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After yesterday’s Phillies-Reds game, Reds’ shortstop Orlando Cabrera really stepped in it. His comments regarding Roy Halladay’s no-no: “He and the umpire pitched a no-hitter. He gave him every pitch. Basically, we had no chance.” Such sour grapes are unbecoming even if the strikezone was wonky, but they’re especially bad when they’re demonstrably false. Click that link. The little red squares on that chart are Halladay pitches that were called strikes. I see five of them that were outside the zone, three of which were really close anyway. In contrast, Reds’ pitchers — whose strikes are represented by the triangles — got three bad calls in their favor, but two of them were really bad calls. No umpire is perfect, of course, but we see way, way worse charts than this one every single night of the season. I don’t know how anyone can look at it and conclude that Halladay was unduly benefiting from a friendly ump. He lived on the left and right, offering virtually nothing hittable, but nonetheless pounding the zone. I don’t know if Orlando Cabrera reviews the pitch charts after the game, but I’m sure someone on the Reds does. That person should tip Cabrera off to it this morning and Cabrera, if he’s wise, should apologize for these comments and admit that they were borne of frustration. The fact of the matter is that Roy Halladay didn’t need any help. And now the Reds need a lot of it. |
The US is considering sending arms to Ukraine after it was revealed at least 3,000 Russian troops are now stationed in the east of the country. Such a move would seriously increase the tension between Washington and Moscow. Speaking at a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, US Defence Secretary James Mattis said President Donald Trump was "actively reviewing" whether to send lethal weapons and reiterated that the US would stand by Ukraine. Stopping short of a concrete promise to supply military hardware, Mattis said the US would continue to put pressure on Moscow over "aggressive behaviour" and its failure to abide by the Minsk ceasefire agreement, which was intended to end separatist violence. "Despite Russia's denials, we know they are seeking to redraw international borders by force, undermining the sovereign and free nations of Europe," Mattis told reporters. The US has supported Ukraine since a pro-Western government took power after massive street protests in 2014. The resulting conflict between Ukrainian troops and Russian-backed militias led to the formal annexation of Crimea by Russia and the deaths of more than 10,000 people. Despite repeated requests, the Obama administration shied away from sending weapons to the country, and during the US election campaign last year, Trump "stoked fears in Kiev he might mend ties with Moscow at Ukraine's expense", suggesting Crimea is a legitimate part of Russia, says the Daily Express. These fears were "heightened following the release of a report which claimed North Korea's recent successful missile tests were only possible with the black market purchase of powerful rocket engines from a Ukrainian factory", the paper adds. However, if Trump had hoped to mend ties with Russia, "his first few months in office have not seen a rapprochement", says Newsweek. The latest snub to Russian President Vladimir Putin comes as Russia prepares to mount what could be one of its biggest military exercises since the cold war. Western officials and analysts estimate that up to 100,000 military personnel could take part in the Zapad (West) 17 exercise, which will take place next month in Belarus, Kaliningrad and Russia. It will be "a display of power that will be watched warily by Nato against a backdrop of east-west tensions", says The Guardian. Earlier this year, The Independent reported scores of tanks and other US fighting vehicles landed in Germany on their way to take part in Operation Atlantic Resolve, "which foresees the continuous presence of an American armoured brigade combat team in Europe on a nine-month rotational basis". The mission represents the biggest transfer of American armour to the region since the fall of the Soviet Union, it says, and "was meant to help allay concerns held by Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and other Nato allies about Russia". |
Dec 24 (Reuters) - A Las Vegas taxi driver has been hailed for his honesty after ensuring that $300,000 in cash found left in his cab was returned to its rightful owner, the Las Vegas Sun reported on Tuesday. Gerardo Gamboa discovered the cash inside a bag that an unidentified passenger left behind in the taxi's back seat early Monday after a successful night of gambling, the newspaper reported. Gamboa's employer, Yellow Checker Star Transportation, later rewarded the cabbie for his rectitude by giving him a $1,000 bonus and a dinner out for two, and named him the company's driver of the year, the newspaper said, citing accounts from Gamboa and his company. It was not clear whether the owner of the cash would also reward Gamboa. The cabbie could not immediately be reached by Reuters for comment, and his company did not return phone calls. City police declined to comment on the incident. Gamboa picked up the cash-toting man early on Monday at The Cosmopolitan hotel and drove him to the Palms Place, where he received a $5 tip, he told the newspaper. At Gamboa's next stop, a hotel doorman at the Bellagio discovered the bag in the rear of the cab, and thinking it contained chocolate left behind by a passenger, moved it from the back seat to the front passenger seat, the newspaper reported. After peering inside the bag while stopped at a traffic light, Gamboa called his dispatcher to report the find. Using hotel records, the cab company tracked down the passenger, who arrived at the company's office in sweats and a T-shirt - but without any identification. After local police helped verify his identity, the man was reunited with his cash. He shook Gamboa's hand, took down his contact information, and said he would reward him at a later time, the newspaper reported. |
Christina Aguilera loves hand fans, and she chose OUR red lace fan for The Voice show!!!! We are so proud!! :D Hand Held Fan fan is great accessory for photo sessions, looks great with evening dress and gives cooling on a hot day. Handmade Lace Hand Fan can be unique Christmas gift for her. Spanish Wedding Fan is handmade and unique acessory, made with 100% thin mercerized cotton in deep red, black, white or in any colour you need. Crochet lace is stretched on a plastic rack in black or white. You can fold this Folding Hand Fan like on the last picture, but not more. This Wedding Prop is about 9,5'' high and 17'' wide (about 24cm high and 42cm wide). Hope you like this Lace Fan a lot. Feel free to write to me with any question. Main photo with Christina Aguilera: Trae Patton/NBC Photo by Amber Marie Photography, with a beautiful couple Sarah and Jon Snyder. Thank you for this photos :) |
Kolkata: Maharashtra’s former inspector general of police SM Mushrif on Tuesday, 23rd February accused the Intelligence Bureau (IB) of being hand-in-glove with right-wing extremists, and called for a ban on the RSS describing it as India’s No.1 terror organisation. At the launch of the Bengali version of his book “RSS – Country’s Greatest Terror Organisation”, Mushrif also termed the ongoing JNU controversy as a manifestation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) attempt to turn India into a Hindu nation. “The IB has been and continues to be the most powerful organisation in the country and irrespective of which political party is in power at the centre, it continues to operate the way it wants. “Whatever the IB says or does is considered the truth and its claims or acts are never questioned or verified,” said Mushrif, indicting the agency for colluding with the RSS and its subsidiaries for the killing of anti-terror squad chief Hemant Karkare, who was probing the involvement of Hindu radicals in terror acts. Karkare was killed during the 2008 Mumbai terror attack. “No other terror organisation has used RDX like the RSS has. At least 18 chargesheets have been filed against the RSS and its subsidiaries like Abhinav Bharat and Bajrang Dal in terror cases. “The RSS should be immediately banned for being the country’s No.1 terror organisation,” said Mushrif. Condemning the Jawaharlal Nehru University row, Mushrif expressed alarm over rising right-wing extremism. “This is only a manifestation of the RSS’s bid to establish the Aryavart Hindu Rashtra based on the tenets of Smritis and Vedas. Its time the entire country stood up against this rise of extremism,” said the author of “Who Killed Karkare? : The Real Face of Terrorism in India”. Bio Social Latest Posts By: Press Trust of India No biography available at this time Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Print More |
“Your core is anything between your shoulders and your hips”. I think I first heard this from the ingenious Charlie Weingroff. It makes perfect sense. There are your limbs and what your limbs connect to. That interweaving of connections is your core. photo credit: fitfphysiotherapy.com If you are quad dominant, you have thick thighs and no butt. If you are a quad dominant athlete, you train often, making strong parts stronger. Certain parts of your legs get bigger, but your butt stays relatively flat. Tight hip flexors get tighter. The pelvis anteriorly tilts, rotating the top forward. photo credit: swolept.com The erector spinae on the left are your low back muscles. When the pelvis is shifted anteriorly, those erectors have a hard time shutting off. If they can’t shut off, your lower stomach muscles can’t turn on. Tension in the body follows the rule of reciprocal inhibition: when a muscle contracts, it’s opposite must relax. Not only does anterior tilt cause back pain, it thickens and strengthens the hip flexors, further minimizing abdominal activation. HIP FLEXORS photo credit: deansomerset.com The body likes easy. If it could use two thick, strong ropes (hip flexors) to create/ resist movement or a thin piece of paper (rectus abdominis), it’s going to choose the ropes. The “ab work” you think you’re doing becomes hip flexor work, exacerbating the problem. Groin soreness after crunches is a sure sign you missed the point. ABDOMINALS photo credit: lyndseydesjardins.com |
Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. Feb. 28, 2017, 6:29 PM GMT / Updated Feb. 28, 2017, 6:52 PM GMT By Alex Moe As President Donald Trump prepares to deliver his first address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, Democrats are gearing up to protest the new president by inviting a diverse group of guests impacted by Trump’s most controversial policies. Immigrants who have made important contributions to American society, the family members of victims of mass shootings and those dependent on the Affordable Care Act will be among the guests on hand for the high-profile speech, say Democrats. "I want, when the president is giving his address, to be looking up in the gallery and see the diversity that is America," said Rep Jim Langevin (D-RI). Langevin is leading the charge encouraging House Democrats “to invite guests who have, despite discrimination, made positive impacts on their communities.” And unlike Trump's inauguration last month when several dozen House Democrats boycotted, only one member, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), has plans to skip the speech. Waters told her Democratic colleagues Tuesday that she won't be in attendance out of concerns she would not be able to "contain enthusiasm." "The only thing we urged members to be is respectful," House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer told reporters Tuesday ahead of Trump's address. Immigration is the dominant theme among the Democratic invitees who could all stand to lose if Trump follows through on signature campaigns promises like cracking down on undocumented immigrants, restricting travel to the U.S., and repealing the Affordable Care Act. “Once he assumed the highest office in the land, his first order of business was to close our borders to immigrants and refugees, particularly those from Muslim-majority countries,” Langevin, said in a statement. “Diversity makes our nation stronger, and I believe it should be celebrated.” The White House announced its own list of guests meant to highlight the importance of Trump’s agenda. The family members of a victim killed by undocumented immigrants will be siting with First Lady Melania Trump. Not all Democratic guests will be a direct rebuke of Trump, however. One of the most notable invitations was extended by Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) to former Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who recently defeated Ellison to become head of the Democratic National Committee. Below is a list of some of the guests being brought by House Democrats to watch Trump’s address: IMMIGRATION FOCUSED GUESTS: Rep. Filemon Vela (D-TX) invited celebrity chef Jose Andres, who cancelled plan to open a restaurant in Trump's new Washington, D.C. hotel after his inflamatory comments about Mexicans. Rep. Jim Langevin (D-RI) invited Dr. Ehsun Mirza. Mirza is a critical care doctor originally from Pakistan. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) invited Jacqueline García de Rayos. Her mother was deported despite efforts to prevent her deportation. Her brother, Angel Garcia De Rayos, will be a guest of Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ). Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) invited Fidaa Rashid. Rashid is a Chicago attorney who works with thos directly affected by Trump's travel ban from majority Muslim countries. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) invited Suzanne Akhras Sahloul, he founder and Executive Director of the Syrian Community Network. Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) invited Banah Alhanfy. She is a 20-year-old Iraqi immigrant whose father served as an interpreter for the U.S. military, but was unable to board a flight from Baghdad to the U.S. in the aftermath of Trump's order to restrict travel. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley invited Sarker Haque. The New York City business owner was the victim of an anti-Muslim hate crime in his store in 2015. Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) invited Hameed Darweesh. He was detained in New York City after Trump's executive order. He worked for US government in Iraq for 10 years as an Army interpreter, as well as an engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers and for the State Department at the US Consulate in Irbil. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) invited Lupe Salmeron, a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals student who came to the U.S 12 years ago. Rep. Ed Blumenauer (D-OR) invited Wajdi Said, a Muslim community leader and and co-founder of the Oregon Coalition for Muslim Values. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) invited Farah Alkhafaji, the sister of an Iraqi interpreter and widow of an Iraqi killed for aiding the U.S. who was initially refused entry into the U.S. after the executive order. She has resettled in Northern Virginia and has remarried a Lieutenant Commander in the US navy. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) invited Syrian refugee Karnig. He is now an employee in a factory, having owned one in Syria and lives in southern California with his wife and two children. Sen. Catherine Cortez (D-NV) invited Astrid Silva. She is a DREAMer who will also deliver the Spanish language Democratic response Tuesday to Trump's speech Tuesday. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) invited Yuriana Aguilar, the first DACA Recipient to earn a PhD. GUNS AND POLICE VIOLENCE FOCUSED GUESTS: Rep. Val Demings (D-FL) invited Christine Leinonen. She is the mother of Christopher Leinonen, who died along with his boyfriend in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-CT) invited Waterbury Police Chief Vernon L. Riddick, Jr. Etsy, whose district includes Newtown, said she will be working with Vernon on solutions to gun violence. HEALTHCARE FOCUSED GUESTS: House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) invited Ola Ojewumi. Ojewumi is a community organizer and women’s health advocate who credits Obamacare for helping her fight against cancer. Rep Sandy Levin (D-MI) invited Lindsay Helfman. Levin's office said Helfman "and her family have health coverage because of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and her attendance will spotlight the many provisions of the ACA that are helping families throughout Michigan, and the entire nation.” Rep Ted Deutch (D-FL) invited Lauri Major Tillman. Per a press release: Lauri’s grandson, Jackson, was born with severe health complications…“Thanks to the ACA, this family doesn’t have to worry about going into medical bankruptcy, having their insurance cap Jackson’s lifetime benefits, or being denied future coverage for his pre-existing condition.” Rep Joe Kennedy III (D-MA) invited Jen Fox. She is one of the congressman’s interns and a cancer survivor who was able to afford access and treatment with the help of Obamacare. OTHER NOTABLE GUESTS: Rep Keith Ellison (D-MN) invited new Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez. Rep Dan Kildee (D-MI) invited Dr. Mona Hanna–Attisha. She is a Flint pediatrician who helped to expose the city's water crisis. She is also the daughter of Iraqi-American scientists who immigrated to the U.S. with her parents after fleeing Saddam Hussein’s oppressive regime Rep Jackie Speier (D-CA) invited Former State Department official Tom Countryman. Per a release from her office: “Countryman’s distinguished Foreign Service career spanned over 30 years, including postings in Yugoslavia and Egypt. Countryman was serving as Acting Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security when, on January 27, he was recalled from overseas travel and dismissed without explanation by the Trump Administration, and without a replacement there to take over and ensure security remained a priority.” |
So much for the lentil shortage. Prices for a food staple of vegetarians across the globe are plunging from record highs in April after Canada, the world’s top exporter, began its largest harvest ever and output rose in the U.S. and India, the biggest consumer. Supplies are increasing for other so-called pulse crops, including chickpeas and dried beans, signaling discounts from costs that had skyrocketed. Lentil output is surging to an all-time high, eroding prices boosted by 2014 crop damage. © Bloomberg “Buyers will look to renegotiate contracts,” said Colin Topham, managing director in Vancouver for Agrocorp International, an agricultural trading company based in Singapore. “In rare circumstances, you’ll get defaults where they just simply won’t take the goods.” Cheaper Beans Expanding supplies may cut costs for food makers including General Mills Inc. that have been adding protein-rich legumes to breakfast cereals, energy bars and salty snacks. It’s also good news for India, where pulses are eaten at almost every meal and a quarter of supply is imported. Prices began soaring in 2014 after rains damaged Canada’s harvest and India’s weak monsoon reduced domestic output. The rally encouraged farmers in North America to plant more. Canada will see its lentil production jump 36 percent this year to a record 3.2 million metric tons, while pea output climbs 44 percent to an all-time high of 4.6 million tons, the government estimates. In 2014, the lentil crop shrank 12 percent. In the U.S., growers expanded the area planted to lentils by 89 percent this year to a record 930,000 acres, much of that coming at the expense of land previously used for wheat, U.S. Department of Agriculture data show. Production will more than double to about 623,000 tons, from 239,515 tons in 2015, said Tim McGreevy, the chief executive officer of The U.S. Dry Pea & Lentil Council in Moscow, Idaho. More Selling “There’s quite a bit higher percentage of selling going on than we’ve seen historically,” McGreevy said. “A lot of that is because they can’t make any money on their cereal grains. They’re holding on to their cereals, and they’re selling their pulses.” Rising supplies have sent prices sinking. Top-quality laird lentils tumbled 34 percent to 52.85 Canadian cents a pound in Saskatchewan as of Oct. 19, down from 80 cents in April, according to Brian Clancey, president and senior market analyst at Vancouver-based Stat Communications Ltd. A wholesale price index for pulses in India fell 5.4 percent last month, the most in six years, after touching a record high in July, according to the Press Information Bureau of India. Lentils, chickpeas, black grams and pigeon pea are a staple for most of India’s 1.3 billion people, and demand has been growing. The legumes are often cooked with curry spices, sauces or butter and eaten at most meals with rice and Indian flat bread. U.S. Price In the U.S., the price of spot richlea lentils in early October was about where it was a year earlier at 30 cents a pound, but down from a peak of 52 cents earlier in 2016, said Justin Flaten, president of JM Grain in Great Falls, Montana. “All the information we’re getting from customers is that they’ll uphold their contracts,” said Flaten, whose company sells to countries including India and Sri Lanka. “We’re really counting on our customers to fulfill their contracts.” Without futures markets for pulses, buyers have fewer ways to hedge price risk, which means there may be more pressure this year to renegotiate contracts signed when the crop value was higher, according to Topham at Agrocorp. Strong Demand “The prices went up so high because we had very tight stocks with extremely strong Indian demand,” said Murad Al-Katib, chief executive officer of Saskatchewan-based AGT Food and Ingredients, the world’s largest exporter of peas and other pulses. “You go from historically high prices to normal to average prices and you have an adjustment period.” Demand remains strong, and pulse crops are more profitable compared with grains and oilseeds, Al-Katib said. Turkey and India -- the two biggest lentil buyers -- have increased their consumption, and China has developed a market around extracting the fiber and starches from the dried peas to use in food products, Topham said. “A lower price environment means increased global consumption,” Topham said. “I think prices have found somewhat of a bottom.” |
(Exclusively for the use of the media. Not an official document) The Hague, 12 December 2012 MS/CS/1540e Zdravko Tolimir, former Assistant Commander and Chief for Intelligence and Security of the Main Staff of the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS), was today sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in 1995 after the fall of the enclaves of Srebrenica and Žepa, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Tolimir was found guilty by the Majority of Trial Chamber II, Judge Nyambe dissenting, of genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, murder as a violation of the laws or customs of war, as well as extermination, persecutions, inhumane acts through forcible transfer and murder as crimes against humanity. The Accused was found not guilty of the crime of deportation as a crime against humanity. The Majority did not enter a conviction for murder as crime against humanity on the basis of the principles relating to cumulative convictions. Zdravko Tolimir was charged with the commission of crimes through the participation in two joint criminal enterprises (JCE). The aim of the first was to murder the able-bodied Bosnian Muslim men from the enclave of Srebrenica, between approximately 11 July and 1 November 1995. The goal of the second JCE was to forcibly remove and deport the Bosnian Muslim population from the enclaves of Srebrenica and Žepa from March to August 1995. The Trial Chamber, Judge Nyambe dissenting, established that Tolimir had participated in both JCEs and found him guilty of the crimes that were committed to further the goals of those criminal enterprises, except for the crime of deportation. The Accused was also found guilty, Judge Nyambe dissenting, of the foreseeable crimes resulting from both JCEs: the opportunistic killings of smaller groups of men from Srebrenica, the targeted killings of three Bosnian Muslim leaders of Žepa, and other persecutory acts. The Chamber determined that that the murders of able-bodied men from the Srebrenica enclave were carried out with discriminatory intent so as to constitute persecutions. The Chamber found, moreover, that “the harm inflicted upon these men rises to the level of serious bodily and mental harm and constitute acts of genocide”. The Majority moreover established that removing the Bosnian Muslim civilian population from Žepa, demolishing their homes and the mosque, and killing three of the most prominent local leaders was carried out to ensure that the Bosnian Muslim population of this enclave would not be able to reconstitute itself. The Majority concluded that “the suffering of the women, children and elderly who were forcibly transferred from the Srebrenica and Žepa enclaves rises to the level of serious bodily or mental harm so as also to amount to genocide”. The Majority established that the “combined effect of the forcible removal and murder operation had a devastating effect on the physical survival of the Bosnian Muslim population of Eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina and is satisfied that these operations were aimed at destroying this population”. The Majority determined that the Accused had the knowledge of and shared the genocidal intent of other JCE members, including that of his security and intelligence organs, who were extensively involved in carrying out both JCEs. The Majority, Judge Nyambe dissenting, made a number of factual findings. They established that already in 1992 a policy existed at the highest levels of Republika Srpska to remove the Bosnian Muslim population from eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. This policy was reaffirmed by Directive 7 issued in March of 1995, signed by the President of the Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadžić, who was assisted in its drafting by various sectors within the VRS Main Staff, including the Sector of Intelligence and Security Affairs, headed by Zdravko Tolimir. After the fall of Srebrenica on 11 July 1995, and the flight of many civilians to the UN base in Potočari, members of the security organs under Tolimir’s professional command in the morning of 12 July discussed a plan to murder the men who were separated from the crowds in the UN base. The Majority, Judge Nyambe dissenting, found that in keeping with this plan, at least 1,000 men and boys were kept in horrid conditions, some of them physically mistreated, before being transported by bus to Bratunac. There, on 12 and 13 July, they were joined by thousands of Bosnian Muslim men from the column that was moving from Srebrenica towards Tuzla, and who had been captured by or surrendered to the Bosnian Serb forces. The Majority, Judge Nyambe dissenting, found that from 13 July to sometime in August 1995, at least 4,970 Bosnian Muslim men from the Srebrenica enclave were murdered. The Majority emphasised that this was a conservative calculation of the minimum number. The Majority stated, Judge Nyambe dissenting, that the total number of Bosnian Muslim men from Srebrenica who were killed was, at a minimum, closer to 6,000. The Chamber stated “that the suffering these men went through in the moments leading up to their deaths must have been unbearable. On many occasions, those who were waiting to be shot saw others before them executed. The few survivors who lived to provide their testimony before the Chamber gave harrowing accounts of what they had to endure.” The Trial Chamber underscored that the crimes that were committed “were massive in scale, severe in their intensity and devastating in their effect.” The Majority, Judge Nyambe dissenting, also considered “the extreme suffering of the approximately 30,000–35,000 women and children forcibly removed from both enclaves, and their inability to live a normal and constructive life to this day”. The initial indictment against Zdravko Tolimir was confirmed on 10 February 2005 and made public on 25 February 2005. The Accused was arrested on 31 May 2007 and transferred into the Tribunal’s custody on 1 June 2007. His trial started on 26 February 2010. Zdravko Tolimir’s trial is one of 12 proceedings at the Tribunal dealing with a range of crimes committed by the Bosnian Serb forces against Bosnian Muslims during and after the fall of the former UN protected zones of Srebrenica and Žepa in July 1995. Six of these cases have been completed. Since its establishment the Tribunal has indicted 161 persons for serious violations of humanitarian law committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 2001. Proceedings against 130 individuals have been concluded. ***** Judgement Judgement summary Case information page |
