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Ken Gregory, 65, was abused by his wife, but he finally got to see justice in court. Gregory’s wife, Teresa Gilbertson, 60, poured scalding water over him after he failed to meet her “unrealistic” financial demands in April 2014. Gregory suffered first and second degree burns on 14% of his body. Though it has been almost a year since Gilbertson attacked him, Gregory still bears scars from the assault at his bungalow. Today, Gibertson was found guilty of grievous bodily harm and sentenced to four years in prison. Gilbertson, a former officer, reportedly didn’t show any remorse for her actions. ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website Prosecutor Thomas Brown said the attack was deliberate. "The marriage had become extremely strained and there were underlying difficulties concerning money, the conduct of Teresa Gilbertson and her unrealistic expectation of what he could provide,” he said. "She was demanding money for doing housework and to buy cars.” Gregory, who met Gilbertson after his wife of 30 years died, said he hopes his experiences would hope other victims of abuse come forward. "As a man who is a bit older and who isn't exactly small, there is a perception that you can't be a victim of domestic violence,” he told the BBC. "But it should be the same message that they put out for women - don't be frightened, you don't have to put up with it.” ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website The couple is in the process of divorcing. Source: BBC (2), Mirror Image Credit: PA via Mirror undefined |
A poll released Monday showed that former realty star Donald Trump remained atop the Republican heap in Iowa following the first GOP debate and his suggestion that its lone female moderator’s menstrual cycle contributed to her tough questioning of him. The poll from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling found Trump leading the pack with 19 percent among Republican primary voters in the state. The poll was conducted from Friday through Sunday and included the days that Trump was coming under fire for saying that Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, who helped moderate last week’s debate, had “blood coming out of her wherever” while questioning him. Trump’s favorability also increased slightly in the four months since the last PPP poll of Iowa. The latest poll showed him at 46 percent favorable to 40 percent unfavorable. In April, he had an even 40-40 split. Rounding out the candidates who poll in double digits were former neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (12 percent), former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (11 percent) and former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina (10 percent). In April, Walker polled at 23 percent. Fiorina, fresh off a strong performance in last week’s debate for lower-tier GOP candidates, increased her favorability from 30 percent in April to 56 percent. The poll was conducted among 619 Republican primary voters from August 7 to 9. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.9 percent. The poll was conducted via landline, except for the 20 percent who didn’t have a landline and completed the poll online. |
There are many reasons to be pulling hard for the Patriots tomorrow — provincialism chief among them — but if you’re of a Boston mindset, the most exquisite possibility looming over tomorrow’s horizon won’t be the capturing of a fifth Super Bowl title; it’ll come if NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who did all he could to bring the Patriots to their knees, has to hand the Vince Lombardi Trophy to Bob Kraft. What is it they say about revenge? It’s a dish best served cold. A Goodell comeuppance has been on ice ever since this $44 million-a-year lackey of the owners took it upon himself to severely punish the New England franchise — fining the team $1 million; stripping it of two draft picks; forcing its quarterback to sit out one-fourth of the season — all because he had a hunch the Patriots were guilty of doctoring game balls, a charge he was never able to prove. Fortunately, a judge reminded him this is not the way justice is meted out in American courtrooms, where proof matters, no matter how laughable that seems at NFL headquarters. Tomorrow will be the 10th AFC championship game, fifth in a row, for Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, now in their 16th season of collaboration. If they win, they’ll be off to their seventh Super Bowl. Is it any wonder the rest of the league gags over their dominance and looked the other way when Goodell tried to sabotage them by any means necessary? We’ve seen it before in this town. When Reggie Lewis died, the Celtics pleaded to have his salary withdrawn from their salary cap restrictions, thereby freeing them to pursue a replacement. Fat chance. The NBA told them, “Tough luck.” “When I brought it up to the Board of Governors,” former GM Jan Volk recalled, “I couldn’t get anyone to second a motion to even discuss it. Later a major personality on that board came over to me and said, ‘Please don’t take it personally, but there are way too many people here who have felt victimized by Red (Auerbach) over the years.’ ” That’s what Deflategate was all about, small-minded big shots determined to bring the Patriots back to earth, doing by bush-league fiat what their teams were unable to do on the field. How shameless. How ?pathetic. A win tomorrow would bring the Patriots just a game away from the delightful possibility of accepting yet another championship trophy from a spineless commissioner who wished them nothing but bad fortune. How delicious would that be? |
A recent sentencing in a sexual assault case in Kingston’s Superior Court of Justice illustrated just how legally perilous sex has become. A 23-year-old Kingston man, having been found guilty late last year of committing a sexual assault when he was 19, and during what at least began as consensual sex by the complainant’s account, was sentenced by Superior Court Justice Paul B. Kane to four months in jail, followed by three years of probation and a 20-year listing on the Sex Offender Information Registry. But the judge, in his reasons for sentencing, said that had the man elected to be tried by a judge sitting without a jury, he would have acquitted him on the evidence he heard. Justice Kane was critical of the local Crown attorney’s office for opting to proceed on the complaint of four specific acts of alleged "misconduct" as comprising one sexual assault simply because they all occurred within a single sexual encounter. He consequently had to instruct the jury that if they found the man had committed all or any of the acts without the complainant’s consent, they should find him guilty of sexual assault and that they need not be unanimous in their agreement about which act or acts constituted the offence. The judge observed that the components of the conduct complained of — touching the woman’s anus with his finger, touching it with his penis, anal penetration and resumption of vaginal sex — were not equally egregious. Because jury deliberations are secret, however, he had no way of knowing exactly which of those acts formed the basis of the jury’s verdict. That, according to Justice Kane, exposed the man to the possibility of a penalty suited to "conduct more serious than that determined by the jury." At the same time, however, he said assuming the finding was based on less serious conduct risked treating the jury finding as being of minimal importance. In his summary of the case, Justice Kane noted that the man and his accuser had previously been sexually intimate but were not dating in April 2012 when the acts complained of occurred. The complainant, who was 18 at the time, had gone to a party that Saturday night, he said, and the man arrived later to the same party with friends. At the end of the night, he offered to drive her home and, Justice Kane recounted, that after first dropping off one of his male friends, the man on trial had asked if she wanted to spend the night with him. The judge said the woman was amenable and after arriving at his apartment consented to kissing, oral and vaginal sex. He also noted the man gave the young woman a pair of his pyjamas and asked her which side of the bed she wanted, but there was no discussion between them about the use of a condom. She testified before him that she consented to initial vaginal intercourse, he said, and that she fully participated and enjoyed it. It was only later, when the young man’s finger touched her anus, that she objected, Justice Kane observed, telling him "that was disgusting." On the evidence, the man didn’t try to penetrate her anus with his finger and moved it when she objected, according to the judge, who added that it wasn’t clear to him the touching was even intentional. He suggested it could have happened accidentally when he lifted her by the buttocks. Consequently, Justice Kane said, he would not have convicted him of sexual assault based on that part of the complaint. Later, the judge recounted, the evidence was that the then 19-year-old man applied lubricant to the complainant’s vagina and anus, as well as his penis, and "she didn’t object to his penis probing her anus for about one minute." Again, "I would not have convicted on count two." He said it was only after the accused penetrated, started to move and caused her pain that she said "ouch." And while, according to her testimony, the young man didn’t stop until she grabbed his arms and told him to, he did then comply. Justice Kane rejected the man’s claim that he didn’t intentionally initiate anal sex and only accidentally inserted his penis in the wrong orifice. He was satisfied, he said, that the anal sex was intentional. But, he added, "there is also evidence that the penetration of the penis into the rectum was consensual until it caused her pain." After that, he judge said, the young woman got out of bed and went to the bathroom, intending, according to her own testimony, to return and sleep with the man for the rest of the night, until she noticed some "green goop" on her buttocks. She said she then changed her plans, according to the judge, because she didn’t know what the goop was or what it meant and it upset her. He said her evidence that she intended to return and sleep with the man "causes