Osborne for itching to make the move anyway and the Liberal Democrats have said they would never permit it unless some other device were found to inflict austerity on the wealthy. The Chancellor was thus being portrayed as a frustrated friend of the rich instead of a powerful one; which is worse? There is, meanwhile, a conviction among top Tories that Miliband's instincts are further to the left than his public pronouncements and that he is struggling to prevent his party from drifting into unelectable reveries of mass redistribution. Osborne is confident that, even if his move is unpopular, Labour's glee will be so immoderate as to put off anyone who takes a more nuanced view of optimal tax rates. That leads to the main reason Osborne has taken such a gamble (and no one in government denies the move is risky): enough business leaders told him it would work as an economic tonic. Corporate and financial bigwigs have been queuing up to denounce the 50p rate for signalling hostility to enterprise, chasing ambitious types overseas and inciting tax evasion. Scrapping it would, they said, bring forth the elusive surge of investment that the Chancellor craves. Conveniently, HMRC has also calculated that the 50p rate was raising much less than had previously been promised. As one Whitehall observer puts it: "Too many people that the government listens to on growth were saying, 'This is a problem.'" Osborne, like so many of his political peers, has no first-hand experience of running a company or making money from scratch and is impressed by people who have done both. (They can be doubly persuasive when viewed as potential contributors to party funds.) The Chancellor is hypersensitive to the demands of business, even by the standards of previous Exchequer chieftains. Treasury officials find demands to deal with obscure European directives or footling regulations landing on the top of their in-trays within moments of Osborne receiving a grumbling industry delegation. No mansion tax So the Chancellor was easily convinced that cutting the 50p rate would send a pro-enterprise flare up over the UK. He had originally wanted to slash the rate down to 40p but was quickly dissuaded from this course in the "quad" - the coalition steering committee where Osborne sits alongside Cameron, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander. The Lib Dems insisted that such a flagrant favour to the well-off should be balanced with a raid on expensive property - a so-called "mansion tax". But Cameron vetoed any permanent new levy on homes. Thus was the broad outline of the budget compromise struck: the Tories got a 45p income tax rate, the Lib Dems got acceleration of the plan to raise the personal allowance, plus noisy pledges to clamp down on wealthy tax dodgers and a stamp-duty hike to show that luxury houses hadn't been forgotten altogether. This pre-Budget quad-wrangle represents a new feature of British politics and one that erodes a chancellor's power. Brown never felt the need to debate his plans with anyone, not even the Prime Minister. He certainly never had to satisfy politically needy Lib Dems. It would be only human for the Chancellor to want to kick back at that constraint, to do something counter-intuitive and audacious. Why did Osborne take his great tax gamble? Because he can; because it shows who's really in charge. |
“Yes, Toomas Hendrik Ilves and Ieva Kupce got engaged in the middle of November,” Toomas Sildam, president's public relations manager, confirmed to ERR. “It was their personal decision and is in no way related to the presidential duties of Toomas Hendrik Ilves,” he added. Ieva Kupce, 38, is the head of the National Cyber Security Policy Section of the Latvian Ministry of Defense. She has worked in the field of foreign and security policy in different institutions in Latvia and with NATO, focusing on the issues of security, democracy, and human rights. In 2012, she graduated the mid-career program at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC and returned to Latvia as advisor to the State Secretary of the Ministry of Defense. She also coordinated the establishment of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (NATO StratCom COE) in Riga, Latvia. President Ilves divorced his second wife Evelin Ilves on April 30, 2015. They were married for over 10 years and have a daughter born in 2003. Ilves also has two older children from his first marriage to American psychologist Dr. Merry Bullock. Ilves's term in the office will come to an end in August 2016. It has not yet been confirmed if the wedding will take place before that and if Kupce will assume the duties of the first lady, although according to Postimees, this might be the case. |
Canadian Captain Megan Couto before leading out troops of the Second Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry from Wellington Barracks heading for the Changing of the Guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace in central London, Britain, June 26, 2017. (Photo11: ANDY RAIN, EPA) LONDON - A Canadian soldier has made history as the first woman to lead the Changing of the Guard ceremony at London’s Buckingham Palace. Megan Cuoto led her unit as it changed Queen Elizabeth II’s guards on Monday. The unit was invited to Britain to mark Canada’s 150th anniversary. The 24-year-old Cuoto is marking her first visit to London. Before the ceremony, Cuoto said that “I’m just focusing on doing my job as best I can and staying humble. Any of my peers would be absolutely delighted to be Captain of the Queen’s Guard and I’m equally honored.” The role of Mounting The Queen’s Guard usually falls to the male-dominated British Army’s Household Division. Women are being phased into more roles over the next three years. Watch as Canadian Soldier Captain Megan Couto becomes the first female ever to Captain The Queen's Guard during Changing the Guard. pic.twitter.com/iSjgX98Eaz — The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) June 26, 2017 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2tMdHXi |
Pro Football Focus is wrapping up the offseason with a look at each position group, ranked out with a little help from their grading system. Earlier this week, PFF took a look at defensive front seven units. There will be plenty of defensive line and linebacker rankings, but given the value of all seven players on most base fronts, it makes sense to combine them together. The Houston Texans are up top, with the NFC West well represented in the top five. After Houston, the top five includes the Seattle Seahawks, Philadelphia Eagles, Carolina Panthers, and Los Angeles Rams. The Arizona Cardinals are not too far behind this group at No. 8. The San Francisco 49ers defensive front has room for growth this year, but potential instead of proven production leaves the group bringing up the rear of these rankings. PFF has them at No. 32, with the Indianapolis Colts, Detroit Lions, New Orleans Saints, and Chicago Bears just ahead of them. Here’s what PFF had to say about the 49ers defensive front: The 49ers will be the dark horse candidate for possibility of most improvement this year. They’ll be banking on rookies Solomon Thomas and Reuben Foster, each first round picks, while San Francisco will also hope for a re-emerging season from edge defender Aaron Lynch. With the ageless veteran Elvis Dumervil and NaVorro Bowman guiding them, this team could be solid on the front seven. Key word, could, as we just don’t know yet. Like many parts of the 49ers defense, there’s a lot of potential, but it revolves around “could” as opposed to “will.” The defensive line is arguably the deepest unit on the roster. Their analysis doesn’t even factor in what the trio of Earl Mitchell, D.J. Jones, and Quinton Dial could bring to the table as a base defensive tackle. And of course, DeForest Buckner and Arik Armstead are just slightly important to the development of the defensive line. At the linebacker position, there are possibilities and questions. Ahmad Brooks has been a rock for what has otherwise been a bad defense in recent years. NaVorro Bowman is returning from his torn Achilles, and the team paid a hefty chunk of change for free agent Malcolm Smith. Reuben Foster’s role remains to be seen as he works his way back from pre-Combine rotator cuff surgery, but much will be expected of him if he gets on the field early in training camp. A year ago, Football Outsiders ranked the 49ers defensive front No. 29 in adjusted line yards, and No. 20 in adjusted sack rate. That would seem to be the floor for this unit. If the group takes a step forward, the defensive line will likely be a bigger reason for it. But a healthy Foster and Bowman could be huge for this group’s development in 2017. |
The European Parliament's Women's Rights and Gender Equality Committee has voted through a report that recommends the adoption of the 'Nordic Model' of prostitution laws. Put forward by Mary Honeyball, Labour MEP for London, the report recommends the EU takes on the Swedish model of prostitution laws, which punishes the clients of prostitutes, rather than the sex workers themselves. The model was recently voted through in the French parliament. Led by Women's Rights Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the bill means anyone found paying for sex will be fined €1,500 (£1,250) for a first offence. If caught a second time, the fine would be increased to €3,000. Fourteen of the European Parliament committee members voted in favour of the Swedish model, with two against and six abstentions. The passing of the vote sends a strong signal in regards to Europe's position on prostitution laws. The report can also now be put forward to the full European Parliament to vote on. This will take place at one of the Strasbourg plenary sessions in February, most likely during the week starting the 24th. The Nordic model has proved highly successful in Scandinavia, where countries generally have a high level of gender equality and acknowledge the problems of exploitation within the sex industry. The laws have also been supported by survivors of prostitution and sex trafficking. Commenting on the vote, Honeyball said: "This is a fantastic outcome. It will form a key part of the sea-change taking place in the way we view prostitution across Europe. We are now a step closer to an approach which recognises the fundamental injustice that takes place when a man buys a women's body. "The majority of prostituted women in the UK are foreign. They are overwhelmingly from poorer countries and in many cases trafficked. Rather than continuing to pretend that buying sex is something that happens between consenting equals, we need to look at the coercive and often exploitative realities of the global sex trade. "With France and Ireland switching the focus onto the men who purchase sex, and Germany re-thinking its laissez-faire system, the wind is clearly blowing in the direction of the Swedish Model. I hope that the European Parliament will be able to lead from the front in making this shift more widespread. "The report recommends adopting the 'Nordic Model', which criminalises pimping, brothel keeping and buying sex, decriminalises people in prostitution and provides exiting services and support." Brendan Wynne, Equality Now "As a British MEP I am particularly keen to see the UK Government come down off the fence and take a clear stance on the issue." Brendan Wynne, spokesman for Equality Now, also welcomed the vote: "It is vital that survivors of sex trafficking and sexual exploitation are listened to when recommending policy on prostitution. "Global networks such as 'Sex Trafficking Survivors United' suggest that we need to target the demand which fuels the inherently violent sex industry. This is what Mary Honeyball MEP's FEMM Committee report proposes and we fully agree. The report recommends adopting the 'Nordic Model', which criminalises pimping, brothel keeping and buying sex, decriminalises people in prostitution and provides exiting services and support. "This has already been effective in countries with higher levels of gender equality, such as Sweden, while countries which have legalised prostitution, such as the Netherlands and Germany, are increasingly realising that they got it wrong." |
While Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe is making new friends in Latin America this week, he is losing them at home. Abe’s domestic approval rating has fallen to 48%, the lowest point since he was elected in 2012 and a dramatic drop from a 76% approval rating last April, according to a survey by the Japanese newspaper the Nikkei. The drop is a troubling sign that the architect of Abenomics, a three-part economic plan to revive Japanese economy, may have exhausted his political capital while difficult structural reforms—the so-called “third arrow” of Abe’s economic experiment—have yet to be launched. Of the country’s last six leaders, Abe has stayed in office the longest—mostly because of the initial successes of his economic reforms, which boosted growth and Japanese stocks last year. Now those gains are starting to fade. Inflation is stuck at 1.3%, well below the government’s target of 2%. According to data released today, unemployment in June unexpectedly rose to 3.7% and household spending fell 3%. Average wages per worker have also fallen. Yet, instead of focusing on needed reforms on labor, immigration, and taxes (paywall), Abe has been visiting more than 40 other countries and pushing through deeply unpopular policies at home, critics observe. These include a revision of the constitution to allow for a greater role of the Japanese military overseas, which prompted protests and one self-immolation, a states-secret law that critics say will muzzle the media, and a sales tax hike that has hit the middle class the hardest. “Sooner or later, Abe will lose the political power to make necessary reforms,” writes Richard Katz, editor of the The Oriental Economist Report. For other nationalist, economic-focused Asian leaders like India’s Narendra Modi, who fancies himself India’s answer to Abe, the prime minister’s declining popularity should be a warning that the difficult economic reforms are best done early, or they might not happen at all. |
Text size It was never going to be an easy process. Tesla set big goals for itself with the Model 3, but just months into production the company has fallen short. Tesla announced late Monday that it produced just 260 Model 3s during the third quarter, ”due to production bottlenecks.” Elon Musk had tweeted in July that the company was expecting to produce more than 1,500 of the vehicles in August and September. Tesla reiterated that goal in early August in its quarterly letter to shareholders. “We are confident we can produce just over 1,500 vehicles in Q3,” the company said. Here’s a look at Tesla’s other Model 3 goals. •The company said in the same quarterly update that it expected to “achieve a run rate of 5,000 vehicles per week by the end of 2017,” and Musk has tweeted that it “looks like we can reach 20,000 Model 3 cars per month in Dec[ember].” •That letter also stated that Tesla plans “on increasing Model 3 production to 10,000 vehicles per week at some point in 2018.” •All that is to help Tesla reach its big goal of producing 500,000 total vehicles, including Model S and Model X cars, in 2018. The company announced the current timeline for its “500,000 total unit build plan” in a May 2016 shareholder letter. •More recently, Tesla has suggested it can do even more. In August, the company said its new California assembly line “sets the stage for us to produce over 500,000 Model 3 vehicles annually.” As for right now, Tesla wrote in its latest delivery update that “there are no fundamental issues with the Model 3 production or supply chain” and that “we are confident of addressing the manufacturing bottleneck issues in the near-term.” Investors are once again taking Tesla at its word. Despite the Model 3 news, shares are up 1.6% Tuesday. |
Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. Democratic state Sens. Bob Wirch and Jim Holperin defeated their Republican challengers in the final two recall elections of what has been the most heated, politically divisive summer in recent history in Wisconsin. Wirch defeated corporate attorney Jonathan Steitz 58 percent to 42 percent. Holperin, in the second recall of his career, led tea party darling Kim Simac 55 percent to 45 percent with 95 percent of precincts reporting. The Associated Press called the race for the veteran Democrat. Wirch and Holperin’s victories mean Democrats gained two Senate seats out of a total nine recall elections this summer. (Six of the recalls targeted Republicans, while three targeted Democrats.) Those two seats aren’t enough to give Democrats the outright majority in the state Senate, but the gains create the possibility that a moderate Republican could act as a swing vote and potentially tip the Senate majority away from the Republican leadership and Gov. Scott Walker. Both parties declared themselves the winner of the recalls, with Democrats touting their two new seats and Republicans bragging about how they defended their Senate majority, which now stands at 17-16. Mike Tate, the chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said Tuesday’s wins showed that Democrats were the overall winners in the recalls. “Democrats won more races, recalled two Republican senators, protected every Democratic incumbent, shifted the balance of power in the State Senate away from conservatives, and forced Walker and the GOP to pay public lip service to moderation and bipartisanship for the first time since they took power in January,” he said in a statement. Meanwhile, Wisconsin GOP chair Brad Courtney said in a statement, “Wisconsin now emerges from this recall election season with a united Republican majority who has beaten off an attack from national unions and special interests and emerged steadfastly committed to carrying forward a bold job creation agenda.” Wisconsin’s recalls were nothing if not historic. For starters, there had only been 20 state legislative recalls in the US since 1905; the Badger State saw nearly half that many this summer alone. The turnout was staggering for late-summer elections, exceeding many strategists’ predictions and, in one senate district, even outpacing the turnout for the 2010 governor’s race. Then there was the sheer amount of money spent. Mike McCabe, director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics, projected that total spending on all the recalls had reached $37 million. By contrast, a mere $3.75 million was spent on the entire slate of legislative races in 2010. As McCabe told me earlier this month, recall spending “is so out of whack from everything we’ve ever seen.” What’s next for Wisconsin’s progressives, who still hope to build a movement around the winter labor uprising in Madison and the summer recalls, remains to be seen. Despite Walker’s dismal approval ratings, half of the Wisconsinites polled in a recent Public Policy Polling survey said they did not support recalling Walker. Part of that reluctance can be blamed on the nasty tenor of this summer’s race, with wave after wave of attack ads blanketing the airwaves, especially in last Tuesday’s six GOP recalls. Wisconsinites, I often heard as I traveled around the state last week, are just plain burned out on politics. But don’t think that will prevent Democrats and progressives from taking their chances with a Walker recall effort. Scot Ross, the executive director of the progressive communications group One Wisconsin, told me last week that he saw Tuesday’s final two recall elections as only the third quarter of the political battle in Wisconsin. The fourth quarter, he said, is “when we’re going to recall Gov. Walker next year and restore decency, fairness, and common sense to this state.” |
After days of dodging questions about whether Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) was involved in a failed proposal to dismantle the state’s open records law, the governor’s office confirmed Tuesday that his office was involved in the measure. “Legislative leaders let us know that they were interested in making changes to the open records law. In response, our staff provided input regarding these proposed changes,” Laurel Patrick, the press secretary for the governor, said in an email to TPM. “Our intent with these changes was to encourage a deliberative process with state agencies in developing policy and legislation. This allows for robust debate with state agencies and public employees over the merit of policies and proposed initiatives as they are being formed, while ensuring materials related to final proposals, as well as information related to external stakeholders seeking to influence public policy, would remain fully transparent.” The admission came shortly after Republican legislative leaders said Walker aides had been involved in writing the proposal, which would have removed certain communications and other legislative documents from under the scope of the state’s transparency laws and would have permitted lawmakers not to comply with other kinds of public records requests. The language was initially approved by a party-line vote in the legislature’s Joint Finance Committee late Thursday evening before the holiday weekend, as part of a larger budget package known as Motion 999. As backlash began to mount, Walker, joined by top GOP state lawmakers, announced Saturday that the provisions would be dropped from the package. Scrutiny continued, however, as to whether Walker was behind the measure, as he faces a lawsuit for refusing to turn over certain documents in a public records request. Some Republican lawmakers in the state have continued to defend the effort, and say they will try to move alterations to public records law forward as standalone legislation that would go through the typical public review process, instead of attaching it to a budget bill. “Our focus remains on ensuring open and accountable government and we encourage public debate and discussion of any potential future changes to the state’s open records law,” Patrick wrote in the email. |
By Michael Aydinian Whatsupic -- I wrote a few lines yesterday pouring scorn over Israeli war minister Moshe Ya'alon's desire to launch an unprovoked Nuclear attack on Iran. As most of you know I'm not one for mincing my words yet the first thing entering my mind this morning was my response hardly seemed adequate. I wanted to do more; I feel a need to do more than just write about this vile cretin who has the gall to admit he wants to commit indiscriminate mass-murder. This man must be made to suffer. I mean woe betide saying anything derogatory about Israel. Your career's up the Swanee! At the very least this vermin has to be held to account, after all, right now Zionists are moaning like stuffed pigs about hate speech? Well for crying out loud, this is the epitome of hatred? Yet at this particular moment in time, it's all hands to the deck for even though Zionists control the entire mass-media, ordinary folk are waking up to the undeniable truth corporate media is lying through it's back teeth. No surprise therefore, an ever-increasing number of people are beginning to feel 'to hell with being accused of anti-semetism - I'm going to speak out regardless!' As a result, the word is now positively gushing out so that we've reached a point where their demands have the stench of desperation written all over them. But how does one even begin to justify stripping us of our god-given right to express opinions, especially when it concerns a country that continuously displays a wanton disregard for international law? Their only option is to instruct their puppet politicians, ie all the traitors who are supposed to represent the people of the US, UK, Canada, France and several other countries, to introduce legislation that effectively outlaws criticism of Israel. Absurd as it is, merely complaining about Zionists could result in losing one's freedom. You're an anti-Semite. This is hate speech. Well, in my opinion, anyone involved in ratifying such tripe is the criminal who must be punished. This is an assault on our fundamental rights. It's like being attacked by some thug - one way or another, you've been violated! Yet ....... this is precisely what they intend to push through. Forget about justification. There isn't any...... so whatever Cameron and all the other Zionist cronies say, get this into your head - THEY'RE LYING! No one but no one has any right to tell us who or what, can or cannot be criticized. Period! Think about this - Imagine a bank robber telling a judge, "you can't pass sentence on me your honor. That would make you an anti-bank-robber!" Amusing it may seem but this is no joke. My bank-robber analogy fits well. The only reason Israel gets away with so much skulduggery is because for years they've literally concocted news rather like a soap opera. They controlled the flow of information and still do. However, the Internet offered an alternative view. Finally we could see what we weren't being told! Nevertheless, Zionist delusion holds no bounds. They will not stop until they control the whole planet, but first they have to overcome the major obstacle of criticism and boycott movements like the BDS. Only then will they have the freedom or should I say licence to do as they please. This bank-robber can indulge with impunity! Better not complain though. Doing so could have you up before a judge. So back to how I felt this morning: how in the blazes can this be possible? At a time when Zionists are up in arms over the alleged rising tide of anti-Semetism; the fact they're desperate to have it categorized as hate speech surely you'd think the last thing any Israeli would do is openly display unbridled hatred? Not one bit. LET'S NUKE IRAN! This in itself demonstrates just how deluded and arrogant these people are. Yet, this is not any Israeli; this is their war minister, proudly stepping up to the plate! Bad enough a man of such appalling character can rise to a position of power and influence but what I simply cannot come to terms with is the shocking reality that we really do live in a world where someone can advocate the mass-murder of millions of innocent folk...... AND NO ONE SAYS ANYTHING! Moshe Ya'alon is a disgrace to the human race, as is anyone who entertains such a notion and I'm in no doubt many Israelis actually believe this is the right thing to do. Quite how people can be this deranged is beyond me but we haven't yet considered who has right on their side when it comes to Israel and Iran. Here are the true facts - Iran threatens no one - Israel does, all the time! Iran has no UN resolutions tabled against it - Israel has 66! Iran does not steal land - Israel does, all the time! Iran last invasion was in 1798 - with Israel, I've lost count! Iran doesn't slaughter innocent civilians - Israel does, all the time! Iran has no nuclear weapons - Israel possesses over 300! Iran does not indulge in targeted assassinations - Israel does, all the time! Iran respects international law - Israel is a law unto itself! Nuclear strike or not, for me, you've got to have the brains of a rocking horse to think Israel has any justification to even open it's mouth! Yet this is only the tip of the iceberg. Almost all false flag events and assassinations like JFK, are planned and executed by Mossad and/or dual national Zionists residing in the US. The finger of blame is immediately placed squarely at the feet of whoever the perpetrators want to royally screw. This in itself should alert anyone with half a brain - with 9/11 for instance - the day before, those who should have known something, claimed they knew bugger all. Bush even said, we never evisaged people flying planes into buildings....... yet...... just an hour after the attack, all of a sudden, these people didn't just wake up - they knew exactly who was responsible! Osama Bin Laden and Muslim terrorists - they're the ones who did it! Yeah right! How anyone could fall for this is beyond me yet what does my head in is so few people realised here was the smoking gun. No investigation, no nothing but lo and behold, they know who did it! You've got to be kidding me! This stinks to high heaven. For me, since the finger pointers had no right to be accusing anyone, the only way to make head or tail of this was by concluding the accusers were the ones - THEY DID IT! This is the ONLY way all the dots connect! I smelt a rat the moment I saw a very large one in the shape of war criminal Ehud Barack being interviewed on the BBC two hours after the attack. He couldn't contain himself when he began saying how 'we have to hunt down the terrorists. Osama Bin Laden. This is a war on terror!' Crucially, every major news outlet had Zionists conveniently plotted up, all set and ready to be interviewed - operation, set up the patsy. There is one specific requirement with a false flag event - YOU HAVE TO GET AWAY WITH IT! Even if the entire operation is a resounding success, being found out means failure. Now the only way to pretty much guaranteeing this is if you're certain no meaningful investigation will ever take place. No one must delve anywhere near the truth. Therefore total control over the entire mass-media is essential, indeed a prerequisite for a successful false flag operation. Anyone can become a terrorist but if the Police and media are free to investigate, it's a shoe in you'll be caught. It goes without saying - the only people capable of pulling off 9/11 are those who know the media will cover up the whole sordid episode. No proper terrorist would even consider such a feat because it's impossible. They know even if they managed to hijack 4 planes, US civil air defense would kick in. No plane would get near downtown Manhattan. It is unequivocal - each and every media baron has to be either directly or indirectly linked to the true terrorists behind 9/11. Finally, I'd like to make one thing clear. I'm not against Jews. In fact I believe the vast majority have no idea they're being taken for as a big ride as we all are. For a long time I wondered why so many of my closest friends were Jewish, yet I felt Zionists were nothing like them. Then I discovered why - Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism. The Ashkenazi Zionist tribe originated in Khazar, a region now known as Georgia. So amazing as it may seem, the very people who scream blue murder about anti-Semetism, do not possess a drop of Semetic blood! Like I said, we're all being taken for a ride. Zionists have usurped Judaism rather like the way they steal Palestinian land. They just take it! Like it or not, the truth is every Israeli Prime Minister as well as 80% of Israel’s inhabitants are of East European descent. They're not Jews but boy, have they used them! Small wonder Zionists have this in-built arrogance where they not only feel they can do whatever they like but they actually believe they have the right to. Well the longer these evil, master manipulators are allowed to slip under the radar, the greater the price mankind will undoubtedly pay. |