The Obama administration says it had no choice but to release almost all of the 169 immigrants with homicide convictions that were let back onto the streets last year, claiming court decisions gave officials no choice in the matter — but it’s promising a new system to better screen who gets let out. Of the 169 immigrants with homicide-related convictions released in fiscal year 2013, all but 15 were required to be let go because of specific court orders or because the immigrants had been held for too long under the rules established by a sweeping 2001 Supreme Court case, the Homeland Security Department said in an Aug. 15 letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican. Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief Thomas S. Winkowski said they’re changing the rules to make sure a senior supervisor screens the release of those kinds of immigrants in the future. • Sign the petition to declare you oppose a government takeover of the Internet “Ensuring that our enforcement policies and procedures are best suited to protect[ing] national security and public safety is paramount,” Mr. Winkowski told Mr. Grassley. “To make certain that we are doing everything we can in this regard, I am instituting new procedures requiring that an appropriate senior-level supervisor must approve before ICE releases potentially dangerous individuals.” The 116 murderers were a fraction of the 36,007 criminals ICE released in 2013. The criminals had convictions ranging from homicide and manslaughter to drunken driving and sex crimes. ICE says many of those it released were subject to some form of monitoring while out on the streets, such as an ankle bracelet. Others were required to call in to verify their whereabouts. Mr. Grassley, though, said the administration needs to do more to warn localities that potentially dangerous criminals have been sent to live near them. “The public needs to know when a person in the country illegally, and who has been convicted of a homicide, is released into their communities,” said the Iowa lawmaker and ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. According to data from ICE, the murderers are “associated” with 134 communities in the U.S. It was unclear whether that meant that’s where they were released or whether that’s where they currently reside. California led the list with murderers associated with 48 different ZIP codes, including one in tony Beverly Hills and another in Murietta, a community that saw rallies objecting to plans to use the area to house some of the illegal immigrant children surging across the border in recent months. New York City alone had 11 locations associated with the released murderers, spanning four of the five boroughs. Even states not traditionally thought of as destinations for immigrants, such as Kentucky, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, each had one location associated with a released murderer, while Alaska, Iowa and Louisiana each had two localities. The Obama administration says its hands are tied by the 2001 court decision, the Zadvydas case, which ruled that most immigration detention is not supposed to be punitive — meaning immigrants cannot be held indefinitely. That means that when governments refuse to take back their citizens, the U.S. government is stuck in a bind and usually has to release them onto its streets. Mr. Winkowski said that decision and other court orders were responsible for 154 of the 169 releases. Of the 169, Mr. Winkowski said one was granted voluntary departure and has left the country. He didn’t say what has happened to the others, and ICE officials declined to comment beyond what was in the letter. Mr. Grassley has introduced legislation to clarify the law and let authorities continue to detain dangerous criminal immigrants. And immigration experts said the Obama administration already has some tools it could use to force other countries to take their citizens back, including suspending diplomatic relations or curbing visas to come to the U.S. for government officials or citizens of recalcitrant countries. “This administration hasn’t pursued that possibility, and State Department people don’t want to raise the issue because State Department feels immigration is small potatoes; they’ve got bigger fish to fry,” said Jan Ting, a law professor at Temple University and former high-ranking official at the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Mr. Ting also said the Zadvydas ruling allowed exceptions for dangerous immigrants and said the government should vigorously use those exceptions to keep hardened criminals off the streets. ICE had initially said it was required to release 75 percent of murderers, then reduced that number to 72 percent. But the latest letter boosts that calculation to 91 percent. Mr. Grassley had asked for more details on the murderers, including the judge and court that had ordered the release. Mr. Winkowski said his agency didn’t keep those statistics and said that would have to come from the Justice Department. Mr. Grassley had also asked what conditions were placed on each convict who was released, but Mr. Winkowski didn’t address that in his letter. Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. |
The vice presidential debate Tuesday could carry with it the same impact that Republican Mike Pence and Democrat Tim Kaine have each brought to their respective tickets: inconsequential. Political experts have said for years that voters make their choice based solely on presidential candidates and not the No. 2 picks. But this year, they are also wondering if the men that Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton have selected to run alongside them are as unimportant as any pair in modern political times. In 2012, Mitt Romney’s pick, Paul Ryan, served as an important figure in the domestic budget debate during negotiations to avoid a government shutdown. In 2008, Sarah Palin initially brought good energy to the ticket — and then months of bad headlines. In 2004, John Edwards used his perch to politically prosecute Vice President Dick Cheney on his role in the war in Iraq. Advertisement In some years, the vice presidential picks had an impact because they were bad (see Quayle, Dan: 1988). Other years the vice presidential candidates were seen has terrific (see Mondale, Walter: 1976). Some picks were interesting, like in 1984, which had the first female on the ticket (Geraldine Ferraro), and in 2000, which had the first Jewish nominee (Joe Lieberman). Get Today in Politics in your inbox: A digest of the top political stories from the Globe, sent to your inbox Monday-Friday. Sign Up Thank you for signing up! Sign up for more newsletters here At least those picks had some impact on the race, however limited. “I think this campaign is, to an unusual degree, about the presidential candidates and the vice presidential candidates are probably getting less focus than is normally the case,” said Joel Goldstein, a professor at the Saint Louis University School of Law and a specialist on vice presidents. It has been two months since America met Pence, Indiana’s governor, and Kaine, a US Senator from Virginia. At the time both picks appeared to be politically logical. Pence, a onetime leadership lieutenant in the House, is an establishment Republican and social conservative who could balance Trump’s flippancy on gay marriage and abortion. Trump’s campaign viewed Pence as someone who could vouch for him with the party’s most apprehensive and conservative Republicans. Advertisement Kaine, meanwhile, was perceived as the safe pick. Clinton didn’t pick a candidate to excite the base. She picked a candidate who backed her 2008 rival, President Obama, and who had the experience to be president. Democrats also hoped Kaine could put Virginia, a swing state, squarely in their party’s column. Looking back, however, neither have accomplished these missions. Days before Pence was picked for the ticket in July, 24 percent of Republicans had an unfavorable view of Trump. In the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, taken last week, 23 percent. Similarly, Democrats have failed to put Virginia in the bank. Prior to Kaine’s addition to the ticket, two July polls showed Clinton leading Trump in Virginia in the high single digits. After he was picked, Clinton bumped up in state surveys by another few points, but the most recent surveys show her in the high single digits again, leading Trump by 6 or 7 percentage points. Nathan Gonzales, a nonpartisan political analyst and publisher of the Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report, said that Pence doesn’t change which states Trump can win — but he does help Republican candidates for governor or Congress. He said they can appear on the same big stage with the national ticket without having to stand next to Trump. Advertisement As for the Democrats, Gonzales said, “Clinton would have been in strong position in Virginia with or without Tim Kaine on the ticket.” Of course it might be unfair to expect either Kaine or Pence to break through in this particular year. Both Clinton and Trump are among the most well-known presidential nominees in history. Voter perceptions of them — which are mostly negative — have been baked into the nation’s mind for a long time. These running mates face additional challenges in getting attention. Kaine — through no fault of his own — is about the sixth most popular Democrat to headline a rally for Clinton, behind the candidate herself, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and Vice President Joe Biden. On the Republican side, Trump has essentially taken away a traditional running mate role from Pence: The attack dog. It’s clear that Trump prefers to do this himself. “Since Trump is the professional attacker, it has relegated Pence to playing more of a behind-the-scenes role with conservatives and the so-called establishment types that doesn’t get a lot of attention,” said Republican consultant Ryan Williams, who worked on Romney’s presidential campaign. While the first presidential debate between Trump and Clinton was the most watched in American history, Tuesday’s sole vice presidential debate could be the most ignored. However, Goldstein, who has written two books on the vice presidency, said that history has proven that sometimes the debate itself can launch political careers. But it’s all relative. The next week’s debate will put more attention on Kaine and Pence that they have received all campaign. “That may elevate one or both of them,” Goldstein said. James Pindell can be reached at james.pindell@globe.com . Follow him on Twitter @jamespindell or subscribe to his daily e-mail update on the 2016 campaign at www.bostonglobe.com/groundgame |
The long-acting, nonhormonal contraceptive - for men. Quick Links Vasalgel Overview Vasalgel FAQs Vasalgel and RISUG History Other male birth control leads and D.I.Y options Vasalgel's sponsor While You Wait: Least- bad current methods Stay Connected Received this from a friend? Join our mailing list! Send to a Friend Success! Twelve Rabbits, Six Months, No Sperm Yesterday the 12th of 12 rabbits marked six months with Vasalgel™, the long-acting non-hormonal male contraceptive -- with no sperm at all since the second semen sampling! We were nervous about this study, because it's crucial in determining whether the technology transfer from India went right. Does the new version of the gel (Vasalgel™) work as well as RISUG® in India? Did we successfully adapt the technology for production on a larger scale? It looks like we pulled it off -- so we're breathing a sigh of relief! Next Steps Some of the rabbits will now have the Vasalgel reversed by flushing it out with another injection; we're looking into adoption for them for afterwards. (We also require animal housing to meet the much stricter and more humane new European standards; for more information on why the European standards are better than the U.S. ones and what we're doing to try to create change within the system, see the At the same time there's a flurry of planning: Our small team is choosing manufacturing sites, figuring out final issues around syringe filling and sterilization, looking for a facility that can do a monkey study to our housing standards and within budget, preparing to talk with the FDA, and more. Some of the rabbits will now have the Vasalgel reversed by flushing it out with another injection; we're looking into adoption for them for afterwards. (We also require animal housing to meet the much stricter and more humane new European standards; for more information on why the European standards are better than the U.S. ones and what we're doing to try to create change within the system, see the FAQ section.)At the same time there's a flurry of planning: Our small team is choosing manufacturing sites, figuring out final issues around syringe filling and sterilization, looking for a facility that can do a monkey study to our housing standards and within budget, preparing to talk with the FDA, and more. Timeline to Clinical Trials We are still aiming to start the first clinical trial by the end of this year, and to have Vasalgel to market by the end of 2015. (It'll be tight -- that's less than 3 years!) Some milestones: Starting monkey study, and talking to FDA: Next couple months Next couple months Crowdfunding: late spring (probably May) Knowing more about clinical trial eligibility: Summer or fall Summer or fall Starting first small clinical trial (about 50 people): End of year End of year Reversibility study and second, larger clinical trial: Next year Note: The first clinical trials are likely to be only open to men who are finished having children, since the reversibility studies haven't been done yet. (So far reversibility has only been studied in animals and a handful of men with RISUG ® in India-- we're just starting reversibility studies of Vasalgel™.) Realistically, for most men it's going to be at least 2-3 years before Vasalgel™ is an option. Getting frustrated with current methods? Check out the Male Contraception Information Project's page about We are still aiming to start the first clinical trial by the end of this year, and to have Vasalgel to market by the end of 2015. (It'll be tight -- that's less than 3 years!) Some milestones:The first clinical trials are likely to be only open to men who are finished having children, since the reversibility studies haven't been done yet. (So far reversibility has only been studied in animals and a handful of men with RISUGin India-- we're just starting reversibility studies of Vasalgel™.) Realistically, for most men it's going to be at least 2-3 years before Vasalgel™ is an option. Getting frustrated with current methods? Check out the Male Contraception Information Project's page about least-bad current options while you wait. Finally: A Way to Support Development People have been asking -- and demanding! -- to contribute for a while now. But we didn't want to take contributions until we were sure we were on the right track. Well, now we're pretty darn sure! Parsemus Foundation (the nonprofit foundation developing Vasalgel) has set up Vasalgel as a "social venture," so that the contraceptive will be affordable rather than at big-pharma prices. But that means we don't have big-pharma resources! Here are some of the bills coming up we are raising money for: Reversal branch of the rabbit study: $10,000 - $12,000 Production and manufacturing: ~$120,000 Toxicology (safety) studies: $110,000 - $150,000 Monkey effectiveness study: ~$120,000 Initial human study, about 50 men: $150,000 - $250,000 Pivotal human trial: $500,000 to multi-million, depending on the number of sites and the number of men who get to take part We'll be relying on public support to get this to market. Will you help us get to the next step, clinical trials? People have been asking -- and demanding! -- to contribute for a while now. But we didn't want to take contributions until we were sure we were on the right track. Well, now we're pretty darn sure!Parsemus Foundation (the nonprofit foundation developing Vasalgel) has set up Vasalgel as a "social venture," so that the contraceptive will be affordable rather than at big-pharma prices. But that means we don't have big-pharma resources! Here are some of the bills coming up we are raising money for:We'll be relying on public support to get this to market. Will you help us get to the next step, clinical trials? Sincerely, We're working diligently and are thankful for your support!Sincerely, The Vasalgel™ team |
US Congressman Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) speaks near the Washington Monument during a rally sponsored by the Minutemen Project June 15, 2007 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/GETTY IMAGES) Former congressman Virgil Goode Jr. has qualified for the presidential ballot in Virginia, the State Board of Elections ruled Tuesday, adding a potential obstacle to Republican Mitt Romney’s hopes of winning the pivotal state. The state Republican Party is challenging Goode’s eligibility, alleging petition fraud, and the Constitution Party’s nominee still could be knocked off the ballot. Goode served in Congress as a Democrat, an independent and then a Republican before losing his southwest Virginia seat in 2008, and he could siphon votes from Romney. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein also made the ballot on Tuesday. Third-party hopefuls rarely garner many votes in Virginia, but Goode’s status as a longtime officeholder — he spent 12 years in Congress and 24 years in the state Senate before that — could bring him more support than usual. Just 2 or 3 percent of the vote going to Goode could be enough to swing the contest. Goode submitted more than 20,500 signatures to the election board, far more than required. State law requires third-party candidates for president to submit 10,000 valid signatures, including at least 400 from each of Virginia’s 11 congressional districts. Goode got significant help collecting signatures from the Independent Green Party, which assisted Goode because he supports the party’s top issue — more spending for passenger rail. But the Virginia GOP filed a challenge last week, arguing that too many of Goode’s signatures are invalid. Republicans in Pennsylvania knocked Goode off the ballot in that state last month. “Congressman Goode is on the ballot, and his name was drawn to occupy the third position on the presidential ballot,” said Virginia election board spokeswoman Nikki Sheridan. “The allegations of petition fraud against the Constitution Party have been forwarded to the office of the attorney general for investigation.” Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II’s office declined to comment on the status of the probe, but Virginia Republicans made clear Tuesday that the issue is far from settled. “Even before our letter, the attorney general was conducting a criminal investigation into issues with Mr. Goode’s petitions,” said Virginia GOP chairman Pat Mullins. “We have simply reported to the SBE additional systemic problems that warrant review. These problems display, at best, a stunning disregard for Virginia law. Mr. Goode owes the citizens of Virginia an explanation about the irregularities in his petitions.” In addition to alleging that many of the signatures submitted by Goode were invalid, Republicans also charged that Goode and other petition circulators working on his behalf committed fraud by submitting suspiciously large numbers of signatures, or by collecting signatures from several different far-flung locations on the same day. Goode on Tuesday called those allegations “ludicrous.” “That’s absurd for [Republicans] to even make a charge like that,” Goode said in an interview. “I have to wonder about their motives in doing something like this. It sounds like they don’t want any view other than theirs out there.” In 2008, President Obama became the first Democrat in more than 40 years to win the state, and head-to-head polls this time around have shown Romney and Obama close to being tied. Most surveys of the contest have not included any third-party candidates, but Public Policy Polling — which uses automated phone calls rather than live interviews — released Virginia polls in May and July with Goode getting 5 percent and 9 percent, respectively. Goode has said that he expects to take votes from both Obama and Romney, but his support is more likely to come from the GOP side. He is running on a mostly conservative platform, with a heavy emphasis on stemming both illegal and legal immigration. Goode also opposes abortion and free-trade agreements. |
COACHELLA, Calif. -- A Southern California mosque was damaged by fire Friday, and its leader said people there at the time believe it was intentionally set. CBS affiliate KPSP reported smoke and flames were seen coming from the Islamic Society of Palm Springs at about 12:10 p.m. Cal Fire responded and was able to extinguish the fire in about 35 minutes and no injuries were reported. According to the Riverside County Fire Department, the flames were contained to the building's front lobby. "The Riverside County Sheriff's Department believes this is an intentional act and we are using all available resources to follow up on any leads that are brought to our attention," Deputy Armando Munoz said in a statement late Friday, adding that investigators were asking the public to come forward with information. Reymundo Nour, the mosque's acting imam, said people there described hearing a "loud boom" and seeing flames. He said the mosque had been "fire-bombed." A group of Muslims gathered in front of the mosque in prayer shortly after the fire was contained. Muslims pray in front of the Islamic Society of Palm Springs after a fire on Friday, December 11, 2015 in Coachella, California. KPSP FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said the agency will assist local law enforcement in determining the cause, which was under investigation. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also plans to help. The mosque is about 75 miles from San Bernardino, where last week a couple that federal officials say was inspired by Islamist extremists killed 14 people and wounded 22 others. The Islamic Society of Palm Springs was targeted by a shooter on November 4, 2014, KPSP reported. The suspect was never caught but the mosque offered a $12,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. |