doubt in my mind about her claim that she had communicated her objections" at that point. He also noted that, under questioning by the man’s lawyer, Matt Hodgson, she confirmed receiving three emails from his client the following morning, questioning her departure and asking: "Where did you go?" It would have been unusual to send such texts, Justice Kane said, if he was aware he’d just sexually assaulted her. Consequently, the judge said, he would not have convicted the man of sexual assault based on the anal sex or for trying to resume vaginal sex with her upon her return from the bathroom. During that final act, the judge suggested, the complainant allowed him to resume sexual activity, although the evidence was that she just lay there without moving, prompting Hodgson’s client to ask if she wanted to go to sleep — and his ceasing to have sex with her. The Crown argued that he should have ascertained that the woman was still consenting after her return from the bathroom. But Justice Kane felt his failure to do so, under the circumstances, still didn’t constitute a sexual assault. "The accused and the complainant both have the capacity to communicate their wishes and say ‘no’," he observed. He said he would not have convicted on the resumption of vaginal intercourse, but "I’m obliged to follow the unspecified and ambiguous verdict of the jury," he complained, adding that "this is entirely the fault of the Crown." The Crown had urged a three-year prison sentence for the man. But Justice Kane found his case had none of the aggravating features that would warrant a sentence of that length. And while he acknowledged that people have different reactions to events, the judge said the complainant’s claims about the impact that night’s events have had on her "exceeded my expectations." sue.yanagisawa@sunmedia.ca |
In the United States and other advanced economies, the major disruption will be in the service sector—which is, after all, where the vast majority of workers are now employed. This trend is already evident in areas like ATMs and self-service checkout lanes, but the next decade is likely to see an explosion of new forms of service sector automation, potentially putting millions of relatively low-wage jobs at risk. San Francisco start-up company Momentum Machines, Inc., has set out to fully automate the production of gourmet-quality hamburgers. Whereas a fast food worker might toss a frozen patty onto the grill, Momentum Machines’ device shapes burgers from freshly ground meat and then grills them to order—including even the ability to add just the right amount of char while retaining all the juices. The machine, which is capable of producing about 360 hamburgers per hour, also toasts the bun and then slices and adds fresh ingredients like tomatoes, onions, and pickles only after the order is placed. Burgers arrive assembled and ready to serve on a conveyer belt. While most robotics companies take great care to spin a positive tale when it comes to the potential impact on employment, Momentum Machines co-founder Alexandros Vardakostas is very forthright about the company’s objective: “Our device isn’t meant to make employees more efficient,” he said. “It’s meant to completely obviate them.” The company estimates that the average fast food restaurant spends about $135,000 per year on wages for employees who produce hamburgers and that the total labor cost for burger production for the US economy is about $9 billion annually. Momentum Machines believes its device will pay for itself in less than a year, and it plans to target not just restaurants but also convenience stores, food trucks, and perhaps even vending machines. The company argues that eliminating labor costs and reducing the amount of space required in kitchens will allow restaurants to spend more on high-quality ingredients, enabling them to offer gourmet hamburgers at fast food prices. Advertisement: Those burgers might sound very inviting, but they would come at a considerable cost. Millions of people hold low-wage, often part-time, jobs in the fast food and beverage industries. McDonald’s alone employs about 1.8 million workers in 34,000 restaurants worldwide. Historically, low wages, few benefits, and a high turnover rate have helped to make fast food jobs relatively easy to find, and fast food jobs, together with other low-skill positions in retail, have provided a kind of private sector safety net for workers with few other options: these jobs have traditionally offered an income of last resort when no better alternatives are available. In December 2013, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics ranked “combined food preparation and serving workers,” a category that excludes waiters and waitresses in full-service restaurants, as one of the top employment sectors in terms of the number of job openings projected over the course of the decade leading up to 2022—with nearly half a million new jobs and another million openings to replace workers who leave the industry. In the wake of the Great Recession, however, the rules that used to apply to fast food employment are changing rapidly. In 2011, McDonald’s launched a high-profile initiative to hire 50,000 new workers in a single day and received over a million applications—a ratio that made landing a McJob more of a statistical long shot than getting accepted at Harvard. While fast food employment was once dominated by young people looking for a part-time income while in school, the industry now employs far more mature workers who rely on the jobs as their primary income. Nearly 90 percent of fast food workers are twenty or older, and the average age is thirty-five. Many of these older workers have to support families—a nearly impossible task at a median wage of just $8.69 per hour. The industry’s low wages and nearly complete lack of benefits have drawn intensive criticism. In October 2013, McDonald’s was lambasted after an employee who called the company’s financial help line was advised to apply for food stamps and Medicaid. Indeed, an analysis by the Labor Center at the University of California, Berkeley, found that more than half of the families of fast food workers are enrolled in some type of public assistance program and that the resulting cost to US taxpayers is nearly $7 billion per year. When a spate of protests and ad hoc strikes at fast food restaurants broke out in New York and then spread to more than fifty US cities in the fall of 2013, the Employment Policies Institute, a conservative think tank with close ties to the restaurant and hotel industries, placed a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal warning that “Robots Could Soon Replace Fast Food Workers Demanding a Higher Minimum Wage.” While the ad was doubtless intended as a scare tactic, the reality is that—as the Momentum Machines device demonstrates—increased automation in the fast food industry is almost certainly inevitable. Given that companies like Foxconn are introducing robots to perform high-precision electronic assembly in China, there is little reason to believe that machines won’t also eventually be serving up burgers, tacos, and lattes across the fast food industry. Japan’s Kura sushi restaurant chain has already successfully pioneered an automation strategy. In the chain’s 262 restaurants, robots help make the sushi while conveyor belts replace waiters. To ensure freshness, the system keeps track of how long individual sushi plates have been circulating and automatically removes those that reach their expiration time. Customers order using touch panel screens, and when they are finished dining they place the empty dishes in a slot near their table. The system automatically tabulates the bill and then cleans the plates and whisks them back to the kitchen. Rather than employing store managers at each location, Kura uses centralized facilities where managers are able to remotely monitor nearly every aspect of restaurant operations. Kura’s automation-based business model allows it to price sushi plates at just 100 yen (about $1), significantly undercutting its competitors. It’s fairly easy to envision many of the strategies that have worked for Kura, especially automated food production and offsite management, eventually being adopted across the fast food industry. Some significant steps have already been taken in that direction; McDonalds, for example, announced in 2011 that it would install touch screen ordering systems at 7,000 of its European restaurants. Once one of the industry’s major players begins to gain significant advantages from increased automation, the others will have little choice but to follow suit. Automation will also offer the ability to compete on dimensions beyond lower labor costs. Robotic production might be viewed as more hygienic since fewer workers would come into contact with the food. Convenience, speed, and order accuracy would increase, as would the ability to customize orders. Once a customer’s preferences were recorded at one restaurant, automation would make it a simple matter to consistently produce the same results at other locations. Advertisement: Given all this, I think it is quite easy to imagine that a typical fast food restaurant may eventually be able to cut its workforce by 50 percent, or perhaps even more. At least in the United States, the fast food market is already so saturated that it seems very unlikely that new restaurants could make up for such a dramatic reduction in the number of workers required at each location. And this, of course, would mean that a great many of the job openings forecast by the Bureau of Labor Statistics might never materialize. The other major concentration of low-wage service jobs is in the general retail sector. Economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics rank “retail salesperson” second only to “registered nurse” as the specific occupation that will add the most jobs in the decade ending in 2020 and expect over 700,000 new jobs to be created. Once again, however, technology has the potential to make the government projections seem optimistic. We can probably anticipate that three major forces will shape employment in the retail sector going forward. The first will be the continuing disruption of the industry by online retailers like Amazon, eBay, and Netflix. The competitive advantage that online suppliers have over brick and mortar stores is already, of