Sydney Cecil Newman,, OC (April 1, 1917 – October 30, 1997) was a Canadian film and television producer, who played a pioneering role in British television drama from the late 1950s to the late 1960s. After his return to Canada in 1970, Newman was appointed Acting Director of the Broadcast Programs Branch for the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC) and then head of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He also occupied senior positions at the Canadian Film Development Corporation and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and acted as an advisor to the Secretary of State.[1] During his time in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, he worked first with the Associated British Corporation (ABC, now Thames Television), before moving across to the BBC in 1962, holding the role of Head of Drama with both organisations. During this phase of his career, he was responsible for initiating two hugely popular television programmes, the spy-fi series The Avengers and the science-fiction series Doctor Who, as well as overseeing the production of groundbreaking social realist drama series such as Armchair Theatre and The Wednesday Play. The Museum of Broadcast Communications describes Newman as "the most significant agent in the development of British television drama."[2] His obituary in The Guardian declared that "For ten brief but glorious years, Sydney Newman ... was the most important impresario in Britain ... His death marks not just the end of an era but the laying to rest of a whole philosophy of popular art."[3] In Quebec, as commissioner of the NFB, he attracted controversy for his decision to suppress distribution of several politically sensitive films by French Canadian directors.[4] Early career in Canada [ edit ] Early life and the NFB [ edit ] Born in Toronto with the surname Nudelman,[5] Newman was the son of a Russian-Jewish immigrant father who ran a shoe shop.[3][6] After studying at Ogden Public School, which he left at the age of thirteen, he later enrolled in the Central Technical School, studying art and design subjects.[3][7] He initially attempted to follow a career as a stills photographer and an artist, specialising in drawing film posters.[3] However, he found it so difficult to earn enough money to make a living from this profession that instead, he switched to working in the film industry itself.[3] In 1938, he travelled to Hollywood, where he was offered a role with the Walt Disney Company on the strength of his graphic design work.[7] However, he was unable to take the job due to a failure to secure a work permit.[8] Returning to his native country, in 1941, he gained a job as a film editor at the National Film Board of Canada.[7] He was eventually to work on over 350 films while an editor for the NFB.[3] During the Second World War the head of the NFB, John Grierson, promoted Newman to film producer, working on documentaries and propaganda films, including Fighting Norway, which he directed.[7] In 1944 he was made executive producer of Canada Carries On, a long-running series of such films.[7] In 1949 Grierson again assisted Newman's career, entering him into television, then a new industry, on a one-year attachment to NBC in New York City.[3] His assignment there was to compile reports for the Canadian government on American television techniques, focusing on dramas, documentaries and outside broadcasts.[7] CBC Television [ edit ] One of Newman's reports on outside broadcasting was seen and admired by executives at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC),[9] and in 1952 he joined the Corporation as their Supervising Director of Features, Documentaries and Outside Broadcasts.[7] There he was involved in producing not only some of the earliest television editions of Hockey Night in Canada,[9][10] but also the first Canadian Football League game to be shown on television.[11] After his experience of seeing the production of television plays in New York, he was eager to work in drama despite, by his own admission, "knowing nothing about drama."[3] He was nonetheless able to persuade his superiors at CBC to make him Supervisor of Drama Production in 1954.[9] In this position he encouraged a new wave of young writers and directors, including Ted Kotcheff and Arthur Hailey, and oversaw shows such as the popular General Motors Theatre.[7] Writing in 1990, the journalist Paul Rutherford felt that during his time at the CBC in the 1950s, Newman had been a "great champion of both realistic and Canadian drama."[12] He felt that Newman "came to fulfil the role of the drama impresario with the vision to push people to develop a high-quality and popular style of drama."[12] Several of the General Motors Theatre plays, including Hailey's Flight into Danger, were purchased for screening by the BBC in the United Kingdom.[7] The productions impressed Howard Thomas, who was the managing director of Associated British Corporation (ABC), the franchise holder for the rival ITV network in the English Midlands and the North at weekends. Thomas offered Newman a job with ABC as a producer of his own Saturday night thriller series, which Newman accepted, moving to Britain in 1958.[3] In 1975 the Head of Drama at the CBC, John Hirsch, noted that the tendency of so many writers and directors having followed Newman to the UK in the 1950s and never having returned to work in Canada had a detrimental impact on the standard of subsequent Canadian television drama.[13] Associated British Corporation [ edit ] Soon after Newman arrived in the UK, ABC's Head of Drama Dennis Vance was moved into a more senior position with the company, and Thomas offered Newman his position, which the Canadian quickly accepted.[3] He was, however, somewhat disparaging of the state in which he found British television drama. "At that time, I found this country to be somewhat class-ridden," he reminisced to interviewers in 1988. "The only legitimate theatre was of the 'anyone for tennis' variety, which on the whole gave a condescending view of working-class people. Television dramas were usually adaptations of stage plays and invariably about the upper classes. I said, 'Damn the upper classes: they don't even own televisions!'"[14] Newman's principal tool for shaking up this established order was a programme which had been initiated before he had arrived at ABC, Armchair Theatre.[2] This anthology series was networked nationally across the ITV regions on Sunday evenings, and in 1959 was in the top ten of the ratings for 32 out of the 37 weeks it was broadcast, with audiences of over 12 million viewers.[8] Newman used the strand to present plays by writers such as Alun Owen, Harold Pinter and Clive Exton, also bringing over associates from Canada such as Charles Jarrott and Ted Kotcheff.[2] Writing in 2000, the television historian John Caughie stated that "Newman's insistence that the series would use only original material written for television made Armchair Theatre a decisive moment in the history of British television drama."[15] In 1960 Newman devised a thriller series for ABC called Police Surgeon, starring Ian Hendry.[16] Although Police Surgeon was not a success and was cancelled after only a short run,[16] Newman took Hendry as the star, and some of the ethos of the programme, to create a new series (not a direct sequel as is sometimes claimed) called The Avengers.[17] Debuting in January 1961, The Avengers became an international success,[18] although in later years its premise differed somewhat from Newman's initial set-up, veering into more humorous territory rather than remaining a gritty thriller.[17] Newman's great success at ABC had been noted by the British Broadcasting Corporation, whose executives were keen to revive their own drama department's fortunes in the face of fierce competition from ITV.[8] In 1961 the BBC's Director of Television, Kenneth Adam, met with Newman and offered him the position of Head of Drama at the BBC.[3] He accepted the position, eager for a new challenge, although he was forced by ABC to remain with them until the expiration of his contract in December 1962, after which he immediately began work with the BBC.[19] BBC [ edit ] Arrival and impact [ edit ] There was some initial resentment to his appointment within the Corporation, as he was an outsider and he was also earning more than many of the executives senior to him, although still substantially less than he had been paid at ABC.[3] As he had done at ABC, he was keen to shake up the staid image of BBC drama and introduce new outlets for the kitchen sink drama and the "Angry Young Men" of the era. He also divided the drama department into three separate divisions—series, serials and plays.[20] In 1964 he and Kenneth Adam initiated the new anthology series The Wednesday Play, a BBC equivalent of Armchair Theatre, which had great success and critical acclaim with plays written and directed by the likes of Dennis Potter, Jeremy Sandford and Ken Loach.[21] The strand attracted comment and debate for several of its productions, such as Cathy Come Home, a Tony Garnett production of a Jeremy Sandford script, which dealt with the issue of homelessness.[21] There were also problems caused by Newman bringing in freelance directors to work on the programme, who sometimes overspent on their plays to try and increase their impact; with staff directors this could be compensated by reducing the budget of a subsequent production, but for a freelancer there would be no such recourse.[20] Shaun Sutton was one of the drama producers who worked under Newman at the BBC, and later succeeded the Canadian as Head of Drama. He later wrote that Newman "galvanised television drama ... [He created] a climate in which boldness paid."[22] In contrast, Don Taylor, who was a director in the drama department at the time, later claimed that he felt Newman was unsuited to the position of Head of Drama, writing: "To put it brutally, I was deeply offended that the premier position in television drama, at a time when it really was the National Theatre of the Air, had been given to a man whose values were entirely commercial, and who had no more than a layman's knowledge of the English theatrical tradition, let alone the drama of Europe and the wider world."[23] Newman's biography at the Museum of Broadcast Communications website points out that much of the work Newman is credited for at the BBC was little different from that which had been undertaken by his predecessor Michael Barry, who "also attracted new young original writers ... and hired young directors ... However, it was the newness and innovation which Newman encouraged in his drama output that is most significant: his concentration on the potential of television as television, for a mass not a middlebrow audience."[2] The academic Madeleine Macmurraugh-Kavanagh has criticised some of the eulogistic views of Newman's time at the BBC, writing that: "When archive and press material emanating from the 1964–65 period is examined, an interesting gap appears between what Newman seemed likely to accomplish and what he finally did accomplish ... Also relevant to the mythology that has sprung up around Newman is the fact that his favoured dramatic material was interpreted by some as being rather less radical than it seemed."[24] Doctor Who [ edit ] In 1963 he initiated the creation of the science fiction television series Doctor Who.[25] The series has been described by the British Film Institute as having "created a phenomenon unlike any other British TV programme",[25] and by The Times newspaper as "quintessential to being British".[26] Newman had long been a science-fiction fan: "[U]p to the age of 40, I don't think there was a science-fiction book I hadn't read. I love them because they're a marvellous way—and a safe way, I might add—of saying nasty things about our own society."[14] When Controller of BBC Television Donald Baverstock alerted Newman of the need for a programme to bridge the gap between the sports showcase Grandstand and pop music programme Juke Box Jury on Saturday evenings, he decided that a science-fiction drama would be the perfect vehicle for filling the gap and gaining a family audience.[27] Although much work on the genesis of the series was done by Donald Wilson, C. E. Webber and others, it was Newman who created the idea of a time machine larger on the inside than the out and the character of the mysterious "Doctor", both of which remain at the heart of the programme.[28] He is also believed to have come up with the title Doctor Who, although actor and director Hugh David later credited this to his friend Rex Tucker, the initial "caretaker producer" of the programme.[29] After the series had been conceived, Newman initially approached Don Taylor[30] and then Shaun Sutton[31] to produce it, although both declined. He then decided on his former production assistant at ABC, Verity Lambert, who had never produced, written or directed, but she readily accepted his offer. As Lambert became the youngest—and only female—drama producer at the BBC,[32] there were some doubts as to Newman's choice, but she became a success in the role. Even Newman clashed with her on occasion, however, particularly over the inclusion of the alien Dalek creatures on the programme.[33] Newman had not wanted any "bug-eyed monsters" in the show,[34] but he was placated when the creatures became a great success.[35] Later in the show's run, in 1966 he took a more hands-on role again in the changeover between the First and Second Doctors. In the 2007 Doctor Who episode "Human Nature", the Doctor (in human form as "John Smith") refers to his parents Sydney and Verity, a tribute to both Newman and Lambert.[36] Verity Newman, a character in the 2010 episode The End of Time, is also named after them.[37] A similar acknowledgement had appeared in the show's original run: in "The Powerful Enemy", the first episode of the 1965 story The Rescue, in order to hide the fact that one character is actually another character in disguise, the role is credited to the non-existent actor "Sydney Wilson", an amalgam of the names of Sydney Newman and Donald Wilson. Other work and departure [ edit ] Newman also had success with more traditional BBC fare such as the costume drama The Forsyte Saga in 1967, a Donald Wilson project on which Newman had not initially been keen.[8] However, it became one of the most acclaimed and popular productions of his era,[7] watched by 100 million people in 26 countries.[38] After also initiating other popular series such as Adam Adamant Lives!,[7] at the end of 1967 Newman's five-year contract with the BBC came to an end, and he did not remain with the Corporation.[20] Instead, he returned to the film industry, taking a job as a producer with Associated British Picture Corporation. "I want to get away from my executive's chair and become a creative worker again," he told The Sun newspaper of his decision.[31] However, the British film industry was entering a period of decline, and none of Newman's projects ever went into production. ABPC was taken over by EMI, and at the end of June 1969, Newman was dismissed from the company, later describing his eighteen months there as "a futile waste."[3] Despite being offered an executive producership by the BBC, keen to regain his services on the very day he left ABPC,[31] Newman decided to return to Canada. He left the UK on January 3, 1970, leading The Sunday Times to comment that "British television will never be the same again."[31] Return to Canada [ edit ] Chairman of the NFB [ edit ] His first post upon returning to his home country was an advisory position with the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC) in Ottawa, where he battled Canada's private broadcasters, especially CTV, over new Canadian content regulations.[10] This lasted for only a few months, before in August 1970 he became the new Government Film Commissioner, the Chairman of the National Film Board of Canada, returning to the same institution for which he had worked in the 1940s.[10] In this role, he experienced considerable problems in Quebec resulting from the fact that he did not speak French, at a time when the NFB's French Program branch was attracting young Quebec nationalist filmmakers.[4][10] Some staff members also felt that he had been away from the NFB for too long,[4] while the filmmaker Denys Arcand felt that Newman did not understand Quebec culture.[10] Newman was able to improve the NFB's relations with broadcaster CBC, securing prime time television slots for several productions,[10] although he was criticised by some filmmakers for allowing the CBC to screen NFB films with commercial interruptions.[39] He also moved the NFB entirely over to color film production.[10] However, the Toronto Star's Martin Knelman felt that Newman was "mired in political warfare and administrative chaos".[40] He was responsible for censoring or banning several productions, including Arcand's On est au coton[40][41] and Gilles Groulx's 24 heures ou plus.[41] These films were concerned, respectively, with the conditions of textile factory workers and critiquing consumer society.[41] Such censorship or banning resulted in some critics attacking Newman for being anti working-class[42] and pro-capitalist.[41] Newman had a mixed record with French-language films. He defended Pierre Perrault's Un pays sans bon sens! to a committee of parliament in 1971,[43] but the same year personally rejected the release of Michel Brault's film about the October Crisis, Les ordres.[43] This was despite the fact that the film had already been approved by the board's French-language committee, and it was not eventually released until Brault personally released it in 1974.[43] Newman himself had been regarded as a possible terrorist abduction target during the October Crisis, and armed guards had patrolled the headquarters of the NFB.[4] Newman was concerned about the idea of releasing films with Quebec nationalist themes, such as Groulx's 24 heures ou plus, at such a tense political time, worried about what the Canadian public would think.[44] Although it was Newman's deputy André Lamy who in some cases drew the monolingual Newman's attention to the controversial nature of French language productions, it was Lamy himself who later permitted the release of some of these same films after he succeeded Newman as Government Film Commissioner.[45] When Newman's contract with the NFB came to an end in 1975, it was not renewed.[10] Film historian Gerald Pratley claims that by this point, the NFB was "an almost-forgotten institution" due to "the stupor that had overtaken it."[46] The writer Richard Collins felt that "the very experiences that enabled [Newman] to recognize the nature of the NFB's problem and the need for a change of diction and reorientation to the tastes of Canadians had left him out of touch with Canada."[47] For his part, Newman felt that the NFB's French program had not made enough effort to communicate with people in English Canada or to make films that were relevant to "the ordinary men, who have no particular axe to grind."[48] Newman went on to become a Special Advisor on Film to the Secretary of State,[7] and from 1978 until 1984 he was Chief Creative Consultant to the Canadian Film Development Corporation.[7] Later years [ edit ] Newman was awarded the Order of Canada in 1981, the country's highest civilian honour.[20] Shortly thereafter he returned to live in Britain again for some time following the death in 1981 of his wife Elizabeth McRae, to whom he had been married since 1944.[20][49] His main reason for going back to the UK was to attempt, unsuccessfully, to produce a drama series about the Bloomsbury Group for the new Channel 4 network.[20] In 1986, the then Controller of BBC One, Michael Grade, unhappy with the current state of Doctor Who, wrote to Newman to enquire whether he had any ideas for reformatting the series, which was at the time struggling in the ratings. Newman wrote back to Grade on October 6 that year with a set of detailed proposals and a suggestion that he take direct control of the series as executive producer. Grade suggested that Newman meet the current Head of Drama, Jonathan Powell, for lunch to discuss the Canadian's ideas. Newman and Powell did not get on well, however, and nothing came of their meeting.[50] He was also unsuccessful in an attempt to have his name added to the end credits of the show as its creator. Acting Head of Series & Serials Ken Riddington, to whom Newman's request had been referred, wrote to him that "Heads of Department who originate programmes have to be satisfied with the other rewards that flow from doing so."[50] Newman returned to Canada again in the 1990s, where he died of a heart attack in Toronto in 1997.[20] At the time of his death, his partner was Marion McDougall.[49] Legacy [ edit ] In September 2003, a version of Newman played by actor Ian Brooker appeared in the straight-to-CD Doctor Who Unbound radio play Deadline, written by Rob Shearman and released by Big Finish Productions.[51] The play was set in a world in which Doctor Who had never been created, existing only in the imagination and memories of fictional writer Martin Bannister, played by Derek Jacobi.[52] As part of the plot of the play, Bannister was unable to clearly remember whether Newman had been Canadian or Australian, with the Newman character's accent changing according to Bannister's varying memories.[52] For the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who in 2013, BBC television commissioned a dramatisation of the events surrounding the creation of the series, entitled An Adventure in Space and Time and written by Mark Gatiss. Newman was portrayed by Scottish actor Brian Cox.[53] A biography of Newman by Ryan Danes, titled The Man Who Thought Outside the Box, was released in April 2017 by Digital Entropy Publishing.[54] Notes [ edit ] |
You took my picture tonight without my permission. You stood five feet away from me in a crowded bar while I watched USC lose in the Final Four. You thought you were being sneaky with your phone, but my friend saw you and alerted me. You pretended not to hear me when I asked you, “Hey did you just take my picture?” So I asked you again. “ Excuse me. Did you just try to take my picture?” “Not tried. Did.” You look back at me. Daring me to do something about it. “Show me the picture on your phone and delete it.” You pull out your phone and there it is. A picture of me watching the game, oblivious to the fifty year old man in the Tommy Bahama shirt snapping away my picture. Next to my picture is a picture of my friend’s butt. “Delete it.” You delete it. Not apologizing. Not really caring. And try to slide the phone back in your pocket. “No. Delete this one too.” I point to the picture of my friend. You delete it. “What you did was wrong. If I catch you doing this again, I’ll report you.” I say. You look at me and sneer. I can’t remember what you say verbatim, but it’s something along the lines of “Who you gonna tell?” At that moment, you almost made me feel like I was helpless. Like you could stand five feet away and take as many pictures of me and my friends for your spank bank and make us feel as uncomfortable as possible, and there was nothing I could do about it. At that moment, you almost made me feel like I was helpless. But there is always something that I can do about it. Always. So I tell the bartender, who alerts the bouncer, who asks you to leave. I watch from the corner of my eye as you are forcibly removed after trying to punch the bouncer. The bouncers later come and make sure things are ok. They tell me that you threw racial slurs at them and became physical. The police are called and your wife shows up. We all give statements. I give mine five feet from your wife. I ask the officer to switch places with me so I don’t have to make eye contact with her while I tell him what happened. The whole thing feels weird. Like I’m in some bad movie. I feel numb and wonder what the score is. The police ask do I want to press charges? No. The police officer is nice and so is the restaurant manager. They ask me if what I want from this situation. I say I just want to watch the game without someone taking creepy pictures of me and my friends. They dismiss me and I catch the last 57 agonizing seconds of USC’s tragic loss to Gonzaga. To be perfectly honest, I don’t care what happens to you. You don’t feel any remorse and to be honest, probably got off on being caught. But I’m glad I confronted you. I’m glad there are no pictures of me and my friends in your phone. To be perfectly honest, I don’t care what happens to you. It’s our duty to call people out on this behavior. Yes, it would have been easier to ignore you and move away from you and continue watching the game. But what if you don’t get caught. How far will you go? Who will be next? It’s both men and women’s responsibility to confront this in public as it’s happening. YES it’s uncomfortable. YES it sucks. But sexual harassment is not okay. It never will be. |
PM says his conversation with the Russian president at the G20 summit next month will be ‘the toughest conversation of all’ Tony Abbott says he will ‘shirtfront’ Vladimir Putin over downing of MH17 Tony Abbott says he will “shirtfront” Vladimir Putin over the downing of MH17, claiming his conversation with the Russian president at the G20 would be “the toughest conversation of all”. The prime minister resorted to the Australian Rules football term for roughing up an opponent to describe his approach to Putin’s presence in the country next month. “I am going to shirtfront Mr Putin – you bet I am – I am going to be saying to Mr Putin Australians were murdered, they were murdered by Russian backed rebels,” Abbott said. The government has confirmed Putin will be attending the world summit in Brisbane after G20 countries agreed “by consensus” that Russia should not be sidelined. It is alleged Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine in July by Russian-backed rebels, killing all 298 passengers and crew, including 38 Australian citizens and residents. Abbott said while Australia was the temporary president of the G20, it could not make unilateral decisions on behalf of the body. “It has to be by consensus and the G20 consensus is that Russia should come,” Abbott said. “I think there will be a lot of tough conversations with Russia and I suspect the conversation I have with Mr Putin will be the toughest conversation of all. The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, acknowledged Australia had no control over the invitation list but took a swipe at the government for “laying out the red carpet”. He also accused Putin of knowing “more about what happened with MH17 than he’s let on”. “It’s an international conference, not a conference run by Australia, so if Putin has the arrogance to turn up to visit a nation whose nationals died in this plane crash, he can,” Shorten said. “But I’m like most Australians, I wish that Putin would at least show enough conscience to be able to not come to Australia, because he’s rubbing our faces in it. “Also what I happen to think is that when you deal with international bullies, the way you do it isn’t by laying out the red carpet.” Paul Guard, whose parents, Roger and Jill Guard, were killed in the MH17 crash, said little would be achieved by Putin staying away. “It wouldn’t achieve much by uninviting him because dialogue is the way forward and I hope the G20 might be a good platform on which to strongly voice our disapproval of his government’s policy and approach to Ukraine,” Guard told Guardian Australia. “It might be uncomfortable for people to shake hands with him [but] at the end of the day, what do you achieve by not inviting someone like that? It would only play to his domestic politics.” |