Political revolutions are often closely linked to communication tools. The American Revolution wasn’t caused by the proliferation of pamphlets, written to whip colonists into a frenzy against the British. But it sure helped. Social networking, a distinctly 21st-century phenomenon, has already been credited with aiding protests from the Republic of Georgia to Egypt to Iceland. And Twitter, the newest social-networking tool, has been identified with two mass protests in a matter of months — in Moldova in April and in Iran last week, when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to oppose the official results of the presidential election. But does the label Twitter Revolution, which has been slapped on the two most recent events, oversell the technology? Skeptics note that only a small number of people used Twitter to organize protests in Iran and that other means — individual text messaging, old-fashioned word of mouth and Farsi-language Web sites — were more influential. But Twitter did prove to be a crucial tool in the cat-and-mouse game between the opposition and the government over enlisting world opinion. As the Iranian government restricts journalists’ access to events, the protesters have used Twitter’s agile communication system to direct the public and journalists alike to video, photographs and written material related to the protests. (As has become established custom on Twitter, users have agreed to mark, or “tag,” each of their tweets with the same bit of type — #IranElection — so that users can find them more easily). So maybe there was no Twitter Revolution. But over the last week, we learned a few lessons about the strengths and weaknesses of a technology that is less than three years old and is experiencing explosive growth. 1. Twitter Is a Tool and Thus Difficult to Censor Twitter aspires to be something different from social-networking sites like Facebook or MySpace: rather than being a vast self-contained world centered on one Web site, Twitter dreams of being a tool that people can use to communicate with each other from a multitude of locations, like e-mail. You do not have to visit the home site to send a message, or tweet. Tweets can originate from text-messaging on a cellphone or even blogging software. Likewise, tweets can be read remotely, whether as text messages or, say, “status updates” on a friend’s Facebook page. Photo Unlike Facebook, which operates solely as a Web site that can be, in a sense, impounded, shutting down Twitter.com does little to stop the offending Twittering. You’d have to shut down the entire service, which is done occasionally for maintenance. Advertisement Continue reading the main story 2. Tweets Are Generally Banal, but Watch Out “The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful,” says Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard law professor who is an expert on the Internet. That is, tweets by their nature seem trivial, with little that is original or menacing. Even Twitter accounts seen as promoting the protest movement in Iran are largely a series of links to photographs hosted on other sites or brief updates on strategy. Each update may not be important. Collectively, however, the tweets can create a personality or environment that reflects the emotions of the moment and helps drive opinion. |
Jump seats in the back of a station wagon used to be pretty common. I grew up facing backwards out of the window of a Ford Country Squire, for example, and these sorts of seating setups were common in all sorts of cars, even diminutive ones like the Saab 95. If just a few more people remembered these wonderful seats, a Tesla owner in Santa Clarita may have been spared a gun to the face. What happened was a person who owned both a Tesla Model S and at least one human child was seen loading the child into the Tesla’s rear-facing seats, which require opening the rear hatch. Whoever called in the crime must have thought this broad-daylight act was a strangely bold and mundane-seeming kidnapping, and so they alerted the Santa Clarita Police. The Santa Clarita Valley Signal reports that the police freely admit “We’re not Tesla experts.” ... and they managed to prove that by finding the gray Tesla, and holding the owner at gunpoint while they familiarized themselves with how “The new Teslas have a weird back seat and when they put the (child) in the back seat it looked like they were putting them in the trunk.” Advertisement Come on, it’s not that weird. And, besides, there’s a huge window back there. It seems that if you really wanted to kidnap someone, it would be much smarter to cram them into the trunk of a sedan, which, of course, is windowless. If other drivers can see the weeping, panicked, screaming child right through the back window, that’s a poor choice for a kidnapper’s car. Also, remember to cut out the internal trunk release, though, really, that shouldn’t stop a kid from escaping. Advertisement The owner was able to show and explain the seats to the police officers, and I imagine they all had a good-natured chuckle, at least once the guns were put away. So, law enforcement officials, it’s probably a good time to remember that there’s a few cars out there with rear-facing jump seats, accessible from the rear hatch. Tesla has them, some Volvo and Mercedes wagons, and, um, not many more. Remember, this has happened before: Also, a wagon or hatch with windows is not likely to be a good choice if you want to kidnap a kid in a trunk, for what it’s worth. |
It’s official: Carnival Cruise Lines is returning to Mobile. Following a unanimous vote by Mobile’s city council, Mayor Sandy Stimpson and Carnival officials announced that the 2,056-passenger Carnival Fantasy will operate 84 cruises from the Port City beginning in November 2016. The thirteen-month agreement calls for the Carnival Fantasy to operate four and five-day cruises to destinations including Cozumel, Costa Maya, and Progreso. The year-long schedule is slated to begin November 9, 2016 and continue through November 27, 2017, with two one-year options to extend. Cruises can be booked beginning today at Carnival.com, with prices as low as $239 per passenger. Currently homeported in Charleston, South Carolina, the Fantasy previously operated out of Mobile in 2009 and 2010. “We are pleased and excited to welcome Carnival Cruise Lines back to Mobile,” said Mayor Stimpson. “This agreement has been a priority since the day we took office. It represents a win for our City, a win for Carnival, and most of all a win for the thousands of consumers who can once again enjoy a great cruise out of one of America’s greatest cities. We are building something special in Mobile, and this renewed partnership is evidence of that momentum.” Prior to deploying in Mobile, the 2,056-passenger Fantasy, built in 1990, will undergo a multimillion-dollar refurbishment, adding a number of restaurants and attractions. These include Guy’s Burger Joint, a complimentary poolside dining venue serving handcrafted burgers and fries created by popular chef Guy Fieri, as well as the BlueIguana Cantina, RedFrog Rum Bar, and BlueIguana Tequila Bar. The Fantasy also features a 12,000-square-foot spa, a WaterWorks aqua park featuring a 300-foot-long slide and a kiddie splash area, and a Serenity adults-only retreat, as well as fun, supervised programs for kids ages 2-17, full casino gambling, and a wide array of dining options, including a 24-hour pizzeria. “We’ve been working very closely with the port and city officials to make these cruises a reality and wish to thank Mayor Stimpson and his team for not only all their hard work but also for creating a welcoming and positive environment that makes these cruises an attractive option for today’s consumers,” said Carnival president Christine Duffy. Four-day “long weekend” cruises will depart Mobile on Thursday bound for Cozumel, where guests can enjoy beautiful white sand beaches, ancient Mayan ruins, and a wide range of shopping and dining experiences. Five-day voyages to Costa Maya and Progreso will depart on Mondays and Saturdays. During the day-long call in Progreso, guests have the opportunity to visit Chichen Itza, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. At Costa Maya, guests can explore the centuries-old Chacchoben ruins or visit the Lost Mayan Kingdom, a multi-million-dollar water-themed attraction currently under development. The City of Mobile, which owns the cruise ship terminal, has been left with no dedicated revenue source with which to pay the $1.8 million in annual debt service on the terminal since Carnival last sailed from Mobile in 2011. Under the new agreement, Mobile will receive $16 per passenger per cruise as well as an estimated $3.4 million in annual parking revenue. While the didn’t require Mobile to pay Carnival any cash incentives, the city has agreed to set aside $800,000 a year for marketing purposes. Nonetheless, city officials said they expect the agreement to net the city nearly $1.9 million after debt service and other expenses are paid. |
Why do gamers seem to hate journalists with an agenda? From the point of view of the journalist, their agenda is a positive thing. They are trying to get more female protagonists in games and making games, trying to get more LGBT representation in games, and trying to get more racial diversity in games. So when readers say that their sendup of Final Fantasy for having no playable female characters and the op-ed about heterosexual white man being life’s “easiest difficulty setting” are bad because they are agenda-driven, they react with confusion and hostility. Its easy to assume the majority of gamers are just misogynist assholes when faced with this reaction, but in my opinion the truth is not so black and white. Gamers aren’t against progress, they’re just against your approach to progress. In simplest terms the gamers who oppose “agenda-driven” reporting are supporters of bottom-up progress; which in this case is providing diverse people opportunities to make games that represent a diverse world. The journalists in question seem to support a top-down method; tearing down already completed works for not meeting their lofty standards. I want to examine the issues with this practice, and why it pisses so many gamers off. The typical method of gaming critics is not to champion the good examples of diversity in game development and games themselves. You seldom hear praise from the big sites about how the new Lara Croft is a capable, non-sexualized protagonist with a better story arc than any recent shooter protagonist. But you will hear that she’s “a girl trying to escape a man’s world” that her constant injuries are fetishistic and one death scene in game could be construed as supporting rape-culture. The journalists behind these articles know that there are more clicks in a “This game promotes misogyny!” article than there are in a “This game is a good example of a strong female character” article, so almost all of their critique trends towards the negative. We see reviews that mark a game down because it made the reviewer “feel like a bully”. We see articles telling us that this video game makes us equate kissing with killing. Their method of change is not to produce “less problematic” content or invite discussion, it is to find something they perceive as objectionable and then denounce it. When you’re told over and over that everything you like is terrible, its easy to become frustrated with those doing the telling. My Equality is Better Than Your Equality Another source of animosity on this matter is the issue of equality of results vs. equality of opportunity. I believe it would be hard to find a gamer who believes that anyone should be restricted from making games, writing about games or becoming involved in the gaming industry. This is known as equality of opportunity, everyone has the right to pursue their goals, whether that goal is to write, to write about, to critique or to develop games. If there are institutional barriers preventing that, they should be removed. If everyone has the opportunity to contribute, we will have more diversity of product and the market will choose who deserves an audience. This is the kind of equality I, and I believe many other gamers believe in. The prevailing attitude of gaming media seems to be that of equality of results. Every person (in this case ones who they perceive as marginalized or oppressed) deserves to enjoy the same level of success, unless you disagree with them of course. So when a female developer or critic produces something, it cannot be criticized lest we drive more women out of the industry. If it is not nursed on a steady diet of unreserved praise, we will lose these important voices in our industry. The media needs to understand that this attitude breeds resentment in the consumer. What would have originally been a discussion of points made or game content becomes a flame war when someone tells the public “no you cannot talk about this”. While gaming journalists may believe they are doing this for the best, saving the delicate flowers from criticism, this attitude harms the creators too. The worst thing you can do for someone’s art is to tell them it is perfect when it isn’t. When you hear nothing but universal praise and dismiss criticism by its very nature, where then is the drive to get better? By insulating women in the gaming industry from criticism you are telling them “this is good enough, do not attempt to improve yourself”. This is what gamers hate about the modern industry, success does not seem to be achieved through skill, but by playing by the rules. When there is a “megaphone” waiting to crush your dreams, why divert from the narrative? Gamers want a meritocracy, and above all they want good games. If people entering the industry refuse to take criticism then I am sorry to say, maybe they shouldn’t be in this industry. Art by Committee Games are art. This is an argument that has been made since we were able to make sprites bigger than a few pixels. And we’ve won. The Supreme Court ruled that video games are protected under the same laws that protect other art. Games appear in museums. Game design courses exist alongside fine arts courses. Many parts of development teams are known personally and professionally as artists. Games are art. Now, like other forms of art they are experiencing external censorship and criticism. If someone creates a painting that you hate, a painting that you find horrible and objectionable, a painting you believe is a representation of all that is wrong in the world… You still have no right to change it. You can choose not to look at it or you can refuse to buy a print but the artist is under no obligation to change it based on your opinion. For better or worse, everything in that painting is the choice of the artist. Games journalists don’t seem to grasp this idea. Games appear to be the only art form that must appeal to and represent every demographic simultaneously. They will demand playable female characters when the game was not written for a playable female character; Mighty No. 9, Assassin’s Creed Unity. They will decry freedom of choice built into a game because if framed a very particular way it can be seen as sexist; Hitman: Absolution, any GTA game. And they will claim 30 year old games are examples of modern societal issues; Dragon’s Lair, Ms. Pac Man. The tragic part is that these were the people who led the “games are art” charge. They campaigned for legitimacy and respect for our medium and when they got it they set about burning it down. They told game developers, “Yes what you made is art, now lets start talking about how your art can appeal to me”. What I, and I believe many gamers would love to see is less attacking of existing art and more provision of opportunity. Nobody is arguing against diversity of sex, race or sexual orientation on screen or in development, we would just like to see it come from positivity, not guilt trips. Yelling at a game for featuring primarily white men is the negative approach, providing opportunities for minority developers to get into the industry and change that is the positive. Tearing down a game because it uses a “trope” is the negative approach, trying to get girls interested in games and game development is the positive. If diversity comes as a result of shaming games and game developers at the highest levels, it will only grow to be resented as all things forced upon you are. If it comes from a grassroots movement, it will be much more likely to be embraced as a representation of how diverse we truly are at all levels of the industry. This is why gamers loved The Fine Young Capitalists project. It wasn’t attacking video games, it wasn’t telling us that women are special by their very nature. It was a way to show the world “Women have good ideas for video games too and we’re going to prove they can make money”. The reason it got funded is not spite, it is because this is the way we want to see women succeed in the gaming industry; on the strength of their ideas, not the novelty of their gender. It’s all about the money And at the end of the day, thats a major issue with an agenda driven crusade. Games developers and games publishers, while they have varying degrees of passion for the art, are driven by money. For years gamers have bought what they’re currently buying, games like CoD, Assassin’s Creed and Battlefield are licenses to print money, so diverting from the formula that made these companies billions is not a smart business move. So any criticism levied at these games for not being diverse enough, not being inclusive enough is going to fall on deaf ears when they see that they made 1.3 billion dollars last November with a white man as their protagonist. There will be token efforts of course; such as hiring “consultants” and engaging with these personalities at a superficial level, but in an industry as big as video games, none of the big companies want to be the first to take a drastic risk. To change what is produced in the industry, you cannot rely on changing the current mindsets of the people in power, you need to focus on getting people into the industry. But the current practice is the opposite of this, it breaks down into a vicious cycle of: Journalists decry video games –> game devs make token efforts –> It isn’t good enough –> Journalists decry video games. If these game journalists are true believers and not just clickbaiters they need to see the necessity of breaking that cycle. If a particularly egregious example of sexism or racism appears in a video game, by all means report on it, but that cannot be the sum of your efforts. When you ignore efforts to get women into gaming like The Fine Young Capitalists in favour of writing articles about how gamers are dead it comes across as abhorrently self serving. You are shouting from a platform about an issue while real people are below you working to fix it. If you truly believe the best way to fix video games is to do what you’re currently doing; then I won’t change your mind. You’re going to call me a misogynist, a bigot or a gatekeeper, that’s if you even ever see this article, otherwise you’ll just assume I’m still “dead” because I call myself a gamer. But I want to tell you that what we hate is not the message of equality but the means by which you address it. We don’t hate women in gaming; Jade Raymond, Amy Hennig and Corinne Yu are all great examples of women whose success in gaming came as a result of their skill, not their gender. If you want to create ways for more women to enter the gaming industry, we will gladly hold the door. If you continue to tell us that we’re scum and all we do is hate women and promote misogyny, we will stand in your way. Advertisements |
Fisking the Guardian: Somebody sent this to me on Twitter this morning and asked my opinion on it. My quick response was that it was more Social Justice Warrior nonsense and their never ending search for perpetual victimhood, but then I decided that because the ideas in it are so poisonous to the very people it is supposedly is trying to help, it deserves an actual fisking. Basically I’m taking the time to write this because if you have to stamp out another artist’s existence in order to justify your own art, you are not helping art. If you don’t feel like giving the Guardian any clicks, I’ve reproduced the entire article here. However in the interest of fairness, here is the original: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/09/move-over-hp-lovecraft-black-fantasy-writers-are-coming-through?CMP=share_btn_tw As usual the original article is in italics and my responding comments are in bold. Move over HP Lovecraft, fantasy writers of colour are coming through. A stupid title. If you are so desperate to prove racism in sci-fi you’ve got to dig up somebody who has been dead for 77 years, your argument might be a little weak. By Daniel Jose Older. Normally when the Guardian tries to prove how horrible racist/sexist/misogynist/homophobic sci-fi or fantasy is they trot out village idiot Damien Walter. This time they’re using somebody who has actually published something. Good for you, Guardian. Way to step up your game. Non-white readers and writers are falling in love with speculative fiction in increasing numbers – Excellent! which is why we need to remove its racist figurehead You’ll note that almost all SJW articles start like this. Here is a good thing, but here is why you are actually racist because of it. Last month I walked through the crowded corridors of Javits Center with tears in my eyes. Maybe it is just because I’m a manly cismale gendernormative fascist who is required by the patriarchy to keep my feelings bottled up, but the only thing that made me cry at the Javits Center was the line at the food court. It was New York Comic Con and around me flourished a sea of black and brown faces, many partially concealed beneath goggles, prosthetic zombie wounds or masks. I was also at this very same convention. I gave out a couple thousand free paperbacks and talked to people for three straight days. But since I’m not a SJW I didn’t feel the need to keep a tally of what color, religion, or sexual orientation every single person I talked to seemed to be. The people I talked to were people who liked to read books. If you are an author and you feel the need to subcategorize much beyond that, you are setting yourself up to fail. For one of the first times since I started writing speculative fiction five years ago, I felt at home in my own genre. I started seriously writing speculative fiction seven years ago so I’m assuming we’re about the same age and we’re dealing with the same industry. This statement is either horseshit or Older hasn’t been to very many sci-fi conventions. I’ve been to dozens of them all over America. I attended thirteen in 2014 alone. Cons and fandom are usually about the most inclusive bunch you’ll find anywhere. Hell, they accept Furries… FURRIES. Your argument is invalid. But SJWs love to look for invisible micro aggressions at cons. Here is one where I fisked a SJW who tried to make GenCon sound racist http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/08/19/no-tor-com-gencon-isnt-racist-a-fisking/ (short version, it isn’t). Earlier this summer, the old guard of fantasy got very uncomfortable over a petition I started asking for the World Fantasy Award to remove the bust of HP Lovecraft as its statuette and replace it with Octavia Butler. Uncomfortable? I don’t think that is a synonym for WTF. A few things for those not in the loop. HP Lovecraft is one of the most famous authors in history, who basically created a whole genre. Authors commonly use the word Lovecraftian today to describe themes and elements that he popularized. Among the creators who list Lovecraft as a major influence are Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Joe Lansdale, Alan Moore, F. Paul Wilson, Brian Lumley, Clive Barker, Guillermo Del Toro, H.R. Geiger, John Carpenter, Mike Mignola, and Neil Gaiman. Plus thousands of other authors, artists, and film makers. Have you heard of Cthulhu? Yeah. That guy. Lovecraft has influenced video games, movies, comics, and more heavy metal bands than you can count. Almost eight decades after his death every nerd in the world knows who HP Lovecraft is. There have been thousands (not an exaggeration) of stories set in Lovecraftian worlds. And hell, Lovecraftian is actually a word! Octavia Butler was also an author. She passed away in 2006. I think I read a couple of her books as a kid but don’t remember anything about them. I’m certain she’s had some influence, but Lovecraft influenced orders of magnitude more. Butlerian isn’t a word. EDIT: It turns out Butlerian is a word, just not on Earth. And I’ve not read a Dune novel in a decade. Lovecraft was an uneven craftsman at best – his stories clunk along, overburdened with adjectives and stale characters. Wow, bold words there dude who has written a couple of books. It’s his world-building and imagination that helped solidify his legacy, but even that is tainted by a failure of craft and humanity. Yet, the atmosphere he set scared the shit out of millions of us, to the point that when we grew up and tried to write something scary, we used him as a template. Nothing is more human than fear. Pulling that off takes craft. Really, most Lovecraft tales only consist of well-spoken New Englanders telling each other scary stories in the dark, but the man practically invented creeping dread in literature. But to be fair, Lovecraft said his influence was Poe, so we all learn from somebody. He detailed his rabid, paranoid racism in many letters, and it permeates his mythos. Lovecraft peopled his fiction with hordes of swarthy, child-killing and abjectly stupid black and brown people, while women are almost non-existent. Lovecraft was a product of his time. I’ve written three books of alternative history set in the 1930s. I’m fascinated by this time period. I’ve done tons of research into those years. Racism was common, ugly, and rampant. And I’m not talking invisible micro-aggressions or college students lecturing people about privilege, I’m talking systematic, legal, subjugation of groups of people based upon their ancestors. Yes, Lovecraft was a racist. He was a 1930s Democrat. It is actually kind of hard to find 1930s democrats who weren’t racists. Eugenics then was the “scientific” equivalent to Global Warming today. The “science was settled”. Proper good thinking folks didn’t question it and the world’s governments used Eugenics as an excuse for all sorts of programs that seem insane to us today. In actuality Lovecraft’s racism veered a bit from the typical democrat’s “scientific” racism, and he was more into looking down on other cultures. Keep in mind that he was a snooty New Englander. If I recall correctly he believed that anybody could move up in the world, provided they learned to act like a proper snooty New Englander. He didn’t have nice things to say about southerners either, and as far as Europeans went, the only culture he liked was the Anglo Saxon one that spawned New England. He married a Jewish woman because she’d become “cultured”. How Anglo was Lovecraft? He thought the American Revolution was uppity. Yet despite being someone descended from those swarthy hordes on one side and degenerate backwoods hill folk on the other, I’m not personally offended. Dude could still atmosphere the shit out of a scary story. As for black and brown people being dumb savages… It was the 1930s. Now I know this is really hard for somebody in 2014 to wrap their brain around, but to the average American most of the world was a mysterious, scary, alien