course, evident with the demise of major retail chains like Circuit City, Borders, and Blockbuster. Both Amazon and eBay are experimenting with same-day delivery in a number of US cities, with the objective of undermining one of the last major advantages that local retail stores still enjoy: the ability to provide immediate gratification after a purchase. In theory, the encroachment of online retailers should not necessarily destroy jobs but, rather, would transition them from traditional retail settings to the warehouses and distribution centers used by the online companies. However, the reality is that once jobs move to a warehouse they become far easier to automate. Amazon purchased Kiva Systems, a warehouse robotics company in 2012. Kiva’s robots, which look a bit like huge, roving hockey pucks, are designed to move materials within warehouses. Rather than having workers roam the aisles selecting items, a Kiva robot simply zips under an entire pallet or shelving unit, lifts it, and then brings it directly to the worker packing an order. The robots navigate autonomously using a grid laid out by barcodes attached to the floor and are used to automate warehouse operations at a variety of major retailers in addition to Amazon, including Toys “R” Us, the Gap, Walgreens, and Staples. Advertisement: A year after the acquisition, Amazon had about 1,400 Kiva robots in operation but had only begun the process of integrating the machines into its massive warehouses. One Wall Street analyst estimates that the robots will ultimately allow the company to cut its order fulfillment costs by as much as 40 percent. The Kroger Company, one of the largest grocery retailers in the United States, has also introduced highly automated distribution centers. Kroger’s system is capable of receiving pallets containing large supplies of a single product from vendors and then disassembling them and creating new pallets containing a variety of different products that are ready to ship to stores. It is also able to organize the way that products are stacked on the mixed pallets in order to optimize the stocking of shelves once they arrive at stores. The automated warehouses completely eliminate the need for human intervention, except for loading and unloading the pallets onto trucks. The obvious impact that these automated systems have on jobs has not been lost on organized labor, and the Teamsters Union has repeatedly clashed with Kroger, as well as other grocery retailers, over their introduction. Both the Kiva robots and Kroger’s automated system do leave some jobs for people, and these are primarily in areas, such as packing a mixture of items for final shipment to customers, that require visual recognition and dexterity. Of course, these are the very areas in which innovations like Industrial Perception’s box-moving robots are rapidly advancing the technical frontier. The second transformative force is likely to be the explosive growth of the fully automated self-service retail sector—or, in other words, intelligent vending machines and kiosks. One study projects that the value of products and services vended in this market will grow from about $740 billion in 2010 to more than $1.1 trillion by 2015.Vending machines have progressed far beyond dispensing sodas, snacks, and lousy instant coffee, and sophisticated machines that sell consumer electronics products like Apple’s iPod and iPad are now common in airports and upscale hotels. AVT, Inc., one of the leading manufacturers of automated retail machines, claims that it can design a custom self-service solution for virtually any product. Vending machines make it possible to dramatically reduce three of the most significant costs incurred in the retail business: real estate, labor, and theft by customers and employees. In addition to providing 24-hour service, many of the machines include video screens and are able to offer targeted point-of-sale advertising that’s geared toward enticing customers to purchase related products in much the same way that a human sales clerk might do. They can also collect customer email addresses and send receipts. In essence, the machines offer many of the advantages of online ordering, with the added benefit of instant delivery. Advertisement: While the proliferation of vending machines and kiosks is certain to eliminate traditional retail sales jobs, these machines will also, of course, create jobs in areas like maintenance, restocking, and repair. The number of those new jobs, however, is likely to be more limited than you might expect. The latest-generation machines are directly connected to the Internet and provide a continuous stream of sales and diagnostic data; they are also specifically designed to minimize the labor costs associated with their operation. In 2010, David Dunning was the regional operations supervisor responsible for overseeing the maintenance and restocking of Redbox movie rental kiosks in the Chicago area. Redbox has over 42,000 kiosks in the United States and Canada, typically located at convenience stores and supermarkets, and rents about 2 million videos per day. Dunning managed the Chicago-area kiosks with a staff of just seven. Restocking the machines is highly automated; in fact, the most labor-intensive aspect of the job is swapping the translucent movie advertisements displayed on the kiosk—a process that typically takes less than two minutes for each machine. Dunning and his staff divide their time between the warehouse, where new movies arrive, and their cars and homes, where they are able to access and manage the machines via the Internet. The kiosks are designed from the ground up for remote maintenance. For example, if a machine jams it will report this immediately, and a technician can log in with his or her laptop computer, jiggle the mechanism, and fix the problem without the need to visit the site. New movies are typically released on Tuesdays, but the machines can be restocked at any time prior to that; the kiosk will automatically make the movies available for rental at the right time. That allows technicians to schedule restocking visits to avoid traffic. While the jobs that Dunning and his staff have are certainly interesting and desirable, in number they are a fraction of what a traditional retail chain would create. The now-defunct Blockbuster, for example, once had dozens of stores in greater Chicago, each employing its own sales staff. At its peak, Blockbuster had a total of about 9,000 stores and 60,000 employees. That works out to about seven jobs per store—roughly the same number that Redbox employed in the entire region serviced by Dunning’s team. Advertisement: The third major force likely to disrupt employment in the retail sector will be the introduction of increased automation and robotics into stores as brick and mortar retailers strive to remain competitive. The same innovations that are enabling manufacturing robots to advance the frontier in areas like physical dexterity and visual recognition will eventually allow retail automation to begin moving from warehouses into more challenging and varied environments like stocking shelves in stores. In fact, as far back as 2005, Walmart was already investigating the possibility of using robots that rove store aisles at night and automatically scan barcodes in order to track product inventories. At the same time, self-service checkout aisles and in-store information kiosks are sure to become easier to use, as well as more common. Mobile devices will also become an ever more important self-service tool. Future shoppers will rely more and more on their phones as a way to shop, pay, and get help and information about products while in traditional retail settings. The mobile disruption of retail is already under way. Walmart, for example, is testing an experimental program that allows shoppers to scan barcodes and then checkout and pay with their phones—completely avoiding long checkout lines. Silvercar, a start-up rental car company, offers the capability to reserve and pick up a car without ever having to interact with a rental clerk; the customer simply scans a barcode to unlock the car and then drives away. As natural language technology like Apple’s Siri or even more powerful systems like IBM’s Watson continue to advance and become more affordable, it’s easy to imagine shoppers soon being able to ask their mobile devices for assistance in much the same way they might ask a store employee. The difference, of course, is that the customer will never have to wait for or hunt down the employee; the virtual assistant will always be instantly available and will rarely, if ever, give an inaccurate answer. While many retailers may choose to bring automation into traditional retail configurations, others may instead elect to entirely redesign stores—perhaps, in essence, turning them into scaled-up vending machines. Stores of this type might consist of an automated warehouse with an attached showroom where customers could examine product samples and place orders. Orders might then be delivered directly to customers, or perhaps even loaded robotically into vehicles. Regardless of the specific technological path ultimately followed by the retail industry, it’s difficult to imagine that the eventual result won’t be more robots and machines—and significantly fewer jobs for people. Excerpted from "Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future" by Martin Ford. Published by Basic Books, a division of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright 2015 by Martin Ford. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. All rights reserved. |