Limited funding explains some of this inaction. But in a new paper , Winston and Purdue scholar Fred Mannering suggest there's more to it than that. They argue that transportation officials suffer from a bias toward the status quo that doesn't afflict the private sector. Case in point: most of the advances made toward driverless cars have come from the likes of Google and car manufacturers. What makes the situation so frustrating to Winston and others is that the government (at all levels) has options that could address some of these problems. Proper road pricing could decrease traffic, not to mention generate transportation revenue. Better pavement design could reduce maintenance costs and vehicle damage. Stronger traffic control systems could improve safety on the road. Most of us experience the inefficiencies of America's transportation system every day. Congestion costs us time, poor roads cost us car repair fees, unrealized safety improvements cause hardship, injury and even death. Brookings economist Clifford Winston recently put a number on these inefficiencies — at least $100 billion — and assigned much of the blame to bad government. For that reason, write Winston and Mannering, if the government waits long enough it won't need to act at all on many of these problems — especially traffic and safety — because driverless cars will go a long way toward resolving them: Thus driverless car technologies are quite likely to effectively leapfrog most of the existing technologies that the public sector could but has failed to implement to improve highway travel. When this innovation leapfrogging occurs, the benefits will redound on everyone. Driverless cars will instantly reduce congestion and expand road capacity by enabling more cars to travel closer together in a single lane. Vehicle-to-vehicle communication could bring us closer to a world without car crashes. Roads will also endure less wear and tear as GPS systems direct trucks and heavy vehicles toward more suitable routes. The Eno Center for Transportation recently estimated the annual economic benefits of autonomous vehicles at roughly $211 billion a year. And that's if only half the existing fleet goes driverless. If 90 percent is converted, the benefits more than double [PDF]: Adapted from "Preparing a Nation for Autonomous Vehicles" by the Eno Center for Transportation If and when that day arrives, many existing transportation inefficiencies will have been addressed without any government action at all. To be fair, the government is taking steps to make your next drive better. Federal officials recently endorsed connected vehicle technology that should improve highway safety (though the system won't operate at peak efficiency until state and local leaders also invest in intelligent infrastructure). And it's certainly not to say the private sector always gets transportation right. Private road investments, for instance, can go terribly awry. Winston and Mannering urge the government not to interfere with driverless technology — except, perhaps, to resolve some critical social questions about liability. But it won't be enough for public officials to sit idly by. The emergence of a driverless fleet will only draw more attention to the poor condition of America's roads and its broken transportation funding system. Try as they might, that's one problem public officials can't avoid for too much longer. |
The 2017 College World Series championship series begins Monday, June 26, at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Nebraska. Florida (50-18) meets LSU (52-18) in an all-SEC final series. The series is best-of-3, with one game Monday, one game Tuesday and an if-necessary game on Wednesday. ESPN will air the entire series, with live streaming available via Watch ESPN. Game 1 begins at 6 p.m. Central (7 p.m. Eastern). Here's the complete for the 2017 College World Series championship series schedule (all times Central): Championship series (best-of-three) Monday, June 26 Game 1: LSU (52-18) vs. Florida (50-18), 6 p.m., ESPN Tuesday, June 27 Game 2: LSU (52-18) vs. Florida (50-18), 7 p.m., ESPN Wednesday, June 28 Game 3: LSU (52-18) vs. Florida (50-18) (if necessary), 7 p.m., ESPN Preview Some things to know as Florida (50-19) and LSU (52-18) play for the national championship in the best-of-three College World Series finals starting Monday night: WHO IS THIS GUY? LSU is short on starting pitching because of a forearm injury to Eric Walker, so coach Paul Mainieri is throwing right-hander Russell Reynolds in Game 1. Reynolds has made 14 appearances this season, but this will be his first start in 2017. "We're going to count on Russell's experience as a fifth-year senior," Mainieri said. "He's pitched very well the last few times out, and we feel like he gives us the best chance to get us off to a good start." Reynolds (1-1, 8.59 ERA) is a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, native who pitched a scoreless inning in LSU's 13-1 loss to Oregon State last Monday. He's worked 1 2/3 scoreless innings over his last three relief appearances, allowing one hit with one strikeout. Florida is starting Brady Singer (8-5, 3.18 ERA) in Game 1. GOING FOR SEVEN LSU would be alone in second place in all-time titles if it wins a seventh this week. Skip Bertman coached the Tigers to championships in 1991, 1993, 1996, 1997 and 2000, and Mainieri coached the 2009 title team. The Tigers are tied with Texas for second with six championships. Southern California is the leader with 12. GOING FOR FIRST Florida is in the finals for the third time. The Gators were swept in their previous appearances, by South Carolina in 2011 and by Texas in 2005. MAKE IT A DOZEN The Southeastern Conference is assured of winning its 12th national championship in baseball. That will rank second among conferences, well behind the Pac-12's 28. The Big 12 is third with nine titles. FAEDO FINISHED? Florida coach Kevin O'Sullivan said he didn't know whether ace Alex Faedo could come back to pitch in relief if the finals goes to a Game 3. He's pitched 14 1/3 innings of shutout ball in Omaha, all in starts against TCU, and became the fifth pitcher in the last 30 years to have double-digit strikeout games in the same CWS. The Detroit Tigers' first-round draft pick has allowed one run in 27 1/3 innings in the NCAA Tournament with 44 strikeouts. LANGE A POSSIBILITY If LSU ace Alex Lange were to pitch again, it wouldn't be until Game 3. Lange has worked 13 1/3 innings and struck out 16 in two CWS starts. He allowed two hits and struck out eight in 7 1/3 innings against Oregon State on Friday. "He's a first-round draft choice, a long career ahead of him. He's never pitched on three days' rest before so I don't know how effective he would be," Mainieri said. "I want to do everything in my power to make sure that he leaves our program healthy for the Chicago Cubs." SPEAKING OF STRIKEOUTS Each starting pitcher in Florida's four CWS games has recorded at least nine strikeouts, with Faedo doing it twice. In the Gators' 31 previous CWS games, only one of their pitchers struck out nine. IT'S A STRUGGLE Florida's Ryan Larson is struggling mightily. He's 0 for 14 in the CWS and 2 for 28 with 13 strikeouts since the start of super regionals. He was the Gators' leadoff batter until Saturday, when he was moved to No. 9. JJ Schwarz also has had a hard time in Omaha, going 2 for 16. ALL OR NOTHING, ALMOST LSU's Michael Papierski is 4 for 14 in the CWS, but three of those four hits have been home runs. Papierski on Saturday became the first player in CWS history to hit homers from both sides of the plate in the same game and the first LSU player to go deep twice in a CWS game since Brad Cresse did it against Southern California in 1998. THE CLOSERS LSU's Zack Hess has earned three saves -- second-most all-time in a single CWS -- in four appearances. Florida's Michael Byrne is 2 for 2 on save opportunities at the CWS, having worked 3 2/3 innings, allowing four hits and striking out seven. Information from the Associated Press was used in this report. |
Mayor Brandon Paulin of Indian Head, Maryland, goes into a shop to get his favorite smoothie. As he walks in, an 18-year-old who just graduated from high school reaches out his hand, pleased to meet the youngest mayor in the state's history. Last year, Paulin, who looks like he could be the student's classmate, was elected mayor of this tiny town when he was just 19. Four thousand residents live in Indian Head, a 2.5-kilometer-long strip of land along the Potomac River. The town, with mostly older homes on tree-lined streets, ends at a peninsula with a U.S. naval base, and the busy highway in the city’s center extends north toward Washington, D.C., about an hour’s drive away. “I think everyone has gotten used to how old I am now,” Paulin says. He's not big on honorifics. “If people call me Mayor Paulin, I ask them to please call me Brandon.” Now a year older, and more than a year in office in his home town, the mayor reflects on his accomplishments and the issues he faces as he sits in his tiny office in City Hall. Looking for a commercial renaissance His first order of business is trying to bring business back in Indian Head, which was a thriving community through the 1960’s. Then, competition from new shopping centers in a nearby larger city forced many retail stores to close. The boarded-up storefronts are eyesores that people see as soon as they drive into the town. But Paulin sees a future with a grocery store, retail stores, quaint shops, and weekend visitors from the Washington area who come to enjoy themselves. He would like Indian Head to be known as “a place to live, work and play." “We’re definitely trying to become more business friendly,” he says, explaining the town is now providing business incentives, like waiving commercial permit fees. He’s personally been calling the dozen or so property owners of the vacant buildings to encourage them to fix them up so they can be leased to new businesses. While many appear to be on board, a few are ignoring his calls. Fixing the problem isn’t easy. “Some of those buildings were handed down from deceased relatives,” he explains, as he walks by an abandoned strip mall, now owned by 20-somethings who don’t have the money to renovate it. In addition, none of the building owners live in Indian Head, “and some of them don’t even live in the state, but they get the benefit of the property tax write offs. I don’t want it to be us against the property owners," Paulin stresses, "but to work together to move Indian Head forward.” Some buildings are in such bad shape that they have to be torn down. The mayor points out what’s left of several structures that were just demolished. They had sat empty for 30 years. “It already looks better and the area will be planted with grass,” he says. Some property owners will be confronted with a business incentive they won’t like. Those who let their buildings sit empty face fines which will increase every year and “it may be as high as $10,000,” explains Paulin, who hopes the fines will influence them “to make changes.” Lessons from the first year The mayor's first year in office has taught him to be confident, he says, but also to recognize that he doesn’t have all the answers, and some ideas don’t work. He wishes he could get faster results. Paulin knew going in that he wouldn't make a lot money. Being mayor is supposed to be a very part-time job, just 12 and a half hours a month. But he figures he works at least 100 hours each month, for an annual salary of $6,000. He takes college classes on-line, majoring in political science, and lives at home with his parents and younger brother who has congenital heart problems. “Every once in a while I’ll bounce ideas I have off my parents,” Paulin says. My mom usually gives me “a positive response, but my dad looks at my ideas from different perspectives. I get that teenager response from my 13-year-old brother.” He says his friendships haven’t changed, except “I don’t talk politics anymore and just listen. I’ve gotten pretty good at finessing situations,” he says, and laughs. Paulin wants young people to get more involved in the community, the way he did. When he was 10 years old, he convinced officials to put a crosswalk on the highway, just across from City Hall. “Who knows,” he says, ”one of them may become the 18 year old mayor of Indian Head.” He says social media, especially Facebook, has helped him to better connect with both kids and adults. “If they understand more about the town government and what we’re doing, they can make educated decisions about what they want to do to help out the community.” Paulin is “not affiliated” with any political party. He says he doesn’t know who he’ll vote for in the upcoming presidential election, but that if he could talk to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, he’d ask, “what will you do for Indian Head? If either of them will help Indian Head, that’s the one I’ll vote for.” |
FXT: a library of algorithms the FXT library the fxtbook: "Matters Computational" (was: "Algorithms for Programmers") the amorphous FFT bucket moved to the fftpage The FXT library FXT is a library of low-level algorithms. Its main focus is on bit-manipulations, combinatorial generation, and fast transforms. The library is accompanied by the fxtbook. A strong emphasis is on performance and many of the routines are among the fastest available. Much of the bit-magic is shown on the bit wizardry page, demo programs are listed here and the documentation is here. The routines about binary polynomials and arithmetic over GF(2^n) are documented in bpol-doc.txt and the demos are here. The routines about combinatorial generation for combinations, subsets, compositions, integer partitions, set partitions, permutations, arrangements, mixed radix numbers, multi sets (subsets and permutations), Catalan objects and Dyck words, necklaces and Lyndon words, ascent sequences, Cayley permutations, Young tableaux, Motzkin paths, various restricted growths strings (RGS), and many other types of objects are documented here and the demos are here, Fred Lunnon's routine for n-dimensional Hilbert curves is documented here The files documenting the fast transforms are as follows: fast Fourier transforms (FFTs), real valued FFTs, fast Hartley transforms, convolutions, correlations, cosine and sine transforms, Walsh transforms, Haar transforms, and number theoretic transforms (NTTs). The complete list of demos contains about 500 programs, listed by topic. Here is a short description, the Linux Software Map (LSM) file fxt.lsm Complete list of generated documentation: bits-doc.txt bit wizardry bpol-doc.txt binary polynomials and arithmetic over GF(2**n) comb-doc.txt combinatorics (combinations, partitions etc.) ds-doc.txt data structures (FIFO, heap etc.) fft-doc.txt fast Fourier transforms realfft-doc.txt real valued FFTs fht-doc.txt fast Hartley transforms convolution-doc.txt convolution correlation-doc.txt correlation dctdst-doc.txt cosine and sine transforms walsh-doc.txt Walsh transforms haar-doc.txt Haar transforms mod-doc.txt modular arithmetics and number theory ntt-doc.txt number theoretic transforms perm-doc.txt permutations sort-doc.txt sorting and searching aux0-doc.txt auxiliary routines aux1-doc.txt auxiliary routines for 1-dim arrays aux2-doc.txt auxiliary routines for 2-dim arrays data-doc.txt tables of mathematical data. The tables can be accessed via the mathdata page. An index of all docs The fxtbook: "Matters Computational" The table of contents as text file (generated from dvi): fxtbook-toc.txt. Short table of contents, giving an quick overview: fxtbook-toc-short.txt. The change log: fxtbook-changes.txt. fxtbook.dvi.gz (dvi, about 1400kB). fxtbook.ps.gz (postscript, about 2100kB). fxtbook.pdf.gz (pdf, about 3200kB). Last update: 2010-September-07 (17:53) fxtbook.pdf (UNCOMPRESSED pdf, about 5200kB). The list of errata: fxtbook-errata.txt. The index as text file (generated from dvi): fxtbook-idx.txt. List of referenced integer sequences from the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS) as text file (generated from dvi): fxtbook-oeisref.txt. If you want to set a link to the fxtbook please use http://www.jjj.de/fxt/#fxtbook instead of directly linking to one of the files (e.g. fxtbook.pdf). jj (Jörg Arndt) |
Senate Democrats want to put the Social Security trust fund in a lockbox and insulate it from a broader budget-cutting package designed to reduce the national deficit. It’s a revival of the concept that former Vice President Al Gore Albert (Al) Arnold GoreOvernight Energy: Trump ends talks with California on car emissions | Dems face tough vote on Green New Deal | Climate PAC backing Inslee in possible 2020 run New climate PAC will back Inslee for president Howard Schultz must run as a Democrat for chance in 2020 MORE (D) made famous when he sparred with George W. Bush over a proposal to invest a portion of Social Security funds in the private market. ADVERTISEMENT Eleven years later, Social Security is again a hot political topic.During his State of the Union address, President Obama called on Congress to “find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations.”But labor unions and liberal groups have waged a blistering campaign to steer budget cutters away from Social Security, a widely popular safety-net program.Leading Senate Democrats say Social Security reform should not be part of a deficit reduction package under negotiation.Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who is at the center of bipartisan talks, said he wants to prolong the solvency of Social Security to 75 years. Under its current setup, the program is projected to pay 100 percent of benefits for the next 26 years.But Conrad does not want Social Security to be part of a broader proposal to reduce the $1.6 trillion federal deficit.“It might be useful to have Social Security treated on a separate track because it is not part of the deficit reduction package,” Conrad told The Hill before the Presidents Day recess. “I think it should be separated.“There are many who recognize we have a long-term challenge with Social Security, but that’s very separate from the deficit reduction,” Conrad said. “When those two get put together, it creates huge problems to getting the deficit reduction done, because it confuses the issue.”Conrad says lawmakers should look instead to reducing projected costs in other entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid. He notes that one of every six dollars in the economy is spent on healthcare and argues that further reform and savings must be found in the healthcare accounts.Conrad’s stance should please House Democrats who warned the Senate last week to keep Social Security out of a plan to reduce the general government budget deficit.“Divorce this conversation about deficit reduction from Social Security and making it a better program!” Rep.(D-Calif.) told a meeting of Social Security advocates on Capitol Hill last week.But it’s an area of potential disagreement with(R-Okla.), who is meeting regularly with Conrad and Sens.(D-Ill.) and(R-Idaho) to put together a deficit reduction plan.Coburn warns that if Social Security reform is not part of the package, Congress won’t address it for years.“Nothing will ever happen if we do it that way,” Coburn said of the prospect of separating Social Security from a deficit reduction package.Liberal Democrats were concerned over Conrad’s role in deficit reduction talks because, as a member of Obama’s fiscal commission, he voted for a plan to raise the Social Security retirement age and lower cost-of-living adjustments.They are reassured that Conrad has said Social Security reform should be kept apart from a broad deficit-reduction package.“I appreciate what Sen. Conrad said,” said Sen.(I-Vt.), founder of the Senate Social Security Caucus. “I can tell you that I think there is growing sentiment within the Democratic caucus to make sure that Social Security is not dealt with within the context of deficit reduction.”Sanders said once Social Security is separated from deficit reduction talks, lawmakers could debate ways to extend its solvency. He favors raising the cap on income subject to payroll taxes, which is now $106,800.Other Senate Democrats have called for Social Security reform to be handled separately from a comprehensive deficit reduction package.“Social Security isn’t contributing to the deficit now,” said Sen.(D-Del.). “We need to be working to ensure the long-term survivability of Social Security, but we’ve got a lot of other big budget challenges in the short term.“What I think is important is for the broad public to realize that any changes to Social Security are going to stand on their own to ensure that Social Security is viable,” he said. “It’s not part of fixing the deficit.”Sen.(D-Mich.) said Social Security reform should be handled separately “because it doesn’t affect the deficit.”Senate Majority Leader(D-Nev.) has also argued against linking Social Security reform to deficit reduction.Jim Kessler, vice president of policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, said lawmakers can separate Social Security from the deficit reduction package but they must reform the entitlement program sometime during the 112th Congress.He argues that Democrats should agree to reforms to extend solvency while they control the White House and Senate.“When is going to be a better environment to do something on Social Security?” he said. “The whole political formulation of Congress and the White House could change, and then you’re really in bad shape. I’d like to see them do something this Congress.” |
Since the Syrian Civil War began in spring 2011, more than seven million Syrians have been displaced from their homes, and more than four million have fled as refugees and asylum seekers to other countries. Millions of Syrians now reside in neighbouring countries such as Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan, while others have travelled even further north and west seeking refuge in Europe. To date the 28 members of the European Union have responded in varying ways to the Syrian refugees, with some calling for all EU countries to take their fair share of refugees. But what is a fair share? Perhaps the most obvious solution is that richer countries should take more refugees than poorer countries. With this in mind, we ranked each of the 28 members according to their economies (their GDP as a percentage of the total GDP of the EU) and then compared this with their intake of Syrian refugees to date. According to this model of fairness, we found that Sweden and Germany are taking many more refugees than they should be expected to, while France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain and Poland are not pulling their weight. Sweden takes 22% more refugees than their relative share of the European economy, with Germany following closely with 18%. At the other end of the chart, though, France, Italy and the UK are all taking roughly 10% less than their economies suggest they should. Of course, the above chart only illustrates the EU response to the Syrian crisis. The EU member countries have taken refugees from many other origins during this time period. One country may have taken more Somali refugees and fewer Syrian refugees than another country, for example. Even when performing the same refugee-intake/size-of-economy comparison for all sources of refugees the results are very similar. Sweden and Germany still take more refugees than their fair share (in this model of fairness) while most of the same countries remain at the other end. France is the notable difference in the two charts, though. |
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) Has No Competition Tesla and the Quest for Electric Vehicle Dominance It’s amazing to me that so many people still don’t get it … The dawn of the electric car is here, and it has been ushered in by Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA). When the company first went public, all we heard was how quickly it would fail. Five years later, and the stock is still trading 1,200% higher than its debut price of $19 a share Of course, judging a company’s future profitability shouldn’t rest on the price at which its stock is trading on any given day. After all, just five years ago Alpha Natural Resources was trading for $50 a share. Last month it went belly up. Here’s how that one turned out … So when looking at Tesla, it makes no sense to predict its future simply by looking at its current share price. That being said, I do remain quite bullish on Tesla. Not from an investment perspective, necessarily — although betting against Tesla is probably not a good idea — but from the perspective of long-term viability, thanks entirely to the fact that CEO Elon Musk has created and delivered the biggest game-changer the auto industry has ever witnessed. To see how far Elon Musk has taken this company over the past ten years is truly amazing. And what he has up his sleeve for the future will likely make past goals seem almost trivial. So when I hear about established car companies coming out of the woodwork to challenge Tesla, I often find myself shaking my head. Fortunes will be made As reported in USA Today … Two well-known luxury brands — one German, the other British — both said they're going to make pricey, long-range, all-electric luxury performance vehicles: Audi and Aston Martin. • Audi: Its new, luxury electric-crossover concept is being introduced at the auto show next month in Frankfurt and will compete with Tesla's new Model X, Audi announced Wednesday. • Aston Martin:The brand best known as the preferred wheels for James Bond said it will start with a luxury electric sedan that will be priced higher than Tesla's only current model, the Model S sedan. Look, there are only so many folks in this world that are willing to drop $80,000 to $100,000 on a car. Tesla started at the high end in order to fund future endeavors, such as its soon-to-be-released Model 3, which is set to be the first “competitively-priced” electric car that can deliver at least 200 miles on a single charge. This is where Tesla’s fortune will be made. At least in the arena of electric cars. That whole battery manufacturing thing Musk is developing is another animal entirely. I’m not saying Audi and Aston Martin won’t be able to sell their high-end electric cars, but they’re not competing with Tesla. If anything, they’re competing with the illusion of Tesla being a high-end luxury car maker. It’s not. If anything, it’s a technology company that’s not held back by the balls and chains of auto execs that should’ve cashed in their pensions back in the 1990s. History in the Making Something else I found somewhat amusing in that USA Today piece was the following quote from Astin Martin spokesperson Matthew Clarke … Electric powertrains are part of our future vision. Emission regulations will force everybody to make changes. Silly rabbit, delusions are for kids! It’s not emissions regulations that will force everybody to make changes. It’s better vehicles. And by the way, consumers won’t be forced at all. They’ll be running to the showrooms, voluntarily - and enthusiastically. Ultimately, electric cars will not only be cost-competitive with their internal combustion counterparts, but they’ll also deliver the same driving distances without the environmental and economic burdens of fossil fuels. Truth is, unless you live in a geographically-challenging region, it won’t even make sense to buy anything but electric. And that goes for everyone - not just luxury car buyers. Understand, I don’t write these words today to discredit Audi and Astin Martin as quality car makers. Both build very impressive machines, and both will have no trouble selling their new electric offerings - as long as they meet the standards of their customer base. However, I do take issue with yet one more article that finds it necessary to continue to portray electric cars as little more than cars for the rich. Sure, it’s mostly well-off folks that are buying Teslas these days, but that won’t always be the case. Tesla’s plan is much bigger than the Model S. Hell, it’s much bigger than the auto industry in general. Whether the naysayers want to admit it or not, Tesla will go down in history as one of the most important and influential companies of the 21st century. And it won’t be because it was able to sell 100,000 units of a car called the Model S. To think otherwise would be, for lack of a better word, naive. |