place. Africa was a distant land of adventure. People were still expecting to find Shangri La. Hell, Lovecraft was a New Englander, by his standards Florida was a distant, scary, mysterious, alien land. Read any periodical from this time, listen to the radio programs, you’ll find that this attitude of foreign lands being cloaked in forbidden mystery wasn’t just common, it was the absolute norm. You can pull up old news reels on Youtube and watch them to see what I mean. I watched a ton before writing Grimnoir. “Here is beautiful Japan! Mysterious! Look at the crazy shoes! They eat with sticks! How do these crazy yellow people do it? Scientists say the Asian can’t see well through their squinty eyes.” You think I’m exaggerating. I’m not. As for women being non-existent, first off, not true. Second, don’t matter, because they’d just die a horrible death or be driven insane anyway. Supporters of the Lovecraft statue point out his influence on the fantasy genre, and they’re right: today, we’re still struggling to unravel the legacy of racism and erasure with which he and other early speculative fiction writers permeated their work. What does that even mean? Diagram that sentence. Yes, he was super influential, but all with racism, so we need to ERASE what came before? That doesn’t make sense. So I think maybe Older is trying to say that Lovecraft and other early writers erased non-whites? But didn’t you just say that he had non-whites, you just didn’t like how they were portrayed? So he was influential, but racist, so those of us he influenced learned racism by osmosis? Sorry, Dad, I can’t love you anymore. Mainstream science fiction and fantasy narratives continue to center on white saviour narratives, as we saw recently on Game of Thrones. Now hold on a minute, George R.R. Martin isn’t a racist. White savior narratives? Hell, any savior narrative is popular and powerful for the same reason that black vs. white/light vs. dark as a stand in for good vs. evil remains a constant in storytelling, and it has nothing to do with racism. Some themes are so deeply ingrained into humans that artists use them all the time. I can also think of popular “savior narratives” involving women, children, computers, aliens, and a Terminator. Villainous, sexualised or helpless, rarely are non-white characters presented with the same humanity and depth as white ones. How the hell does Older quantify that? Based upon the highly scientific study of pulling facts out of his ass? He might feel that way, but I disagree. But what do I know? I’ve only written a bunch of popular books where the main PoV characters aren’t white. As Imran Siddiquee points out at the Atlantic, teen dystopias tend to have a glaring blindspot when it comes to talking about more complex issues of power and privilege: “While recent dystopias warn youth about over-reliance on computers, totalitarian rule, class warfare, pandemic panics and global warming, very few ask audiences to think deeply about sexism and racism …The results feel false, and undercut the films’ attempts to comment on the present day.” All that paragraph says is that some movies are bad because they didn’t cater to some reviewer’s particular pet peeve topic. That would be like me saying that I really hated Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants because it didn’t have enough gun fights. Not everything in the world needs to be about whatever the hell it is you are personally hung up on. If you really want to have a story about Topic X maybe you should go write it and quit sniping at whoever wrote about Topic Y instead. And while “urban” has become publishing industry code for books by and for black people, throw the word fantasy on the end and suddenly the characters and authors are very white. Sigh… Again… This bizarre hang up on genres. Genres are just so book sellers know where to shelve stuff. I’m usually considered an urban fantasy author, but I think “contemporary fantasy” is more accurate, but hey, I don’t put things in the catalog for Simon & Schuster, so it isn’t my problem. In this literary gentrification, the American city becomes either a goofy whitewashed playground, Girls with werewolves and vampires, or an abysmal urban nightmare. And like most dystopias, neither fictionalized versions of this city have much to say about the real-world conflicts threatening urban communities of color like police violence and gentrification. What the hell did I just read? I’m not sure what any of this has to do with somebody winning a trophy that looks vaguely like HP Lovecraft, but because the marketing term “urban fantasy” stuck for books with magic and monsters set in the contemporary world, and some white people write books like that it equals Ferguson. Seriously? I had to look up Gentrification… Which for those of us who don’t live in democrat controlled cities means when they redevelop their inner-cities to increase the property values… And this is controversial because, hell, I don’t know… Stuff. Things like that are why I choose to live in a county with more cows than people. Honestly, these Social Justice Warrior articles are like meaningless word salad. They throw out a bunch of buzz words about racism and injustice on top of some half-baked argument about equality. When you try to question it, they say you’re a racist and declare victory. That’s why I skip right to mockery. Unfortunately, this shouldn’t surprise us. According to a recent survey, Latinos and Asians make up 3% of the publishing industry each, Hey, that’s me! Hi, guys! while blacks come in at 1%. This isn’t a conspiracy. It is actually very simple. Where do writers come from? Readers. Communities that have more readers are going to create more writers. Like I talked about in the linked article above about where gamers come from, same principle. Communities with more education, higher incomes, and leisure time produce more readers. Parents who read produce children who read. Let me give you a personal example. I grew up in a very poor, immigrant, farming community. Of my 8th grade class half of us could speak English. Of those, half could read. Of my friends, I was the only reader. Where I’m from reading was for dorks, and what kind of sissy reads books about dragons and elves and shit? Most of your time was spent doing back breaking manual labor, and free time spent reading could better be spent “partying” (drinking yourself stupid and screwing around). Tough guys didn’t read (though having a nose in a book was a great way to get into fist fights, which explains a lot about how I turned out the way I did). Reading fiction was seen as lazy, effeminate, fluff. That’s how my Dad grew up. I don’t think he’s ever read an actual book. I’d guess he’s got about a 4th grade reading level. He didn’t like the fact that I read books as a kid. I can’t fault him for feeling that way, because that was the culture he was raised in. Luckily for me, my mom liked to read. She was an Air Force kid, and had grown up all over the place. Also, very luckily, my little town had a tiny old library. When I discovered books, I didn’t care that the characters didn’t look like me. I didn’t care that they weren’t from my culture. In fact it was awesome that they weren’t like me. I didn’t need a fictionalized version of what I already knew, I wanted new experiences. I wanted gunslingers, rocket ships, and monsters. My high school was a junior gladiatorial academy. My senior year we had the 2nd highest teenage pregnancy rate in America (curse you, Dade County, Florida!). We were well divided between Mexicans, blacks, Hmong, Laotian, poor farm kids of various ethnicities, and white suburbanites. Guess who I talked to about books or played RPGs with in high school? Yep, the white suburbanites. There was a single exception to this, and that was the Pena family. The mother and father had immigrated from Mexico, opened a restaurant, and worked their butts off. They pushed all of their kids to be educated as possible and to read like crazy. Their kids appreciated GI Joe, nunchuks, dirt bikes, and other things that made the 80s awesome so I loved going to their house. Those kids got into nerdy stuff, and if I recall correctly they were the first kids I ever played D&D with. But overall, not a ton of readers from the poorer groups. I was an anomaly. Of the people I grew up with, I’m not aware of anyone else who because a writer. Now compare that to where I am now. I moved to Utah. Utah has a culture of readers. Everybody reads here. Education levels are extremely high. Disposable incomes are relatively high. Leisure time is common. So how many writers does Utah produce? Tons. For a state with less than three million people we’ve produced an absurd number of authors, many of them extremely successful, way out of proportion to our population. If you want to increase the readership in any given community, give them the opportunity and introduce them to books that they’ll find fun. That’s really what it is all about, and as a particular community gains more leisure time, you’re competing against entertainment with lower barriers to entry, like TV or videogames. Of course, the way our education system does this is totally ass backwards, by shoving dense, impenetrable “classics” onto kids and then discussing what the author “really meant” until you’ve beaten all of the love of reading right out of them. You’ll note that SJWs never talk about entertaining or fun books, but rather socially conscious or enlightening (i.e. boring). On the other hand, we’ve got the SJW answer: As Publishers Weekly puts it: “the world of speculative fiction faces the same challenge as the rest of publishing: overcoming a long history of books being primarily created by, for, and about straight white men.” So the reason there are fewer minority readers is the fault of existing white writers for writing to their existing audience. Naw, I’m going to stick with my answer gleaned from (un-privileged) personal experience rather than some gender studies professor’s bullshit hypothesis. The racial makeup of the industry matters. Nobody is stopping anybody from any particular group from reading or writing. In fact, we’re all encouraging as many people as possible to read and write. The more people buying books, the better! If you’d like to write toward a particular audience, fantastic. DO IT. Just don’t demand that other artists create art only in your approved manner. For writers who aren’t straight, cis, white men, the already steep uphill road to publication is complicated by issues of cultural translation, representation, passive and microaggressions, rage, and assimilation, among others. That is all total bullshit, and I’m not just talking difference of opinion, but I’m talking a flat out lie. First off, for everybody the path to publication is extremely difficult. I think traditional publishing has something like a 99.99% rejection rate. I got rejected a ton of times. However, in none of my query letters did I ever specify my ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, political affiliation, or shoe size. Over the last few years changes in technology have caused a revolution in publishing. There are now far more opportunities for authors to publish independently, and because of the eBook revolution, even the tiniest niche market can be targeted, and often in an economically viable fashion. So there is literally nothing stopping you from submitting to publishers and agents. There is nothing stopping you from going independent and producing your own books. If you’d like to very specifically write a book about trans-whatever-queer-cis-binary-polar bears in the space future-past, knock yourself out. There is probably an audience for that. Next, the bit about being shunned for that big old word salad list of gender studies terms, flat out wrong. Be some type of minority and show up to an agent with a sellable, readable manuscript, and the first thing they’re going to think about is going to be how much money they can make by marketing you as special, distinct, or whatever else separates you from thousands of other competing authors. Anything that can help market you to a specific audience is wonderful, because the agent wants to GET PAID. In the time I’ve been doing this, I’m only aware of a single incidence where a publishing house discriminated against an author because of their sexual orientation. And it was a tiny publishing house. Immediately the entire author community condemned them. In fact, even the ultra-evil right wing International Lord of Hate (that would be me) reached out and put them in contact with his publicist because that sort of attention is marketing gold. http://monsterhunternation.com/2013/08/21/publisher-cancels-book-contract-because-the-writer-is-gay/ With all of the added attention, in short order they found a new, far bigger publisher, and got a much better contract. Come to think of it, the only authors I know of who’ve actually been sabotaged in major publishing houses because of their political beliefs have been conservatives, and the mainstream Manhattan publishing industry is overwhelmingly liberal. Strange… Maybe these ragey assimilators think they’re being held back from being nominated for prestigious awards… Nope. Not in recent years. They’ve been tripping over themselves to show just how Social Justice they are. And again, the group that gets attacked, sabotaged, maligned, and slandered when it shows up are conservative authors. http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/04/24/an-explanation-about-the-hugo-awards-controversy/ Well, he listed Rage… Because… Shit… I don’t know. I got an accounting degree. I can’t wrap my brain around this gender studies tripe. It’s impossible to know which of our truths will unsettle the privileged sensibilities of one of the many gatekeepers we face along the way. Frankly, that is just narcissism right there. Speaking of gatekeepers, anybody want to make any bets as to who has pissed off more of publishing’s traditional gatekeepers, me or this Daniel Jose Older? “Why Butler?” people asked me when the petition went up, and I remembered how entrenched we all get in our own corners within the genre. Butler’s prose soars where Lovecraft’s stumbles. Her characters live and breathe, confront complexities of power and privilege amid fantastical, terrifying dreamscapes steeped in history and nuance. Good for her. Get back to me when her nuance gets its own beer. My SFF community is mostly black and brown, and Butler inspired many of us to start writing in the first place. I’m all in favor of anything that gets anybody writing, so good. These folks congregate more often than not in online communities like the Nerds of Color,Black Girl Nerds and the Fan Bros, because outside of ComicCon, SFF cons have historically not been safe spaces for women and people of color. That simply isn’t true. They always throw this victim stuff out there, because to SJWs being a victim grants them super powers. You can find a handful of anecdotes of bad things happening to a handful of people at various cons over the years, but considering that these are events that happen constantly, all over the country, the number of incidents is absolutely tiny. You are way more likely to get harassed at a pee wee football game or a Bar Mitzvah. Fandom is cool. Many of them are the ones who grew up being picked on. The way SJWs keep maligning good innocent people really offends me. Again. Furries… Holy shit. Fandom accepts FURRIES. These are the online communities that signed the petition in the thousands, which is what transformed it from being just another attempt at dethroning Lovecraft as the face of one of fantasy’s highest awards (there have been several) to a global conversation with coverage in Salon, the Guardian, NPR and countless blogs. The Salon, Guardian, and NPR? Well then. That is settled! I know when I think of unbiased, critical, hard hitting journalism I think of SALON! Ultimately, the Lovecraft statue must go. He may be replaced by Butler, or Carrie Cuinn’s sea serpent wrapped around the world idea or any of the many other options, Or how about a grey, formless, blob? That would be sure not to offend anyone. But the thing is, the trophy is actually irrelevant. If it wasn’t this trophy, it would be something else for SJWs to get all outrage sputtery over. Any disagreements will be met with allegations of racism or sexism, so that you can be dismissed. Since most people are nice and don’t like being attacked as vile things that they aren’t, they give in. Keep in mind that whenever you are dealing with these people, they simply want you to be wrong somehow so they can browbeat you until you apologize, because then they own you. From then on your opinions can always be safely dismissed. but the fantasy community cannot embrace its growing fanbase of color with one hand while deifying a writer who happily advocated for our extermination with the other. Hey, doesn’t Salon, the Guardian, and NPR also think winning the Margaret Sanger Award is awesome. BWA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAA snort. Read Lovecraft, be inspired by his wild imagination, repelled by his heinous worldview, learn from his mistakes – I certainly have. But the lionizing, sugarcoating and kneejerk flurry to defend and silence uncomfortable histories has to stop if we are to move forward. Yeah, I’m not seeing a lot of sugarcoating from anybody other than the SJW crowd, who like totally wants equality (as long as you aren’t one of those evil privileged white cis-males) and diversity (as long as you are diverse in exactly the approved manner). Lovecraft was a racist. He held racist beliefs. So did many icons of that and earlier eras. You can try to erase them, or you can be an adult that realizes that throughout all of human history people have believed things that were wrong or different, including those who accomplished great things. While we’re on the topic of sugar coating, have you SJWs quit showering Marion Zimmer Bradley and Sam Delaney with praise yet? People of color have been fantasy creators and fans for a long time; we’re not going anywhere. The We Need Diverse Books campaign took the internet by storm this year and is still going strong. Good. You should go write some. A recent digital renaissance in online speculative fiction magazines like Tor.com, Crossed Genres and Strange Horizons, has helped give rise to a new, flourishing generation of writers of color. Writers of Color? I’m sorry, but this whole People of Color thing is absurdly racist. I’m technically a Person of Color, but fuck that noise. It was racist back when it was Colored People. You can’t just flip Colored People around backwards and it suddenly be cool. And honestly, you’ve got way more in common culturally with a white American suburbanite than you do with a Mongolian shepherd or a West African villager, and I’ve got more in common with you than I do with an Azorean dairy farmer, so can we just knock this stupid shit off and get back to writing stories and entertaining people? Networks executives have started to take notice. He must have missed that NPR story I fisked where the only ethnic group underrepresented on TV was Latinos, and that was only when we forgot to wear sombreros for easy identification. http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/08/07/fisking-npr-about-latinos-in-the-movies/ More importantly though, we’ve stopped asking permission and begun finding ways of making our voices heard. Again, the only people you had to ask permission from before were Manhattan liberals. Now you’ve got indy publishing. Playing the victim card is getting kind of silly when the people running your industry have been on your side. Social media revolutionized fandom in ways few saw coming, and content creators of color find ourselves with unprecedented access to audiences. We’re entering a new time – one not so enraptured by the same tired hierarchies – and the genre itself will be stronger for leaving its oppressive tropes behind. Help! Help! I’m being oppressed. Out of curiosity when I was writing the paragraph about this author having more in common culturally with an American suburbanite, I googled Daniel Jose Older to see if he had a Wikipedia page that said where he was from: http://ghoststar.net/ Heh… Check out the Google images of him. He was walking around ComicCon in tears because there were people who looked like him? If they made a movie they’d cast Morgan from Criminal Minds to play him. Meanwhile, I look like the giant swarthy love child of James Gandolfini and Khalid Sheik Mohammed and they’re lecturing me about being profiled, privilege, and micro aggressions? 😀 In the interest of full disclosure, my writing has been influenced by HP Lovecraft, because if you don’t like giant sky squids, there is something fundamentally wrong with you. I also share a birthday with Lovecraft and Ron Paul (yes, I know, this explains a lot). In actuality I’m more of a Robert E. Howard fan than a Lovecraft fan. I once got a negative review that said “though Correia uses some Lovecraftian themes, he is more of a modern Robert E. Howard” and he meant it as an insult. Personally, I wanted to use that as a cover blurb. |
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- In the NFL, if a player doesn't say he hates to lose, he's an outlier. It's practically a mandatory claim. It's not enough to be competitive. You need to be ultra-competitive. You need to hate to lose worse than all the other guys hate to lose. It's certainly a trait attached to Marcus Mariota, the Tennessee Titans second-year quarterback who will lead his team against Minnesota Sunday at Nissan Stadium. Outside of football, how does Mariota's competitive urge manifest itself? Friends say he habitually plays just about anything -- golf, cards, table tennis -- until he wins. "Marcus is hyper-competitive and he hates losing," said trainer Ryan Flaherty, who worked with Mariota in two offseasons. "I don't just mean in football games. If I beat him in a round of golf, which I beat him most of the time -- ha ha -- he won't forget about it and he'll make you play him again and again and again until he can beat you. "And that doesn't just go for golf, he will do that with ping pong too. He is a vicious competitor. So if you want to get under his skin, beat him. But if you do he will hunt you down until he beats you. I know that might seem pretty obvious and you'll say most guys are like that. But he is next level." "Anything I am doing, I want to win, I want to be the best at it," Marcus Mariota said. "It doesn't matter if it's cards, doesn't matter if I am racing home from dinner or something, I just want to be the first to do it." Joe Robbins/Getty Images Mariota's friends have his pattern down. "He will definitely teach you how to play the game then once you learn, it's on," said Bronson Yim, who played with Mariota in high school and at Oregon. "Even if it is a game that Marcus just learned, he wants to learn all of the ins and outs so that he can keep up and then before you know it, he's better than you." In the spring, Mariota spoke of losing at golf to the Titans new center, Ben Jones. What kind of quarterback loses to a lineman at golf, many of us wondered? Jones quickly turned it around and said Mariota was being modest about his game. Mariota's golfed, too, with tight end Phillip Supernaw, including on a trip to Oregon that also included two of Mariota's teammates from Oregon: Jeff Lockie and Hroniss Grasu, who is now with the Bears. "He's the sandbagger of all sandbaggers," Supernaw said. "He actually tied me one time. He's in the learning stages, but he's got a really good swing. I think he's had some lessons, I don't know if he'll admit that. "He said he shoots over 100, but it'll always be in the high 80s, low 90s pretty consistently. When he's asking for strokes, oh my God, it's a ton. He'll try to make me give him at least 10 strokes probably. At least. He can play really bad, but he can play really well. If he plays really well the 10 is more than enough. At any time he can par five holes in a row. He's a decent golfer." During that golf trip, Mariota and the gang also played a lot of Sevens, and some other games he knows from home. "Hawaiian people have all these card games, I guess it's a big thing in Hawaii," Supernaw said. "He teaches me all the card games, then he beats me at them until I kind of learn. He doesn't take losing at card games very well. "He's going to keep playing until he wins. Then it's time to go to bed." In football, Mariota won't be able to keep playing until he wins. An NFL week can be long after a loss, and he learned that after playing in nine of them in his rookie season. In three years as Oregon's starting quarterback he lost only five times. In one year as the starter at St. Louis School in Honolulu, Hawaii, before that, he lost once. "He's not an always outwardly competitive guy, but he's got an internal fire that he hates to lose," Titans general manager Jon Robinson said. "He's won a lot of football games over his career collegiately, then to have what happened last year happen, there is certainly a lot of motivation Robinson sees Mariots'a competitiveness at practice, in relatively subtle body-language. "When he comes out of a series in practice it's a fist pump, excited about what happened," he said. "If it's a bad play, it's gritting his teeth and snapping his chin strap off violently, like he let one get away." Mariota is super easy-going. It's hard to picture him visibly mad beyond that chin-strap tug. A devious grin is easier to imagine, especially as he talks about trying to be the first one home from dinner. "Anything I am doing, I want to win, I want to be the best at it," he said. "It doesn't matter if it's cards, doesn't matter if I am racing home from dinner or something, I just want to be the first to do it. "That's just kind of my mentality. That's been my mentality for a long time. It's kind of the way I was raised." |