The government launched on Tuesday an Aadhaar card-linked payments system that will allow customers to ditch their debit and credit cards and pay using fingerprints. Aadhaar Pay, a new Android-based smartphone app, will also eliminate the fee charged by private card companies such as MasterCard and Visa. The app is available on Google Play Store. Merchants must download the app on smartphones connected to a biometric reader. A customer has to enter her Aadhaar number in the app and select a bank for payment. Biometric scans are used as passwords. This is the government’s latest move to encourage people to go cashless. The app was first announced by finance minister Arun Jaitley in his budget speech in February. The government targets 25 billion digital transactions on various new payments platforms in 2017-18. The government issued one billion Aadhaar cards till April 2016, the latest year for which data is available. At least 400 million of these are linked to bank accounts, and the government hopes to link the rest by the end of this month. Aadhaar Pay has been developed by IDFC Bank in collaboration with several government organisations, including the agency that controls Aadhar cards. The bank hopes to enrol up to 75,000 merchants over the next two years, said its founder and CEO Rajiv Lall. “Basic banking services will come to those who do not have even basic mobile phones,” he said. The State Bank of India and Punjab National Bank will launch their merchant platforms for Aadhaar Pay in the coming weeks. The app has some limitations, though. It works only where there is internet connection, unlike debit or credit card machines which can work on telephone lines. Plus, the app can’t be used to transfer funds or get immediate information on refunds. First Published: Mar 07, 2017 16:12 IST |
Santa came early this year, he left presents for all the children … whether they wanted them or not! Hard to say what Santa will offer next year, Christmas may be cancelled … or Stukas might be dive-bombing Poland. In the twilight of ‘More’ anything is possible except ‘more’. Anguish being felt across the country after Trump election, (LA Times): Americans who voted against Trump are feeling unprecedented dread and despair. I have never seen anything quite like the grief being felt by the majority of American voters who did not vote for Donald Trump. Back in 1980, there was disappointment among Democrats when Ronald Reagan won. In 2000, after the long Florida recount and the intrusion of the Supreme Court into the decision, there were plenty of upset people who thought Al Gore, not George W. Bush, deserved to be president. But the losing voters in those elections were not despondent. They were not breaking out in tears weeks later. They were not waking up each morning with feelings of dread about what was to come. This time it is different … (David Frum): “Construction of the apparatus of revenge and repression will begin opportunistically and haphazardly,” Frum wrote. “It will accelerate methodically.” Do you mean the apparatus of revenge and repression aimed at Chelsea Manning, or the citizens of Boston? How about other ‘Brand X’ whistle blowers? (Justice Integrity Project): OpEd News (OEN) Publisher Rob Kall, another speaker, has a different view. “Since Obama has taken office,” Kall reported in ‘RoughTime for Whistleblowers’, “most whistleblowers say his administration and his DOJ treat whistleblowers worse than any previous president.” Kall quoted GAP Homeland Security and Human Rights Director Jesselyn Radack, a well-credential ethics advisor in 2001 at the Bush Department of Justice. It promptly ousted her from her job and tried to inflict harsh reprisals in her later career after she provided to superiors her opinion that FBI personnel committed an ethics violation in questioning American John Walker Lindh after he was caught with the Taliban in Afghanistan. “Obama,” she told Kall, “has brought more prosecutions against whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than any previous president and all presidents combined.” Thank you sir, may we please have another! Everyone knows Trump is a Fuhrer who is making lists and identifying enemies, (WaPo): Obama administration tries to shut down visitor registry program before Trump takes office The Obama administration on Thursday took the unprecedented step of creating obstacles to a widely-anticipated but poorly understood plan by President-elect Donald Trump to establish a Muslim ban or registry — by dismantling the registry system that already exists. In fact, almost every ‘crime’ the oafish Trump is being accused of in advance has been committed already by preceding administrations including Obama’s, starting illegal wars, snooping on citizens, raping the environment, cozying up to bankers, bankers, bankers and more bankers. Don’t forget Obama’s ‘drone war’, suspension of habeas corpus, arbitrary imprisonment and torture in secret prisons. These programs took form under Bush but Obama did nothing to end them or much to rein them in. Erratic, bullying, Nazi, paranoid … all are unpleasant to contemplate, but are hardly new. The issues that defines our new (gauche) president are matters of form rather than substance. The conflicts of interest, the ‘massive self-enrichment’ by office holders and ‘retaliation by means fair and foul’ are as entrenched in Washington as traffic jams. Our small-d democracy isn’t threatened, it vanished a long time ago, after people decided to let ‘experts’ tend to their affairs and for corporate marketing and PR to do everyone’s thinking for them. Remember this? Comparing Combatants in Syria – Iraq Theater COUNTRIES – INTERESTS WHAT THEY INTEND TO GAIN COST WHAT THEY OFFER GOVERNMENT: CURRENT | PROPOSED ECONOMY USA Arms sales. To destabilize region to import consumption Operational expenses & loss of influence Transient tactical advantage for no one in particular Corporate plutocracy / None Capital destruction – consumption / Ponzi finance “Corporate Plutocracy / None” … that’s us! So is Capital destruction – consumption / Ponzi finance! The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2016 This generated blind fury across the mediasphere; the suggestion is Trump is a nuclear madman. Obama’s Russian Rationale for $1 Trillion Nuke Plan Signals New Arms Race February 23 2016 The Obama administration has historically insisted that its massive $1 trillion nuclear weapons modernization program does not represent a return to Cold War-era nuclear rivalry between Russia and the United States. The hugely expensive undertaking, which calls for a slew of new cruise missiles, ICBMs, nuclear submarines, and long-range bombers over the next three decades, has been widely panned by critics as “wasteful,” “unsustainable,” “unaffordable,” and “a fantasy.” It’s okay as long as ‘our guy’ does it: it wasn’t Trump who ringed Russia with military bases, missiles and combat formations, it wasn’t Trump who sent spies and provocateurs to destabilize Ukraine or attack Russian clients Syria and Libya from the air. It wasn’t Trump who is engaged in questionable wars in multiple countries across the globe all aimed at driving energy- and resource consumption to the world’s largest energy hog. It isn’t Trump who made al-Qaeda into a defacto ally of the Pentagon and the CIA, who gave the militants arms and training, who enabled the rise of Turkish neo-Ottoman ambition alongside Saudi Salafism and state terror. It was Obama who did all these things and more, following in the footsteps of American presidents going back to Truman. Or was it? Whoever is president doesn’t matter, he is irrelevant. Our managers (including Trump) are actors reading from scripts, performing at the direction of shadowy back-door men, employed strictly by how they conform to the public expectations created by corporate marketing. Conforming includes how they look, dress, speak, where certified and whom they ‘know’; where they live and work and how they travel. Trump himself acknowledges this reality by selecting as footmen those who are possessed of a certain je ne sais quoi, that is, they have the appropriate outward appearance. Activities that require labor, skill, difficulty or do not present a marketing opportunity are penalized with diminished status. There are no grimy proletarians, mechanics or farmers in the current administration or those set to come; nor in Congress or the Courts. Instead, there are neatly coiffed thievish mandarins. Because our Ponzi- economy is divorced from reality the scam managers are expected to be incompetent, they have to be even as they are fashionable. There is no penalty for stupidity in America. Competence is unacceptable except where it allows for the proper internal functioning of the enterprise. Our ostensible Ponzi- masters are grasping buffoons while those tending the boilers (Goldman-Sachs) must know what they are about. The conflict in America is not between ‘left’ and ‘right’, ‘liberal vs. conservative’ but between logic and illogic, between reality and denial. The establishment’s factions are parties to malfeasance and mis-communication. To tell the truth is to acknowledge that business as usual is bankrupt regardless of who is in charge, (Brooking Institute): Another Clinton-Trump divide: High-output America vs low-output America Last week, as my colleague Sifan Liu and I were gnawing on some questions asked by Jim Tankersley of The Washington Post, we happened upon a revealing aspect of the election outcome. While looking at number of influences on the presidential vote outcome, we found that in a year of massive divides, one particular economic split stands out. Our observation: The less-than-500 counties that Hillary Clinton carried nationwide encompassed a massive 64 percent of America’s economic activity as measured by total output in 2015. By contrast, the more-than-2,600 counties that Donald Trump won generated just 36 percent of the country’s output—just a little more than one-third of the nation’s economic activity. Candidates’ counties won and share of GDP in 2000 and 2016 Figure 1: US counties voting preference, (Brookings Intitute, click for big). Here you can see very clearly that with the exceptions of the Phoenix and Fort Worth areas and a big chunk of Long Island Clinton won every large-sized county economy in the country. Her base of 493 counties was heavily metropolitan. By contrast, Trumpland consists of hundreds and hundreds of tiny low-output locations that comprise the non-metropolitan hinterland of America, along with some suburban and exurban metro counties, as Indeed Chief Economist Jed Kolko pointed out in a tweet … The foundation of Brooking’s argument is breathtakingly false, yet is so fashionably rendered anyone looking at it uncritically would take the authors’ premise at face value: that the metropolitan areas who fell to Clinton ‘produced’ greater ‘output’ than the backwards redneck promised lands that supported Trump. By way of Brookings’ logic, the consumption that takes place in cities is ‘productive’ because the various banks magically output ‘money’ to pay for it. Cities are sinks not sources, their actual output