Congress is a den of corruption. We know this by intuition and from repeated experience, so when the president signed the congressional insider trading ban into law, most of us approved, perhaps with some reservations about whether it should have gone further. Yesterday, Congress released the annual mother of all document dumps containing financial disclosures from all 535 congresscreatures, which will for the first time include information about their personal mortgages. Via the Washington Post: As part of the new law, leaders of the Senate Ethics Committee — Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) — won their three-year fight to require lawmakers to reveal their personal mortgage information. This came after their 2008-2009 inquiry into a pair of senators who were part of a VIP mortgage program run by Countrywide Financial, former senator Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), both of whom were cleared of any wrongdoing by the ethics panelbecause the discounted fees for their mortgages were offered to many customers. This is a meaningful step. But lest we think their transparency issues have been solved, consider that the new disclosure rules wouldn’t have caused any red flags to go up had they been around when Congress decided to build Nancy Pelosi’s husband a railroad. The STOCK Act marries the current approach to congressional transparency–‘fill out some more forms!’–with a new mandate that they disclose all stock, bond, commodity futures, and other security transactions within 45 days. There are some other stipulations too, notably restrictions on special access to IPOs, but the transaction disclosures are definitely the meat of the bill. The only person I’ve ever heard defend congressional insider trading as a good thing was a doctrinaire Randian, but the whole approach to conflicts of interest among lawmakers is flawed at best. Politico’s Jake Sherman wrote today about how disclosure rules can obscure many of the facts about politicians’ wealth: The financial disclosures allow huge ranges in reporting the value of assets, require no reporting of spousal income above $1,000 and often provide an incomplete picture of lawmakers’ real estate assets. There is no requirement to reveal tax returns — a stark contrast with presidential candidates, who voluntarily give the public a peek into their taxes. In essence, Congress has allowed its members the leeway to obfuscate their true financial worth, even as some lawmakers and good government groups have pushed for more transparency. There’s a limit to how effective these disclosure frameworks can be. Which leads one to wonder, isn’t the purpose of these rules to ensure an informed citizenry, one that can discern whether or not politicians are acting in the public interest or their own self-interest (both, if you ask Nancy Pelosi). The simplest way to do this would be to empower those citizens to simply ask for whatever information they request, a standard already applied across most of the executive branch (with several large exemptions) by the Freedom of Information Act. But the law doesn’t apply to Congress. A British or Israeli citizen can request the correspondence and records of lawmakers in the Knesset and the UK Parliament, but Joe Six-pack doesn’t have the right to request the records of his own congressman. How could this be? The simplest answer is because Congress writes its own rules, the same reason nearly all new electoral laws benefit incumbents. That’s not the whole story, though; it would be unreasonable, not to mention unconstitutional, to include the sort of personal information that could expose insider trading under the purview of FOIA, which means the disclosure laws are probably necessary. Also, there’s a major separation of powers question. With every issue from Mitt Romney’s misspelled iphone app to Barack Obama’s childhood dog-eating becoming a political football, it’s easy to see how a congressman stonewalling on a particular FOIA request could become a target for politicized litigation. Yet there are good reasons to believe extending FOIA to the legislative branch would have major benefits too. First and foremost it would be the most significant ethics reform ever passed by congress, which might help restore some faith in the branch of government whose approval rating currently hovers around 17 percent. Here’s how the Democratic faction of the House Rules Committee weighs the choice: The argument could be made, on the one hand, that Congress could be subject to the same information disclosure requirements imposed on the executive branch inasmuch as the purpose of the Act — “ensur[ing] an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society”59 — would be served by congressional coverage. On the other hand, application to Congress might impinge on Congress’ privilege with regard to its papers, pose administrative burdens on congressional offices, and involve Congress in law suits filed by persons appealing the denial of their FOIA requests. Finally, not all congressional records would necessarily be subject to disclosure under the FOIA because they may come within one or more of the Act’s nine exemptions.60 The fact that the case against the extension of FOIA is so unpersuasive is evidence of how dead-on-arrival the very idea is. The last bit about exemptions isn’t really an argument against extending FOIA at all. As for the ‘administrative burden,’ maybe Senate offices could just outsource their constituent services to a call center in India–at least then someone might listen to them–and have interns and low-level staff dig up the FOIA documents. They’d be dishing the dirt on their own employers, which would break the page-to-politico cycle of Washington careerism, while at the same time working toward a more transparent government. |
The technology industry is mobilizing to push the Trump administration over concerns on copyright matters in discussions to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Top technology trade associations, which lobby on behalf technology firms’ political interests, say in a letter on Wednesday they’re concerned that NAFTA renegotiation discussions are going in the wrong direction on copyright provisions. ADVERTISEMENT Trade associations like the Information Technology Industry Council, the Internet Association and the Consumer Technology Association, which represent massive firms like Google, Facebook and Amazon, as well as Engine, which advocates on behalf of startups, say copyright talks are “departing from a carefully calibrated and balanced compromise” that had been discussed between trade associations and the administration. The groups push U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer Robert (Bob) Emmet LighthizerTrump says no discussion of extending deadline in Chinese trade talks McConnell urges GOP senators to call Trump about tariffs Companies brace for trade war MORE in the letter to find the “right balance in the area of copyright.” Technology firms have argued in the past for copyright rules that protect the creators who generate the content that makes their platforms valuable. But they also want to strike a balance so that such laws don’t come at the “expense of free speech,” as the Internet Association puts it. Tech firms also want to make sure that intellectual property provisions in copyright laws don’t allow for easy lawsuits that result in what some call frivolous "patent troll" cases. Such cases have frustrated tech companies like Apple and Intel as they field lawsuits from smaller companies that hold patents but make their money through such court cases, instead of manufacturing and producing their own products. NAFTA talks are now in their fifth round. Leaders from the U.S., Mexico and Canada convened in Mexico City on Wednesday to continue negotiations. |
It's been quite some time since the indie Rainbow Skies was announced 4 years ago, but it still exists and has been finally announced for release in 2018 on the Playstation 3, Playstation 4, and Playstation Vita. Rainbow Skies is a fantasy RPG from the makers of Rainbow Moon, with the story centering around Damion, an aspiring monster tamer. In his final examination, he messes things up from a terrible hangover, setting off an interesting set of events with his examiner Layne. The gameplay is turn-based, and you can explore between two parallel worlds while hunting and breeding monsters to become your party members. The game promises 100 hours of content, which includes side quests and optional content. Pre-orders for its physical edition are now available on Play Asia, which is only available for the PS4 and Vita.The physical editions will have standard and limited editions, with the latter containing the following: Collector's box A copy of Rainbow Skies Game manual “Melodies” two-disc original soundtrack 100-page “Book of Knowledge” guidebook Double-sided map Numbered certificate A physical edition will also be released for Rainbow Moon due for 2018. You can pre-order it in Play Asia , with the limited edition having the same type of contents as Rainbow Skies. |
AMD is readying three motherboard chipsets for its next-generation socket AM4 desktop platform. With its 7th generation A-series "Bristol Ridge" APUs, the company launched the A320 mainstream and B350 premium motherboard chipsets, while keeping a better-endowed high-end chipset under the wraps, which makes its debut with the ZEN "Summit Ridge" processors. It turns out that this chipset is the AMD X370. The X370 chipset will debut with the first ZEN "Summit Ridge" processors along the sidelines of the 2017 International CES, next January.AMD "Summit Ridge" desktop processors, much like the 7th generation A-series APUs they share the platform with, are SoCs, in that the chips combine the entire platform core-logic along with the CPU and its relevant uncore components. AMD is still giving this platform a sort of chipset, which adds to the number of SATA, USB, and general-purpose PCI-Express connectivity that the processor gives out. The AMD X370 should feature more 10 Gb/s USB 3.1 ports, SATA 6 Gb/s ports, 32 Gb/s M.2 or U.2 ports, and general-purpose PCIe lanes than what the B350 offers. This chipset should drive motherboards that are ready for multi-GPU setups. |
This is a story you have heard many times before. Rags to riches. The rise of the underdog. Seam bowlers T Natarajan and Mohammed Siraj have been underdogs for most of their lives. But, when the 2017 IPL auction ended up becoming their biggest payday, their lives, as they have known them, have probably changed irreversibly. Left-armer Natarajan, 25, earned 30 times his base price of INR 10 lakh to become the highest-paid uncapped Indian player, while the 22-year-old right-arm quick Siraj attracted a bid of INR 2.6 crore. Born to Thangarasu, a daily-wage worker in the weaving industry and Shantha, a wayside meat seller, Natarajan hails from Chinnappampatti, a hamlet 35 km from Salem in Tamil Nadu. The eldest of five siblings, Natarajan was consumed by cricket right from the outset. Siraj's obsession with the game began after he won an inter-school tournament on Independence Day while in class seven. The son of an autorickshaw driver in Khaja Nagar, Banjara Hills in Hyderabad, Siraj would gladly bunk classes to play cricket. Neither Natarajan nor Siraj had seen much of the cricket ball before turning 20. To them, cricket meant hurling a tennis ball at great speed at the batsman. Natarajan's love for the game was stoked by his neighbour, Jayaprakash anna, who ran the Chinnappampatti Cricket Club. His ability to nail the inch-perfect yorker was burnished at this club. "I remember winning a game in the Super Over in one of the matches," he told ESPNcricinfo. "I bowled three balls and took two wickets with two yorkers. I won many trophies with the yorker." Jayaprakash, though, wanted Natarajan to replicate the same skills with the cricket ball. He encouraged his younger colleague to move to Chennai and test himself in TNCA's competitive leagues. Long before his skills grabbed eyeballs, he struggled with the cricket ball. "I didn't know anything about gripping the cricket ball and found it difficult to control initially, but later got used to it." Siraj, on the other hand, had no such teething troubles. "It didn't seem different when I played with the cricket ball. I just wanted to bowl fast," he said. "I am a natural inswing bowler - I never learnt it or anything. I haven't done anything [to develop the outswinger or other deliveries] till now. It's on the back of my mind that if I change something my pace will drop. I will keep bowling my stock line." In 2015, even as Siraj's reputation grew with the tennis ball, a friend gently chided him for not making better use of his talents. "He said there was a friend of his who played at Charminar CC, and asked me to come to the nets there." Siraj turned up and did what he liked best - bowl fast and bounce the batsmen - and it didn't escape the attention of Hyderabad's cricketing circle. "I was taking five wickets match after match. How do you ignore someone whose name appears in the papers all the time?" he said. "They included me in the senior zonal side before being named in the probable of the state Under-23 side. I took five wickets in my second selection match. That changed my life." Conversely, Natarajan's life-changing moment came in the shortest format via the Tamil Nadu Premier League last year. He claimed 10 wickets in seven matches for Dindigul Dragons at less than 7.5 runs an over. Against eventual champions Tuti Patriots, Natarajan sent down six consecutive yorkers and successfully defended 12 runs in the Super Over. T Natarajan was scooped up in the IPL auction with a bid of INR 3 crore by Kings XI Punjab T Natarajan If the IPL scouts watching the game weren't impressed enough already, he practically dared them to ignore his performances in the 2016-17 Ranji Trophy. Along with Aswin Crist and K Vignesh, Natarajan was part of a formidable pace pack that played a major role in Tamil Nadu's run to the semi-final. For someone who had to endure the trauma of being reported for a suspect action after his first-class debut in 2014-15, Natarajan, by now bowling with a remodelled action, claimed 24 wickets in eight matches, including six in the quarter-final against Karnataka. Like Natarajan, Siraj, too, played only one game in his debut season, in 2015-16. In his first full season, however, he finished as the third-leading wicket-taker with 41 scalps in nine games at 18.92. Such rich numbers were rewarded with a call-up to the Rest of India team in the Irani Cup, where his persistent bouncers hassled Gujarat's batsmen. Last week, Siraj was selected in the India A squad for the warm-up game against the touring Australian side, but didn't feature in the playing XI. In three days' time, however, the auction would bring him rewards of proportions he might not have anticipated. A few days before the auction, Siraj spoke about how he awaited his remuneration from the Ranji Trophy, so that he could ask his father to quit driving autorickshaws and stay at home. "If he doesn't listen to a cricket player, who will he listen to?" he said with a chuckle. After the death of his oldest brother in a drowning accident more than a decade ago, Siraj wanted to ensure he was always there for his parents and older brother, an engineer. "The death of my brother affected my parents the most," he said. "He was after all the first child. Now, they get a lot of happiness out of my success in cricket. I don't want to let them down, and hopefully I play for India and will play in the IPL with their blessings." Natarajan, too, hoped that the IPL windfall would help boost his family's financial health. "Romba romba sandhoshama irukken (I am very, very happy now)," he said. "I never expected to be picked for such a big price. From Chinnappampatti to Kings XI Punjab...I don't have words to explain the journey. My family is extremely delighted. I will repay our loans with this money. I am now leaving for Chinnappampatti where my family members and friends are waiting to celebrate with me." For Siraj, the celebrations in his neighbourhood have been a constant for some time now. "Humare mohalle mein to mela hi chalta rahta hai (there is always some festivity surrounding my performance in my neighbourhood)," he said. "I want to be an example for people around me, that someone can rise up through passion and hard work." Siraj, who lives in a one-bedroom house, admitted to being dazed by the luxuries on offer at the star hotels while touring during the domestic season. "It was the first time I had stayed in hotels like those. Just the lavish spread at breakfast, lunch…I have no words to say." Natarajan, though, was aware of the expectations that came with a hefty pay packet. "It brings a lot of pressure. I have to somehow prove my worth and do my best for Kings XI Punjab." Siraj and Natarajan would do well, however, to dodge two pitfalls that have swallowed several careers before they even took off: the pressure of the price tag and the seductive charm of overnight riches and spotlight. |
Share this infographic on your site! Image compliments of Masters in Marketing Degrees Embed this infographic on your site! Image compliments of Masters in Marketing Degrees The editors at Masters in Marketing Degrees decided to research the topic of: The Economics of going VIRAL Until recently viral YouTube videos were one-time flukes. Now an entire industry surrounds YouTube stars: - Managers, PR programs, award shows, and content networks YouTube Space is a 41,000 sq. foot production space in L.A. - Green rooms - Dance studios - Indoor and outdoor theaters - 1,500-6,000 sq. foot production space YouTube Spaces have opened up in Tokyo and London as well - Seem over the top? Think again. - 4 billion= number of hours of YouTube watched per month - 60 million= number of monthly viewers on uStream - 16.8 million= number of total viewers for one uStream video in 24 hours. - 200 petabytes= the size of video files played on Vimeo in 2012 - - That's 214,748,364,800 megabytes. - - In contrast: - - 15 petabytes of data are generated by the Large Hadron Collider every year - - More than 100 petabytes in physical memory are needed to keep Facebook running. Self-expression is great, but who's really pushing the content? Advertising - Purchase consideration/intent increases 14.3% by the third viewing of an advertisement on a top tier video hosting site. - Spending on online marketing campaigns were up 21.7% from 2011-2012 - For television over the same time period spending was up a mere 4.5% - 98.1% of affluent Americans use the internet for an average of 30 hours a week - Affluent Americans aged 18-29 spend more than 40 hours online. - If media consumers are spending the equivalent of a full time job's worth of time per week, imagine how hard content producers work. - 6% growth of internet users every year. - The average age of an internet user is rising in tandem with the average age of Americans. - Average age of Americans: 32 Fame - Top ten YouTube channels [channel name-subscribers-subscribers per 24 hrs] - Smosh-9054709-31,528 - RayWilliamJohnson-8296377-16,002 - JennaMarbles-8233318-21,307 - Nigahiga-7818967-27,032 - RihannaVevo-7574717-18,933 - Machinima-7152893-13,648 - PewDiePie-6623944-43184 - OneDirectionVevo-5912875-20,795 - HolaSoyGerman-5736337-48,277 - FreddieW-5228573--8961 From quirky gamers to preteen advice to low brow humor, whatever you're into, chances are someone's producing content, and someone's advertising on it. Getting Paid $346,827.12 = what TubeMogul, a video ad buying platform company in California estimates that JennaMarbles, the third most popular channel on YouTube earned last year from advertising revenue. - That number doesn't include endorsements. - JennaMarbles films her videos from home with the same low-fi camera she started with. Community - "Video Responses" stimulate discussion and provide humorous spin offs of extant videos. - 50,000+ = number of messages JennaMarbles receives a month - Future channel posts are often dictated by polls of what viewers want to see next. - Active social networking campaigns connect channels, corporations and the audience in ever evolving and entertaining ways. Of National Importance - 7,000 hours of news related footage uploaded to YouTube Daily - 13 million views on the weather channels live feed of Superstorm Sandy - YouTube uploads tagged #Obama or #Romney were watched a total of 2.7 billion times during the 2012 campaign. - Debates streamed in over 200 countries. - That's 3x the views for "Gangnam Style" - Real time buying of ad space allows campaigns to target demographics at a moment's notice. - Romney's "binders full of women" quote was immediately targeted by Obama ads on YouTube. - Online demographic tracking allows for hyper-customized messages targeting individual zip codes, genders, ages, and interest groups. - Theoretically, campaigns could place ads on their own content, recouping some of their advertising costs. Protected Interests - Up to a third of YouTube's videos are copyrighted material posted without the owner's consent. - ContentID screens newly posted content to discover copyrighted material. - Scans over 100 years of content every year. - Most owners choose to leave the content up, however, - As YouTube shares the ad revenue with the owner of the material. - Only 14% of YouTube videos need to be viewed for YouTube to turn a profit from ad revenue (in 2010). - In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views. - That's 140 views for every person on Earth. Citations - http://www.youtube.com/yt/space/faq-la.html - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/fashion/jenna-marbles.html?smid=fb-share&_r=1& - http://www.tubemogul.com/research/report/49-Is-There-an-Online-Video-Prime-Time- - http://www.tubemogul.com/research/report/42-Does-Real-Time-Buying-of-Video-Advertising-Deliver-Brand-Lift-or-Is-It-All-Direct-Response-Hot-Air- - http://www.forbes.com/sites/brentgleeson/2012/11/20/tv-advertising-vs-digital-marketing/ - http://vidstatsx.com/youtube-top-100-most-subscribed-channels - http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_age_in_America - http://royal.pingdom.com/2013/01/16/internet-2012-in-numbers/ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petabyte - http://www.tubemogul.com/marketing/TubeMogul_2012_BrettWilsonTheGuardian.pdf - http://youtube-global.blogspot.se/2012/12/news-on-youtube-2012-in-review.html - http://www.tubemogul.com/research/report/7-Online-Video-s-Short-Shelf-Life - http://www.tubemogul.com/research/report/51-Is-There-an-Online-Video-Primetime-in-the-United-Kingdom- - http://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html |
Slate’s Editor David Plotz responded to questions on Tuesday about his favorite magazines, his marriage to Hanna Rosin, and his hatred of pandas during an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. This transcript has been edited for clarity. webdevcrazy: What was the most unexpected thing you learned from reading the whole bible? David Plotz: God—what a jerk! I was unprepared for the essentially unpleasant, rageaholic nature of my God. I assumed there was some loving kindness in there somewhere—I know the Christians have that—but there was very, very little. On the other hand, the most admirable people in the book are the people who argue with this implacable, rageful, irrational deity (Abraham, Job, Gideon, Moses). Also, basically every woman in the Bible is a prostitute. _______________________ bradspahn: Can you tell us more about what your marriage with Hanna Rosin? As a feminist dude, I feel like there aren’t many examples of really equal marriages that involve two careers and multiple kids, but it sounds like yours really is very equal. David Plotz: Hanna Rosin is amazing, but you know that. I don’t know that our marriage is really equal. It is more that the inequalities flow back and forth. We don’t split things 50/50 or anything like that. It is that there are periods when I have more responsibility for the kids and periods when she does, periods when my career is front and center and periods when hers is. And we are pretty good about watching out for each other. We’ve just come out of a period where Hanna has been traveling a huge amount for her book, and it’s clear that she’ll be a bit more domestic in the coming months, and I may be less. I don’t think it occurs to either of us that our own career or life is more important than the other’s. We went into marriage knowing that, and we’ve done a pretty good job sticking to it. Plus, we have incredibly generous parents who help out, and a great babysitter, and great friends, and wonderful children, all of which simplify the complexities of family and work life. _______________________ WrigleyJohnson: What made you switch from being a DOJ paralegal to a journalist? David Plotz: That was definitely the best career error I made. When I graduated from college, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, so I took a job as a paralegal at the Department of Justice to see what lawyers did all day. I loathed it. Two days after I started, I was desperate to leave. I sent my résumé (college newspaper and bad college clips) to 93 newspapers around the country. Only one, the Winston-Salem Journal, offered me an interview, and then a job. The week of my Winston-Salem interview, I saw a job opening at the Washington City Paper, the alt-weekly in D.C., and sent my résumé and my undergraduate thesis, which was about Marion Barry. The editor, Jack Shafer was intrigued by the Barry thesis, and offered me a job, which I took. I covered D.C. politics for Jack—the most difficult and rewarding job I can imagine. _______________________ shanepang: Pandas. We all know your firm stance against pandas in the past. Have your views on pandas softened? Hardened? David Plotz: Hardened into a diamond-core of loathing and rage. When will Americans wake up and see Pandagate for what it is. The Chinese government charges extortionate rents for us to house, feed, breed their dumb animals. When babies are born, the Chinese take them back, and then rent them to another high bidder. Zoos are literally wasting millions of dollars on this shoddy merchandise, when they could be stocking up with made in America otters or brown bears. _______________________ alma9: What is your favorite publication other than Slate (or one of your favorites)? David Plotz:Top of Form As an editor, I envy and adore New York Magazine, which we subscribe to even though we live in D.C. It is perfect as a magazine—beautiful, always clever, bold, provocative, fun. I read the New York Times more than I read anything. _______________________ Echoey: You’ve spoken often on the podcast about your previously-held anti-gay marriage views. I was hoping you could elaborate on them, and perhaps explain why you felt that way. David Plotz: Sure. I went to an all-boys, jocky private school in the mid-’80s. It was a school where homophobia was explicit and never questioned. I absorbed enough of that to make me feel ashamed, and I carried forward homophobic ideas into college. Gay marriage was never really something anyone talked—I probably first heard about it as a serious idea in the mid-’90s. At the time, I thought: oh marriage is special. It is a particular, defined institution for men and women, for historic reasons, and we tinker with it at our peril. I was all for civil unions, but I stumbled at marriage. Then, my then-colleague John Cloud talked to me about gay marriage one day, and explained why it mattered, and why civil union was a non-substitute, and how important it was to be free to love who you love and make a family with that person. And I realized that I had been an idiot, and have been for gay marriage ever since. _______________________ NinjaDiscoJesus: What did you think of the inauguration speech yesterday? David Plotz: Perhaps because I have lived in D.C. for so very long, I have been exhausted with speeches. Any politician worth a dime can deliver a great speech, and most of them can write them. But so what? It is very, very, very rare, vanishingly rare, for a political speech to make a difference in the world. Political change never happens because someone makes a nice speech calling for it. It happens because politicians and interest groups commit political capital and labor and money. The Obama speech was a moving, effective speech, well delivered. I don’t think anyone will remember it in a week, much less in a year. Can you remember anything he said at his first inauguration? I can’t. _______________________ Dankois: Which is your favorite flavor of Fresca? Original citrus, black cherry citrus, or peach citrus? David Plotz: Original. The black cherry is gross. The peach is vile. _______________________ Komputerwelt: What’s your stance on the elections in Israel today? David Plotz: Incredibly depressed. My wife is Israeli and has lots of relatives over there, and it has become harder and harder to visit. I don’t see how Israel backs away from the settler-driven, expansionist, occupationist path it is on. _______________________ UVdogastrophe: Other than your fellow Gabfest panelists and your wife, who is the most enjoyable person at Slate with which to argue/discuss political and societal issues? David Plotz: Love this question! I have the great good fortune to share a hallway with the following murderer’s row: Josh Levin, Bill Smee, John Dickerson, Will Dobson, Matt Yglesias, Dan Kois, Will Saletan, Dave Weigel. It is heaven for argument! For pure office BS-ing, I would say Yglesias. I love economic thinking applied to noneconomic problems, and Matt does that better than anyone I know. But really, every single person at Slate is someone I would happily squabble with. _______________________ Mcfors: Who is you favorite vendor at the Dupont Farmer’s Market? David Plotz: Heinz (sp?), the Swiss guy who sells amazing, unfashionable vegetables. I love his uncompromising ethos, and the kale kills. What about you? Mcfors: Is that the bearded guy at Next Step Produce? Great place. I also like the second apples from Toigo Orchards (only 99 cents a pound) and eggs from someone named Tom—he’s stationed near Atwater Bakery and the singing Street Sense woman. David Plotz: Yup, Next Step. _______________________ Sdkstl: I’m a reader since launch and was a subscriber. Two questions: 1.) Would you charge again for Slate? 