Role reversal: Would-be groom Liu Wang wears a wedding dress to pop the question (Picture: CEN) A romantic student gave his would-be bride a dress rehearsal of their big day, by wearing a white gown to propose. Prospective groom Liu Wang decided on making the extravagant gesture before popping the question at their university in Chongqing city, southern China. The 23-year-old looked radiant in the figure-hugging frock as he got down on one knee to ask for her hand in marriage. Bizarrely the dress was picked out by the would-be groom for his partner to wear on their big day. ‘I wore it because I wanted to tell her that one day I want to see her in this dress beside me,’ he explained. ‘I know it’s not for her to wear right now but now she knows I would do anything for her.’ The unorthodox Romeo also hired a team of florists to decorate his girlfriend’s room with a banner saying: ‘Bride – I love you.’ It’s unclear if she said yes. |
TORONTO - Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne agreed Tuesday to appear before the legislature's justice committee next week to testify under oath about the Liberal government's decisions to scrap planned gas plants in Oakville and Mississauga. Since replacing former premier Dalton McGuinty in January, Wynne has maintained she was willing to appear before the opposition-dominated committee, and would release all the relevant documents on the cancelled energy projects. article continues below "I really believe that it's very important that I am the premier who has asked the auditor general to look at those costs to make sure that the calculations made are open and transparent," she told the legislature. "That's why we asked the auditor general to look at it." Wynne defended the government's decision to cancel the two gas plants, which were opposed by local residents in both communities, and noted the Tories and NDP agreed the projects should be moved elsewhere. "We made the decision to relocate those gas plants, and there were costs associated with that," she said. The auditor reported last week that the cost of scrapping the Mississauga gas plant in mid-construction, just days before the 2011 election, was $275 million, not the $190 million the Liberals had been claiming. The auditor is also investigating the 2010 cancellation of an even larger gas plant planned in Oakville, which the government says cost $40 million, but the report into that project isn't expected until August. Last week, Wynne insisted it would be wrong for the government to provide an updated cost for the Oakville plant before the auditor completes his investigation. But the Liberals said Tuesday they wanted the committee to hear from Colin Andersen, the CEO of the Ontario Power Authority, who the government said could provide updated costs on the Oakville cancellation. "The OPA will be in a position to share their current estimate of long-term costs and savings associated with the relocation of the Oakville plant," said Chiarelli. However, the opposition parties blocked Anderson's testimony until next week, which the Liberals complained would prevent the planned appearance of Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak before the committee. Hudak had also made a campaign promise to scrap the unpopular Mississauga gas plant, and the government wants to know what the Tories thought the cancellation would cost taxpayers. "They were the ones opposed to the gas plants, but when we cancelled them they cried foul," said government house leader John Milloy. "If it’s such an important issue, we’d like to know what their figures were and we look forward to Mr. Hudak coming." The Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats estimate the cost of cancelling the Oakville gas plant will be closer to $1 billion. Meanwhile, former energy minister Chris Bentley testified Tuesday that he initially blocked the release of some gas plant documents because making them public would have hurt the province's negotiating position and cost taxpayers more in the long run. "I was attempting to the best of my ability to reconcile two very important principles: protecting the financial interests of the people of Ontario, which I honestly believed were at risk, and the right of members to ask for what they want in the course of a committee proceeding," said Bentley. "The whole proceeding has been very, very challenging and very difficult." Bentley was the target of a contempt of parliament motion last fall over the gas plant documents, and resigned from government in February after Wynne won the Liberal leadership. Bentley stuck to the $40 million price for cancelling the Oakville plant, but admitted the OPA was on the hook for other costs including $210 million for gas turbines purchased for the project. Bentley's predecessor as energy minister, Brad Duguid, testified Tuesday that he recommended against scrapping the Mississauga plant, but got a call from the Liberal campaign team informing him they had decided not to go ahead with the project. "I wasn't privy to the discussions around it with the (Liberal) party, but in the last days of the campaign I got a phone call which indicated they decided to cancel the plant," said Duguid. The premier's office was clearly working around Duguid as energy minister when it came to the gas plants, said New Democrat Peter Tabuns. |
Image courtesy of Science Translational Medicine/AAAS For some women with cancer, the chemotherapy that could be their salvation will also steal their fertility. A study on mice has now revealed how those drugs damage ovaries1, offering a way to ward off the effect. The results are an important contribution to the field, says Evelyn Telfer, a reproductive biologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, who was not involved in the study. “If you’re going to try to develop fertility-preserving drugs, you want to know where the primary damage is,” she says. “This holds a lot of promise.” Every human ovary contains thousands of follicles that shelter developing eggs. Roughly once a month, some of those follicles become activated and the eggs within them mature. The ovary normally releases one of those eggs for possible fertilization. Currently, women who are treated with cyclophosphamide — a drug used to combat ovarian and breast cancers, among others — or other ovary-damaging chemotherapies must take steps to preserve their ability to have children. This usually means either having some eggs frozen or having them fertilized and then storing the embryos for later implantation. For some patients, including young girls who cannot yet produce mature eggs, doctors can harvest and freeze ovarian tissue for later transplantation. Fertile ground To investigate the effect of chemotherapy on fertility, Dror Meirow of Tel Aviv University in Israel and his team treated female mice with cyclophosphamide. They found that the drug increased the number of actively growing follicles in the ovaries and triggered a cellular pathway associated with follicle activation. This left the activated follicles vulnerable to subsequent doses of the drug, which kills actively dividing cells. The activation pathway stimulated by cyclophosphamide is controlled by a protein called PI3K. Meirow’s team knew that this protein is targeted by an experimental drug called AS101, which is in clinical trials for reducing the negative effects of chemotherapy on the blood and skin. When the researchers tested AS101 in mice treated with cyclophosphamide, they found that fewer follicles were activated or damaged and that fertility was preserved. Although the results are tantalizing, it is a big leap to extrapolate from female mice — which release between 8 and 20 eggs every four days — to humans, cautions Telfer. But the work provides an important lead that can be followed up in larger animals and human cells grown in culture, she says. Meirow, meanwhile, is eager to see the project through to ease the burden on his patients. “It’s not easy to say to a patient, ‘You have cancer, and now you’re also sterile’,” he says. “We are working on many methods to keep that from happening.” |
Lot Details One of the world's rarest, most legendary motorcycles, one of only four built 1954 AJS 497cc E95 'Porcupine' Racing Motorcycle Frame no. E95.F3 Engine no. E2.54 Britain's first success in the modern era's Grand Prix World Championships was achieved by a marque with an illustrious racing history - AJS. And the machine that carried Les Graham to his, and AJS', first and only World Championship in 1949 was, of course, the legendary Porcupine. To this day the Porcupine remains the only twin-cylinder motorcycle to have won the 500cc World Championship. The 1954 AJS 500cc E95 Porcupine represents the final development of the most exotic, innovative, and graceful British Grand Prix racing motorcycle ever made. New for 1954, its final year of competition, the unique low handmade alloy "pannier" fuel tank wraps around the motor. The magnesium camboxes protrude out from under the front of the tank, capturing the cooling air. Only four E95's were built. They first appeared at the 1952 Isle of Man TT. Development continued, eventually under the genius of race shop head Jack Williams. For the 1954 Season he introduced the pannier fuel tank (which required a fuel pump) with the matching lowered chassis. Unlike the rival works Nortons, the Porcupine shares little with the production machines sold to the public. The motor and gearbox are unit construction with gear primary drive. Power is transmitted through what may be the most beautiful exposed clutch ever seen. The long graceful cast alloy underslung oil tank is a full gallon in capacity. The twin overhead camshafts are driven by a train of gears that also drive the special aircraft magneto and the high capacity oil pump. Extensive use is made of lightweight ELECKTRON castings. Conceived towards the end of WWII, the Porcupine was originally designed to be run either with or without forced induction. Supercharged multi-cylinder engines had begun to threaten the single's supremacy towards the end of the 1930s and indeed, AJS themselves went down this road with their fearsome water-cooled V4. Fast yet difficult to handle, the latter had demonstrated that horsepower bought at the expense of excess bulk and weight was not the answer, so the thoughts of designer Vic Webb turned to a twin. Laying the cylinders almost horizontally with their heads facing forwards ensured adequate cooling and a low center of gravity while at the same time providing room, if required, for a blower above the gearbox. When the FIM banned supercharging at the end of 1946, AJS was ready with new cylinder heads designed for normal aspiration! Typed E90 but dubbed 'Porcupine' by the motorcycling press because of its distinctive spiked 'head finning, AJS' new challenger debuted at the 1947 Isle of Man TT in the hands of Les Graham and Jock West, the pair finishing 9th and 14th respectively after encountering a variety of minor problems. By way of consolation, West's best lap was only three seconds down on the fastest and showed that the bike had promise. The Porcupine's first race victory was achieved later that year by Ted Frend at the Hutchinson 100. Development continued throughout 1948, with a number of Grand Prix podium finishes and 18 world speed records among the season's highlights. The inaugural 500cc World Championship of 1949 consisted of six races, with victory going to Les Graham at the Swiss and Ulster Grands Prix. Bill Doran won the Belgian GP to assure AJS of the manufacturers' title, while Graham's two wins were enough to take the riders' championship from Gilera's Nello Pagani. Many years later, AJS works rider Ted Frend - the first rider to win on the bike - recalled that carburetion had been the Porcupine's biggest problem. Over the years several different induction arrangements were tried. Eventually, the 1954 pannier fuel tank and fuel pump solved this problem. The E90 was also bedeviled by failure of the gear driven magneto shafts - the cause of Graham's retirement from the lead of the '49 Senior TT just when two minutes from the finish. The problem was solved when chain drive for the magneto was adopted on the revised E95 engine. Introduced in 1952, the E95 engine had its cylinders tilted upwards at 45 degrees, an arrangement that permitted a shorter wheelbase. The new motor layout featured a more robust crankshaft, and improved cylinder head architecture. Its distinctive spike fins had gone, but the 'Porcupine name stuck. The E95 enjoyed a dream debut, new recruit Jack Brett and Bill Doran finishing 1st and 2nd respectively at the season-opening Swiss Grand Prix, with New Zealand star Rod Coleman in 5th place. Another new addition to the AJS team for '52, Coleman had first been given an E90 to try at the '51 Ulster GP and followed that up with a strong showing at the Grand Prix Des Nations at Monza. "In the race it was quite definitely faster than the Nortons and I had little problem getting past Geoff (Duke) and Ken (Kavanagh) with just three Gileras only a short distance ahead," Rod recalls in his book, The Colemans. "I did get with them and found again that the Porcupine was just as fast as the Gileras but was down a little on acceleration from the slower corners, but not by much. I was just beginning to think I had every chance of second place behind Milani when the motor stopped." The cause? Yet another magneto shaft failure. For 1954, the final year of competition, the E95 Porcupine (and works 'triple-knocker' 7R3 350 single) gained the new pannier-style fuel tanks which extended down on either side of the engine, thus lowering the center of gravity and affording a measure of streamlining at the same time. An AC fuel pump was used to raise fuel to the carburetors, a delivery system that involved mechanics standing the bike on its rear wheel to prime the internal header tank for starting! Jack Williams took over the race team that year and the result of his development was a much smoother engine, which now produced a maximum of 54bhp at 7,800rpm. Bob McIntyre, Derek Farrant and Rod Coleman were the riders, the latter providing the Porcupine with its best international results of the season, placing 2nd in Ulster and winning the Swedish Grand Prix. Other riders to swing a leg over the Porcupine during its short career include Bill Lomas, Robin Sherry and Reg Armstrong. Sadly, 1954 would prove to be the Porcupine's swansong year. With the death of AMC founder Charlie Collier, AJS withdrew from direct involvement in Grand Prix racing at the season's end, never to return. But the record books tell the story: between 1949 and 1954, Porcupines finished 24 races with five wins, seven 2nd places and one World Championship. In total, only four complete E90 and four E95 machines were built. Only one E90 survives. With the exception of the E95 acquired later by privateer Tom Arter, they were raced exclusively by the works team and never offered for public sale. Fortunately, all four E95s survive today. Two are in a Chartered Museum. One other is in private hands, owned by Team Obsolete. The E95 Porcupine offered here was acquired by the late Roy Richards, founder of the UK's National Motorcycle Museum in the 1980s. On display at the Museum for decades, 'F3' was mechanically restored in the USA between 2000 and 2004 by New York-based Team Obsolete - luckily escaping the Museum's disastrous fire of 2003. Quoted in Motorcycle Sport & Leisure magazine (August 2011 edition) Team Obsolete's Rob Ianucci enthused about the Porcupine: 'It's the Holy Grail of British motorcycles. It was conceived in the darkest days of the Second World War, and was created on limited budgets during the austerity of post-war Britain by dedicated men who were passionate about their craft. Yet they created a motorcycle which won the 500cc World Championship, and in my opinion was a truly beautiful mechanical object... It's a two-wheeled work of art.' After the rebuild's completion by Team Obsolete, the Porcupine went back to the NMM, arriving in time for its reopening in December 2004. The machine was acquired by the current owner after the passing of Mr. Richards, who had planned to have it do a Lap of Honor at the Isle of Man TT. Ultra-rare and of immense historical significance, 'F3' represents a possibly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to acquire one of the most legendary and exotic of all Grand Prix racing motorcycles. Offered on a Bill of Sale. |
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders appeared on Meet the Press and Face the Nation this morning, insisting that there was still "just a possibility" his campaign could win more delegates than Hillary Clinton, but rejecting the idea that Clinton's e-mail scandal could sink her. Earlier on ABC's This Week, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who defended Clinton in the wake of the inspector general's report, said she didn't "think we should make a federal case out of this" e-mail scandal. The federal investigation continues. Asked on Meet the Press about supporters who were quoted by The New York Times as "rooting" for a federal indictment of Clinton, Sanders complained that he had "a real problem with the New York Times," which he said was "dismissive" of and negative toward his campaign "from the beginning." He insisted he wanted to focus on "the issues" (a common refrain) but then just rattled off the promises that have littered his campaign. Sanders also rejected Trump's characterization of the Democratic primary process as "rigged," one shared by his far-left supporters. "I've been very touched by Donald Trump's love for me, but with all due respect, maybe some aspect of this he thinks will advantage himself," Sanders said. Instead, Sanders insisted the primary process was "really dumb" because of closed primaries, "like in New York State, where three million people who were Democrats or Republicans could not participate." In other word, the long-time Independent who coalitioned with Democrats but didn't join them until seeking their nomination, dismissed the notion that Democrats should vote in the Democratic primaries and Republicans should vote in the Republican primaries as "dumb." Basic freedom of association. Libertarian delegates will select a presidential and vice presidential candidate in Orlando today. The delegates are party members, and it would be "really dumb" to invite Republicans (who chose Trump) or Democrats (who are still choosing between a crook and a communist) to have a say in the Libertarian nomination. Sanders insisted he was a better candidate than Clinton not because unlike her he wasn't involved in a federal investigation, but because he could get a higher voter turnout, an argument that mirrors Donald Trump's. He said he would continue to try to convince superdelegates in states that he won to vote for him, while also acknowledging superdelegates that have pledged to vote for him but come from states won by Clinton shouldn't vote for him, specifically mentioning Mississippi, which Clinton won and from where two of his pledged superdelegates are from. About a third of his superdelegates come from states Clinton won, which tend to be more densely populated. |
(Newser) – Alain Robert, known as "Spider-man" for his penchant for illegally scaling the world's tallest skyscrapers, is on his way up the world's tallest: Dubai's dizzying half-mile-tall Burj Khalifa. The 48-year-old Frenchman set off just before 6pm local time, and the trip up was expected to take him six or seven hours, notes the AP. Four hours in, he had scaled two-thirds of the 2,717 feet. Robert's only concession to organizers is the use of a rope and harness, though he didn't appear to be relying on either. The AP notes that an ambulance waited at the foot of the tower. Robert's previous climbs include the New York Times building, the Empire State Building, Chicago's Willis Tower, Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Towers, and Taiwan's Taipei 101, previously the world's tallest building. Click here for more on Robert. (Read more Alain Robert stories.) |
The Saskatchewan Party won its second majority government in a landslide on Monday. With almost all the votes counted, Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party captured about 64.2 per cent of the popular vote — a historic high — while Dwain Lingenfelter's New Democrats polled 31.9 per cent. The Saskatchewan Party picked up 11 seats, finishing with 49 out of 58. The New Democrats ended up with nine seats. Wall won in his home constituency of Swift Current, making him the only party leader to win his seat. Wall jubilant Speaking to supporters Monday night in Swift Current, a jubilant Wall said people outside the province may wonder why the NDP "orange wave" that was seen federally and in other provinces this year didn't materalize in Saskatchewan. "Well, what those folks may not know is that in this province, green is the colour," Wall said to applause. Wall said his government will continue to build on Saskatchewan's economic prosperity, which he said has made people in the province optimistic about the future. "This new Saskatchewan that you have built is stronger and prouder and better than it is ever been, and we are not going back," he said. "There is still work to do, but I know we are up to the challenge because Saskatchewan people are facing their future today with hope and with optimism…. They know this: the only day better than today in Saskatchewan is tomorrow in Saskatchewan." SP's popular vote increased Before the election was called on Oct. 10, the Saskatchewan Party held 38 seats and the NDP held 20. The Sask. Party not only expanded its seat count, it increased its popular vote — a rarity for a second-term government. The party won by expanding its foothold in Regina and Saskatoon, in some cases knocking off longtime incumbents such as New Democrats Kevin Yates in Regina Dewdney and Judy Junor in Saskatoon Eastview. The party also won in The Battlefords, defeating NDP incumbent Len Taylor. In Prince Albert Northcote, the NDP also fell to a Sask. Party challenger. Voters once again shut out the Liberal Party, which ran nine candidates and received a total of 0.6 per cent of the vote. The Green Party ran a full slate, but didn't come close to winning any seats, finishing no better than third in every contest. Voter turnout was down 10 percentage points: 66 per cent compared to 76 per cent four years ago. |
This is the loud trumpet/howling noises in Spokane Valley, WA that I have been hearing All night. Started around 11pm and have been non-stop up until this morning, about 6am. That’s just one of countless social media posts that appeared throughout the night of December 13th and early December 14th as residents of Spokane Valley, Washington, tried to find the source of (and hopefully shut off) an eerie trumpeting sound that drove many out into the frigid cold in attempts to determine the cause. Did they? Local media outlets in Spokane valley, a suburb of Spokane, jumped right on the story the night of December 14th, reporting thousands of people – one estimated at least 27,000 people would have been exposed to it – heard the mysterious sound from 10:30 pm to 5 am … a sound that many described as a trumpet, which always stokes apocalyptic fears. They attempted to pinpoint the cause. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB5giItoe2Q Snow plows was a popular initial diagnosis, since there was snow on the ground and plows on the streets. In fact, one report mentioned a single mall parking lot that was allegedly being plowed continuously the entire night (nice work if you can get it). While that might explain the sound in that localized area (and it was later determined that the lot hadn’t been plowed at all), it doesn’t explain the sound traveling throughout the town nor the loudness of it, especially in areas where there was no plowing going on. When sound travels great distances, weather, cloud cover and the unusual properties of cold air are the usual suspects. … temperature does affect the speed of sound, which can make certain things sounds different than what we are used to hearing. Sound will actually travel faster in hot air than it will in colder air. That’s a local TV station’s science expert, Radical Rick. (Should we trust a scientist who calls himself radical? Wouldn’t Logical Lou be a better source?) Cold air that night (not unusual in Washington state) could have slowed down normal sounds and distorted them into trumpet blasts. That sounds logical, not radical, especially if the night was filled with loud noises like snow plows and trains. However, plows were already ruled out and there were few trains running that night. One interesting theory was that the sound was the creaking of train rails expanding and contracting in the cold. That might make sense if it happened frequently (Spokane Valley is often this cold) and the noise wasn’t so loud. Once the usual suspects are disproved, the unusual suspects come out for mysterious trumpet sounds in the sky. There’s the Hum that’s heard around the world, but its frequency is too low to make the Spokane noise. There’s the sound make by the Northern lights, but that’s more of a crackling and there were no reports of auroras that night on Spokane. Tectonic plates rubbing? Not in this area. The moaning of whales or other sea creatures? These don’t last for hours. HAARP? Good luck proving that one. For those who don’t believe the constant trumpeting of those shouting “Snow plows!”, the search for an explanation of the Spokane Valley trumpeting continues. Any thoughts? |
Okay I know a lot of people here are mad that Sprint is in Halo. It's already factually proven that Halo needs to evolve to new audiences or else it would die, halo 1 2 and 3 are all so slow compared to Reach! (Which was the best halo btw) and Sprint is the key to doing this. All my friends agree Reach was the best, had awesome emotional character deaths, and was the biggest success on the MLG circuit. Halo needs Sprint. So how do we actually balance it? Make it so Sprint makes you run slower than you normally would instead of faster! You could get rid of the no shield recharge, and maps wouldn't be blown out of scale and you could still keep sprint to make everyone happy. I know I would for sure use it more if it didn't stop shield recharge, and I also couldn't just run away! What do you guys think? I feel like this is the ultimate step to fixing Halo 5 and making it the first Halo to be better than Reach :) Edit: so far no one has been able to tell me why this would be a bad idea, obviously this would fix Halo. All I hear is the Halo 1- 3 kids whining about how Halo is ruined because THEIR not good at it anymore. They just say Sprint is bad because they can't keep up anymore. Edit 2: look at the top played games on XBOX right now? Why is Destiny, Cod AW, Battlefield, Fifa, and Madden all up there? Because they all have SPRINT. Why isn't your precious Halo 1 or Quake or Unreal Tournament in the Top 10? Because they're outdated, don't have sprint, and don't take skill. It's time for all the old guys to leave and let halo get with the times. Edit 3: the only reason MCC ever makes top 10 is because of everyone playing Halo 4. Look at IGNs review of it they gave it almost a perfect score. |