is little or nothing but waste. The backwaters of America don’t ‘produce’ either, they extract our nation’s wealth — our non-renewable resource capital — and speed it to its death. Soil fertility, water, oil, gas, coal, metallic ores along with the lumpishly unfashionable activities that require labor, skill, difficulty … all these and more are sucked out of our towns making stops at Hillary Clinton’s capital-annihilating colonias on their way to the landfill. Retail sales and speculation are measured as production by Brookings’ economists and the banks which fund the process, lending abstract ‘wealth’ into existence using the wasting processes as collateral. Given four- hundred-plus years of mechanized pillaging the flyover counties have been emptied out with the extractive returns captured by well-positioned rentiers. The locals cry, “where’s our cut?” The fact of the question itself reveals the answer … Establishment whines about ‘fake news’; what is fake is denial of the onrushing consequences of resource squander and how these are making themselves manifest. Figure 2: Fed Funds by FRED, (click for big). Immediately before president-elect Obama took office in ’09, Santa gave the children negative real interest rates, that is, yields below the rate of inflation. Bargain basement borrowing costs were the incentive for firms to borrow astronomical sums, to fund carry trades of all kinds, to become larger and more concentrated, to buy out competition, to overpay for the firms’ own shares. Tycoons borrowed to buy luxury real estate, yachts and fine art. This offered the impression of a recovery from the ’08 crash, everyone looked like geniuses for a little while including Obama, for whom it can be said it is better to be lucky than good … Even without the Fed, rates would have been low. Because of the Great Recession, there was a ‘flight to safety’ and the bidding up Treasuries in the absence of real, non-financial returns elsewhere. Added was systemic moral hazard and the eagerness of banks to lend back-and-forth to each other. The outcome was dollar carry trades speeding US inflation around the world; ‘Lucky Obama’ able to enjoy interest rate tailwinds every single year throughout his term in office. Figure 3: Chart by estimable Doug Short, (Click for big). Obama is jumping ship before the storm breaks: 10-year Treasury rates are galloping upward due to dollar preference which pressurizes foreign exchange and unwinds dollar carry trades. The ‘official narrative’ is future US inflation but the decline in bonds is the re-pricing of repayment risk and the forex depreciation that is certain to come. In developing countries, borrowers with cavitating currencies cannot repay their dollar debts. The incoming president promises (more) tax relief for overburdened tycoons, those expected to pick up the tab are the same developing countries already tapped to service and retire prior rounds of credit expansion. Remember dollar preference? Don’t pick up that economics textbook, you won’t find it there! Just because Marshall or Keynes didn’t write about it doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Dollar preference is what it sounds like: given the choice between accepting a dollar as payment or one- or more foreign currencies; between holding the dollar or spending it for shit or between holding the dollar or non-cash assets, people will choose the dollar. At issue is what determines the dollar’s worth. Conventional Lucas/Friedman economics suggests ‘efficiencies’ going forward discount future money: this and time preference ‘discovers’ present monies’ worth. The conventional narrative supports the rate-setting role of central banks and centrality of monetary policy. Debtonomics insists dollars and other currencies are priced by their exchange on demand for petroleum, something that takes place millions of times every day at gas stations around the world. Question for Donald Trump: millions of motorists vs. a handful of central bankers and corrupt politicians, who wins? The worth of the dollar is the fuel price bargain each one represents relative to other currencies, also what future dollars will be worth in a fuel constrained world. In this narrative, dollars are a proxy for fuel as dollars and other currencies were proxies for gold was during the periods of the gold standard. As such the dollar is a hard currency now becoming harder, to be hoarded out of circulation for the value it represents. Put another way, dollar preference is the convergence between the value of the oil capital and the dollars that are exchanged for it. Fuel by itself is worth more than the real-world enterprises that make use of it regardless of what means are used to ‘adjust’ the price. By this way of reasoning, fuel in the ground in North Dakota is worth more than fuel wasted in a car stuck in traffic on an LA Freeway. Business (wasting) enterprises earn nothing on their own and are essentially worthless. They exist solely to borrow, gaining- and making use of credit is their primary product: other goods and services are intended to justify credit issuance in ever-increasing amounts. Part of this stream becomes the property of well-positioned ‘entrepreneurs’: enormous unearned borrowed profits are what drives the system. When debt = wealth, there is an incentive to take on as much debt as possible, keep what you can for yourself and to shift the retirement- and servicing burdens onto others. Our economy as nothing more than a vast cost-shifting regime, our ongoing crisis is the shortage of ‘others’ able to bear the burdens of rapidly increased surplus-related costs. Figure 3: Emerging market currency ETF: carry trades have been unwinding since 2011 as the dollar becomes stronger. A dollar carry is a way to sell the dollar short; investors borrow in the US at low rates then ‘sell’ dollars for higher-yielding assets in another currency. Decline of dollar becomes profits to those holding the overseas assets. When the dollar strengthens as it is doing now, the deal is a bust. Any asset appreciation in an overseas currency is more than offset by foreign exchange losses. What this means is costs are more difficult to shift, that dollar debts held overseas cannot be retired. The export of dollars and the shifting of costs that have been the mainsprings of globalization; that and the petroleum trade. Resource depletion and dollar preference are undoing all three … Figure 4: Polygon of Doom: since 2008, price peaks in oil markets are followed by sharp declines, the amplitude of peaks diminish as the world’s customers go broke, chart by TFC Charts (click for big). Unraveling of carry trades, currency depreciation, runs out of forex and generalized credit contraction ruins millions of customers at a time. This in turn strands oil drillers who cannot extract the cheap petroleum as our economy requires. In our over-financialized world, fuel shortages don’t manifest themselves as gas lines or odd-even days. Rationing takes place through the credit transmission channel. When oil price rises high enough credit vanishes and customers cannot buy. How high is too high? Last year $65/barrel turned out to be pricey enough to torpedo China’s currency; the diminution of Chinese consumption crushed the price of crude. The current barrel price of $55 appears to be too high with another predictable banking- and credit crisis unfolding in Europe. Energy deflation occurs when shortages cause prices to fall instead of rise. This is another something not found in your macro textbooks, it’s real nevertheless and unfolding under @realDonaldTrump’s nose. Because shortages can’t make customers richer, they are unable to borrow in order to bid up the price. The drillers are stranded because they don’t have customers to sell products to. Ruined customers is the reason why oil prices have declined 60% since 2014, broke customers are why the entire oil extraction industry is insolvent. Oil prices can only decline as there are diminished returns on each energy dollar invested … diminished GDP, diminished credit availability, diminished ability to meet ever-higher real extraction costs. Going forward, real energy costs will increase relative to the ability to meet them … even as nominal costs decline. The result is a net-energy death spiral or ‘energy deflation’ similar to Irving Fisher’s Debt Deflation. Whatever the fuel price happens to be at any given time it is too high. The price falls to meet the market, but fuel is removed from the market because of the drop in price, the ongoing shortage reduces the ability of customers to meet the price which is still too high … in a vicious cycle. Energy deflation and dollar preference are large forces beyond the control of politicians, generals or central bankers. They are driving countries and events toward involuntary conservation. America’s new president is the product of economic failure; the inability of the economists to make correct analysis, a long grinding recession disguised as recovery; media falsehoods and the unwillingness of Americans and others to face reality, government policy failures and the headwinds of resource depletion. Trump and his cretinous gang of thieves represents the last gasp of a defunct industrial system that is sinking under the weight of its own costs. Keep in mind, oil producing states like the US tend to be autocratic. The US, Canada, Mexico and others are on their way to becoming single-party police states like Saudi Arabia or Iran. Because of autocrats promise of access to energy, they gain ascendancy with their populations’ eager consent. What is at stake for Americans and the West is democracy itself: a choice between the right to have a say in our own affairs versus the false-promises of energy-driven ‘prosperity’ offered by autocrats … the choice between the (vague) promise of convenience or having a functioning republic. |