2.) The online magazine field is a lot more crowded than when Slate first launched. How would you describe its role in today’s media landscape? David Plotz: Thanks for reading for so long, and subscribing back in the day. 1.) I don’t see Slate charging subscriptions. But I can easily see us having a membership program, where we would charge for a membership that would offer special benefits like private events, or free tickets to live Gabfests and the like. But not a subscription. 2.) For a long, long time, Slate was in a category of one, or maybe two (with Salon), online-only magazines. What’s been wonderful in the past 7 years has been the emergence of so many healthy, clever, innovative online only sites that are not principally news sites, and the online success of traditional magazines like the Atlantic. The health of the category has been good for all of us. There is more advertising, and more readers who now get to read across sites (Slate AND the Atlantic AND HuffPo AND Daily Beast AND Gawker…). More competition has been good for all of us, and forced us to innovate constantly. It has also made us realize that we have to stick to our comparative advantage: Slate is smart and funny. That is what we do best. We stick to that. And the results have been good. Our audience has been growing very rapidly. _______________________ Fblom: I started reading Slate because of Hitch. Can you tell us a memory unedited about him? David Plotz: We would have lunch once a year to reaffirm the Slate/Hitch partnership. My favorite was one—perhaps in 2009—when he had me over to his apartment in the Wyoming. The lunch was sausages, wine, and Hitchens talking to me for about two hours about his childhood, and his awful boarding school. I hadn’t realized till then how much of his hatred of arbitrary authority and abusive authority came from the childhood experience of a brutal, arbitrary school. _______________________ Plusroyaliste: I read Slate every day and my favorite contributor is Dave Weigel, mainly wanted to encourage you to keep him around. My general question is to what extent page views drive decisions about subject matter to report on at Slate? Obviously there’s a basic commercial consideration but there are some red meat topics (ie. marijuana) that are known to drive page views and that some online outlets focus on to get that traffic. Is that a major incentive when stories get pitched and, if so, how do you balance that against not wanting to report disproportionately on subjects whose importance doesn’t necessarily correlate with their popularity? David Plotz: Like all of our competitors, we carefully track metrics. I can tell you that 33,603 people were on Slate 10 seconds ago, and 2,910 of them were reading a piece about Google. And one of my major goals—and one that my bosses in particular judge me on—is attracting more readers to Slate. So we are constantly looking for ways to increase our audience. That said, Slate’s comparative advantage is wit and intelligence, so we often make our biggest gains from our smartest stories. That’s not to say that a traffic-whoring piece about a celebrity breakdown won’t get traffic, and that’s not to say we won’t run such pieces, but in general, the smarter we are, the better we do. The key way you get traffic is not writing sleazy stories, it is writing MORE stories. (For example, we recently added Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog, which has brought us a bumper crop of very smart, lively, science and astronomy-minded readers.) _______________________ Brenbuescher: Slate has an awesome staff—how would you describe your leadership philosophy and your management style? David Plotz: Brenbuescher, or as I like to call you, “mom”: Editing Slate is very easy, because it mostly involves getting out of the way! Mike Kinsley had a rule when he started Slate: No assholes. We have stuck hard to that. Like Mike and Jacob Weisberg, my predecessors, I think my most important job is hiring people with the right sensibility—smart, funny, bold, energetic—and watching them do wonderful things. We tend to hire best available players rather than positions. _______________________ Ihniwmansb: What is John Dickerson really like? David Plotz: John was actually hand carved out of black rhino horn, then brought to life with an incantation involving spider webs by a benevolent witch. He can do only good in the world, and eats only cotton candy. John is more or less how he seems. Very smart, super hard worker, very funny in a disarming way. Excellent guitarist. Talks too much about Dylan. _______________________ Jjmccullough: Do people call you “Plotz” or “David” in day-to-day conversation around the office? I notice on the podcasts people sometimes make what appear to be revealing slips of the tongue. David Plotz: Both. Increasingly PLOTZ because we just hired a third David. _______________________ Aviddakota: Have you ever made anyone on Slate’s staff cry? David Plotz: Only with joy, I hope. There have been occasionally teary meetings in my office. I once cried during a meeting because I was so proud of the person I was talking to, but I don’t think he noticed. |
DALLAS -- A police supervisor in Texas is defending the actions of a constable who was in a confrontation last week with a young man. Millions have seen the cellphone video, and some believe the constable crossed the line. The cellphone video captures a moment when a Harris County constable stopped 20-year-old Marlin Gipson as he and his brothers were passing out business cards for his lawn service last week. Marlin Gipson seen in an undated photo. CBS News "I'm kind of busy, I'm trying to make money," Gipson can be heard saying in the video. Screengrab of a video Marlin Gipson shot when a Harris County constable confronted him. The officer then says, "Yeah, but when I saw you, you were going from door to door." Gipson did not have an ID card on him when asked by the officer. Then, the situation got tense, after Gipson asked the constable for his information. "Tell you what," the officer says. "Just turn around and put your hands around your back." "For what? Hey! Nope," Gipson says. He instead left the scene. Gipson spoke with CBS News and showed us the business cards he was handing out. "I would still be doing this right here," Gipson said as he fanned out the cards in his hand. "Lawn service, making money that's the goal… trying to support our family." Marlin Gipson shows the business cards he was handing out to the neighborhood. CBS News Constable administrator Alen Rosen said Gipson left because of an outstanding misdemeanor assault warrant. "So when originally stopped and questioned by the officer, that was why he really didn't want to say who we was," Rosen said. Constables came to his house later that day. Gipson recorded that, too. He said constables broke down his door, tased him and sicced a K-9 on him that left bite marks on his arm. "I can't even lift certain stuff no more," Gipson told us. "My arm is still numb in certain spots. I can barely lift it up." Marlin Gipson shows CBS News the bite marks he says he sustained when officers sicced a K-9 on him. CBS News But Rosen says his officers did nothing wrong. "We gave Mr. Gipson, before the police dog went upstairs, we told him four different times, we even yelled, 'police dog, police dog come out,'" Rosen explained. The Harris County constable says they have body camera video that backs up their side of the story, but they have not released it. |
Survey finds nine in 10 say the crime is a 'very big problem', while three in four say laws too lax and police not strict enough A new poll shows that Indians view rape as a big problem in their country and think the criminal justice system is inadequate to deal with it. The national survey was conducted by the Pew Research Centre one year after the December 2012 gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student in New Delhi unleashed a wave of public anger about sexual violence in India. The results were published Tuesday. The survey shows nine in 10 Indians agree that the crime of rape is a "very big problem." About eight in 10 say the problem is growing. And despite some legal reforms after the Delhi case, about three in four Indians say laws are too lax and faulted police for not being strict enough in investigating rape cases. The survey was based on 2,464 face-to-face interviews with adults across India between December 2013 and January 2014. It found the concern about rape cuts across gender and party lines, and is shared by urban and rural Indians. Some 91% of men said rape was a very big issue, and 89% of women. The nationwide outcry following the Delhi gang rape led the federal government to rush legislation increasing prison terms for rapists and criminalising voyeurism, stalking, acid attacks and the trafficking of women. In September, a special fast track court sentenced four of the perpetrators of the Delhi case to death. And earlier this month, a court sentenced to death three men who raped a photojournalist inside an abandoned textile mill last year in Mumbai, India's biggest city, under a new anti-rape law. The woman who was attacked survived. The Pew poll found that only 7% of Indians rated the current laws as "about right" in dealing with cases of rape, and only 6% said the police investigated rape cases adequately. Some 18% thought the laws were too tough. |
Editor’s Note: The United States in general, and the Trump administration in particular, is often accused of not matching its deeds to its rhetoric. When the Trump administration decided to use force against the Syrian regime after it conducted a horrific chemical weapons attack, some Americans worried we might be getting bogged down fighting yet another enemy in the Middle East while others worried we were doing too little too late. Erik Gartzke of the University of California San Diego strikes a slightly more optimistic note, arguing that the U.S. strike on Syria can and should serve broader U.S. objectives regarding chemical weapons and weapons of mass destruction in general. *** America's foreign policy is often characterized by excess. We do too much, aim too high, and then lose interest, leaving muddles (or worse) behind. There are limited things we can do with a limited effort spawned by limited interests, even with enormous military capacity. Last week, President Donald Trump instructed the U.S. military to carry out a limited strike in response to evidence that the Assad regime in Syria had perpetrated a chemical weapons attack against his own people. If indeed the goal of the Trump administration is only to deter future chemical weapons attacks, this could work and may have been (even unintentionally) a “wise” use of military force. If instead the objective is, or becomes, something broader, then the administration risks repeating recent U.S. foreign policy excesses, and eventual failures. There is a basic problem in Syria that most outsiders seem to want to ignore: Someone is going to win. For the conflict to resolve itself, a victor will need to reassert power. Until this happens, the Hobbesian (stateless) state will continue to grind up human life and deliver misery. Several factions vie for power in the civil war. The situation is so chaotic that instability has spilled over to neighboring countries, led to a massive exodus of refugees, and of course enabled the rise of the Islamic State. If indeed the goal of the Trump administration is only to deter future chemical weapons attacks, this could work and may have been (even unintentionally) a “wise” use of military force. A humanitarian objective for the international community should be the rapid resolution of the conflict. But here lies the rub: The most likely winners are all horrible scoundrels guilty of crimes against humanity. Further, outsiders cannot agree on who they think should win. This is almost certainly prolonging the conflict and the associated human suffering. U.S. policy has vacillated between inaction (remember Obama’s "red line"), ineffectiveness (support for the notional Free Syrian Army, or FSA), and the nearly counterproductive (a bombing campaign that, in effect, makes us the Iranian Air Force). Russia, for its part, has steadfastly backed the Assad regime, using our rhetoric and half-hearted initiatives to cloak realpolitik machinations in humanitarian trappings. The FSA, the Kurdish militias, or other groups we favor are not going to win—at least not outright. Factions that are both politically moderate from the U.S. perspective and militarily effective grow increasingly difficult to find in civil wars, as the brutality of the process grinds away at the will of reasonable people and forces many to flee. Those that remain in Syria—the Islamic State, the Assad regime, and Iranian-supported militias—are not our friends, and they are not disposed to see the wisdom or virtue of protecting human rights. With only enough "boots on the ground" to choose targets and advise allies, we cannot pick winners in this civil war, and coalition air support cannot produce moderation or ensure victory for moderate groups, whoever they are. Generally, the Western bombing campaign favors whatever faction is not being bombed, most typically the proxy Iranian militias. It is far from clear how the United States benefits from helping to extend Iranian influence in the region, just as it is far from clear how we benefit from helping Assad, or from assisting (in effect) the Islamic State, for that matter. But there is a principle that extends far beyond the boundaries of the current civil war, one that is exceedingly important to U.S. and other Western interests and, unlike picking a winner in Syria, is at least amenable to the efforts we are likely willing to exert. Last week's flight of Tomahawks suggests that the Trump administration may have stumbled upon a fight we can and should win. One “dog” we have in the Syrian conflict is preventing the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Chemical weapons are not nuclear, of course, but with good reason they are often considered together as “unconventional” weapons. Chemical weapons are banned by international convention. They are also the only type of weapon in use in Syria that could directly threaten the United States, if deployed by terrorists or other groups. Every recent U.S. administration has opposed their use. The goal in punishing Assad for their use is thus definable, discreet, moderate in scope but extremely important (to us and others), and amenable to our means. There is a simple message in the punitive U.S. strike against the Assad regime: “Keep using chemical weapons and we will make sure you lose the civil war.” While we cannot pick a winner in a multi-sided conflict in which we oppose all likely winners to some degree, we can guarantee that one faction will not be the winner, especially if we focus our efforts on an issue that is critical to us and others outside the region. Use of WMD is unacceptable. We have made this clear in our declaratory policy, in sponsoring a major international treaty regime, and in the use of sanctions and military force against other transgressors, like Saddam Hussein. Unlike the other weapons being used in the civil war, chemical weapons pose a special danger to U.S. citizens. They will almost certainly become a favorite choice of future “rogue states” and terrorists, especially if we fail to make clear that their use is subject to special retribution. This message may prove especially effective in Syria, given the unique characteristics of the conflict. Enforcing the WMD taboo with military force is practical under these circumstances. The last thing the embattled Assad regime wants is to face concerted U.S. airpower. So far, Assad has avoided the brunt of U.S. capabilities because of the divided nature of the factional conflict, and because the United States has not (yet) been clear about whom its chief enemy might be. Making WMD the issue for the United States compels Assad to choose between one weapon in his arsenal and the attention of his most capable adversary. He can either continue to use chemical weapons—a weapon with marginal effects in an already bloody war—or he can avoid the focused enmity of the United States. Each time Assad uses or is suspected of using chemical weapons, the United States can carry out an increasing campaign of denying him access to his other weapons. This progression would end in his being shorn of the very tools he needs most to prevail. So, he will back down. The Trump administration will be able to point to a limited military engagement that will have achieved its limited objective of ensuring that WMD use is not tolerated, a message of tremendous and ongoing importance in world affairs. Insufficiently clear about its strategic objectives at the outset, the Trump administration may be drawn into the broader Syrian quagmire. The risk is that success will breed failure, as it so often does in U.S. efforts in the region. The temptation of “mission creep” outlives the labels we apply to it in succeeding administrations. No one can or should be indifferent to pictures showing children as victims of attack, but a broader intervention risks the U.S. becoming a perpetrator of abuses as well as protector of the innocent. Insufficiently clear about its strategic objectives at the outset, the Trump administration may be drawn into the broader Syrian quagmire. Observers are already muddying the message from last week’s attack, in large part because the administration has not been explicit as to what the exact objective was. There is still time to delineate a doctrine that reinforces established U.S. policy: Use of WMD is incompatible with U.S. interests and those of the rest of the world, and will be met with vigorous consequences until a perpetrator either ceases or succumbs. Unfortunately, it is far from clear that the administration is aware of the potential for its own success. While the president said last week that the United States must “prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons,” he had previously, as a private citizen, criticized the Obama administration for considering intervention, arguing that the United States “should stay the hell out of Syria.” President Trump appears to be acting on instinct, posing the risk that he will fail to maintain a consistent position on the non-use of chemical weapons, either falling back into an extreme form of isolationism or allowing himself to be sucked into a broader, ill-defined, and ultimately futile set of objectives in Syria. One of the most difficult things for a great power to do, apparently, is to limit its own aspirations. Almost any of the finite things one can accomplish through force are possible given America’s extraordinary military means. Much less is likely, however, due to the lack of a U.S. appetite for yet another major ground conflict in the Middle East. In fact, as we often forget, most of what we desire most has already been achieved. As the greatest great power, we have aided, cajoled, or imposed much in the world that is to our liking. It would be very strange indeed if there were not a few items that escape our interest, if not necessarily our power. At the same time, core U.S. interests, and those of our partners, are imperiled by WMD. It is these weapons that pose the greatest danger to our way of life. We must oppose the use of weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological, nuclear) wherever they appear. To argue against acting on WMD use is to confuse a vital interest with an understandable anxiety about involvement in the Syrian civil war, a larger conflict in which our objectives are weak or inchoate. We may cheer the Trump administration on this point if they recognize, emphasize, and advertise this distinction, and follow through on their policy of eliminating WMD use. But they will undermine their own goals if they instead become mired in another futile effort at nation building in yet another foreign land. |
The highly acclaimed basketball video game series NBA 2K is scheduled to release it’s latest version on October 1 with the installment of NBA 2K14. The official trailer to the game was released Thursday, with the short video including video game highlights of James Harden and newest Houston Rockets center Dwight Howard. Unlike versions of the past, NBA 2K14 will feature a number of Euroleague teams: Alba Berlin FC Barcelona Real Madrid CSKA Moscow EA7 Emporio Armani Milano Montepaschi Siena Fenerbahçe Ülker Istanbul Alba Berlin FC Barcelona Real Madrid CSKA Moscow EA7 Emporio Armani Milano Montepaschi Siena Fenerbahçe Ülker Istanbul Anadolu Efes Istanbul Olympiacos Piraeus Panathinaikos Athens Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv Žalgiris Kaunas Unicaja Málaga Laboral Kutxa Vitoria Last but not least, a video game in this day and age wouldn’t be completed without music. The soundtrack to NBA 2K13 was the best ever for the 2K series that began in 1999; but last year’s game was produced by Jay-Z himself, so that doesn’t come as a surprise. In this year’s version, cover boy Lebron James served as the producer for the soundtrack, so here’s a look at the tunes that will be included: |
photo credit: YouTube via megaforcerecords 1976 Classic Gets A Facelift Covering a rock classic is no easy feat, especially when your musical style is so diametrically opposed to that of the band you’re covering. Thrash rock icons Anthrax had their work cut out for them when they tackled Kansas’ 1976 epic “Carry On Wayward Son” for their newly released album For All Kings, offering the classic up as a brilliant little bonus track that finds the New York based rockers in uncharted territory, exchanging their usual brand of speed and power for intricate guitar licks, vocal harmonies, and some pretty sweet organ work. You may also like… Advertisement I’ll admit – I was a little concerned, thinking Joey Belladonna and company would have turned “Carry On Wayward Son” into a thrashy masterpiece, but found myself pleasantly surprised when the boys recreated it nearly note for note, something drummer Charlie Benante says came as a result of being lifelong fans of both Kansas and this 1976 classic and only wanting to do them both justice: “I had to go back into the hard drive of my brain and remember how to play the song. We wanted to do it justice,” said Benante. Clearly, their hard work paid off; this cover of “Carry On Wayward Son” absolutely rocks, and I love being able to hear both Anthrax and Kansas shining through. Enjoy! |
I turned my back on the Guardian’s Comment is Free page for about five minutes on Thursday afternoon, and when I turned back around there was a piece by Emer O’Toole on men and feminism that had already reaped around 1300 comments. I clicked, expecting some provocative outrage above the line and a savage feeding-frenzy below. It wasn’t really the case. The comments, by the standard of CIF feminism, included an unusually high proportion of interesting and astute points and constructive exchanges. The article itself centred on a flowchart designed to test whether or not a man (although I see no reason why it should be restricted to men) can be classified as a feminist or not. Although she’s too polite to say so, the post is really a demolition of the facile yet almost ubiquitous trope that goes “Do you believe men and women should be equal? Congratulations, you’re a feminist.” A lot of the controversy and dispute in the comments spiralled around a couple of points that I have made myself in the past and broadly agree with. The first is that feminism is (and should be) a woman’s movement, led by women, for women and with women’s rights, welfare and issues at its heart. Feminism is not a broader movement for social justice and equality of all sorts (including issues which primarily affects men). That’s not to say feminism cannot or should not sit alongside other social justice movements (including those which do focus on men) – simply that it is not feminism’s job. The second point of agreement is that whether or not someone should be described as a feminist is not necessarily that big a deal. You don’t have to be a feminist. There are plenty of ways to be awesome without working towards equal rights for women. For example, if you answered “Who do you think is more disadvantaged by gender inequality?” with “Women, but I’m still more interested in talking about men,” that’s fine. Leaving aside the use of the phrase “be awesome” (cringe), and the fact that Emer goes on to pick out the Good Men Project as an example of said awesomeness (GMP and I have history) – I think this is pretty much spot on. There is no obligation to be feminist, and not being so doesn’t necessarily make you personally or politically bad. It would be an interesting experiment to stop 100 random women in the street and take them through the flowchart. My guess is it would go a long way to answering the question which so often vexes mainstream liberal feminism, as to why a large majority of women choose not to identify as feminists. That said, I do have a few issues with the analysis here. The first is the point of identification. This kind of reified, mechanistic approach removes any real personal choice from the question of whether or not someone is a feminist. It becomes a matter of pathological diagnosis instead (like “congratulations! You have syphilis!”) To me this misses one of the most important elements to the equation. I know several people who have made a conscious and conscientious decision to opt out of the label ‘feminism’ out of frustration, disgust or despair at the way the feminist mainstream deals with issues of concern to them – for example, white privilege and racism; sex worker rights or male victims of domestic and sexual abuse. It seems egregious to assume the authority to impose the label on people who may not wish to accept it, and arrogant to assume that everyone would want to be so defined. My other theoretical issue with the post is that it positions feminism purely around matters of equality. As one persistent commenter rightly pointed out repeatedly below the line, the assumptions underpinning the question would be rejected out of hand by bell hooks, for starters, who would surely react by asking “equal with which men?” Emer insists that to quibble over definitions of equality is enough to send you straight to the ‘Not a feminist’ box. Really? Meanwhile, I can’t help thinking of the kind of religious traditionalist who says things like “I believe Our Lord made men and women equal, which is why he decided that men should have the important job of going outside and earning money while women should have the equally important job of staying home, raising her family and keeping herself and her home all clean and purdey.” Is that a feminist belief? As most feminists identified decades ago, the central issue is not about simple equality, but about personal, political and economic power and their distribution at the micro and macro levels. That is precisely why feminism began talking less about equal rights for women, and more about patriarchy. They are not the same issues. I suppose we could start the flowchart with the question “Do you wish to challenge social, cultural and political structures which curtail and prescribe gender roles which systematically entrench disproportionate power relations between men and women within the context of a hegemonic capitalist system that is sustained by interlinked networks of oppression?” but I accept you would struggle to squeeze it into a little box on a flowchart. |