The Swope Park Rangers have added nine players on loan from Sporting Kansas City ahead of tomorrow’s USL showdown with Rio Grande Valley FC: Goalkeeper Tim Melia, defenders Ever Alvarado, Kevin Ellis and Seth Sinovic, midfielders Emmanuel Appiah, Connor Hallisey and Paulo Nagamura, and forwards Cameron Porter and Diego Rubio. Of the nine players joining on loan, Alvarado, Ellis, Appiah and Rubio have all represented the Rangers this season, with the latter scoring in the 1-1 draw against Saint Louis FC on Aug. 3. Melia, Sinovic, Hallisey, Nagamura and Porter will be added to the SPR roster for the first time. The Rangers take on Rio Grande Valley FC on Saturday night at Swope Soccer Village, with kickoff set for 7:30 p.m. SPR are in the midst of a five-game homestand and have won their last two games at Children’s Mercy Victory Field by a 2-1 scoreline against LA Galaxy II and San Antonio FC. Tickets start at $12 and are available via Ticketmaster, while the game will be available via live stream on SportingKC.com. |
Two rockets fired by Gaza terrorists slammed into a greenhouse in the Hof Ashkelon region Tuesday afternoon, breaking a brief lull in hostilities after four days of cross border fire. The building suffered damage, but there were no reports of injuries. The rockets were the first after several hours of quiet since the morning, when a Grad rocket was fired at Ashdod, landing in an open field and causing no injuries or damage. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up Since Saturday more than 160 rockets and mortar shells were fired on Israel from Gaza. More than 40 Israelis were reported lightly injured, mostly suffering from shock and light shrapnel injuries. Israel retaliated by firing on rocket launching squads and terrorist infrastructure. |
Ebay user krayzee4carz is selling his totally crazy amazing custom Star Wars-themed Dodge Ram van for *ahem* only 9 grands. YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE. If you do a Google image search for Star Wars Van this comes up on the front page. (woops, I just checked again and it turns up on the SECOND page.) Graphics were professionally designed and installed. Detail is excellent and there is absolutely NO FADING! This van started out as a lovingly cared for custom van. When I got it the headers, flares, front spoiler, and dash tach were still there. I am only the third owner. It had a custom interior at one time but much of it had been removed and the van had sat for a while. It came with lots of spares and ran great. It was the perfect blank slate…….. THe force was with us. |
Land transport authorities have revealed nearly half of double-decker buses have failed basic safety tests, as major transport operators are torn over a plan to ban the vehicles. Double-decker buses are a common sight and a popular ride - until something like Monday's crash that killed at least 30 people in Tak province. Caretaker Transport Minister Chadchart Sittipunt said Wednesday many double-decker buses on the roads were unsafe and he wanted operators to order their drivers to take more precautions on dangerous routes. "Of the buses subject to a slope test, about 45% did not pass," Mr Chadchart said, citing ministry figures. It was not clear when the figures were compiled, or what happens to the buses which fail. "The vehicles can overturn if they negotiate a curve at high speed." COMMENTARY: Bus carnage should spur safety rethink A standard double-decker bus weighs about 18 tonnes and is 4.5 metres high. It can carry up to 50 passengers, while a single-decker bus weighs 15 tonnes, is about 3.8 four metres high and carries up to 40 passengers. The minister said it may be difficult to control a double-decker bus in an emergency situation given the added height and weight. Mr Chadchart plans to limit the height of all passenger buses to four metres in the future. At present, there are about 6,200 double-decker buses registered nationwide. Of them, about 1,700 are scheduled buses while the rest are charter vehicles. The plan comes in the wake of an accident involving a double-decker bus which killed 29 people and injured 23 others in Tak on Monday. Mr Chadchart also pointed to seven highways which he said are unsafe for double-decker buses to operate on. They are the Tak-Mae Sot, the Phitsanulok-Phetchabun, the Kabin Buri-Pak Thong Chai, the Ang Thong-Sing Buri-Chai Nat section of the Asian Highway, the Rangsit-Saraburi, the Krabi-Phangnga and the Chiang Mai-Mae Hong Son routes. Thailand Development Research Institute researcher Sumet Ongkittikul said bus operators preferred double-decker buses because they can carry more passengers. But he said research has found they are not suitable for long-haul routes as the vehicles can become dangerously unstable driving up or down steep slopes. He also pointed out that the UN Economic Commission for Europe introduced 150 safety criteria for operating the vehicles, but the Department of Land Transport implemented only four of them in regulating passenger buses. Mr Sumet said operators apply to register about 800 double-decker buses annually, but about 20-30% fail safety tests. He added that a standard double-decker bus costs about 7-8 million baht, but most double-decker buses driven in Thailand are locally assembled and cost 3-4 million baht each. Sujinda Cherdchai, president of the Thai Bus Operators Association and owner of Cherdchai Tour Co, opposes a ban on double-decker buses on danger-prone routes. She said most bus operators, including her own company, had spent a lot of money to acquire the double-decker buses. A ban on the vehicles would be unfair to the companies, she said, adding that most accidents are the fault of drivers, not the vehicles. Sathaporn Wongbenjarat, president of Nakhonchai Air, said his company avoided using double-deckers because tall buses handled poorly and were unsuitable for driving at high speeds. |
L.A. Guns are an American hard rock band from Los Angeles, California, formed in 1983. The band currently consists of Tracii Guns (lead guitar), Phil Lewis (lead vocals), Ace Von Johnson [2] on (rhythm guitar, backing vocals), Johnny Martin (bass guitar, backing vocals) and Shane Fitzgibbon (drums). The first incarnation of the group was formed by Tracii Guns and Rob Gardner in 1983 and merged with fellow Los Angeles group the defunct Hollywood Rose to form Guns N' Roses in March 1985. Later that year, the group was reformed by Guns and singer Paul Black adding Mick Cripps, Robert Stoddard and Nickey Alexander. Black would soon be replaced by former Girl singer Phil Lewis while former Faster Pussycat bassist Kelly Nickels was added to the group. Later, Alexander would be replaced by former W.A.S.P. drummer Steve Riley with this being known as the "classic lineup" of L.A. Guns. They achieved moderate chart success in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, the group went through numerous lineup changes (with Riley being the most consistent member) and failed to regain mainstream attention. The "classic lineup" of the group would reunite in 1999 and began recording new material. However, the group continued to change lineups and Guns eventually left to form the hard rock supergroup Brides of Destruction with Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe in 2002. L.A. Guns continued without Guns, bringing in guitarist Stacey Blades, however, following his decision to put Brides of Destruction on hiatus in 2006, Guns formed The Tracii Guns Band. The group's lineup consisted of former L.A. Guns members Black, Alexander as well as Jeremy Guns (though the lineup would eventually change), with the group eventually changing their name to L.A. Guns. Both groups continued to record and tour under the L.A. Guns moniker until 2012, when the Tracii Guns-led version of the group disbanded. To date, L.A. Guns have released eleven studio albums – L.A. Guns (1988); Cocked & Loaded (1989); Hollywood Vampires (1991); Vicious Circle (1994); American Hardcore (1996); Shrinking Violet (1999); Man in the Moon (2001); Waking the Dead (2002); Tales from the Strip (2005); Hollywood Forever (2012); and The Missing Peace (2017), two extended plays – Cuts (1992); Wasted (1998) as well as a number of live and compilation albums. History [ edit ] Formation and Guns N' Roses (1983–1985) [ edit ] L.A. Guns were first formed in 1983[3] by guitarist Tracii Guns and drummer Rob Gardner.[3][4] The first lineup included singer Mike Jagosz , bassist Ole Beich and drummer Rob Gardner. Guns, Gardner and Jagosz met at Fairfax High School and previously played in a band called Pyrrhus with bassist Dani Tull.[5][6] This lineup recorded the band's debut EP, Collector's Edition No. 1, before Jagosz was replaced by Axl Rose.[3] Originally released on vinyl, the record was produced and engineered by Blues/Rock guitarist Chuck Rosa and came out on Raz Records (an independent Hollywood based record label, named after the band's manager, Raz Cue). The same material would later be released as a bonus disc with the compilation album Hollywood Raw in 2004. Rose fronted the group Rapidfire before going on to form Hollywood Rose, a group formed following the introduction of guitarists Izzy Stradlin and Chris Weber to each other by Guns.[7] Following the breakup of Hollywood Rose, in 1984, singer Rose joined L.A. Guns.[8] However, Hollywood Rose reunited, briefly, with Rose, Stradlin, Weber and Steve Darrow returning while L.A. Guns drummer Gardner also joined the group. Weber, who left to move to New York City,[7][9] was soon replaced by Tracii Guns.[7][9][10] The group changed their name to Guns N' Roses (combining the names of L.A. Guns and Hollywood Rose) with the lineup composed of Axl Rose, Tracii Guns, Izzy Stradlin, Ole Beich and Rob Gardner.[11][12][13] Beich was eventually replaced by Duff McKagan[14][15] while Guns left the group[3] (after a falling out with Rose[14]), being replaced by Slash.[14] McKagan went on to book shows taking place between Sacramento and Seattle, which was dubbed "The Hell Tour". During this time, Gardner quit the group and was replaced by Steven Adler[9] with this line-up becoming known as the "classic lineup" of Guns N' Roses.[9][16][17] Reformation and mainstream success (1985–1992) [ edit ] [18] I guess I was a little cocky with the label. I kind of had a 'fuck you' type of attitude with them. And I guess you do not do that with major labels when you're an unknown artist. I didn't like anyone trying to change me though and A & R reps like to manipulate even though most of them are complete idiots. They kept telling me to write songs like Cinderella Bon Jovi , and Poison . It was insulting to me. Why should I follow in their footsteps just because they are successful? ... Here's the pivotal reason I left L.A. Guns. Izzy [Stradlin] and I got busted together. Rumors shot around town that Guns N' Roses were going to lose their deal with Geffen PolyGram felt it was time to replace me before signing L.A. Guns to a deal. —Black on why he was replaced. Later, in 1985, Guns and singer Paul Black reformed L.A. Guns[3][18] with Mick Cripps and Nickey Alexander.[18] Robert Stoddard, former The Dogs D'Amour singer, briefly became guitarist for the group,[18] co-writing the song "Nothing to Lose" that appeared on L.A. Guns debut album.[19] Initially, the group were to be called Faster Pussycat (later the name of another band; several of that band's members over the years were also in L.A. Guns)[18] but soon re-adopted the L.A. Guns moniker.[18] After writing material and playing shows, the group signed with PolyGram.[3][18] Black was soon replaced by former Girl singer Phil Lewis[3][20] while Kelly Nickels (formerly of Faster Pussycat) was added to the lineup.[3] They recorded their debut album, titled L.A. Guns, with producer Jim Faraci.[19] The album featured six songs co-written by former singer Paul Black[3] ("No Mercy", "Sex Action", "One More Reason", "Nothing to Lose", "Bitch is Back" and "One Way Ticket")[19] while, after album completion, drummer Alexander was replaced by former W.A.S.P. drummer Steve Riley[3][21][22] (with Riley credited as L.A. Guns' drummer on the album's liner notes[19] and Alexander only given drum credits[19]). The album was released in 1988, through PolyGram/Vertigo Records, peaking at number 50 on the Billboard 200.[23] After briefly touring in support of the album, the group returned to the studio to record their new album[3] with producers Duane Baron, John Purdell and Tom Werman.[24] Although the group (Lewis, Guns, Cripps, Nickels and Riley) wrote the album's material,[24] "Never Enough" featured additional contributions from Paul Black, Gregg Tripp and Phil Roy.[24] Robin Zander and Rick Nielsen, both of Cheap Trick, also make an appearance on the album.[24] Released in 1989, L.A. Guns new album, titled Cocked & Loaded, peaked at number 38 on the Billboard 200[23] while the single "The Ballad of Jayne" peaked at number 25 and 33 on the Mainstream Rock Chart[25] and the Billboard Hot 100[25] respectively. The album went on to become RIAA certified Gold[3] and eventually Platinum.[4] They released their third album, titled Hollywood Vampires, in 1991[3] which peaked at number 42 on the Billboard 200.[23] The singles "Kiss My Love Goodbye" and "It's Over Now" would peak at number 16 and 25 on the Mainstream Rock Chart[25] respectively while It's Over Now" also peaked at number 62 on the Billboard Hot 100.[25] Drummer Riley was fired from L.A. Guns in 1992 following the group's tour of Europe with Skid Row.[22] Vicious Circle and lineup changes (1993–1999) [ edit ] Due to the rise in popularity of Seattle's grunge movement,[3] the group waited a number of years before recording new material.[3] During this time, Guns participated in the short lived supergroup Contraband,[26] the group put together by Alan Kovac.[4] The group featured singer Richard Black[26] (of Shark Island), Michael Schenker[26] (of Scorpions, UFO and Michael Schenker Group), Share Pedersen[26] (of Vixen) and Bobby Blotzer[26] (of Ratt).[26] They released one self-titled album in 1991, which peaked at number 187 on the Billboard 200,[27] and achieved some moderate success with the single "All the Way from Memphis",[26] which peaked at number 12 on the Mainstream Rock Chart,[28] before disbanding. Regrouping in the mid-1990s with drummer Michael Gersema, L.A. Guns recorded and released their fourth album, titled Vicious Circle, in 1995 with the album failing to chart. It was their weakest selling album to date[3] with the group's first major lineup change came afterwards. Former drummer Riley was invited to rejoin the group for the subsequent tour,[22] however both Lewis (who went on to form Filthy Lucre, releasing the Popsmear album in 1997)[29] and Cripps departed the group[22] with singer Chris Van Dahl replacing Lewis[3] and Johnny Crypt replacing Cripps on rhythm guitar. PolyGram soon dropped the group, who had already begun sessions for a follow-up album, following the low sales of Vicious Circle.[3] Nickels subsequently left the band as well, at which point Crypt switched to bass.[3] The now four-piece lineup completed recording of the Pantera[22]-influenced album American Hardcore, released in 1996 through CMC International[22] with the album failing to chart also.[3] The group changed singers once again, recruiting Ralph Saenz,[3] formerly of The Atomic Punks,[30] for the recording of the Wasted EP released in 1998[3] before eventually adding former Love/Hate singer Jizzy Pearl to the group in 1999.[3] With the lineup consisting of Pearl, Guns, Crypt and Riley, the group recorded their new album with former Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke producing.[3][4][31][32] The group released the album, titled Shrinking Violet in 1999 through Perris Records[4] before going on tour supporting Poison.[4] Reunion and the departure of Tracii Guns (1999–2002) [ edit ] A compilation album of re-recorded songs and new material, titled Greatest Hits and Black Beauties, was released in the summer of 1999.[3] Despite the Pearl-led lineup having just released new material, Shrinking Violet, during this time, the "classic" lineup of L.A. Guns reunited with Phil Lewis, Mick Cripps and Kelly Nickels returning to the group in the fall, touring in support of the compilation album.[22] They recorded a live album during this time, titled Live: A Night on the Strip, which was released the following year. That same year, they re-recorded and re-released Cocked & Loaded, retitled Cocked & Re-Loaded, on Deadline Records. Both Cripps and Nickels would leave the group on the eve of a 2000 summer tour, replaced by Faster Pussycat guitarist Brent Muscat[33] and bassist Muddy.[3][34] For the recording of their new album, Cripps returned to the lineup, replacing Muscat, and recorded keyboards on the album.[34] Produced by Gilby Clarke,[3] the group released Man in the Moon in 2001 through Spitfire Records[34] while former Pretty Boy Floyd guitarist Keff Ratcliffe was added to the group.[3] Sometime afterwards, Muddy would depart the group, along with Ratcliffe and Cripps, with Adam Hamilton becoming the group's new bassist.[35][36][37] with Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx.[35] L.A. Guns bassist Hamilton was briefly involved with this group (as keyboardist),[35] which was rounded out by singer London LeGrand[35] and Adema drummer Kris Kohls.[35] John Corabi, formerly of Mötley Crüe and The Scream, was to fill in for Guns, during the latter's involvement with Cockstar, on L.A. Guns' tour with Alice Cooper.[33] However, Corabi himself would soon join Cockstar, replacing Hamilton.[35] Cockstar would change their name to Brides of Destruction. Meanwhile, L.A. Guns completed the recording of their new album in late April 2002,[38] releasing the record, titled Waking the Dead, the same year to positive reviews.[39] That June, the group began touring with Warrant, Ratt, FireHouse and Dokken as part of the Rock Fest tour.[38] However, they were soon dropped from their label.[22] They also pulled out of touring with Alice Cooper[40] followings Guns departure from the group in October[41] in order to concentrate on his project with Sixx,[36] [37][35][42] though he would argue he never left.[43] Two L.A. Guns [ edit ] Phil Lewis' L.A. Guns (2002–2012) [ edit ] Phil Lewis' L.A.Guns Cube 2010 Despite the departure of Guns, the group continued and toured in support of Waking the Dead[33] with the lineup, in 2003, consisting of Lewis, Riley, Hamilton, former guitarist Brent Muscat and new guitarist Keri Kelli (formerly of Big Bang Babies and Slash's Snakepit).[33] The group eventually recruited guitarist Stacey Blades,[44][45] with both Muscat and Kelli departing the group, in 2004 while they also released the cover album, titled Rips the Covers Off, the same year. Commenting on Blades addition to the lineup, Lewis stated that "Stacey really is a virtuoso type of guy and player. It was really fortunate that we found him and that he's another Hollywood guy. I've read reviews where they called him a Tracii [Guns] clone, but he's not. He is definitely his own man."[44] Enlisting Andy Johns and Bruce Witkin, the group began recording a new material with the group's current lineup with the result being Tales from the Strip,[44] released in 2005 through Shrapnel Records.[46] In a 2006 interview, singer Lewis stated that he would have preferred releasing the album on a larger label while he also likened the album to a demo.[47] Stacey Blades with L.A. Guns in 2008. In September of the same year, the group released the live album Loud and Dangerous: Live from Hollywood[48] before going on to play a selection of shows in California as well as one date supporting Ratt in Pennsylvania.[49] In January 2007, the group announced a string of US tour dates in support of Tales from the Strip.[50] In March, along with more tour dates, L.A. Guns announced the departure of bassist Hamilton[51] who was subsequently replaced by Scott Griffin.[52] Further tour dates were announced to take place in Australia, taking place in October,[53] as well as dates in Europe supporting Hanoi Rocks, taking place in November.[54] They soon announced that the European dates were postponed until 2008,[55] however, Hanoi Rocks issued a statement saying that the tour with L.A. Guns supporting "was never officially approved" by the group.[56] On July 5, 2009, bassist Griffin departed the group and was replaced by Kenny Kweens (formerly of Beautiful Creatures).[57][58] In January 2011, Kweens departed the band, with Griffin returning to the lineup.[59] On March 7, 2012, the band announced a new studio album, titled Hollywood Forever, which was released on June 5 that same year.[60] Tracii Guns' L.A. Guns (2006–2012) [ edit ] Former singer Marty Casey performing with L.A. Guns in 2008. Following his decision to put Brides of Destruction on hiatus, in 2006, former L.A. Guns guitarist Tracii Guns formed The Tracii Guns Band with former L.A. Guns members Paul Black and Nickey Alexander as well as Brides of Destruction live bassist Jeremy Guns.[61] The group announced a tour of the US with plans to perform songs from L.A. Guns, Brides of Destruction and Tracii Guns' solo material[61] as well as various cover songs.[62] Previously, in 2005, Black released the demos, titled Black List, recorded during his time with L.A. Guns in the 80's.[18] With Tracii Guns owning the rights to the name[22] (along with Steve Riley[22]), he changed the name of The Tracii Guns Band to L.A. Guns in the summer of 2006, creating a conflict, as there were now two groups touring under the "L.A. Guns" moniker.[63] In October of the same year, during the 20-year anniversary party for Cathouse Club, in Hollywood, Phil Lewis joined Tracii Guns' L.A. Guns onstage, after being invited by singer Paul Black,[18] for a duet of "Rip and Tear."[64] Despite Black's hopes that this would "relieve the tension between the two line-ups",[18] Lewis would later state that "Tracii [Guns] as good as he is, has had to pretty much lower himself to playing with these guys that if they were going to do anything they would have done it in the past twenty years, but they have done nothing."[65] In 2007, Alexander would be replaced by drummer Chad Stewart with the group playing shows in South America, Europe as well as numerous tours of the US.[66] In December, the Tracii Guns version of the band's dressing room was robbed during a show at McGuffy's in Dayton, Ohio. Items taken included wallets, "a Blackberry and a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey." The thief was later caught with the items returned to the band.[67] Guns announced, in January 2008, that the group were to record a new album stating that they were "heading up to Canada in April/May to record the new stuff in a very secluded location so we have no distractions and can actually get it done."[68] They announced dates in the US and South America in February,[69] however, they announced, in March, South American tour was postponed with them beginning recording on their new album, tentatively titled Pretty in Black, with producer Steve Thompson.[70] The same month, they were confirmed as one of the acts of the second Rocklahoma festival. After being invited by bassist Jeremy Guns, singer Marty Casey, of Lovehammers, joined the group, who had signed a deal with Alexus Records,[71] in the studio co-writing material.[71] Paul Black parted ways with the group in March, while Alec Bauer was added as the group's second guitarist.[72] By July, the group had completed the new album with Casey[71] with plans to release the album by the end of the year.[73] They also recorded a pilot for VH1 which, at that point, was being shopped to different networks. Also announced that the "name of the band will not be L.A. Guns for this TV show and album, but we will do some nostalgia shows and festivals as L.A. Guns."[74] The group toured through 2008 and 2009, however, Casey returned to Lovehammers to record and release their new album Heavy Crown in 2009. While the group waited for a release date for their new album, as well as deciding on a new name for the group, former L.A. Guns singer Jizzy Pearl returned to group while guitarist Alec Bauer departed the band.[75] In an interview, in late 2009, Tracii stated that L.A. Guns parted ways with Alexus Records and that he was unsure wither the material recorded with Marty Casey or the VH1 pilot will ever be released. In February 2010, L.A. Guns announced they had signed a deal with Steve Vai's label, Favored Nations,[4] to release a "Deluxe Reissue" of Shrinking Violet, the only L.A. Guns studio album to feature singer Jizzy Pearl, that was released the same year. The album was repackaged with new artwork and five live bonus tracks by the group's current lineup.[76] The band announced a one-off unplugged event, taking place at the Hotel Café in Los Angeles, California, in February 2011 featuring the band, with the exception of Jeremy Guns, former L.A. Guns members Muddy, Mick Cripps, as well as Danny Nordahl and Doni Gray.[77] By March, both Jeremy and Stewart departed the band. Although Nordahl temporarily replaced Jeremy, while Stewart remained before both rejoined Faster Pussycat.[78] It was later confirmed that Jeremy returned to the lineup,[79] with Doni Gray joining as their new drummer.[80] By September, it was announced that Pearl had departed the band, on good terms,[81] with former Rock Star: Supernova finalist Dilana joining in his place.[82] Session musician Eric Grossman was also announced as the replacement for Jeremy.[83] But after being in the band for 71 days Dilana would depart from the band and be replaced by Tony West from Blacklist Union.[84] West was replaced in January 2012 by Scott Foster Harris according to the L.A. Guns official Facebook site.[85] It has also been announced that Tracii Guns L.A. Guns will be playing their farewell tour Europe and then they will be going under the name The Tracii Guns League of Gentleman.