For many characters in popular, long-running franchises, there is no such thing as retirement or living “happily ever after.” Fans keep demanding new adventures of old favorites, and so familiar heroes are no longer allowed to live out their golden years in peace and seclusion. This applies manifestly to both the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Star Wars saga, especially now that both are under the aegis of Walt Disney and CEO Robert Iger. An essay called “Unfinished Business” in The Guardian by Nicholas Barber argues that this trend robs films of something essential and wonderful: Unlike real people, movie characters can expect to face “one or two major crises in their lives, whereupon they could look forward to indefinite rest and recuperation.” That is a very satisfying idea, and it’s being snuffed out with each sequel and reboot. Exhibit A in Barber’s case is, naturally, The Force Awakens, a “depressing” film that nullifies everything that happened at the end of Return Of The Jedi. In the long run, Luke Skywalker and his pals accomplished exactly nothing in the original trilogy. As of the latest film, the problems in their galaxy are as bad as ever, if not worse. But the problem is hardly limited to Star Wars. Harry Potter is being dragged back onstage, literally. Rocky Balboa has cancer in Creed. Mulder and Scully are put back to work in the revival of The X-Files. Where does it end? That’s just it. It doesn’t. The article singles out Disney-owned Marvel, but films based on DC Comics are just as susceptible to the trend. Just like Marvel’s Iron Man 3, for instance, DC’s The Dark Knight Rises ends with its title character spending finally some quality time with his special lady, safely away from the costumed crime-fighting shenanigans. And yet, there is Bruce Wayne, facing a scary showdown with Superman in Dawn Of Justice, while Tony Stark doesn’t seem likely to be spending his days sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch either. Barber sees this as worrisome: If blockbusters are now going to replace every “The End” with a “To Be Continued,” they will lose this essential part of their appeal. Why see a Star Wars episode when you could just skip it and see the next one, or the next one, or the next one after that? |
"Predicting the future may be a thing of the past." There’s a heavy dose of nostalgia in the proceedings, and it’s not just about bringing back an old name. Longtime editor Ben Bova has described Omni as "a magazine about the future," but since his time as editor, our vision of the future has been tarnished — or, at the very least, we’ve started looking at the predictions of the past with rose-tinted glasses. Evans, for one, echoes the common fear that we’ve stopped dreaming of a better time. "I think Omni was very skewed towards this idea of convenience, leisure, enhanced ability, enhanced freedom, and sexuality," she says. "The discourse about technology that we have now is much more 'What is it doing to us? How is it affecting our society? How is it affecting the way we deal with the world?'" Writer Ken Baumann, who is contributing an essay to the first issue, questions even the idea of looking forward. "It's getting harder and harder to actually predict in a real way what the future will look like," he says, "because complex systems get really messy, and ours is more complex and more entropic than ever. Predicting the future may be a thing of the past." But if he had to do it? He references George Carlin: the planet is fine, the people are fucked. "I don't think we deal with complexity very well, and I think that's increasingly dangerous, but I don't think we're bad on the face of it. I just think we're beautiful little fools with nice and powerful tools." Was the future, though, ever really that good? The cyberpunk future of William Gibson — whose work first appeared in Omni with "Johnny Mnemonic" in May 1981 — wasn’t purely dystopian, but it offered a bleak, cynical take on corporations and technology. "People were taking it as a dystopian thing because they were living in a freakin' dream world," says Bruce Sterling, who will also appear in the first issue. "They had no idea what was actually happening." And the 1960s, a "high-water mark of space age ecstatic exhilaration," weren’t a golden era. "If you were actually alive in the 1960s, especially if you were a right wing person, it was a very very frightening time in many ways, and many people were in deadly fear of the future." |
As the next secretive flight of the U.S. Air Force's robotic X-37B mini-shuttle draws closer, analysts are keeping a close eye on China’s own potential space plane, the Shenlong. Last year several Chinese media outlets reported a test flight of the Shenlong space plane that apparently included its airdrop from an H-6 bomber. But the nature of the Shenlong project's testing, as well as what the robot vehicle truly represents, remains sketchy. Several China watchers in the U.S. have taken a stab at what the Shenlong (Mandarin for "Divine Dragon) might mean, with some experts conjecturing that the craft is simply a tit-for-tat response to the unmanned X-37B space plane. This December 2007 image shows China's robotic Shenlong space plane prototype carried by an H-6 bomber for glide testing. (Image: © Chinese Internet) Challenge to the U.S.? China is the third country, after Russia and the United States, to develop an independent human spaceflight program. It has made a series of incremental advances that culminated earlier this year in China's first manned space dockingat an orbital laboratory. The country has stated its goal of building a 60-ton space station for future missions. China's current manned Shenzhou spacecraft, however, are capsule-based vehicles. "Shenlong is China’s effort to develop a re-entering aerodynamic spacecraft, similar to the space shuttle or the X-37B but much smaller than either," said Mark Gubrud, a postdoctoral research associate in the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University. Gubrud told SPACE.com that if China space designers are successful in their Shenlong work, the country may attempt to develop a larger version. [Winged Spaceships: Space Plane Evolution (Infographic)] "However, the economic rationale for the [NASA] shuttle was never realized, and it is not clear what advantages the X-37B offers the U.S. military over conventional upper stages, satellite buses and re-entry capsules," Gubrud said. The Air Force's robotic plane would appear to serve the U.S. primarily as a sign that American space power endures despite retirement of the NASA space shuttlefleet, he said. "Appropriately enough, Shenlong may also be little more than a symbol of China’s ability to challenge U.S. assumptions of primacy and technological dominance," Gubrud said. Keeping up with the (space) Joneses Joan Johnson-Freese, a national security affairs professor at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I., said: "I don’t think it’s useful to hype the potential threat of technology test-bed programs. Countries including but not limited to China and the U.S. are working on space plane technology." Johnson-Freese said programmatic interest in such technology dates back to the Air Force DynaSoar program in the 1950s. "But that program was canceled for several reasons, including nobody knew what exactly it would be useful for that couldn’t be done by other means … though it has been suggested recently that it would provide additional 'global strike' capability," she added. Comparative chart showing China’s Shenlong and the U.S. Air Force X-37B space plane. (Image: © Chinese Internet, China SignPost™, USAF) When Russia pursued its own shuttle, the Buran, Johnson-Freese said a cosmonaut friend told her it was for the sake of "keeping up with the Joneses." "If countries see the U.S. working on a space plane," she said, "they will feel compelled to do so, also." [X-37B Space Plane: Photos of the U.S. Military's Mini-Shuttle] Johnson-Freese said she is concerned about the action/reaction spiral in technology development, fueled sometimes by sensationalist speculation. "The technology itself, if developed and operationalized — and the hard evidence right now on that is scarce — could be destabilizing as it pushes countries to act faster in fear of potential threats," she concluded. Space-to-ground military operations Other China space program watchdogs are mindful of the military origins of the country's space efforts. "It seems to be a focus, and it likely builds upon a bureaucratic element that had proposed a space shuttle/space plane approach to manned space that was trumped by the Shenzhou space capsule design," said Dean Cheng, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center in Washington. Cheng said numerous scientific conferences held in China during 1988-92 saw debate about what the manned space program vehicle should look like. "Given regular People’s Liberation Army writings about the importance of space-to-ground military operations in the future, something like an X-43 [an unmanned experimental hypersonic aircraft] or X-37B would also have appeal, as a likely pathway for military purposes," Cheng said. Alleged screenshot of coverage by China’s official military television channel depicting a Shenlong test flight. (Image: © CCTV/China SignPost™/Erickson and Collins) Emerging U.S.-China space competition In August, China analysts Andrew Erickson and Gabe Collins posted their Shenlong assessment on their China SignPost website. Erickson is an associate professor in the Strategic Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College and an associate in research at Harvard University’s John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. Collins is a student at the University of Michigan Law School whose research includes a focus on commodity, security, and rule-of-law issues in China. Their co-authored posting was titled "Spaceplane Development Becomes a New Dimension of Emerging U.S.-China Space Competition." "Beijing may be entering the space plane era faster than many would have predicted," Erickson and Collins wrote. As for the Shenlong test flight, they said: "To be sure, much remains uncertain about the nature of such a 'test,' most likely a glide/aerodynamic test from an H-6 bomber. Shenlong is very likely far less capable than the X-37B and may still be years away from yielding a vehicle with true operational capability." The bottom line Erickson and Collins also wrote that, depending on its precise nature, Shenlong’s reported test may turn out to be part of a larger trend: a shrinking time gap between when the U.S. discloses a prototype military system and when China publicly shows a system similar in type —if not equal in capabilities or immediately operational. "For previous aerospace developments, China typically revealed its systems’ existence at least 15 years after the U.S. first showed its analogous platforms," Erickson and Collins observed. The bottom line, the two researchers said, is that foreign policymakers need to take China’s ambitions in space seriously. "Beijing’s development of space plane programs is broad-based, and their trajectory will represent a key barometer of its civil and military space intentions." Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is a winner of last year's National Space Club Press Award and a past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines. He has written for SPACE.com since 1999. |