Amid reports, speculation and confusion over whether Russia interfered in the presidential election, it looks like Russia is also interfering a little closer to home. KQED has discovered that the leader of Yes California — an organized, supposedly San Diego-based effort to have California secede from the nation — is an American who lives in Russia and runs the independence campaign from there. Despite having lived in San Diego’s Golden Hill neighborhood at one point, KQED reports 30-year-old Louis Marinelli lives in a town on the edge of Siberia. They also report that he studied at St. Petersburg State University and is married to a Russian citizen. He admitted to living in Russia, saying he still considers himself to be a Californian, but that he moved back to Russia to “handle some personal issues.” He also talked about it recently on CNN. Does his residency matter to you? Should it? The idea of seceding from California — which many are referring to as Calexit, a borrowed termed from the U.K.’s British exit from the European Union or Brexit — gained steam after the presidential election. Californians overwhelmingly voted for Hillary Clinton and many took to social media to call for California to take its values and political beliefs and bail out of the United States. https://twitter.com/projectcreator/status/796200706050912256?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/herbivorre/status/796270876480049152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Democracy in America is doomed. We're going to rescue a piece of it with <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CalExit?src=hash">#CalExit</a>. <a href="https://t.co/pVhNK2qVsK">https://t.co/pVhNK2qVsK</a></p>— My Work Here Is Done (@MyWorkHeresDone) <a href="https://twitter.com/MyWorkHeresDone/status/809820675204517888">December 16, 2016</a></blockquote> <snap_script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></snap_snap_snap_script> Whether the tweeters and Facebooker were just joking around or really meant it, the Yes California campaign and its leader are very serious. However, as we’ve previously explained here at The Conversation, it would be extremely hard to make it happen. So does the campaign being run from Russia give you pause? Should the efforts continue? Let us know at @sdutideas. Email: abby.hamblin@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @abbyhamblin ALSO Calexit? Some California voters reject Trump, advocate 'secession' Calexit: How secession would actually work in California (if it could, which it can't) Calexit: All this secession talk is just a waste of time in California |
Network: ABC Air Date: 1990 Writer: David Lynch and Mark Frost Creator: David Lynch and Mark Frost Stars: Kyle MacLachlan, Michael Ontkean, Mädchen Amick, Dana Ashbrook, Richard Beymer, Lara Flynn Boyle, Joan Chen, Eric Da Re, Sherilyn Fenn Premise: An FBI agent arrives in the town of Twin Peaks to investigate the murder of high school student Laura Palmer. "She's dead, wrapped in plastic." And so begins David Lynch and Mark Frost's small-town murder mystery Twin Peaks, the likes of which we will never again seen on network television. We'll never see it again because now this kind of show—off-kilter, with a slippery tone and bizarre subject matter that's hilarious and revolting all at once—would be made on cable or a premium station. Likely the series would become even more violent, sexual, and profane on, say, HBO, but watching Lynch work his singular magic within the confines of network standards is what makes Twin Peaks so great. Because he can't be as fucked up as he normally would, he pulls different tricks from his bag. The tricks are the characters, and the pilot brings out the entire town in the wake of the murder. Laura Palmer, high school sweetheart, has been found dead. And yes, wrapped in plastic. FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) is the strange in town handling the case. What comes next is a strange joy. —RS |
“You can’t kill me. You’re just a man, and no man can kill me.” When this show says it’s going to do something, it does it. It wastes no time playing cute games or throwing in filler, and as much as a Chayton-Hood showdown would make for an exciting season finale, it works just as well here in episode eight. “All the Wisdom I Got Left” is a satisfying, thrilling, and brutal close to the Chayton-Hood storyline, and once again, it is Banshee operating at its best. The setting is key toward crafting the mood of this episode. The show creates a surreality around the New Orleans environment, taking us from a swamp to an underground fight club to a cemetery to the waterside, and it’s almost as if the only two inhabitants of the city are Chayton and Hood. It’s only fitting, considering how many clashes they’ve had over the last few episodes and how personal the dynamic has grown since Chayton snapped Siobhan’s neck. Even in the fight club, the two lock eyes in the midst of a rowdy group of spectators, and it’s as if all else around them stops moving as they fight to a gritty stalemate. At this point, you know that it is on, and it only gets better from there. The knife fight between the two later on is a brilliantly choreographed and directed piece of work–as is the norm for this show–but the subsequent sequence that ends in Chayton’s death also illustrates another aspect of this rivalry: the fact that Chayton underestimates Lucas Hood. He spends quite a bit of time mocking Hood and Siobhan, and well, I guess you can’t blame him for thinking he’s indestructible when he looks the way he does. Over the past two weeks, though, we’ve been seeing a few cracks in his seemingly impenetrable physique, and we’ve seen evidence that Hood can wound him, can get to him. Instead of him being the attacker–like he was during the attack on the station–he’s now the one being chased through New Orleans. In this episode, there is some acknowledgment of Hood’s determination and skill at the end by him, but ultimately, Chayton dies with the mindset that he is supreme, that he is a warrior who understands “purity [and] true purpose”. In the end, Lucas Hood is the one who lives, but he is still profoundly affected by recent events. Now that he’s avenged Siobhan’s death, he simply wants to get out, to leave Banshee and its sheriff department behind. At the same time, though, this is what he does and this is who he is, and everyone around him realizes this. Brock knows that he’s not really a cop, and asserts that he just doesn’t really care anymore about who Hood is. He just wants to take down Proctor and to keep his town safe, and as much as Hood is deeply affected by his line of work–as human as he really is–he is also someone who is drawn to this danger. And so, he heads back to Banshee, ready to face whatever is thrown at him next. GRADE: A- OTHER THOUGHTS: -Dammit, Chayton, I thought you were going to rise from the dead in the post-credits scene. -The chase scene really reminds me of the first sequence of the season. Also, I love how Lucas’s final line before blasting Chayton away–“Hey”–is not some badass, cliche catchphrase. It fits with the character, and it’s simple, yet powerful. -The Kai-Burton flashback is very well done here: disturbing, yet moving at the same time. This show is able to not only insert little moments like these without having them feel intrusive, but also to find nuance and pathos in the unlikeliest of places. The balance found week to week is truly something to be admired. -Speaking of Burton, how ’bout that scene between him and Rebecca, right? Burton’s probably one of the most fascinating characters I’ve seen on television in a while. -I wrote solely about the Hood-Chayton storyline in the main review, but there are still some excellent scenes throughout the remainder of the hour that I did not mention. The Job-Sugar plot is poignant and well handled by Hoon Lee/Frankie Faison, and it’s a nice exploration of the idea of taking accountability for the past. It’s a different angle to take on the “make them pay” mentality of Colonel Douglas Stowe (or of Hood with regards to Chayton Littlestone). -So, right after Kai is accepted back by his father, he gets taken by Frazier’s men. It’ll be interesting to see in the next two episodes how the Rebecca-Kai divide plays out, as the former’s actions are certainly leading to major consequences for the latter. -Stowe is shot from the back at the end, just like Littlestone is at the beginning. -Two left this season. Also, the show has been renewed for an 8-episode season four! Photo credit: Banshee, Cinemax |
NFL Sunday Ticket is an out-of-market sports package that broadcasts National Football League (NFL) regular season games unavailable on local affiliates. It carries all regional Sunday afternoon games produced by Fox and CBS. The ideal customer of this package is presumed (based on advertisements) to be a fan of a team who is unable to see their team on local television because they do not reside in one of that team's markets, or sports bars who want to increase business by attracting fans of out of town teams. The package is distributed in the United States exclusively by AT&T Inc. under its DirecTV unit (which also offers it on the Internet, on certain tablets and smartphones, and JetBlue flights); in Canada on streaming service DAZN, in Mexico and Latin America on SKY México, in South America and the Caribbean on Vrio, and several cable providers in The Bahamas and Bermuda. United States [ edit ] Satellite TV provider DirecTV has exclusive rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket package in the United States until the end of the 2022 NFL season. Although other satellite and cable providers supposedly are allowed to bid on the rights to carry NFL Sunday Ticket if they agree to carry the NFL Network, DirecTV decided to extend their current contract beyond 2014 by paying the NFL $1.5 billion per year for the next eight years. Reaching the deal was also a condition of AT&T's 2015 acquisition of DirecTV.[1][2] As of the 2015 season, the service is now available through an online-only subscription exclusively for those who are unable to use DirecTV services.[3] NFL Sunday Ticket viewers do not count towards local Nielsen ratings; thus offering NFL Sunday Ticket on cable might cost CBS and Fox affiliates millions of dollars in lost revenue from local commercial breaks (as opposed to national ads sold by the networks). In turn, affiliates help subsidize the networks' programming costs. Since the launch of new satellites, DirecTV no longer drops other HD feeds to broadcast the NFL Sunday Ticket games in HD. DirecTV offers a free preview of NFL Sunday Ticket for the first week of the season. Blackouts [ edit ] Games scheduled to air on the local Fox and CBS affiliates within a viewer's designated media market (determined by the ZIP Code of the viewer's address) are blacked out on the NFL Sunday Ticket feed sent to their receiver. Viewers must watch these games on their local broadcast stations instead.[4] (This applies to live streaming of said games as well.) Until the end of the 2014 season, if a game the viewer wished to watch was blacked out in their home market because it was not sold out, the game remained blacked out on NFL Sunday Ticket. Games joined or switched away from in progress usually had their blackout status altered immediately.[citation needed] The NFL suspended the local blackout policy for the 2015 NFL regular season, and has since done so indefinitely.[5] Extra features [ edit ] DirecTV offers the following extra features. From 2005–09 these features were part of an add-on package called Superfan and cost $100 extra. As of 2012, some of them are part of the NFL Sunday Ticket Max package which costs an extra $100.[6] Since 2009, all games have been in high definition. The HD games were formerly part of the Superfan package. Game Mix This channel shows eight games at once, along with the game's score, time left in the game, and the quarter that the game is in under the game's feed. Starting in 2008, it added a high-definition feed, and in 2011, it added larger cells when four or fewer games are being played. Red Zone Channel This channel acts as a viewer's "remote control" and switches around various NFL games as plays of interest occur (scoring plays, key turnovers, etc.) The coverage is hosted by NFL Network's Andrew Siciliano and has been offered on some airlines, such as JetBlue. As of 2012, it is only available on the new NFL Sunday Ticket Max package.[6] As of the 2007 season, this channel is provided in HD. Note: This is not to be confused with the Scott Hanson-hosted NFL RedZone, which is produced separately by NFL Network. That channel airs at the same time on Dish Network, various cable systems, and also on Verizon Wireless smartphones. Short Cuts This two-channel duo recaps every NFL game in 30 minutes or less, including games not available on NFL Sunday Ticket because they were televised locally or blacked out. One channel shows AFC games while the other shows NFC games. These highlights are made available on Sunday nights and are shown continuously until Tuesday morning. As of 2012, it is only available on the new NFL Sunday Ticket Max package.[6] Highlights on Demand DirecTV subscribers with interactive DVRs receive a three- to four-minute recap of every NFL Sunday Ticket game on demand with this feature, via channel 1005. As of 2012, it is only available on the new NFL Sunday Ticket Max package.[6] NFL.com Fantasy Football TV app Starting in 2011, the NFL.com Fantasy Football TV app will allow NFL.com fantasy players with Internet-connected set-top boxes to view their NFL.com Fantasy Football teams and scores directly on their TV screen. Computers, tablets and smartphones [ edit ] NFL Sunday Ticket Max subscribers can also stream games on the Internet and their smartphones and tablets.[6] Starting in 2009, NFL Sunday Ticket To Go is also available to non-DirecTV subscribers who are unable to receive satellite television in their homes or apartments due to line of sight issues. The cost is $50 more than those with DirecTV service. DirecTV offers NFL Sunday Ticket To Go on Motorola Xoom and Samsung Galaxy tablets; Motorola Android phones; the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry OS devices with 3G or wifi, Palm Pre/Pixi, and other Droid-branded phones. Gaming consoles [ edit ] For those who do not have DirecTV, the NFL offers the Sunday Ticket package for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One video game consoles.[7][8] JetBlue [ edit ] Starting on October 3, 2010, DirecTV began offering the full slate of NFL Sunday Ticket games on JetBlue flights to 50 destinations across the United States. History [ edit ] The concept of NFL Sunday Ticket was largely invented by Jon Taffer during his three-year term on the board of NFL Enterprises, along with NFL Chief of Marketing Michael Miller.[9] NFL Sunday Ticket was launched in 1994 and was available on both DirecTV (which had launched just months earlier) and on C band and K u band satellites, for which the receiving dishes are larger in size.[citation needed] Within several years, the service became available on various cable systems in Canada as well.[citation needed] International distribution [ edit ] NFL Sunday Ticket is also available in Mexico, Latin America, Bermuda, The Bahamas and Canada (for business customers only). Canada [ edit ] NFL Sunday Ticket was previously available in Canada through most major pay television providers, often in a bundle with other sports packages. In July 2017, it was announced that the streaming service DAZN had acquired the rights to the NFL's out-of-market package beginning in the 2017 NFL season. The games previously available through this service, as well as NFL Game Pass, are bundled with the provider's service in Canada.[10][11][12] However, after DAZN's Canadian launch was met with frequent technical problems and user criticism, DAZN announced that it had begun to offer NFL Sunday Ticket to television providers as an alternative to its over-the-top product.[13] México and Central America [ edit ] South America and Caribbean [ edit ] Brazil [ edit ] Bermuda [ edit ] Bahamas [ edit ] See also [ edit ] References [ edit ] NFL Sunday Ticket |
Governor Jan Brewer signed the bill into law. Ariz. gun buybacks now sell-agains Arizona cities and counties that hold community gun buyback events will have to sell the surrendered weapons instead of destroying them under a bill Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law Monday. The bill was championed by Republicans in the GOP-controlled Legislature who argued that municipalities were skirting a 2010 law that was tightened last year and requires police to sell seized weapons to federally licensed dealers. They argued that destroying property turned over to the government is a waste of taxpayer resources. Story Continued Below Democrats who argued against the bill said it usurps local control and goes against the wishes of people who turn over their unwanted weapons to keep them out of the hands of children or thieves. A second bill signed by Brewer on Monday bars cities, towns and counties from collecting or maintaining any identifying information about a person who owns or sells a firearm. Buybacks are popular among some police and elected officials who either pay cash or hand out gift cards in exchange for weapons. Tucson and other Arizona communities destroyed weapons from the events, arguing that because the guns were voluntarily surrendered, the laws concerning weapons seized by authorities didn’t apply. House Bill 2455 prompted a furious debate in the state Senate, where Democrats accused Republicans of complaining about an overbearing federal government but then turning around and dictating policies to local governments. Brewer’s office did not release any signing letter accompanying the announcement of more than 30 bill she signed Monday evening, but the Republican governor is a strong gun-rights supporter and had signed the 2010 and 2012 laws. The governor’s office said it received nearly 2,000 letters, emails or phone calls about the bill, with only 25 opposed. One of the letters in support was from the National Rifle Association, which argued that selling seized or forfeited guns “would maintain their value, and their sale to the public would help recover public funds.” The NRA letter said the bill doesn’t prevent a private group from holding an event and destroying the weapons. “However, this measure would ensure that taxpayer resources are not utilized to pursue a political agenda of destroying firearms,” according to the letter, sent April 22 and signed by Brent Gardner with the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action. Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, a Democrat who champions the buyback events and survived being shot in the buttocks at the end of a 1997 Board of Supervisors meeting, sent a letter to Brewer urging a veto. The bill “would force the resale of guns that would otherwise never have been used for violence,” she wrote. “How many lives would be lost through the use of weapons our citizens hoped to be removed from the hands of criminals?” |
No, Sony's not coming out with a new augmented-reality toy just yet, but that doesn't mean it isn't working behind the scenes to make its graphics look a little more... believable. The company just posted two videos out of its PlayStation lab in Japan, both of which hint at what it could be like to play future PlayStation Move games. In the first, we see a man holding two three-dimensional boxes, one of them with water inside (Sony's signature rubber duckie is there too). As he pours the water back and forth from one box to the other, we see the water splash up onto the floor and sloshing back and forth, sometimes even covering the duck. Not "believable," you say? Check out the second video, which shows someone casting a flashlight on a dinosaur in a darkened room (just go with it, OK), with the shadows changing as the light moves on and off the subject. We've embedded both vids below, though you might still want to check out Sony's PlayStation blog post -- there's reference to some new trading-card recognition feature, though there's sadly no video demo to go with it. |
BANGALORE: The ancestors of most Asian populations, including the Chinese and southeast Asians, came from India, a new genetic study across 10 countries has revealed. The study found that humans first migrated to the Indian subcontinent from Africa some 100,000 years ago and then spread to other parts of Asia."When humans moved out of Africa, there was a migration to India and from India to southeast Asia and then east Asia, and finally to the Americas. So, all Asians have a genetic connection with India," Mitali Mukerji, a scientist from the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology who was in the team, said.The study — Mapping Human Genetic History in Asia — was conducted in 10 Asian countries including India. Apart from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research DG Samir Brahmachari, the Indian study team comprised eight members and some students from IGIB, New Delhi, anthropologist Partha Majumdar and researchers from the Centre for Genomic Applications.The study contradicts earlier findings that humans directly went to East Asia from Africa. The study found remarkable similarities between the Dravidian population of south India and specific populations in Malaysia and Singapore. More interestingly, north Indians and Dravidians, too, were found to be genetically connected — meaning there are similarities in their gene structures. |
A professor at a prestigious private university is expressing remorse for a provocative tweet about the Texas church shooting, saying “frustration” led him to lash out at the GOP and NRA. The tweet—posted Sunday night in response to the mass-shooting at a Texas church which left at least 26 dead—suggests that the National Rifle Association and the Republican Party secretly desire such massacres. "Now that my emotions have cooled somewhat, I do not actually believe the GOP or NRA wants mass shootings." [RELATED: Prof suggests Texans deserve hurricane for supporting Trump] “There is no rational alternative. The GOP and NRA must, in fact, want mass shootings,” the professor postulated, reasoning that “It serves their interests.” Campus Reform reached out to the professor, whose name has been redacted, in an attempt to get additional context for his comment, and received a thorough and contrite response, which is published in its entirety below: “The tweet was sent in a moment of supreme frustration and sorrow after hearing the news of the shooting in Texas. I kept asking myself why the GOP and NRA would not support some more aggressive efforts at gun control to stop these increasingly frequent mass shootings. “There is so much death, so much violence, so much heartache that results from these massacres. And it seemed all we could get from the GOP, which controls most of the levers of power in the country, was ‘thoughts and prayers.’ That did not seem like an adequate response. So I asked myself, if the GOP and NRA were acting rationally and in their own interest, why would they not do more? I concluded not doing more must somehow be in their rational interest. “Upon reflection, now that my emotions have cooled somewhat, I do not actually believe the GOP or NRA wants mass shootings. I do believe, however, that gun control is a losing issue for Democrats, and opposition to gun control tends to be a winning issue for Republicans. So although the GOP and NRA most certainly do not want mass shootings, they welcome the gun control debate because it energizes their base and helps with fundraising. So that’s what I meant when I said it was in their interest.” The professor also added that “I do not bring my political views into the classroom” and that “my tweets are my own and do not represent my employer.” The employer is, however, listed in the professor’s Twitter bio. [RELATED: Students, donors fleeing Drexel over prof’s inflammatory tweets] When asked whether this incident might be informative in more general terms, the professor said that he thinks “we should all do what we can to live up to our highest values at all times,” but also acknowledged that, “we are all human, and sometimes, in the heat of the moment, we fall short of our own highest aspirations.” “It is very difficult to know what the right thing is to do on social media,” the professor continued. “The default mode for Twitter discourse is vitriolic anger, and I fall into that mode myself sometimes. Twitter especially, because of the 140 character limit, encourages brief, snarky jibes over thoughtful analysis.” The professor went on to contend that the problem is not confined merely to social media, pointing out that political rhetoric in all forms has grown increasingly harsh in the current political climate. [RELATED: Marxist prof doubles down on ‘Trump must hang’ tweet] “One way of thinking about angry rhetoric is to say it's divisive, failing to unite us. Another way, often espoused on the Right, is to say this is a free marketplace of ideas, and that an adversarial system allows the best ideas to rise to the surface,” the professor explained. “I think any realistic appraisal of the current situation would have to conclude that the country is, in fact, quite badly divided along ideological lines. Under such circumstances, it is hard to imagine what language could unify us.” The professor concluded by noting that there is perhaps no perfect response to tragedies with relevance to political debates, remarking that “To say nothing seems to endorse the status quo (mass shootings, thoughts and prayers). To attack the GOP and NRA strikes you as divisive. To offer only sympathy for the victims and families seems too weak a response, especially if one believes, as I do, that policy solutions could minimize future harms.” Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @asabes10 |
When Minneapolis mom Stephanie Brodegard leaves the grocery store, people do a double take. Brodegard doesn’t load the groceries — and her three kids — into the family minivan. Instead, they’re all loaded on her cargo bike. When she hitches a trailer to the bike, she can carry even more. “I can haul up to five kids or my three kids and a bunch of groceries,” she said. The bikes — “long tails” with an extended frame behind the seat or “front-loaders” with a big, low-slung bin in front of the handlebars — are being used by local riders to haul the bulky, heavy, everyday stuff of life: bags of compost, kegs of beer, barbecue grills, coolers, lawn mowers, boxes of cat litter, Costco-sized bales of toilet paper, even other bikes. Surprisingly, they’re proving especially popular with families, who see them as two-wheeled minivans. Rob DeHoff, owner of Varsity Bike and Transit in the Dinkytown area of Minneapolis, said the decision to buy a cargo bike is largely driven by moms. “It’s women who say, ‘I don’t want to have to drive,’ ” he said. Stephanie Brodegard reached for a water bottle after getting her three kids situated on her cargo bike after picking up her son. Grant, 6, from school. Some families are using them to downsize from two cars to one. Others, such as the Brodegards, are relying on the two-wheeled haulers to replace the family car altogether. At least for a little while. Brodegard, her husband, Bill, and their three kids — Grant, 6; Darcy, 4; and Lewis, 1 — are halfway through what they’re calling “the bike year.” “We just like adventures and we like bikes,” Stephanie Brodegard said. “We like the Earth, too.” So they asked themselves, “How can we have an adventure with bikes that doesn’t cost a lot of money?” The answer was to let Bill’s parents drive away with their only car, a 2013 Hyundai sedan with heated seats. Since March, Bill has been commuting by bike about 20 miles a day round-trip to his job in Bloomington, where he’s director of food safety at Schwan’s. Stephanie, a stay-at-home mom, is using one of their two cargo bikes for every trip she needs to make — to school, church and the YMCA, as well as the grocery store. Her long-tail Yuba bike has a platform behind the seat to carry passengers or cargo and an electric-assist motor to help get up hills or ease long trips. Cargo bikes aren’t new. They’re been around for decades, used for deliveries and other commercial tasks. Luke Breen, the owner of Perennial Cycle in Minneapolis, started carrying front-loading cargo bikes about 11 years ago. Back then, they were marketed as a two-wheeled version of a pickup truck. “It was a flop,” he said. Then about six years ago, he started selling Yuba bikes, which can be accessorized to carry passengers as well as heavy loads. “It was all about carrying kids, and that just changed everything,” Breen said. DeHoff said he now sells so many cargo bikes that “it’s gotten to the point where it’s not a weird thing anymore,” he said. Going ‘car lite’ Of course, not everyone is going carless like the Brodegards. Many, however, are going “car lite” with the help of a cargo bike. Stay-at-home dad Casey Andrus of Minneapolis and his wife sold one of their two cars and replaced it with a cargo bike made by a Dutch company, Babboe. Their bike features a big, low-slung wooden cargo box mounted between the handlebars and the front wheel of the bike. The box, which Andrus has decorated with Grateful Dead decals, has a bench seat and shoulder straps for a passenger and is big enough to carry Andrus’ 2½-year-old son, Bruce, as well as the family’s two 50-pound English bulldogs. They also take along a Bluetooth speaker to play the Grateful Dead as they ride. Bill and Stephanie Brodegard of Minneapolis biked home from their son’s school along Minnehaha Creek with all three of their kids seated on the back rack of Stephanie’s cargo bike. The kids are, front to back, Darcy, 4; Grant, 6; and Lewis, 1. “Bruce and I are big Deadheads,” Andrus said. “I just chauffeur him and the dogs around when they need to go someplace.” Chrissy Kannas of Minneapolis has transported her four kids, ages 1 to 7, about 1,000 miles around town over the course of the summer, using an electric-assist cargo bike. “There’s no stress to it. You use it like a car. Pile them on, and go to the pool,” she said. “We’ve hardly used the minivan.” Parents who use cargo bikes say they are an improvement over Burley-style, pull-behind trailers. “The trailers really weren’t that much different from riding in a minivan,” Breen said. “On the cargo bikes, kids are much more engaged in the experience.” Andrus agreed. “It’s more time that he and I talk,” he said of biking with his son. But the bikes aren’t cheap. Nonmotorized cargo bikes can cost $1,000 to $3,000. And electric-assist models, such as the Yuba Spicy Curry bike used by the Brodegards, cost about $4,000. Still, riders say they can save money over the long haul by avoiding the expense of gas, insurance and repairs for a car. A ‘bike year’ On the first week of school, Stephanie Brodegard loaded Darcy and Lewis on her lime-green Yuba Spicy Curry to pick up Grant at school. When they arrived at Burroughs Community School in south Minneapolis, there was another mom with her own cargo bike. Melissa Albert had come to pick up her 10-year-old daughter, Kate, from fourth grade. When she bought the bike six years ago, she couldn’t find it in a local shop, so she ordered it online. “I really wanted to get exercise, and I wanted a way not to ignore my kids when I get exercise,” Albert said. After picking up Grant, the Brodegards biked to the Southdale YMCA in Edina. While Darcy took a tumbling class and Grant went to basketball practice, Brodegard biked with Lewis to a Target and loaded three sacks of groceries in the trailer before taking everyone home. The Brodegards have a blog, The Bike Year, which they call an “adventure blog about a family whose big adventures might consist of getting rained on a lot.” Posts are titled “How do you go to the airport?” “What do you do when it rains? (Part II)” and “This was actually Steph’s idea.” In their blog, they admitted that Grant was at first skeptical about giving up the family car — even though it meant that they could keep the trampoline in the driveway. “He was asking about our car daily. He was saying, ‘When are we going to get our car back?’ ” Stephanie said. Bill said he and Stephanie have a plan for the car, “but Grant will not like it.” Bill added, “Later on, when they are older, our children will have loads and loads of character. They will thank us. Or burn us in effigy.” The Brodegards aren’t sure how their experiment will work over the winter. Stephanie plans to dress the kids in snow gear when it gets colder. Two of them will fit in the trailer, which offers some protection from the elements. “I guess the third one will have to be tougher,” she said. She’s also working on building a shelter out of plastic tubing that can fit over the back of the bike. But for now, a cargo bike is the way the family wants to travel. “It feels like an outing every time we go out,” Bill said. |