[85] Eric Grossman has since announced his departure from L.A. Guns. He was later replaced by Johnny Martin on bass and the band added Steve Preach on guitar, organ and piano, extending the line-up to a 5-piece.[85] Disbanding of Tracii Guns' band (2012–2015) [ edit ] Michael Grant performing in 2014 Guns announced in July that he was finished with his version of L.A. Guns, leaving only the Phil Lewis-led group performing under the moniker.[86] On December 12, guitarist Stacey Blades has announced his departure from L.A. Guns;[87] five days later, Frank Wilsey joined the band as its new guitarist.[88] On January 16, L.A. Guns announced a new video DVD, Live in Concert, including video of the band's performance at the M3 Rock Festival in May 2012, three music videos and a documentary about the making of Hollywood Forever.[89] The DVD was scheduled for release via Cleopatra Records on February 12.[89] On January 17, 2013, it was announced that Wilsey had left the band; he was replaced by Michael Grant from Endeverafter.[90] On March 9, 2014, original singer Michael Jagosz died at aged 48.[91] In September 2014, the band revealed that Griffin had departed and Kweens had returned.[92] Reunion between Tracii Guns and Phil Lewis (2016–present) [ edit ] On May 31, 2016, it was announced that Phil Lewis and Tracii Guns would perform together for the first time in 14 years under the name "L.A. Guns' Phil Lewis + Tracii Guns" for a handful of shows, including three shows in South America in July, Hair Nation Rock Fest in Irvine on September 17 and Rock N Skull Fest in Joliet, Illinois on October 27.[93] This line-up of L.A. Guns consists of Lewis and Guns along with bassist Johnny Martin (who had previously been a member of Tracii Guns' version of the band) and drummer Shane Fitzgibbon; with Michael Grant from Steve Riley's line-up touring with the band as second guitarist.[94] In September 2016, LA Weekly reported that Lewis and Guns plan to record a new album together under the "L.A. Guns" name for Frontiers Records, originally intended for a June 2017 release. The album was supported by a world tour, which kicked off with two shows at the Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood in March 2017.[95] In December 2016 Lewis announced he was leaving L.A. Guns, noting "With a heavy heart I have to inform you that as of January 1, 2017 I will no longer be a member of this line up. I feel I have gone as far as I can in this band, and unless I get out and focus on myself and something new that has a future, I'm going to stagnate". It was later clarified that Lewis was to continue fronting the Tracii Guns version of L.A. Guns and that he was only leaving the Steve Riley version.[96] The Steve Riley-led version of the band are due to play the M3 Rock Festival in Maryland, USA in May 2019.[97] It was announced that L.A. Guns would be entering the studio to record a brand new album called "The Missing Peace" which was released on October 13, 2017[98] The Tracii Guns version announced that they would tour Australia and New Zealand in 2018.[99] On March 7, 2018 it was announced that the former Endeverafter guitarist Michael Grant left L.A. Guns to pursue other interests including his solo project "Michael Grant and the Assassins".[100] Grant later revealed that he was fired from the band and did not voluntarily leave.[101] Grant was replaced by Enuff Z'Nuff guitarist Johnny Monaco,[102] but was replaced by Hamilton a few months later.[103][104][105] In July 2018, L.A. Guns announced their 12th studio album Wasn't Tomorrow Great, to be released in March 2019.[106] Band members [ edit ] Tracii Guns' and Phil Lewis' version current members Tracii Guns – lead guitar, backing vocals (1983–1985, 1985–2002, 2016–present; 2006–2012 in Tracii Guns' L.A. Guns) Phil Lewis – lead vocals, rhythm guitar (1987–1995, 1999–present) Adam Hamilton – rhythm guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (2018–present) , bass (2001–2007) , bass Johnny Martin – bass, backing vocals (2018–present) Shane Fitzgibbon – drums, percussion (2018–present) Ace Von Johnson – rhythm guitar, backing vocals (2018–present, touring only) Steve Riley's version current members Kelly Nickels – bass, backing vocals, occasional harmonica (2018–present; 1987–1995, 1999–2000 in Guns'/Lewis' L.A. Guns) Steve Riley – drums, percussion, backing vocals (2018–present; 1987–1992, 1994–2016 in Guns'/Lewis' L.A. Guns) Scotty Griffin – guitar, backing vocals (2018–present) , bass (2007–2009, 2011–2014 in Guns'/Lewis' L.A. Guns) , bass Jacob Bunton – lead vocals (2018–present) Discography [ edit ] Studio albums See also [ edit ] |
Three men from Digby who rescued a whale entangled in a net say it seemed like the animal swam to shore in search of help. Barry O'Neil, Nathaniel Denton and Dallas Kenley were working on a boat on Digby's waterfront when they spotted the distressed minke whale. "I just happened to stop what I was doing for a minute, and I heard something in the water," Kenley said. "So I looked behind me and I seen a little dorsal fin in the water." "At first I thought maybe it was a porpoise or a dolphin or something." In waist-deep water Kenley got up from under the boat he was working on and realized it was a whale at least 15 feet long. It was swimming close to shore in waist-deep water and had fish netting tangled around its mouth. The netting had kelp growing on it. "Whales, they're big mammals and their skin's really thick, but the net was almost digging into his skin by an inch or so. It looked like it had been there for a bit," Kenley said. "It could still kind of open its mouth, but it was a decent sized piece of net. It probably was a nuisance for the whale, and I don't know if he would have been able to eat right or what." Whale seemed relieved The three men got into the water and gently pulled it closer to shore so they could help. Kenley said it took about five minutes for the men to cut the net off. The whale was bleeding because the net was so deep in its skin. They said it seemed like the whale was relieved when the final bit of netting came off. "It just relaxed and the three of us kind of gave it a little nudge back out to deeper water." he said. "He took off and just slowly swam away. We watched him swim for a few hundred feet. In a matter of minutes he was gone. "It's kind of surreal." In search of help? Kenley said it seemed like the whale came close to shore to find help. It is unusual for entangled whales to swim so close to shore as the one did, says Tonya Wimmer, president of the Marine Animal Response Society in Halifax. "There have been reports obviously of whales in netting before. It's just that we've never had one reported where it came that close to shore with that much netting still wrapped around it in that way." Whale entanglements not unusual Net entanglements are one of the main causes of death and injury to marine mammals, says Wimmer. Last year, minke whales were one of the most commonly reported species in terms of entanglements or dead animals in the Maritimes. "I think we had six or seven cases of minkes being entangled or entrapped in different gear around the Maritimes in just [2015] alone, and that's just when people have reported them to us." The Marine Animal Response Society knows of several humpback whales tangled in nets that have been spotted by whale watchers in the Bay of Fundy, and is monitoring that situation. 'These animals do surprise us' Unfortunately, Wimmer says it's not likely the minke whale will survive, despite rescue efforts. The whale seemed like it hadn't been eating lately due to its size. "All whales are usually fairly plump. They're fairly round. You don't usually ever see evidence of bones, like their ribs or things like that, and with this animal you do," she said. "I mean it was great that they were able to get it out of the gear in that way, because it was obviously suffering. But the odds of it surviving are probably slim just given its state. "But you never know, these animals do surprise us." Wimmer said anyone who finds a whale in distress can call the Marine Animal Response Society's toll-free hotline at 1-866-567-6277. |
Immobile agent drops Napoli hint By Football Italia staff Ciro Immobile’s agent denies his client has sold his house in Dortmund, but hints he could move to Napoli. It was reported yesterday that the striker’s agent had met with Milan’s joint-CEO Adriano Galliani, with a view to returning to Serie A. Bild even speculated that the Italian international had sold his house in Germany in preparation, but the representative of the former Torino man says that’s nonsense. “They said he’d sold his house in Dortmund,” Marco Sommella told Radio CRC. “That’s incorrect, because he never bought a house in Dortmund. A Neapolitan lad would never buy a house after six months, use your logic. “On September 1 we’ll know if Immobile will return to Italy. Two years ago Borussia Dortmund played in the Champions League final, no-one expected this slump but we’ll make our evaluations at the end of the season. “Ciro is an Italian international striker, and I think if he was on the market there would be some interested teams. “Napoli? You’d have to ask [sporting director Riccardo] Bigon. It’s too early for those kind of things, but we will say that Immobile is a neapolitan and a Napoli fan. “We’ll make certain assessments and proceed calmly.” |
Suggesting that, if Mrs Clinton wins she could face impeachment and a criminal trial as president, he said: "Her election would mire our government and our country in a constitutional crisis that we cannot afford." Mr Comey announced on Friday a fresh probe into Mrs Clinton's use of a private email server for classified government communication. The new emails were discovered on a device seized during an unrelated underage sexting investigation into former New York congressman Mr Weiner. Sources told CNN that Mr Comey will not release any further information to the public on the investigation until the review was complete, which is highly unlikely to happen before election day next Tuesday, November 8. The most relevant of the 650,000 emails linked to the Clinton campaign could be identified by election day, it was claimed on Monday. However, analysis of their contents and significance will take much longer. “These kinds of cases by their very nature are painstaking and involve layers of complexity beyond run-of-the-mill investigations,” said Paul Pelletier, a former Justice Department official. The Clinton campaign on Monday accused Mr Comey of applying a double standard when it comes to the presidential candidates after the FBI director was reportedly opposed to releasing information close to election day about alleged Russian interference in the presidential race. “A foreign power was trying to undermine the election. He believed it to be true but was against putting it out before the election,” a former official told CNBC. The CNBC report said that Mr Comey had ensured the FBI's name was not on a document that the US government put out accusing Russia of meddling in the US election. The FBI declined to comment. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said it was evidence of a "blatant double standard". Mr Mook called on Mr Comey to "immediately explain this incongruence and apply the same standard to Donald Trump's associates as he has applied to Hillary Clinton's." |
In an interview with The Washington Post this week, President-elect Donald Trump floated the idea of using military parades to make good on his promise of rebuilding America's greatness. "Being a great president has to do with a lot of things, but one of them is being a great cheerleader for the country," Trump said. "And we're going to show the people as we build up our military, we're going to display our military. "That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we're going to be showing our military," he added in the Post interview. Military parades — complete with tanks and armored vehicles — down Constitution Avenue in Washington are not a common site, even for the Fourth of July Independence Day celebrations. The last major parade in D.C. that showcased a major display of American power was right after the first Gulf War in the summer of 1991. More than 200,000 spectators that day watched as 8,000 uniformed troops, armored vehicles, Patriot missile systems and stealth aircraft zoomed overhead. However, not all spectators were impressed with the show of force that day. "The elaborate celebration, which cost $12 million, drew scattered protests from critics, who said that it glorified militarism. And the turnout for the parade — estimated at 200,000 by U.S. Park Police — was far below predictions of 1 million or more spectators," read a Los Angeles Times article covering the spectacle. Still, Americans certainly enjoy military displays, air shows and parades. Every year Americans turn out for airshows across the country in hopes of getting a glimpse of America's most famous flight demonstration squadron, the Navy's Blue Angels, who have performed in front of nearly 500 million spectators since 1946. However, Trump understands showmanship and parades will not be the only standard of valuation for America's greatness, The Washington Post's Karen Tumulty contends. |
While one of the two men repeatedly hacked Reddy with a machete, his accomplice held the victim to the ground. (Photo: Screengrab) Amaravati: In a horrific incident, a 32-year-old man was hacked to death in broad daylight by two men in Andhra Pradesh's Kadapa. The attackers later surrendered before the police. According to a NDTV report, Maruti Reddy was on his way to a court when two men dragged him out of an auto-rickshaw and attacked him in full public view in the middle of a street in. While one of the two men repeatedly hacked Reddy with a machete, his accomplice held the victim to the ground. Police said that the killers had a personal dispute with the victim. The assailants struck Reddy about 11 times. They kept on attacking him even after he had gone still. The attack was captured in the CCTV cameras installed in the area. Several bystanders watched the men kill Reddy, while many filmed the incident on their mobile phones. According to police, there was a feud between the families of the victim and the accused men over an affair between Reddy’s sister and killer’s brother-in-law. The police also clarified that there was no political or factional motive behind the murder. |
Unadulterated RGB Illumination is what they call it. G.SKILL is thrilled to announce the Trident Z RGB Series - an RGB lighting DDR4 memory kit. It looks prewtty nice actually. Requiring no additional power connections, this incredible feat of engineering bares pure RGB lighting across an uncovered full-length light bar on the award-winning Trident Z series heatspreader design. By default, the Trident Z RGB will display a rainbow of colors in a wave-style lighting effect, illuminating any system with a myriad of hues. Further lighting effects and color customizations can be controlled and chosen through software (like ASUS AURA and likely Corsair CUE, scheduled for a February 2017 release. A culmination of over 25 years of experience in DRAM manufacturing, G.SKILL sought to combine full-range RGB lighting with minimal impact on DDR4 performance. Designed with a custom 10-layer PCB and hand-picked IC chips to enhance overclocking performance, the Trident Z RGB series is capable of reaching speeds of DDR4-4266MHz. Trident Z RGB series memory kits are rigorously tested under proprietary G.SKILL test methods for reliability and compatibility to ensure the highest possible quality. And like all other G.SKILL memory, the Trident Z RGB is covered under a limited lifetime warranty, as well as full support for XMP 2.0 for easy overclocking and simple BIOS setup. Trident Z RGB series DDR4 memory kits are scheduled for a worldwide release via G.SKILL authorized distribution partners in mid-January 2017, with software to be available for download the following month. |
Apple makes itself an easy target. For all its bluster, its secrecy, its aloofness, its promises of magic and revolution; it's easy to fall into the trap of loving or loathing the company, what it stands for and, most importantly, its products. But when you strip back all the hype and hyperbole, the iPhone 5 is still a smartphone like any other, and we've tried to review it as such. Design A lot has been said about this design already and yet, there are still a few surprises we noticed when we first unpacked the box. It is noticeably lighter than the 4S, which you can feel as soon as you pick it up. It's slimmer too, though, this change is hard to spot. And of course, it's longer; as though someone at Apple took last year's phone and ran a rolling pin over it in the Apple staff kitchenette. iPhone 5 is longer, but not wider. (Credit: CBS Interactive) It's longer, but not wider. This decision was made, apparently, so that the iPhone could be used in a single hand. Apple succeeds at this, but misses an opportunity to add screen real estate to core elements of the phone. In particular, the onscreen keyboard in portrait mode is the same size as before, and for some, this is too small to be used comfortably. It is interesting that Apple has maintained this distinction between its phone and the other top-tier Android models, offering a real alternative to users who don't want a large screened device. The new aluminium and glass chassis is striking -- definitely one of the better refinements of Apple's design. And, for the first time in several years, the black version of the iPhone looks better than the white, with a sleek metallic blue hue when the light strikes it at certain angles. (Credit: CBS Interactive) It's not a more comfortable design than the 4S, unfortunately, so that while it certainly looks nicer, it is still cold in the hand, with sharpish corners that sit at angles against your skin. Not that these edges are like knives in your hand, but most of the other top-tier releases this year have had a great, curved ergonomic design that the iPhone lacks. If you've owned an iPhone in the past, you'll notice that the headphone socket has moved to the bottom of the phone, next to the new Lightning port. Though we have problems with the ramifications that changing the USB port will have for users, especially for people with older accessories, we do agree that the new Lightning connector feels more secure than the old 30-pin jacks, and we love that there is no right way to insert them. Performance Apple's new A6 processor delivers a user experience as seamless as every processor in every iPhone before it. We've come to expect silky smooth performance when using an iPhone, and this is no exception. Comparatively, there is a performance boost over the iPhone 4S in tasks like launching applications, but the difference is barely worth measuring. Battery life is solid on the iPhone 5, especially stand-by power. You can leave the iPhone sitting with the screen turned off for days without the battery draining to zero. We attempted a continuous video playback battery test using the same 720p video file we use on all new Android phones, and the iPhone 5 scored about seven and a half hours. This result isn't as direct a comparison as we'd have liked, due to the looping app we have access to not scaling the video to the full screen size of the new phone. This meant that the video played with large black pillar boxes, giving the iPhone the advantage of not having to power the extra pixels. But, it is a very respectable result, nonetheless. The major hardware milestone to consider in this release is the welcome addition of 4G data speeds. In Australia, you have 4G options with both Telstra and Optus, and after trying the iPhone 5 on both, we definitely recommend considering a 4G network for the iPhone. In speed tests, we saw a peak download of 61Mbps on the Optus network, and an average of about 20Mbps on both, and while it's pointless saying one is better than the other at this early stage, it is a major advantage for Optus and Telstra until Vodafone launches a similar network next year. Adding to this, the iPhone's Safari browser remains one of the faster smartphone browsers available, and paired with 4G speeds, the results are impressively quick. Camera On paper, Apple may seem to have made only small changes to the iPhone camera, but in practice, this feels like a brand new shooter. The camera is lightning fast, taking pics just as soon as you hit the button, and the results are often superb. Colours are vivid and well produced, and the level of detail captured is impressive. The iPhone has a few new photography tricks up its sleeve, too. For starters, you can now take a photo while shooting a video, even at 1080p resolution, which is a handy feature that we think loads of people will find a use for. You can also shoot panorama pics, which is easy to do and the results tend to be pretty sharp. |
Watch the promo for the TV show, Sex Sent Me To The ER. Courtesy:TLC Sex Sent Me To The ER promo 0:35 DRIVING ON a busy 100kmh road normally requires two hands on the steering wheel. But Neal Marshall was caught masturbating, and totally naked, while driving along the M56 motorway, in Chester, England, the Chester Chronicle reported. Marshall's solicitor Adrian Evans told Chester Magistrates Court today (AEDT) that his 49-year-old client got "carried away" when engaged in a "messaging conversation". "This does not excuse his actions but it goes a way to explain why he was seen doing it," said Mr Evans. "He bitterly regrets his actions. He never intended to be seen by a member of the public." A heavy goods vehicle driver noticed Marshall's actions and that he was naked and took down his registration number and contacted police. Prosecutor Rob Youd told the court that police then contacted Marshall, of Ellesmere Port, who refused to comment. Naked, drunk, speeding and having sex 'Amorous activities' led to car crash Marshall was charged with an act of outraging public decency, to which he pleaded guilty. He was handed a 12 month community order and a 12 month supervision order. He was also ordered to pay $160 (Pound85) costs plus a victim surcharge of $110 (Pound60). Marshall was given a six month community order and a six month supervision order in 2008 for committing the same offence. In May this year, New Mexico man Luis Briones faced multiple charges after police say he was having sex with a woman while driving drunk and crashed, hurling the woman from the vehicle. Police said Briones was found with one shoe on and his shorts on inside-out after he wrecked his Ford Explorer in Albuquerque. Police say Mr Briones' female passenger was found naked outside the sport utility vehicle with cuts. And in - where else? - the Northern Territory in 2009, a driver who crashed his car was engaged in "amorous activities" at the time of the accident. Police said the driver had been distracted by the female passenger and veered into a concrete drain on the opposite side of the road at Humpty Doo. |