Nielsen Will Start Spying on Your Facebook Conversations About Television Don’t be alarmed though. It’s all for a good cause. Media research firm Nielsen announced on Wednesday its plans to include Facebook conversations about television shows into their rating system intended for the television industry. Currently, the company only monitors Twitter conversations about shows. Twitter has allowed Nielsen to monitor conversations for the past three years, and now Facebook will allow them access even for personal pages that are designated private. The inclusion has prompted a name change for the rating system, now called “Social Content Ratings”. So, why is Nielsen doing this? No, it’s not to piss off the public. Related: Pack up your desk, we are all going to lose our jobs to robots Data about what television buzz is happening on social networks is valuable to television networks and advertisers who aim to boost ratings and curate content according to the likes and dislikes of viewers. Plain and simple, the rating system helps industry executes figure out where to spend their money. Related: Did Zulily engage in amazing customer service or a brilliant publicity stunt? Nielsen’s latest move proves why collecting and interpreting data, consumer or otherwise, is so inherently crucial for business success. It’s no accident that Nielsen is making this change after several years of criticism from television executives about the usefulness of their data. The company has been dealing with an onslaught of complaints about them not accurately measuring the audience for shows, accusing them of failing to keep up with metrics from the latest digital devices, including gaming systems and mobile phones. The truth is that data, whether it’s used to drive growth at a multinational conglomerate or a small business, is integral to a business’s overall success. The term Big Data is a buzz word thrown around in the finance world, but make no mistake about it, the trend towards it is real. A 2010 study from the University of Texas found that companies can increase annual sales per employee by 14.4 percent simply by improving the usability of its data by a mere 10 percent. “The use of Big Data — large pools of data that can be brought together and analyzed to discern patterns and make better decisions — will become the basis of competition and growth for individual firms,” states an Ivey Business Journal article. Related: Is Yelp ruining mom and pop businesses? Here are just a few ways that various industries are using Big Data to remain competitive: Retail: Sensors embedded into products can collect valuable information about how exactly consumers are using the products. Research shows that retail operating margins can increase by 60 percent simply by increasing the use of consumer data. Sensors embedded into products can collect valuable information about how exactly consumers are using the products. Research shows that retail operating margins can increase by 60 percent simply by increasing the use of consumer data. Pharmaceuticals: Pharmaceutical companies are collecting consumer data about the benefits and risks of drugs once they are widely prescribed rather than relying on the limited data from clinical trials. Pharmaceutical companies are collecting consumer data about the benefits and risks of drugs once they are widely prescribed rather than relying on the limited data from clinical trials. Manufacturing: Car manufacturers embed sensors into products to determine when they might require maintenance, and then present consumers with attractive after-sales offers to purchase preventative maintenance. This list is just a taste. There are plenty of other industries that benefit from the collection and analysis of data, whether it be consumer-driven or otherwise. Nielsen has some big boots to fill. As the emphasis on Big Data becomes a top priority for television executives, they will continue to look to research firms like Nielsen for guidance. Whether Nielsen lives up to industry expectations, remains to be seen. |
Bake cornbread on a bayonet, cure a cough with laudanum, cook stew for fifty, and more Like civilians across the country, Atlantans had felt the hardships of war, with access to food and goods severely restricted. By the summer of 1864, the privations grew. Inflation Confederate currency flooded the South and quickly lost value. A barrel of flour that cost five Confederate dollars at the start of the war cost 225 dollars in 1864, says Jonathan Scott, curator of the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History. “It was a hard life,” says Scott. “No matter who you were or where you were, the war touched you.” Daily Rations A Confederate soldier’s standard allotment: twelve ounces of bacon and about a pound of cornmeal or hardtack. Beans, sugar, and coffee were given at the war’s start but scarce by 1864. Thrifty Tips Published in 1863, the Confederate Receipt Book contained more than 100 hints for making do in wartime. A few tips gleaned from its pages: Extra Wear for a Petticoat One flannel petticoat will wear nearly as long as two if turned behind part before, when the front begins to wear out. A Cheap Taper for a Sick Room Take a piece of soft pliant paper, part of newspaper for example, and form a circle, then gather the centre together and twist it into a wick, immerse the whole in a saucer of lard and light it, and you have a taper that will last some hours. For a Troublesome Cough Take of treacle and the best white wine vinegar six tablespoonfuls each, add forty drops of laudanum, mix it well, and put into a bottle. A teaspoonful to be taken occasionally when the cough is troublesome. The mixture will be found efficacious without the laudanum in many cases. [Editor’s note: Also known as tincture of opium, laudanum was a strong narcotic.] Charcoal Tooth Powder Pound charcoal as fine as possible in a mortar, or grind it in a mill (1), then well sift it (2), and apply a little to the teeth about twice a week (3), and it will not only render them beautifully white, but will also make the breath sweet, and the gums firm and comfortable. To Prevent Blisters Blistering or soreness of the feet may be prevented on long marches by covering the soles of the stockings with a coating of the cheapest brown soap. Coarse cotton socks are the best for walking. Recipes Battlefield Cornbread Mix cornmeal into pork grease to make a stiff batter. Spin a bayonet in the batter until it is coated. Hold the bayonet over the fire to cook the bread; the metal heats and bakes the dough. Coffee Substitute Take sound ripe acorns, wash them while in the shell, dry them, and parch until they open, take the shell off, roast with a little bacon fat, and you will have a splendid cup of coffee. Indian Sagamite Three parts of Indian meal [cornmeal] and one of brown sugar, mixed and browned over the fire, will make the food known as “Sagamite.” Used in small quantities, it not only appeases hunger but allays thirst, and is therefore useful to soldiers on a scout. Plain Irish Stew for Fifty Men Cut fifty pounds of mutton into pieces which equal ¼ pound each. Put them in a pan and add twelve pounds of whole potatoes. In addition, add eight tablespoons of salt and three teaspoons of pepper. Cover all with water, giving about half a pint to each pound of meat. Light the fire and 1 to 1 ½ hours of gentle ebulation will make a most excellent stew. Mash some of the potatoes to thicken the gravy, and serve. To Make Old Silk Look a New Unpick the dress (1), grate two Irish potatoes into a quart of water (2), let it stand to settle, strain it without disturbing the sediment (3) and sponge the silk with it. Iron on the wrong side (4). This article originally appeared in our July 2014 issue. |
A Hollywood superhero just tweeted about this UBCO fundraiser The Incredible Hulk himself, Mark Ruffalo, sent out a Tweet Tuesday asking his 1 million followers to support a UBCO nursing fundraiser. Image Credit: Twitter September 18, 2014 - 4:30 PM KELOWNA – The Incredible Hulk himself, Mark Ruffalo, sent out a tweet Tuesday asking his one million followers to support a UBCO nursing fundraiser. The Global Nursing Initiative is a six-year-old program that gives students the opportunity to do practicums in Ghana, Zambia and India. All of the $2,000 they hope to raise will go to those communities. Fourth-year nursing student Erika Warkentin says at first she couldn't believe the tweet was real. “I thought it was fake,” she says. “But I looked at the Mark Ruffalo (Twitter) page and was like, no way. There is no way this is happening.” She says the exposure is already helping out more than they ever expected. “We are getting donations from outside of our nursing community so the word is getting out there. It’s absolutely amazing for us.” To donate visit the Global Nursing Initiative fundraiser page. Ruffalo was unavailable for an interview. Image Credit: Twitter To contact the reporter for this story, email Adam Proskiw at aproskiw@infotelnews.ca or call 250-718-0428. To contact the editor, email mjones@infotelnews.ca or call 250-718-2724. |
Welcome to Click¶ Click is a Python package for creating beautiful command line interfaces in a composable way with as little code as necessary. It’s the “Command Line Interface Creation Kit”. It’s highly configurable but comes with sensible defaults out of the box. It aims to make the process of writing command line tools quick and fun while also preventing any frustration caused by the inability to implement an intended CLI API. Click in three points: arbitrary nesting of commands automatic help page generation supports lazy loading of subcommands at runtime What does it look like? Here is an example of a simple Click program: import click @click.command () @click.option ( '--count' , default = 1 , help = 'Number of greetings.' ) @click.option ( '--name' , prompt = 'Your name' , help = 'The person to greet.' ) def hello ( count , name ): """Simple program that greets NAME for a total of COUNT times.""" for x in range ( count ): click . echo ( 'Hello %s !' % name ) if __name__ == '__main__' : hello () And what it looks like when run: $ python hello.py --count=3 Your name: John Hello John! Hello John! Hello John! It automatically generates nicely formatted help pages: $ python hello.py --help Usage: hello [OPTIONS] Simple program that greets NAME for a total of COUNT times. Options: --count INTEGER Number of greetings. --name TEXT The person to greet. --help Show this message and exit. You can get the library directly from PyPI: pip install click |