This review is for the "Barnana Organic Chewy Banana Bites, Coconut, 3.5 Ounce, 3 Count", though I will also mention the original flavor towards the end for comparison. I was first introduced to the Barnana products after searching for a healthy new snack that both my two year old nephew and I could enjoy on the go. My nephew was absolutely crazy about dehydrated foods, but it seems the thrill of dehydrated foods has slowly died down with the maturing of his taste buds. When I came across the Barnana products I was very excited to try them out, as the ingredients and natural dehydration process sounded both healthy and delicious. For my initial order, I decided to try out the "original" as well as the "coconut flavor". The bags are 3.5 ounces, which makes them the perfect size for throwing into a lunch or diaper bag. When my orders arrived, I decided to try the coconut flavor first, and in the end I am very glad I chose to try that flavor before the original variation. Prior to ordering this product, I was well aware that the product appears to be either brown or black in color, which helped me avoid the confusion/surprise many people faced when trying out the product for the first time. I'll admit, the color doesn't exactly make the product very appealing, but if you prepare yourself with the fact that this is a natural as well as expected part of the dehydration process that Barnana uses, it's something that can be easily overcome. As I stated earlier, I first tried out the Coconut flavor. I honestly didn't count, but if I had to guess I would say that each bag contains maybe around 10 bite size chewy Banana squares. Once again, the color isn't exactly the most appealing, but the natural banana scent along with the coconut flakes does help make the initial tasting test much easier. It didn't take long after trying my first coconut square that I fell in love with this snack, I immediately went back on Amazon to order two more shipments. The moisture that each chewy bite sized square contains is the perfect amount, giving them a texture that I found rather enjoyable. The square bites definitely taste like bananas, and the coconut flakes are a very nice compliment to the natural banana taste. My nephew absolutely loves them, to the point that he doesn't even want to share them with me anymore. I've usually packed this snack when going to the park with my nephew, and so far the Miami Heat has yet to melt these bites into a big chunk of goo like some other people have experienced on here. So whoever these people are ordering the product from must be doing a very bad job at storing these snacks. I believe I've ordered seven or eight shipments directly from Amazon.com, and I've never had any issues with the product arriving in anything less than perfect condition. Now to share my experience with trying the original flavor. I was expecting the banana pieces to be squares just like the coconut flavor, however, the original flavor contains random shapes and sizes. I preferred the square sized bites from the coconut flavor, but I suppose in the end the shape of it doesn't really alter from the flavor itself. Though one thing I found extremely disappointing about the original flavor was that these pieces had a lot harder texture. At times, I felt like I was eating banana jerky, and not the delicious banana snack the coconut flavor introduced me to. I wouldn't say that the flavor is bad, but the original flavor just felt too dry for me. I am not exactly sure why the moisture level and texture vary so much between the original flavor and the coconut one, as they both claim to have reduced 80% of the water level in the bananas. The only difference is that the coconut variation contains 1/4 of a coconut but in turn has one less banana than the original flavor. But I guess that little change is what makes a huge difference in the texture between the two variations. Had I tried the original flavor before trying the coconut one, I probably wouldn't have re-ordered the product. But luckily for my nephew and I, we tried the coconut variation first and we've definitely become a big fan of this snack. [Summary] Pros: -Coconut flavor Banana bites have a great texture and are extremely delicious. -Coconut flavor chewy bites are bite size squares, making them a healthy and delicious snack that even my two year old nephew can enjoy. -The 3.5 oz bags are the perfect size for an on the go snack that can easily fit into a diaper bag, lunch bag, or even the back of a cycling jersey. -Great alternative snack for cyclists. I can easily store this snack in my biking jersey. -Original and Coconut flavors only contain non-genetically modified organic fruit/drupe and nothing else. No added sugar or preservatives that we may commonly find in other fruit snacks. -Gluten free -Good source of potassium and fiber, though I would be careful feeding too many of these chewy bites to little kids as it can definitely increase their bowel movements. Not ideal when you plan to be out for an extended period of time. -Not sure whether this is a pro or con, but the coconut bites are dangerously addictive Cons: -Color isn't the most appealing, as people usually associate browning or blackening with rotten bananas. But rest assure, it is normal for them to be that color as Barnana uses a natural process of dehydrating the bananas without adding other ingredients or using preservatives in their original or coconut flavor. I can't speak for the other flavor variations as I haven't tried them nor have I looked up their ingredients. -Original flavor variation has a much harder texture than the coconut square bites, it almost feels like banana jerky at times. -The original flavor bites come in weird shapes. Not the biggest issue in the world, but when you get used to the coconut square bites the random shapes from the original flavor aren't as appealing. -Not exactly the cheapest dehydrated fruit snack out there -People have reported having their Barnana products arrive molted, sticky, goo'ed, etc. I have ordered a few shipments directly from Amazon.com and never have faced any of those issues. I recommend that you are very careful from which seller you order the snack from, as you don't know what kind of condition the seller stores the product in. The safest bet is probably ordering directly from Amazon, or at the very least fulfilled by Amazon. In Conclusion: I highly recommend the coconut flavor, as it is both chewy and tastes great. However, I am not sure I can recommend the original flavor. I would probably give the original flavor a 3/5 stars, as the consistency nor flavor is anywhere as good as the coconut variation. It seems my nephew still somewhat enjoys the original flavor, though clearly not as much as the coconut ones as he has yet to finish a bag of the original flavor. My biggest recommendation is to simply stick to the coconut flavor, and be sure to pay close attention to the seller. I hope you guys enjoy the snack as much as I do! |
Shortly after we launched some adblockers and even antiviruses began blocking Coinhive. We have outlined our ideas about this issue in our previous blog post and we're happy to report that we have a solution: AuthedMine. AuthedMine enforces an explicit opt-in from the end user to run the miner. We have gone through great lengths to ensure that our implementation of the opt-in can not be circumvented and we pledge that it will stay this way. The AuthedMine miner will never start without the user's consent. In turn, we hope that Adblockers and Antiviruses acknowledge the legitimate use and value of Cryptominers when the user gives an explicit opt-in. There is no need for them to block the AuthedMine implementation. Here is an example of the opt-in screen for the JavaScript API. Transitioning to AuthedMine If you already implemented Coinhive on your website, you don't have to do anything. Our previous solutions will continue to work exactly as they did. However, we want to encourage you to use our new opt-in solution if you can. If you want to switch, for the Simple UI and the [Captcha[(/documentation/captcha) all you have to do is to load the new JavaScript files from authedmine.com instead of the ones hosted on coinhive.com . You only lose the autostart ability, but will benefit from not being adblocked. I.e. for the new AuthedMine Captcha: <script src="https://authedmine.com/lib/captcha.min.js" async></script> And the Simple Miner UI: <script src="https://authedmine.com/lib/simple-ui.min.js" async></script> The switch to our new JavaScript API is equally simple. You just have to load the authedmine.min.js instead of the coinhive.min.js . The API works exactly as before, but the miner.start() call will now present an opt-in screen tothe user. <script src="https://authedmine.com/lib/authedmine.min.js"></script> Please refer to our AuthedMine documentation for all the details. A Note to Adblock and Antivirus Vendors We urge you to please read this blog post and our AuthedMine documentation carefully. You will find that there's no need to block authedmine.com or any files on this domain and we promise it will stay this way. If you have any questions, please get in touch. We strongly believe in the future of this project. We want to do this right and we hope you will support us. posted on October 16, 2017, the Coinhive Team |
Advisers for former shadow cabinet ministers have House of Commons security access taken away without notice in ‘bully boy tactics’ Jeremy Corbyn’s office has been accused of “petty” and “ludicrous” behaviour after advisers working for his former shadow cabinet ministers were suddenly denied entry to the House of Commons. A string of advisers had their passes blocked on Friday, after the House of Commons sergeant-at-arms was sent an email on behalf of Karie Murphy in Corbyn’s office saying they no longer work for the Labour party. The incident has angered some former shadow cabinet ministers at a time when Corbyn has said publicly that he is seeking to unify the party and reach out to the dozens of rebel MPs who resigned their front bench roles. One aide, who still works for a former shadow cabinet minister, said: “I had my pass taken away. Another person went to the gym at lunch time and couldn’t get out ... One member doesn’t have the right to revoke the pass of another member’s staff.” Chris Bryant, the former shadow leader of the House of Commons, said it was a terrible way to treat staff members, branding it petty and “vindictive, gratuitous nastiness”. “It is the kind of thing you’d expect from a ludicrous authoritarian City bank,” he said. “It completely misunderstands that MPs do actually have a job to do and is classic bully boy tactics – not to have the courtesy to tell people when we’ve suspended their right to go into the office.” Neil Kinnock urges people to join Labour to vote against Corbyn Read more It is understood the staff members affected were advisers who lost their roles when their bosses resigned from the front bench. They were paid by the Labour party but many are staying on to work for their old bosses who are now backbench MPs. The email to the House of Commons sergeant-at-arms did not order the cancellation of the passes but merely informed the parliamentary authorities that the list of advisers were no longer employed by the Labour party. However, a number of MPs are understood to be furious about how their staff were treated and may raise the issue in the House of Commons on Monday. It will do little for party harmony at a time of continuing tensions, which Len McCluskey, the Unite general secretary, is trying to resolve through talks with Tom Watson, the deputy leader, and Corbyn. If the standoff is not resolved soon, there may be a leadership challenge against Corbyn by either Angela Eagle, the former shadow business secretary, or Owen Smith, the former shadow work and pensions secretary. However, Corbyn’s position has been strongly boosted in recent days by a huge surge in the membership of the party of around 130,000, most of whom are thought to have joined to help defend his leadership. The Labour leader wrote in the Guardian on Friday that while he was willing to “reach out” to sceptical MPs and participate in talks with union leaders to “bridge the gap and work together more effectively”, he had no intention of stepping down. “Those who want to challenge my leadership are free to do so in a democratic contest, in which I will be a candidate,” he said. |
If you want to understand a state's history, start by looking at its name. The map below shows the breakdown of all the states' etymologies. The most names, eight in both cases, stem from Algonquin and Latin. Wikimedia Commons But the etymologies of some names have become muddled over the years. Even alternate theories exist for some, and an author even appears to made one up entirely. Scroll through the list to find your home state's meaning and how the name originated: Alabama: From the Choctaw word albah amo meaning"thicket-clearers" or "plant-cutters." Alaska: From the Aleut word alaxsxaq, from Russian Аляска, meaning"the object toward which the action of the sea is directed." Arizona: From the O'odham (a Uto-Aztecan language) word ali sona-g via Spanish Arizonac meaning "good oaks." Arkansas: From a French pronunciation of an Algonquin name for the Quapaw people: akansa. This word, meaning either "downriver people" or "people of the south wind," comes from the Algonquin prefix -a plus the Siouan word kká:ze for a group of tribes including the Quapaw. California: In his popular novel "Las sergas de Esplandián" published in 1510, writer Garci Ordóñez de Montalvo named an imaginary realm California. Spanish explorers of the New World could have mistaken Baja California as the mythical place. Where Montalvo learned the name and its meaning remain a mystery. Colorado: Named for the Rio Colorado (Colorado River), which in Spanish means "ruddy" or "reddish." Connecticut: Named for the Connecticut River, which stems from Eastern Algonquian, possibly Mohican, quinnitukqut, meaning "at the long tidal river." Delaware: Named for the Delaware Bay, named after Baron De la Warr (Thomas West, 1577 - 1618), the first English governor of Virginia. His surname ultimately comes from de la werre, meaning "of the war" in Old French. Florida: From Spanish Pascua florida meaning "flowering Easter." Spanish explorers discovered the area on Palm Sunday in 1513. The state name also relates to the English word florid, an adjective meaning "strikingly beautiful," from Latin floridus. Georgia: Named for King George II of Great Britain. His name originates with Latin Georgius, from Greek Georgos, meaning farmer, from ge (earth) + ergon (work). Hawaii: From Hawaiian Hawai'i, from Proto-Polynesian hawaiki, thought to mean "place of the Gods." Originally named the Sandwich Islands by James Cook in the late 1700s. Idaho: Originally applied to the territory now part of eastern Colorado, from the Kiowa-Apache (Athabaskan) word idaahe, meaning "enemy," a name given by the Comanches. Illinois: From the French spelling ilinwe of the Algonquian's name for themselves Inoca, also written Ilinouek, from Old Ottawa for "ordinary speaker." Indiana: From the English word Indian + -ana, a Latin suffix, roughly meaning "land of the Indians." Thinking they had reached the South Indes, explorers mistakenly called native inhabitants of the Americas Indians. And India comes from the same Latin word, from the same Greek word, meaning "region of the Indus River." Iowa: Named for the natives of the Chiwere branch of the Aiouan family, from Dakota a yuxba, meaning "sleepy ones." Kansas: Named for the Kansa tribe, natively called kká:ze, meaning "people of the south wind." Despite having the same etymological root as Arkansas, Kansas has a different pronunciation. Kentucky: Named for the Kentucky River, from Shawnee or Wyandot language, meaning "on the meadow" (also "at the field" in Seneca). Louisiana: Named after Louis XIV of France. When René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle claimed the territory for France in 1682, he named it La Louisiane, meaning "Land of Louis." Louis stems from Old French Loois, from Medieval Latin Ludovicus, a changed version of Old High Germany Hluodwig, meaning "famous in war." Maine: Uncertain origins, potentially named for the French province of Maine, named for the river of Gaulish, an extinct Celtic language, origin. Maryland: Named for Henrietta Maria, wife of English King Charles I. Mary originally comes from Hebrew Miryam, the sister of Moses. Massachusetts: From Algonquian Massachusett, a name for the native people who lived around the bay, meaning "at the large hill," in reference to Great Blue Hill, southwest of Boston. Michigan: Named for Lake Michigan, which stems from a French spelling of Old Ojibwa (Algonquian) meshi-gami, meaning "big lake." Minnesota: Named for the river, from Dakota (Siouan) mnisota, meaning "cloudy water, milky water," Mississippi: Named for the river, from French variation of Algonquian Ojibwa meshi-ziibi, meaning "big river." Missouri: Named for a group of native peoples among Chiwere (Siouan) tribes, from an Algonquian word, likely wimihsoorita, meaning "people of the big (or wood) canoes." Montana: From the Spanish word montaña, meaning "mountain, which stems from Latin mons, montis. U.S. Rep. James H. Ashley of Ohio proposed the name in 1864. Nebraska: From a native Siouan name for the Platte River, either Omaha ni braska or Oto ni brathge, both meaning "water flat." Nevada: Named for the western boundary of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, meaning "snowy mountains" in Spanish. New Hampshire: Named for the county of Hampshire in England, which was named for city of Southampton. Southampton was known in Old English as Hamtun, meaning "village-town." The surrounding area (or scīr) became known as Hamtunscīr. New Jersey: Named by one of the state's proprietors, Sir George Carteret, for his home, the Channel island of Jersey, a bastardization of the Latin Caesarea, the Roman name for the island. New Mexico: From Spanish Nuevo Mexico, from Nahuatl (Aztecan) mexihco, the name of the ancient Aztec capital. New York: Named in honor of the Duke of York and Albany, the future James II. York comes from Old English Eoforwic, earlier Eborakon, an ancient Celtic name probably meaning "Yew-Tree Estate." North Carolina: Both Carolinas were named for King Charles II. The proper form of Charles in Latin is Carolus, and the division into north and south originated in 1710. In latin, Carolus is a strong form of the pronoun "he" and translates in many related languages as a "free or strong" man. North Dakota: Both Dakotas stem from the name of a group of native peoples from the Plains states, from Dakota dakhota, meaning "friendly" (often translated as "allies"). Ohio: Named for the Ohio River, from Seneca (Iroquoian) ohi:yo', meaning "good river." Oklahoma: From a Choctaw word, meaning "red people," which breaks down as okla "nation, people" + homma "red." Choctaw scholar Allen Wright, later principal chief of the Choctaw Nation, coined the word. Oregon: Uncertain origins, potentially from Algonquin. Pennsylvania: Named, not for William Penn, the state's proprietor, but for his late father, Admiral William Penn (1621-1670) after suggestion from Charles II. The name literally means "Penn's Woods," a hybrid formed from the surname Penn and Latin sylvania. Rhode Island: It is thought that Dutch explorer Adrian Block named modern Block Island (a part of Rhode Island) Roodt Eylandt, meaning "red island" for the cliffs. English settlers later extended the name to the mainland, and the island became Block Island for differentiation. An alternate theory is that Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano gave it the name in 1524 based on an apparent similarity to the island of Rhodes. South Carolina: See North Carolina. South Dakota: See North Dakota. Tennessee: From Cherokee (Iroquoian) village name ta'nasi' of unknown origin. Texas: From Spanish Tejas, earlier pronounced "ta-shas;" originally an ethnic name, from Caddo (the language of an eastern Texas Indian tribe) taysha meaning "friends, allies." Utah: From Spanish yuta, name of the indigenous Uto-Aztecan people of the Great Basin; perhaps from Western Apache (Athabaskan) yudah, meaning"high" (in reference to living in the mountains). Vermont: Based on French words for "Green Mountain," mont vert. Virginia: A Latinized name for Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen. Washington: Named for President George Washington (1732-1799). The surname Washington means "estate of a man named Wassa" in Old English. West Virginia: See Virginia. West Virginia split from confederate Virginia and officially joined the Union as a separate state in 1863. Wisconsin: Uncertain origins but likely from a Miami word Meskonsing, meaning "it lies red";misspelled Mescousing by the French, and later corrupted to Ouisconsin. Quarries in Wisconsin often contain red flint. Wyoming: From Munsee Delaware (Algonquian) chwewamink, meaning "at the big river flat." |
When members of the Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously last year to block the demolition of a significant piece of the city’s industrial history, they might have thought they’d taken a big step toward preserving it. They didn’t. Pending an expected approval by the University of Minnesota Board of Regents in October, the Electric Steel Elevator — one of the last steel grain elevator complexes in the region — will be demolished starting shortly after the Regents authorize it. And in its place, in an area just east of TCF Bank Stadium, will someday be the new location of something slightly less notable: a recreational sports bubble. In other words, in a little more than a year, a structure that was deemed eligible for placement on the National Register of Historic Places will go from historic to history. Fighting a losing battle In September of 2015, the Riverland Ag Corp. asked the City Council to allow it to demolish the 32-bin grain elevator at 600 25th Avenue SE and sell the land to the university. The company’s president, Craig Reiners, didn’t deny the historic nature of the place, but he also said it was obsolete as a grain storage facility. The company couldn’t sell it or reuse it in its current status. Riverland was also fighting a losing battle with vandals and urban explorers, who found a way around all of the fences and locks, cameras and alarms the company employed to keep them out. Someone, Reiners feared, was going to be hurt or even killed while exploring the place. Reiners had been given a financial lifeline from university officials, who said the U would buy the land for $1.45 million — but only if the buildings were demolished. The university even agreed to cover the costs of that demolition. The only thing Reiners needed to close the deal: a demolition permit. The city of Minneapolis, however, wasn’t on board. The city’s Heritage Preservation Commission and Zoning & Planning Committee thought the plan to demolish the structures was premature, and ordered a study to assess the grain elevator’s historic status. The city also wanted to see if there wasn’t a new use for the structure. Then, in early September 2015, the City Council voted to give the structures interim protection from demolition or alteration — for one year. Once the historic designation study was completed, the heritage preservation commission would decide whether to recommend the Electric Steel Elevator complex for permanent placement on the city’s historic register. If more time was needed, the protection could be extended for another six months. But shortly after the council’s action, the university bought the Electric Steel Elevator complex anyway. And on Thursday, at a meeting of the school’s facilities, planning and operations committee of the Board of Regents, university staff will ask for authority to tear the place down, sell the scrap steel for as much as the market will pay and clear the land for its next use. Mitigation will include photographic documentation, donation of some equipment to the Mill City Museum and donation of rare architectural drawings to the state. “We are excited because we’ve worked very closely with Mill City to identify a number of elements that can be salvaged,” said Monique MacKenzie, the U of M’s director of planning in the Capital Planning and Project Management office. “There are some huge pieces of equipment in the property that Mill City Museum feels they can use immediately in their collection.” And thanks to the special status it enjoys in state law, the U of M says that no permit is needed from the city of Minneapolis for the demolition, nor is there any need for it to get approval from the state historic preservation office. So what makes Electric Steel special, anyway? Built between 1903 and 1914, the silos and buildings of the Electric Steel Elevator were early examples of the expansion of the city’s grain economy, away from the river and toward rail connections. One of the factors that makes Electric Steel special, however, is also what makes it endangered. While many unused concrete silos remain in place because they are too expensive to demolish, some of the costs to take down a steel elevator can be recovered by selling the scrap steel. Robert M. Frame, who’s studied the storage facilities that supported the state’s wheat farming and milling industries, says that steel was one of the early choices for owners looking for better alternatives to wood before concrete eventually won out. The only other steel elevator in Minnesota was taken down in 1995. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society The Electric Steel Elevator, circa 1910. Electric Steel has another claim to historic status: It was engineered by nationally prominent structural engineer C.A.P. Turner. “If [Turner] touched something, you pay attention to it,” Frame said last summer. “If his name is on the plans, it makes a structure stand out.” The historians who’ve examined the building agree on its historic status. A report written in 2002 to support the creation of a Southeast Minneapolis Industrial Area historic district concluded the elevator was a contributing structure of the district, and that it met at least three of the criteria required for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Minneapolis stands down Electric Steel Elevator is one of six historic properties listed on the city’s Historic Preservation Commission webpage as subjects of current designation studies. But the study was never done — and won’t be. While the HPC and the City Council could seek six more months to complete the work, staff will not make that request. And since the commission does not meet before Sept. 11, the interim protection will expire, leaving the building eligible for a demolition permit without the City Council’s permission. But an explanation for why the city didn’t pursue historic status for the elevator has been elusive. Steve Poor, director of development services for Minneapolis, said the staffers who might have completed the designation study were busy with other tasks, especially work updating the city comprehensive plan. “It’s not that they didn’t intend to do it, they just didn’t have time,” Poor said. In many cases, much of the research is done by building owners who are seeking register status. That isn’t the case with the Electric Steel. Staff, however, would not have been starting from scratch. A 92-page report had already been prepared for last summer’s preservation commission and City Council discussions on the facility. City of Minneapolis The elevator complex at 25th Avenue SE near TCF Bank Stadium, circled in yellow. Would it have mattered? The university asserts that it needs no permit from the city; that it would not be required to abide by the interim protection status, anyway — even if a permanent listing on the register had been achieved. Minneapolis City Attorney Susan Segal does not concede the university’s claim about off-campus properties, however. “On the question of city jurisdiction over properties owned by the University outside of their campus area, we do have jurisdiction over regulatory and land use matters,” Segal said via email. “That being said, however, we seek to work cooperatively with the university as we do other public partners.” The U’s MacKenzie said that university officials did meet in May with city planning officials, including Community Planning and Economic Development Director Craig Taylor and Land Use, Design and Preservation Director Jason Wittenberg, to let them know what the school’s plans were for the property. She described them as pleased with the work being done by the university. “We have worked closely with the city to understand their intent and their process and try to align our work efforts with their needs,” MacKenzie said. Wittenberg referred questions about the city’s position to Poor. Do other preservation laws apply? While the U of M might be exempt from city historic preservation rules, it would have been covered by other state and federal laws had circumstances been slightly different. If federal funds were involved in any part of the project, for instance, it would have have been required to protect buildings that are on the national register or eligible to be listed, but there is no federal involvement in either the proposed demolition or the construction of the new recreational sports facilities. State law requires state agencies as well as the U of M to involve the historic preservation office whenever it is threatening properties on the state or national registers. A preservation officer would have to be consulted “to determine appropriate treatments and to seek ways to avoid and mitigate any adverse effects on designated or listed properties.” Absent an agreement by the preservation office, the U of M couldn’t act but could trigger mediation before a special five-person panel. In this case, eligibility for listing isn’t sufficient, it must be on the register. That puts a different section of state law into play, one that requires the U of M only to “cooperate with the Minnesota Historical Society in safeguarding state historic sites and in the preservation of historic and archaeological properties.” The university says it satisfied that requirement by informing the state preservation office of its plans for the Electric Steel complex, and by sending copies of a historic property record report and an investigation into possible adaptive reuse. Sarah Beimers, the manager of government programs and compliance for the preservation office, said the university has involved the state office more intensely on other projects, even when they weren’t on the state or national registers, including Tate Hall and Northrup Mall. “In this case, the U is saying we’re not going to consult with you. We’re just going to tell you what we’re going to do,” Beimers said. “They didn’t ask for comments.” Opposition from neighborhood The Prospect Park Association has long opposed demolition of the complex. As association president Christina Larson wrote to the regents: “Time and again in a continuous series of planning documents,the Electric Steel Elevator is identified for preservation as a contributing landmark to reinforce the unique heritage and essential character,” of the area. “By purchasing this site with intent only to demolish the extant historical structures, the University does an end run around due process and ignores decisions made by both the city and the neighborhood. ” Gayla Lindt, a resident of the Prospect Park who’s on the faculty at the university’s School of Archicture, argues that the property is outside the “Regents Boundary” for campus growth and has not appeared on lists of future university ownership. “I am terribly concerned that University Board of Regents have not been duly provided the fullest context for this significant decision,” Lindt wrote to regents. “Documenting and saving parts and pieces of an historic structure is not commensurate with preserving by conservation or adaptive reuse … nor does it contribute in a meaningful way to a rich sense of place.” MinnPost photo by Peter Callaghan Electric Steel Elevator is one of six historic properties listed on the city’s Historic Preservation Commission webpage as subjects of current designation studies. The possible decision to demolish the elevators — as well as the notice in the regent’s meeting docket that an adjacent elevator will also be purchased and demolished — was seen by the Prospect Park Association as further evidence that a state requirement that the U of M work directly with neighborhood organizations via the University District Alliance on issues of expansion and development isn’t being followed. Larson wrote that the association was “simply informed” of the U of M decision during a June 7 association meeting. “In our opinion, this is not stakeholder engagement in the spirit and mandate of the legislated University District Alliance,” Larson wrote. While the neighborhood group members “understand and support the University in its mission … the way in which the University has acquired additional land has often been disruptive, destabilizing and not always consistent with Regents policy and the legislative intent. The Electric Steel Elevator is the latest example.” Council response Council Member Lisa Bender, the chair of the Zoning & Planning Committee that rejected the demolition permit last year, did not respond to requests to talk about the fate of Electric Steel. The complex is in the city’s Ward 2, which is represented by Council Member Cam Gordon, who said he has become convinced that the Electric Steel complex is unique historically and would have liked to see the city’s designation study completed so as to demonstrate that. Gordon said he at least expected the university to bring its case back to the Heritage Preservation Commission for its involvement and comment. And he isn’t convinced that if the city pushed its jurisdiction in court — especially in regards to a building that was designated historic prior to being purchased — that it would lose. That possibility went away when the city staff decided not to complete the designation study that might have led to permanent historic protection under the city’s ordinance. “Maybe both sides don’t want to go to court because they’ll find out the wrong thing,” Gordon said. The pending demolition raises a broader issue for Gordon: what to do about the dozens of grain terminals around the city and the state. “We need to start taking a look at which ones have development potential, which ones are being used right now and which ones may be historic,” he said. “We haven’t made a lot of progress.” |
Treasurer Scott Morrison has savaged Bill Shorten's leadership after a peak small business body threw its support behind the Greens over Labor. Mr Morrison jumped on the declaration from the Council of Small Business Organisations that the opposition's stance on business has regressed under Mr Shorten, vouching for the minor party instead. It was a "bizarre position", the treasurer said. "For goodness sake, where has Bill Shorten taken the Labor party ... that the Greens are even seen as a more credible economic managers," he told Sky News on Friday. The council will launch a mail campaign in the Labor-held Melbourne seat of Batman - as well as eight other marginals - highlighting the opposition's anti-business stance. "The Greens are more small business-friendly. We just don't know what has happened. Labor has regressed," chief executive Peter Strong told The Australian. |
It happens every election cycle: Americans threaten to move if the wrong person gets elected. We asked those who headed north if the grass really was greener 'An alternative exists': the US citizens who vowed to flee to Canada – and did In November 2004, David Drucker and his wife Pam were at home listening to NPR when they heard the news that would change their lives: George W Bush had been re-elected as president of the United States. Canada considers changing national anthem to include country's women Read more In the lead-up to election day, the couple had made a pact: if John Kerry won, they would build their dream house in Vermont; if he lost, they would move to Canada. A year later, they were on their way to Vancouver to start their new lives. “It’s been a little over a decade now. We have clear eyes about what we did. We have no intention of going back,” Drucker said. The Druckers were not alone. On election day in 2004, a record-setting 179,000 people visited Canada’s official immigration website, the majority of them Americans. And as anxieties about the outcome of 2016 begin to grow, some Americans are again musing about fleeing to their northern neighbor. In September, the digital analytics firm Luminoso found about 4% of 4.5 million Donald Trump-related tweets contained threats to leave the country if the billionaire became president. Of those, 25,000 identified Canada as their intended destination. Since then, comedian and Obama “anger translator” Keegan-Michael Key has joined the chorus. Even former USdefense secretary Robert Gates joked about emigrating if Trump took office. Talking about relocating to Canada clearly is pretty trendy – actually relocating there, not so much. According to the Canadian government, the number of new US immigrants arriving in the country has remained relatively stable – about 9,000 annually – from 2005 to 2014. It might not be the northern utopia of their dreams, but those who have made the move say they have never regretted it. “If Americans want to live in a country where there is an investment in public education, where people aren’t afraid of going bankrupt because they get sick, and where democracy is taken seriously, they should move, because an alternative exists,” said Tom Kertes, 43, who moved from Seattle to Canada with his now husband Ron Braun in 2007. Kertes and Braun had been thinking of Canada since the invasion of Iraq and the US government began using “enhanced interrogation techniques” on detainees. But they actually started browsing the Canadian immigration website the night they heard Bush propose a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage during his State of the Union address in 2005. They applied for Canadian permanent residency in 2006 and and now live in British Columbia. Jim DeLaHunt left an engineering management position with Adobe in California for uncertain prospects in Canada after Bush’s re-election. Leaving behind his country’s penchant for authoritarianism, war and inequality, he says, was the right call. DeLaHunt, now a tech consultant, misses the scale and ambition of the technology industry in the United States, but says he wouldn’t trade life in Vancouver to go back to it. He and his wife integrated easily into Canadian society, he said, learning how to be “less arrogant and a bit more gentle”, and even picking up local etiquette and speech patterns. “Canadians say ‘sorry’ a lot more than people in the US do. They thank the bus driver as they get off the bus. In the US, if someone says ‘thank you’ a typical response might be ‘sure’. That seems awfully brusque in Canada. A better response is, ‘No worries.’ There’s little things like that, and if you get those things right you blend in on a day-to-day level,” he said. Writer Lee Rowan, 63, and her wife, on the other hand, have found Canada to be more similar to the United States than they would like. In 2007 they moved from Ohio, which three years earlier had banned same-sex marriage, to Ontario, one of the world’s first jurisdictions to legalize it. But in the Waterloo region, where they settled, their neighbors turned out to be more conservative, and less tolerant, than they had hoped. “I’d say there’s some Canadian homophobia. If we had kids or had been churchgoers I doubt it would have been an issue,” Rowan said. Watching Trump’s rise, in particular, has been disconcerting to Rowan. Still, she’s keeping an eye on the political climate in the US. If the conditions are right, she says, she would consider moving back. For Laura Kaminker, however, that’s completely out of the question. In the 20 years before she and her partner Allan Wood finally moved to Canada from New York City in 2005, she had “lost hope” in the country she saw plagued by “civil liberties crackdowns” and “endless wars”. Although she still has her American citizenship, she doesn’t vote any more in US elections, and whenever she comes back to Canada after visiting family or friends in the States, she breathes a sigh of relief. “Every time I say, ‘God, I’m so glad to be out of that crazy country,’” she said. |
Seattle Sounders FC travels to Texas for the final road match of the regular season on Saturday afternoon against FC Dallas. Kickoff is set for 11:30 a.m. PT at Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas. Saturday’s match will be on network television as NBC will carry the game nationally with John Strong and Robbie Earle calling the action. The match will also be available on 97.3 FM with Ross Fletcher and Kasey Keller calling the action, and can be heard in Spanish on La Gran D 99.3 FM. Sounders FC (15-11-6, 51 points) can clinch a berth in the 2013 MLS Cup Playoffs with a win on Saturday at Dallas. Seattle could also qualify with a draw and several favorable results from Western Conference opponents. Sounders FC would qualify regardless of its result if the LA Galaxy and Colorado Rapids both win. Sounders FC has qualified for the playoffs on the road each of the past four seasons, and could become the second expansion team in league history to reach the postseason in each of its first five seasons. Sitting third in the West and fifth in the race for the Supporters’ Shield, Sounders FC looks to rebound from its first three-game losing streak since 2010. Seattle is still tied for the league lead with 15 wins – the first tiebreaker for playoff seeding. Riding a six-game (5-0-1) unbeaten run against Dallas, Sounders FC will visit Toyota Stadium for the first time since September 2, 2012. Seattle won the previous two meetings this season at CenturyLink Field, 4-2 on May 18 and 3-0 on August 3. With just two wins in its past 19 outings, FC Dallas (10-11-11, 41 points) was eliminated from playoff contention last Saturday. Having lost four of its past five games, Dallas will draw from its strong home form where the team has earned 29 of its 41 points this season. Following Saturday’s match, Sounders FC will return home for the regular season finale against the LA Galaxy on October 27. CenturyLink Field will be opened to the full seated manifest for the fourth time this season. Tickets to Sounders FC home matches are available through SoundersFC.com, all Ticketmaster Outlets, the CenturyLink Field Box Office or by calling 800-745-3000. Sounders FC Competition Schedule (all times Pacific; subject to change) Saturday, October 19, 11:30 a.m. – Sounders FC at FC Dallas Sunday, October 27, 6 p.m. – Sounders FC vs. LA Galaxy goalWA.net Local Soccer News is sponsored by Pro Roofing Northwest, Kirkland, Bellevue, Seattle, Redmond, Woodinville, Federal Way, Everett, Snohomish, Issaquah, Renton, Kent, Bothell, Edmonds Washington roofing company. MLS Cup Playoffs Update Sounders FC will have another opportunity to punch its postseason ticket on Saturday afternoon in Dallas. A win would clinch a berth in the MLS Cup Playoffs while a draw would require favorable results from several Western Conference opponents. Seattle would qualify for the playoffs regardless of Saturday’s result if both the LA Galaxy and Colorado Rapids win. Seven Western Conference teams are vying for five playoff spots as Chivas USA and FC Dallas have already been eliminated from playoff contention. Two Eastern Conference teams (New York and Sporting KC) have qualified while two teams (Toronto and D.C. United) have been eliminated. Seattle Sounders FC will clinch a berth in the MLS Cup Playoffs IF * Seattle Sounders FC win vs. FC Dallas on Saturday OR * Seattle Sounders FC tie vs. FC Dallas on Saturday AND * Colorado Rapids lose or tie vs. Vancouver Whitecaps FC on Saturday OR * San Jose Earthquakes lose or tie vs. LA Galaxy on Sunday OR * LA Galaxy lose to both Montréal Impact on Wednesday and San Jose Earthquakes on Saturday OR * LA Galaxy win vs. San Jose Earthquakes on Sunday AND * Colorado Rapids win vs. Vancouver Whitecaps FC on Saturday MLS Cup Playoffs Notes Ten clubs will qualify for the MLS Cup Playoffs – the top five in points from each conference at the end of the regular season. The 4th- and 5th- place teams will play a single knockout game, the winner of which will advance to the Conference Semifinals and face the 1st-place team in the conference. The Conference Semifinals will be decided by a two-game, aggregate-goal format. The Conference Championships will be decided by a two-game, aggregate-goal format. MLS Cup will be hosted by the finalist that finished the regular season with the most points in the standings. Tiebreaking Procedures When two or more teams are tied in the standings on points, the following tiebreakers will be used in the sequence below, until one team ranks ahead of the other(s): 1. Most Wins 2. Goals For 3. Goal Differential 4. Fewest Disciplinary Points 5. Road Goals 6. Road Goal Differential 7. Home Goals 8. Home Goal Differential 9. Coin Toss (2 teams) or Drawing of Lots (3 or more) How Seattle Previously Qualified Sounders FC has qualified for the MLS Cup Playoffs the previous four seasons – one of just three teams (LA Galaxy and Real Salt Lake) to accomplish the feat. Seattle has clinched its postseason berth on the road all four years, with the first two at Kansas City and last two at Vancouver. If Sounders FC can clinch a 2013 postseason berth, it will be the latest in a season in club history. Playoff Qualification Game Date Opponent Result 10/17/09 at Kansas City W, 3-2 10/9/10 at Kansas City W, 2-1 9/24/11 at Vancouver W, 3-1 9/29/12 at Vancouver D, 0-0 Final Two Games Await As Sounders FC readies for its final two matches of the 2013 regular season, the team will look to draw upon the strong finishes of season’s past. Same as last season, Seattle will end the season against FC Dallas and the LA Galaxy. Seattle downed Dallas, 3-1, at home and lost to Los Angeles, 1-0, on the road to end the 2012 regular season. Overall, Sounders FC has gone 6-2-0 in the final two matches of the regular season, including two home wins over Dallas. This season will be the first time since 2009 that Seattle will play its final regular season game at CenturyLink Field. Results in Final Two Games of Regular Season Date Opponent Result 10/17/09 at Kansas City W, 3-2 10/24/09 FC Dallas W, 2-1 10/15/10 Chivas USA W, 2-1 10/23/10 at Houston L, 1-2 10/15/11 San Jose W, 2-1 10/22/11 at Chivas USA W, 3-1 10/21/12 FC Dallas W, 3-1 10/28/12 at LA Galaxy L, 0-1 Nearing Season’s End Nearing the end of the regular-season campaign, Sounders FC is approaching some of the top marks in club history. The 15 wins this season is already tied for second-most, and the team could reach 17 by season’s end – one shy of the club record. Seattle’s 10 home wins ranks second, and the five road wins already ranks third. The current third place standing in the West is on par with 2009 and 2012, and the team could set the shutout record – currently one shy of the club record (12) set in 2012. Year-by-Year Record Year Record (pts.) GD (GF/GA) Home Road Finish Playoff Result 2009 12-7-11 (47) 9 (38/29) 7-2-6 5-5-5 West 3 Quarterfinals 2010 14-10-6 (48) 4 (39/35) 8-4-3 6-6-3 West 4 Quarterfinals 2011 18-7-9 (63) 19 (56/37) 9-4-4 9-3-5 West 2 Quarterfinals 2012 15-8-11 (56) 18 (51/33) 11-4-2 4-4-9 West 3 Semifinals 2013 15-11-6 (51) 2 (41/39) 10-2-4 5-9-2 Springboards of the Past Losses are often the best motivator, and statistically with Sounders FC that has proven to be the case. Seattle has lost two or more consecutive games on eight occasions in club history. In the previous seven instances, Sounders FC has bounced back quickly, including six-game unbeaten streaks following back-to-back losses in 2009 and 2011 and a seven-game unbeaten run following three straight losses in 2010. After the previous two back-to-back losses this season, Sounders FC posted a six-game and four-game unbeaten streak. And following Seattle’s previous loss before the current three-game losing streak, Sounders FC won five straight matches and posted a seven-game (5-0-2) unbeaten run. Following Two or More Consecutive Losses Date Opponents (Result) Notes April 11-18, 2009 KC (L, 0-1), CHV (L, 0-2) Six-game unbeaten streak (1-0-5) August 2-8, 2009 at SJ (L, 0-4), at RSL (L, 0-1) Won next game; went 5-2-3 in final 10 games May 22-29, 2010 SJ (L, 0-1), at COL (L, 0-1) Won next game, 3-0 June 10-July 4, 2010 DC (L, 2-3), at PHI (L, 1-3), Seven-game unbeaten streak (5-0-2); at LA (L, 1-3) 10-2-3 in final 15 games March 15-19, 2011 LA (L, 0-1), at NY (L, 0-1) Six-game unbeaten streak (3-0-3) March 23-30, 2013 at SJ (L, 0-1), at RSL (L, 1-2) Six-game unbeaten streak (4-0-2) July 6-13, 2013 at VAN (L, 0-2), at SJ (L, 0-1) Four-game unbeaten streak (3-0-1) Marcus in the Nets Marcus Hahnemann made his third career MLS start for Sounders FC last Sunday at Portland, marking his first action since a 2-1 road win against Toronto FC on August 10. The Seattle-native and former A-League Sounder made two saves and allowed one goal against the Timbers, just his second goal allowed in his three league starts since signing last season. At 41 years and 120 days, Hahnemann is the oldest player to appear in a game this season. Leo Back on the Left Costa Rican left back Leo Gonzalez returned to the Sounders FC starting lineup last Sunday after missing three games due to injury. Gonzalez has been perhaps the most consistent defender for Sounders FC this season, nearing career-highs for starts (26) and minutes (2,228). Fourteen of Seattle’s 15 wins this season have come when Gonzalez is starting and, overall, 46 of the team’s 51 points were earned with Gonzalez in the lineup. In his 26 starts, Sounders FC has allowed one goal per game while in the six games he did not start the team allowed 13 goals (2.17 goals against average). Seattle Success versus Dallas Seattle’s record against FC Dallas is among the best in club history. Sounders FC has only beat two teams (Chivas USA and Colorado Rapids) more than Dallas, and Toyota Stadium is one of four venues (Toyota Park, Crew Stadium and Sporting Park) where Seattle has never lost. The 20 goals scored against Dallas are tied with Colorado for the most goals scored against one opponent in club history. Additionally, the +10 goal differential against Dallas is the best in club history. Seattle Regular Season Record vs. Team GP Winning Pct. Record GD (GF/GA) Chicago 8 .813 5-0-3 5 (10/5) Kansas City 8 .813 6-1-1 5 (11/6) Toronto 8 .813 6-1-1 8 (14/6) Colorado 12 .750 8-2-2 5 (20/15) Dallas 11 .727 6-1-4 10 (20/10) Dallas Series Notes Sounders FC holds a 6-1-4 record in the all-time series with FC Dallas, including an unbeaten 2-0-3 record on the road. Seattle is currently riding a six-game (5-0-1) unbeaten streak against Dallas, with wins in the past three meetings. Sounders FC has scored at least three goals in the past three matches in the series, including a 4-2 win on May 18 and 3-0 win on August 3. Saturday’s visit to Dallas will be the team’s first since a 1-1 draw on September 2, 2012. * Sounders FC has outscored Dallas, 20-10, including four goals in the final 15 minutes. * Dallas has outshot Seattle 158-137, but Sounders FC has put 12 more shots on goal. * Brad Evans leads all active players with four goals in the series. He has five goals and three assists in 11 career matches against Dallas. * Eddie Johnson and Mauro Rosales have both recorded three goals and one assist against Dallas. * Overall, 11 active Sounders FC players have scored against Dallas, with Obafemi Martins scoring a goal in both meetings this season. * Marcus Hahnemann started the previous meeting with Dallas on August 3, leading Seattle to its third shutout in the series. About FC Dallas FC Dallas was eliminated from playoff contention last Saturday following a 3-2 home loss to the Chicago Fire. Dallas kicked off the 2013 campaign as the best team in MLS, posting eight wins in the first 13 games. The team has since struggled, earning two wins in the past 19 outings, dating back to May 25. The Dallas defense has been of main concern as the team has allowed 17 multi-goal games, including seven three-goal games, and has not kept a clean sheet since July 20. Eight of the team’s 10 total wins have come at Toyota Stadium, though Dallas holds the third-highest goals allowed average at home in MLS (1.38). With four losses in the past five matches, Dallas enters Saturday’s game searching for its first win since September 7. Dallas Top Attackers The FC Dallas attack is led by two of the top playmakers in MLS this season. Panamanian striker Blas Perez has scored 11 goals, ranking tied-seventh in the Golden Boot race, but has scored just one goal since the end of August. His partner in the attack is former MLS MVP David Ferreira, who ranks tied-fifth in MLS with nine assists this season. There are several other notable attacking options on the Dallas roster, including Kenney Cooper, who scored a brace as a substitute last Saturday, and Michel, who recorded a goal and assist against Seattle in May. International Stars Return Following tonight’s World Cup Qualifier between the United States and Panama, a trio of players will return to their club teams to meet again in MLS regular season play. Sounders FC midfielder Brad Evans will face two key players for Seattle’s next two opponents in Dallas top scorer Blas Perez and Los Angeles starting goalkeeper Jaime Penedo. Both Perez and Penedo start for Panama, who sit fifth in the group and are fighting to qualify for the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. Evans and the USMNT have already clinched the top spot in the CONCACAF region, and will look to finish the Hexagonal Round with the best record in team history. Sounders FC Academy Kicks Off 2013 MLS Generation adidas Cup Play Sounders FC U-16 and U-14 teams traveled down to Irvine, Calif., this weekend to participate in the 2013 MLS Generation adidas Cup. In the first series of games for the tournament hosted by Chivas USA, the Seattle U-16s won one of the three games while the U-14s won two of three. The U-16s fell, 2-1, on Friday to the San Jose Earthquakes despite a Harrison Kurtz olimpico. On Saturday, second-half substitute Kasey French’s goal was not enough as the team again lost, 2-1, to Club Tijuana Xolos U-16s. However, a John Magnus golazo fueled the U-16s to a 1-0 win over the LA Galaxy on Monday. After coming up short in a 2-0 defeat to the LA Galaxy U-14s on Friday, Sounders FC U-14s won the remaining two games of the weekend. Alec Zimmerman, Yohanne Griffin, and Alex Kristov all scored in a 3-1 win over local side Corona U-15 on Saturday. On Monday, goals from Kristov and Cameron Martin fueled a Seattle to a 2-nil win over Chivas USA U-14s. The 2013 MLS Generation adidas Cup continues when the San Jose Earthquakes host a series of games February 11-14. Advertisements |
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