Share. Showrunner Wendy Mericle previews daddy issues, big bads and more Deathstroke in Season 6. Showrunner Wendy Mericle previews daddy issues, big bads and more Deathstroke in Season 6. Warning: Spoilers ahead for Arrow Season 5. When the fifth season of Arrow came to an end, it left views shocked as Adrian Chase (Josh Segarra) killed himself, triggering a series of explosions on Lian Yu that potentially killed nearly everyone Oliver (Stephen Amell) cares about. With a new season ready to begin, producers have remained tight-lipped about who didn't survive the deadly attack and who will return to help the Green Arrow in his continuing quest to save Star City. While there are some secrets that will remain that way until Season 6 of Arrow premieres, there's still plenty to talk about. Executive producer and showrunner Wendy Mericle spoke to IGN about the show's return and revealed some major details about what's to come. The Flashbacks Aren't Entirely Gone While Season 5 saw the end of flashbacks to Oliver's life before returning to Star City, the storytelling device isn't gone for good. Instead, Mericle teases that they'll be used to fill in the blanks as the show kicks off some time after the events of the finale. "We're going to pass the normal amount of time and we will see what happened," she says. "We're going to use the flashbacks to tell the story of what happened on the island in the aftermath." In doing so, Arrow keeps one of its more unique elements alive, but with a new purpose. "It's nice to have the real estate and liberty to play around with that structure," Mericle says. "It's such a great device and now we can use it in different ways. So we're going to start right there with the premiere." Oliver's Son Will Play a Major Role When last season came to a close, one of the only people Oliver knew was safe was his son William (Jack Moore). As the boy sat with him on a boat watching the island go up in flames, it's unknown whether or not his mom survived the attack. Whatever the case, this will be the year Oliver finally steps up as a father. "One of the things we're exciting about exploring this year is his relationship with his son," Mericle says. "We leave the finale last season knowing that it's him and his son watching the island go up and seeing that horrible explosion and, like the audience, not knowing who lives and who dies. That is something that's very much at the forefront of Oliver's mind, his son and how's he going to protect his son from the fallout of what happened on the island. And going forward, the general fallout of his being the Green Arrow and how [William] knows that now." Exit Theatre Mode For Mericle, William having that knowledge opens up a number of possibilities for the series. "We've never seen a superhero try to be a parent and the complications that ensue as a result of that," she says. More importantly than his dad being a superhero though, William will have to come to terms with the events of Lian Yu -- including Chase killing himself. "He's completely traumatized as any 12-year-old boy would be having witnessed what he's seen," Mericle admits. "In the first nine-to-ten episodes this season, we're going to be exploring what is the fallout of that. And like what Oliver went through in Season 1, it's PTSD. We're not going to call it that or go into the psychological details so much but we're definitely exploring how this kid has been traumatized and, in some ways, Oliver is responsible for that." The Black Canary Will Finally Integrate Into the Team When Dinah Drake (Juliana Harkavy) joined Team Arrow as the new Black Canary, she joined at a time of extreme conflict as Oliver's war with Prometheus became more and more deadly. With that in the past and a clean slate, so to speak, as the series moves into a new season, she is dedicating herself to her vigilante identity. "I think over the intervening months and as a result of her witnessing what happened on the island, she's going to go through a similar transformation and really be not just a full-fledged member of the team but an actual believer in the cause," Mericle teases. "We haven't seen that side of her. She's always been a skeptic and now she's not." Exit Theatre Mode She will also be, perhaps, the most valuable member of the team as she's not giving up her spot in the Star City Police Department. "We've never had someone who's a vigilante but also working for the police," she explains. "Lance has moved in those worlds a little bit but now we have someone who's actually a cop and doing that." With Dinah working for the SCPD and Oliver himself still serving as mayor of Star City, the line between vigilante and law enforcement continued to be blurred. Slade's Return Will Be Emotional When Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett) returned in the Season 5 finale, he was a different man. Instead of trying to kill Oliver, he was trying to help him and his team survive the plot by Chase. Fans haven't seen the last of the character but when he returns in Season 6, it might be a bit more emotional than you're expecting. "I will tell you those episodes -- we've filmed them -- are fantastic. They're also about fathers and sons, and it's a really great storyline that's informed by Oliver's experience," Mericle says. "Slade is in a very different place now." Exit Theatre Mode Having fathers and sons figure into Slade's story is an interesting route to take. While fans have never seen his son Joe, who has been mentioned a handful of times throughout the series, Wilson has never forgotten the boy. Upon returning in the Season 5 finale, Slade admitted he wanted to find him. That's a common ground he shares with Oliver, who is only now getting to know his son. Still, as much as the two may have in common, Oliver will still have to be very careful with his frenemy. "He can never fully trust Slade," Mericle says. "That's what makes the episodes and the stories really cool and dynamic to tell." New Big Bad May Have a Team Arrow Connection The main villain for the new season is Ricardo Diaz (Kirk Acevedo), who is known as Richard Dragon in the comics. Unlike many past Arrow baddies, Diaz has no superpowers and no overt connections to Oliver himself. "The cool thing about the villain this season is we wanted to make him a different sort of villain than we'd seen before," Mericle says. "We got Adrian Chase last season and I think collectively, at least on the writing staff, that's tough to top. He was such a great villain and such a great presence. This season we wanted to do something a little bit different." That something different is a Star City crime boss that is also a master of hand-to-hand combat. And while he may not have a connection to Oliver, as Mericle tells it, "that doesn't mean there isn't a connection in there somewhere between him and maybe some other people on the team." Exit Theatre Mode That possibility gives an idea of how important the team will be in the upcoming season, as the focus of the series opens up beyond being centered entirely on Oliver. "We feel that Oliver's chapter in the first five seasons has been closed. We have the opportunities to tell stories about some other people from the team -- those that survive," Mericle explains. "We're going to use that to our advantage and take that opportunity to explore some other villains and some other relationships that we didn't have the opportunity or real estate to deal with previously." Vigilante Will Finally Be Revealed One of Season 5's dangling storylines was the identity of Vigilante. The masked person tried several times to kill Oliver in Season 5 over perceived corruption but was unable to get the job done. While that particular plot may have taken a backseat leading into the Green Arrow's final showdown with Prometheus, it will be revisited this year. What’s more, the show is going to finally reveal who’s under the mask. "I can't tell you when or who or how but I can tell you that question will be answered in the course of Season 6," Mericle reveals. "And I think it's going to be awesome. We're really excited about who we've gotten and the storylines we're working on. It's gotten bigger than we anticipated and it's going to be awesome." Arrow premieres on Thursday, Oct. 12, at 9 p.m. on The CW. |
Senate Projections The table below shows the results of our prediction algorithm for the Senate Elections in November. The method by which a projection is determined is complicated, using local regression, but its all explained if you're really curious. The algorithm outputs a projected result for each candidate; the candidate with the highest projected percentage is declared and the associated party is credited with a Senator. The races in Arkansas, Wyoming-A and Wyoming-B are devoid of non-partisan polling, thus making a projection impossible; in these situations the previous Senate election results are used in place of a projection. The polls used in the calculations can be viewed on our polls and graphs page. *60 Senators needed for filibuster proof majority. The two indepedent Senators are added to the Democratic total because they currently caucus with the Democrats. |
Nanowires and nanotubes, slender structures that are only a few billionths of a meter in diameter but many thousands or millions of times longer, have become hot materials in recent years. They exist in many forms — made of metals, semiconductors, insulators and organic compounds — and are being studied for use in electronics, energy conversion, optics and chemical sensing, among other fields. This Scanning Electron Microscope image shows an array of nanowires. Photo: Kristian Molhave/Opensource Handbook of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology The initial discovery of carbon nanotubes — tiny tubes of pure carbon, essentially sheets of graphene rolled up unto a cylinder — is generally credited to a paper published in 1991 by the Japanese physicist Sumio Ijima (although some forms of carbon nanotubes had been observed earlier). Almost immediately, there was an explosion of interest in this exotic form of a commonplace material. Nanowires — solid crystalline fibers, rather than hollow tubes — gained similar prominence a few years later. Due to their extreme slenderness, both nanotubes and nanowires are essentially one-dimensional. “They are quasi-one-dimensional materials,” says MIT associate professor of materials science and engineering Silvija Gradečak: “Two of their dimensions are on the nanometer scale.” This one-dimensionality confers distinctive electrical and optical properties. For one thing, it means that the electrons and photons within these nanowires experience “quantum confinement effects,” Gradečak says. And yet, unlike other materials that produce such quantum effects, such as quantum dots, nanowires’ length makes it possible for them to connect with other macroscopic devices and the outside world. The structure of a nanowire is so simple that there’s no room for defects, and electrons pass through unimpeded, Gradečak explains. This sidesteps a major problem with typical crystalline semiconductors, such as those made from a wafer of silicon: There are always defects in those structures, and those defects interfere with the passage of electrons. Made of a variety of materials, nanowires can be “grown” on many different substrates through a vapor deposition process. Tiny beads of molten gold or other metals are deposited on a surface; the nanowire material, in vapor, is then absorbed by the molten gold, ultimately growing from the bottom of that bead as a skinny column of the material. By selecting the size of the metal bead, it is possible to precisely control the size of the resulting nanowire. In addition, materials that don’t ordinarily mix easily can be grown together in nanowire form. For example, layers of silicon and germanium, two widely used semiconductors, “are very difficult to grow together in thin films,” Gradečak says. “But in nanowires, they can be grown without any problems.” Moreover, the equipment needed for this kind of vapor deposition is widely used in the semiconductor industry, and can easily be adapted for the production of nanowires. While nanowires’ and nanotubes’ diameters are negligible, their length can extend for hundreds of micrometers, even reaching lengths visible to the unaided eye. No other known material can produce such extreme length-to-diameter ratios: millions of times longer than they are wide. Because of this, the wires have an extremely high ratio of surface area to volume. That makes them very good as detectors, because all that surface area can be treated to bind with specific chemical or biological molecules. The electrical signal generated by that binding can then easily be transmitted along the wire. Similarly, nanowires’ shape can be used to produce narrow-beam lasers or light-emitting diodes (LEDs), Gradečak says. These tiny light sources might someday find applications within photonic chips, for example — chips in which information is carried by light, instead of the electric charges that relay information in today’s electronics. Compared to solid nanowires, nanotubes have a more complex structure: essentially one-atom-thick sheets of pure carbon, with the atoms arranged in a pattern that resembles chicken wire. They behave in many ways as one-dimensional materials, but are actually hollow tubes, like a long, nanometer-scale drinking straw. The properties of carbon nanotubes can vary greatly depending on how they are rolled up, a property called chirality. (It’s similar to the difference between forming a paper tube by rolling a sheet of paper lengthwise versus on the diagonal: The different alignments of fibers in the paper produce different strength in the resulting tubes.) In the case of carbon nanotubes, chirality can determine whether the tubes behave as metals or as semiconductors. But unlike the precise manufacturing control that is possible with nanowires, so far methods for making nanotubes produce a random mix of types, which must be sorted to make use of one particular kind. Besides single-walled nanotubes, they also exist in double-walled and multi-walled forms. In addition to their useful electronic and optical properties, carbon nanotubes are exceptionally strong, and are used as reinforcing fibers in advanced composite materials. “In any application where one-dimensionality is important, both carbon nanotubes and nanowires would provide benefits,” Gradečak says. |
Bitcoin has left stocks, bonds, and gold in the dust in 2016. The digital currency has more than tripled in value, while the S&P 500 and SPDR Gold shares rose in upper single digits; and all three investments outperformed the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond, which declined in value. Fund YTD Performance SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) 8.53% Bitcoin Investment Trust Shares (GBTC) +153.09 SPDR S&P500 (SPY) +9.77 iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond (TLT) -1.48 Source: Finance.yahoo.com 12/29/2016 What could explain Bitcoin’s big lead over other investors? A number of factors. Like the growing divide among investors regarding the state and the outlook of the US economy and the Federal Reserve’s unconventional monetary policies, for example. On the one side are those who still have faith in the Federal Reserve and the health of the US economy, and think that stocks and bonds are the place to park their savings. On the other side are those who have lost faith in the Federal Reserve and the US economy, and are looking for alternative investments to park their money -- like gold or Bitcoin. Then there are the renewed concerns over the break-up of trade wars, and the return of the old fiscal easing and huge budget deficits that feed into inflation, which undermines faith in national currencies. Also shaking up the public’s confidence are attempts by certain national governments have been trying to manipulate their own currencies, particularly India and Venezuela. Prime Minister Modi has been trying to fight corruption, a widespread problem in India. And President Maduro has been trying to fend off capital flight from the ailing Venezuelan economy. While both policies have had some success in achieving their objectives, they have also undermined public confidence in national currencies as a store of wealth; and boosted demand for Bitcoins, the only currency that cannot be manipulated by governments. Adding to the luster of Bitcoin are a couple of advantages which the digital currency has over gold. Convenience is one of them. Bitcoin is a more convenient medium of payment than gold is. And the supply of Bitcoin supply is expected to be limited to 21 million. By contrast, the supply of gold, on the other hand, is expected to increase anytime its price rises, as higher prices fuels mining for more gold. To be fair, gold has its own advantages, too. It can be used as an outright gift -- to make jewelry, or to manufacture certain products. Still, past performance isn’t a guarantee for future performance. Besides, Bitcoin has only been around for a short period of time. That’s why investors shouldn’t rush to pour their savings into the digital currency. |
Teaching high school math for 17 years finally caught up with Donald Wood. Yesterday, the Tennessee teacher lost his mind during class and started throwing chairs and desks across the room. Wood was cuffed and removed from school grounds. The incident at McGavock High School was recorded by a student using a cell phone. At first it seems like a joke, but then he starts throwing things, yelling and the guy basically loses his mind. Wood tells everyone to shut up, goes on a rant about his "absolute power," and claims he started a fire in the school. It's pretty sad. According to local News Channel 5: Witnesses said Wood shouted profanities and resource officers and students in the hall as he was escorted out. School officials said Wood suffered from an apparent nervous breakdown. The quality is terrible, but here's the cell phone video shot by a student: |
Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. June 9, 2016, 1:09 PM GMT / Updated June 9, 2016, 4:26 PM GMT By Tracy Connor, Josh Meyer and Erik Ortiz An American ISIS defector who allegedly told the FBI he "gave himself" to the terrorist group appeared Thursday in a U.S. courtroom to face federal charges that could put him behind bars for up to 20 years. Mohamad Jamal Khweis, who was captured by Kurdish authorities in Iraq after he bolted from ISIS, was ordered held without bail at the hearing in his home state of Virginia. Khweis, 26, the American-born son of Palestinian immigrants, is charged with material support of ISIS. He said nothing during the brief proceeding but waved and smiled weakly to his parents as he was led away. His attorney, John Zwerling, hinted outside court that he may argue statements Khweis made to Kurdish officials and FBI agents were given under duress and shouldn't be used as evidence. "The government's version of everything is not as it appears," Zwerling said. He said Khweis' parents were relieved he was returned to the U.S. nearly three months after his capture made international headlines. "They are glad he's home," Zwerling said. Booking photo for Mohamad Khweis. Fairfax County Police Department "It's a lot better than a prison in Erbil," he said of the city in the Kurdistan region of Iraq where Khweis had been held. A federal criminal complaint against Khweis was unsealed Thursday hours before he was brought into court wearing a blue prison shirt and a sheepish expression. An affidavit by one of two FBI agents who interrogated him while he was in Kurdish custody said he told them he started researching ISIS — referred to as ISIL in the court papers — in December 2015. He started by contacting ISIS-affiliated social media accounts, then sold his car and flew to London, where he sent a message to a "well-known Islamic extremist cleric who supports terrorism," the affidavit said. Once in Turkey, he used the code-phrase "green bird" — which signals support for jihad — to make ISIS recruiters comfortable with him, authorities said. During a stint at an ISIS safe house in Raqqa, Syria, another member asked him if he wanted to be a suicide bomber. "The defendant answered 'yes,'" the affidavit said, adding that Khweis thought the question was intended to test his commitment to the cause. "During the interview, the defendant stated he 'gave himself' to ISIL and that they controlled him. The defendant stated he was aware that ISIL wants to attack and destroy the United States," an affidavit from an FBI agent says. "The defendant stated that ISIL wants America to be taken over." Investigators said when they examined Khweis' electronic devices, they found terrorist propaganda — including images of the World Trade Center burning on 9/11, and photos of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Before the FBI questioned to Khweis, he gave a statement that aired on Kurdish TV in which he portrayed himself as an almost accidental recruit, saying he met an Iraqi girl while traveling in Turkey and decided to follow her to Mosul. "It was pretty hard to live in Mosul," he said. "It's not like the Western countries ... There's no smoking." Wanting out, Khweis said, he sought out the Kurds to help him get back to the Turkish border. He was captured by Kurdish Peshmerga military forces near Sinjar on March 14 as he tried to enter the Kurdistan Region from Mosul. He told the TV station that signing up with ISIS had been a "bad decision." "I don't see them as good Muslims," he said. "I wanted to go back to America." Khweis later told the FBI that "he provided misleading information in the video for self-protection," but no specifics were given, the agent's affidavit said. A driver's license obtained by Voice of America identifies a fighter detained in Iraq as Muhammed Jalal Khweis from Virginia. via Voice of America Zwerling pointed out that FBI agents were not on site when the Kurdish video was made and that Kurdish authorities were always in the room when the FBI spoke to Khweis later. "He answered in the way they wanted to hear," Zwerling said. But in the affidavit, FBI Special Agent Victoria I. Martinez emphasized that Khweis voluntarily waived his Miranda rights to a lawyer and agreed to tell FBI agents the details of his time in ISIS territory. She said that in a longer version of the Kurdish TV video, Khweis appeared "lucid, uninjured and free from duress." "The defendant is shown in the video walking into a room on his own accord and free from any constraints," Martinez said. "The defendant is depicted in the video freely smoking cigarettes as he speaks, and smiling and laughing at times.” Khweis' state of mind could prove critically important at trial, according to one Justice Department official, who said prosecutors may not be permitted to use his statements in court if he claims they were made under duress or after rough treatment by his Kurdish captors or even by ISIS. |
Martin St. Louis entered the lockout-shortened season with a chip on his shoulder. His production had fallen 25 points in the previous season, down from the previous season's 99. Sure, he was still a leader on the Tampa Bay Lightning, but his age was becoming a factor and there were whispers that all that banging and grinding had worn down a determined but relatively diminutive player. Short-season mojo: The Lightning were out of it pretty quickly in 2013, which can result in one of two things: Players pull the chute, letting minor injuries take them out of the lineup for extended periods of time, or they skate harder every shift because they are professionals. St. Louis fell into the latter category, as you might have guessed, and just kept on plugging with amazing consistency. According to Elias, St. Louis had 12 points in January (in six games), 13 in February (14 games), 18 in March (14 games) and 17 in April (14 games). In this case, it seemed like the shorter season benefited the shorter player. Why it will be tough to repeat: The Southleast Division is gone; the Lightning are in the Metronome or something Division, which means nightly poundings at the hands of the Boston Bruins, Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs. Plus, the travel to take on these northern rivals isn't going to do the Florida teams any favors. And although his conditioning is rarely suspect, St. Louis is a full 38-years-old, which is older in hockey-player years when you take into account he's been in the league for 15 seasons. Verdict: He won't win the Art Ross Trophy again -- he's a better bet to defend his Lady Byng title -- but St. Louis will find a way to put up a lot of points. He always does. Plus, he'll have newly acquired Valtteri Filppula as another option for a skilled center to feed. So, call this one a wash, even with all the factors working against St. Louis. |
In addition to OnSmash.com, the music sites shut down included Dajaz1.com, RapGodFathers.com and rmx4u.com; another, torrent-finder.com, is a search engine for users of BitTorrent, a file-sharing system that can be used for any kind of data. The seizures over Thanksgiving weekend — most of the 82 sites involved were shut down for selling knockoff handbags, sunglasses and other goods — were made without warning. Internet advocacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation have expressed alarm at the precedent the action might set. Victoria A. Espinel, the White House’s intellectual property enforcement coordinator, said on Dec. 6 that more shutdowns could be expected soon as the government pursued “pirates and counterfeiters.” Some of the people most surprised by the shutdowns are within the music business itself. “The industry and my artists don’t have any issues with most of these sites,” said Corey Smyth, a manager of rappers and producers like Lil Jon and Talib Kweli. “When you’re trying to get something out, this is where the kids go.” For artists, blogs that traffic in the latest leaks are not always beneficial, nor is it always clear where a leak is coming from. Fabolous, a Brooklyn rapper on the Def Jam label who has worked with OnSmash.com, said competition among blogs had resulted in a free-for-all in which e-mail accounts for artists and producers had been hacked in search of any snippets of new music that could attract readers. Photo “It’s a double-edged sword,” Fabolous said. “It’s a great, great promotional tool to get whatever you’re trying to get out to the masses. But on the other side it is a little bit of piracy, because sometimes it’s not always stuff that’s given — there’s certain things that are taken.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story More than a decade since the advent of the file-sharing service Napster, the big labels are still struggling to reconcile the promise and the threat of digital music. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not explained how it selected sites that deal in downloadable music, but a spokesman for the Recording Industry of Association of America, which represents the major music labels, said it had worked with ICE and other federal agencies in identifying infringing sites. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. “The sites and services we identify are flagrantly violating federal copyright laws, illegally offering songs of well-known artists or pre-release content not commercially available online or in any store,” said the trade group spokesman, Jonathan Lamy. Mr. Hofman, who began his career working in the new media and marketing departments of a major record label (he would not say which one), enjoys easy access to artists and labels. His site regularly hosted showcase concerts in New York clubs, and had been festooned with artist shout-outs. The Miami rapper Rick Ross, in the liner notes to his recent Top 10 album “Teflon Don,” thanked OnSmash.com before mentioning his own record company. “I get nothing but open-arm receptions,” said Mr. Hofman, who is prominent enough in the music world that Kanye West links to him on Twitter. “I turn down more industry invites than I accept.” Photo Mr. Hofman said tracks and videos were leaked to his site regularly, adding that if he received a cease-and-desist letter about unauthorized material on his site, he took it down. Sites like OnSmash.com and Dajaz1.com had advertising, but their operators said the income from it was minimal. The operator of Dajaz1.com, who calls himself Splash (he would not give his real name), described himself in an interview as a married father of two in Queens who once worked in the music industry. “I have a regular, Joe Schmo job,” he said. But running an influential rap blog does have its privileges. “I’m on the phone with Busta Rhymes once every three to four days,” Splash said. For now the seized domains are in legal limbo. David Snead, a lawyer specializing in Internet cases who is representing the owner of torrent-finder.com, speculated that it might be 30 to 60 days before he would be able to see a seizure order. “The government is providing zero information to help us determine what he is being charged with,” he said. “It’s a black hole.” Some of the sites have resumed their postings by simply relocating to other domains: RapGodFathers.com is now operating on RapGodFathers.info, and torrent-finder.com is now torrent-finder.info. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Mr. Hofman said he was “extremely nervous” about his legal situation, but also puzzled. “I see myself as a legitimate source of content online, and I have no reason to believe that I was ever perceived as otherwise. If what I’m doing is so wrong and is harming the artist, then why is he retweeting stuff to two million-plus people?” Mr. Hofman said, referring to Kanye West. “It just doesn’t make sense to me.” |
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