I have had this blog on my mind for quite some time. But I finally decided to write it because I see something that really bothers me just continuing. I always considered (particularly after reading The World Peace Diet) that Veganism was not just about other animals in the literal sense but also about including everyone from the human community. After all, we are animals too. But what I tend to see when I browse through Facebook or other social networks is a lot of anti-religious hate from vegans not only towards pre-vegans but also, and particularly, towards other vegans because they follow a particular faith. I am a former atheist. I understand the point of view of an atheist and for clarification, I haven’t embraced any new faith. However, I do see things from a different, more spiritual, so to speak, perspective. I do not like being ridiculed by religious pre-vegans because I am a vegan and it doesn’t agree with their beliefs anymore than anyone else. I get it! I also get why vegans reject religion. All religions, even the most peaceful ones, have some really nasty sides to them. But that is dogma. In other words, it is interpretation. What I regret is that people who attack vegans and pre-vegans because of whatever faith they have miss out on the opportunity of educating and showing a different vision of their faith. For example, a few years ago, I saw a wonderful documentary called A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values To Help Heal the Planet which, being non-Jewish myself redefined Judaism to me from a different perspective. Another example is that beautiful documentary shared by Will Tuttle recently (who is featured in it as well as French Vegan Monk Mathieu Ricard) called Animals and The Buddha which also shows a vegan perspective of Buddhism worth sharing with those in their community who think differently. I even shared it on the Dalai Lama’s pages in the hope that this would open his own perspective. Now I wish I could find a Christian or Muslim movie from a vegan perspective but that may yet happen. After all, there is a Christian Vegetarian Association (which also supports veganism) and a Muslim Vegetarian Association which I found both exist online. I know vegan Muslims as well as vegan Christians as well as atheist or agnostic vegans and so on. We all share one thing in common, regardless of beliefs, we love other animals and we want to spare their suffering. That is ALL that should matter. I also want to point out that I work with activists here who are Muslims AND Vegans. Do you think we care if we are from different cultural/religious background? We don’t. We work for a common goal. We are all on the same boat. We try to enlighten our own communities within our cultural/religious frameworks. And let’s face it, if you’re atheist and believe that religion is going to disappear overnight, you’re delusional. All I am asking is that, instead of criticizing someone’s faith or lack thereof, we give people a vegan alternative within their own conceptual view of life. Who can pretend to know more than anyone else about life and death? To think that we or anyone else have the answers is just ego at work. The only things we know are that we have one planet, we are one species and we have to protect other species from the insane side of humanity. And this is not going to work as long as people see only the outer limits of others instead of encouraging common grounds and offering a different perspective (of faith for example) as the two movies above do. Veganism is about inclusion and compassion. It is not about division and hate. When vegans despises pre-vegans and vegans alike because they don’t agree on the same things, they just bring even more hate in this world. Instead of wasting their time doing this, they should realize that we all belong to the same human family and that we are all born with compassion in our hearts. Hate, sexism, religion, racism and speciesism is not something we are born with, it is something that is taught to us… just like eating other animals. Let’s extend this vegan principle of love and compassion to those who need to be enlightened, not cast them out because of our own prejudices against them. So next time, you hear someone of faith ridiculing you about being vegan, why not ask them to watch a documentary or give them information about people who do vegan education in their own community. Not doing it is missing the point of our message and missing the chance of maybe having another new vegan join our family. Advertisements |
M9 has arrived and it’s bringing many new features and important changes. We’ve already highlighted these and covered others in detail. Let’s dig deeper into some of the other improvements. Language Changes NOTE: Some of the changes below are breaking changes, meaning that some code that was compilable with earlier versions will not compile any more, so you’ll need to correct it. Platform Types As we mentioned before, platform interoperability (i.e. Java and JavaScript interoperability) is among our top priorities, because this is so for our users. Nullability issues when interoperating with Java were one of the biggest complaints we were getting. In a nutshell, the problem is that any reference coming from Java may be null, and Kotlin, being null-safe by design, forced the user to null-check every Java value, or use safe calls ( ?. ) or not-null assertions ( !! ). Those being very handy features in the pure Kotlin world, tend to turn into a disaster when you have to use them too often in the Kotlin/Java setting. We relied on external annotations and KAnnotator to mitigate this problem by enhancing Java with extra type information. This approach proves to be too cumbersome and doesn’t work for some cases. This is why we took a radical approach and made Kotlin’s type system more relaxed when is comes to Java interop: now references coming from Java have specially marked types (we call them “platform types”, because they come from the underlying platform), which are treated specially: Kotlin does not enforce null-safety for platfrom types. I.e. for Java values you get Java’s semantics: NPE is now possible for values coming from Java val s = javaMethod() // s has a platform type s.foo() // this line may throw NPE, like in Java 1 2 val s = javaMethod ( ) // s has a platform type s . foo ( ) // this line may throw NPE, like in Java Platform types can not be mentioned explicitly in Kotlin code, but when the IDE/Compiler shows you type information, they are distinguished by exclamation marks at the end. Examples: String! , ArrayList<Int!>! , (Mutable)Collection<Foo!>! . , , . To store platform values, you can either rely on the type inference, or pick Kotlin types (either nullable or not, as you please): val s = javaMethod() // platform type inferred val s1: String = javaMethod() // not-null type chosen by the programmer val s2: String? = javaMethod() // nullable type chosen by the programmer 1 2 3 val s = javaMethod ( ) // platform type inferred val s1 : String = javaMethod ( ) // not-null type chosen by the programmer val s2 : String ? = javaMethod ( ) // nullable type chosen by the programmer When you assign a platform value to a non-null type, Kotlin emits assertions in the byte code so that to make sure that a non-null variable doesn’t hold a null, this keeps most nulls from propagating through the code. So, there may be an assertion error on line 2 in this example, instead of an NPE some time later. When you override Java methods, again, you can not mention platform types, so you have to pick some Kotlin types instead: class KotlinClass : JavaClass() { // declared in Java as 'List<String> javaMethod(String s)' override fun javaMethod(p1: String): List<String> { ... } // or it could be override fun javaMethod(p1: String?): MutableList<String?>? // or any other combination of nullabilities and collection mutability } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 class KotlinClass : JavaClass ( ) { // declared in Java as 'List<String> javaMethod(String s)' override fun javaMethod ( p1 : String ) : List < String > { . . . } // or it could be override fun javaMethod ( p1 : String ? ) : MutableList < String ? > ? // or any other combination of nullabilities and collection mutability } To summarize, platform types relax Kotlin’s type system for the case of things coming from Java. When you are using Java libraries, Kotlin is as safe as Java. When there’s no Java involved, Kotlin is even safer: it guarantees absence of NullPointerExceptions. In the future, we are planning to enhance diagnostics on platform types so that Kotlin will issue warnings on misuse of nulls in the Java interoperability cases. More on Platform Interop We already covered in detail the changes introduced for better platform interoperability, but just to recap, we have introduced the platformStatic annotation to define methods as static when being called from Java, as well as a series of improvements for better dealing with getters, setters and other interop aspects. No more local object declarations As of M9, named objects can no longer be local. To use an object inside a function we need to use object expressions, i.e. assign an unnamed object to a variable: fun usingObjects() { val configuration = object { val maxRows = 10 } } 1 2 3 4 5 fun usingObjects ( ) { val configuration = object { val maxRows = 10 } } The reason for this is that named objects in Kotlin are meant for representing singletons. Having these inside functions, which can be called several times makes little sense. Named objects can still exist if they are global or nested in non-inner classes. Non-local returns When working with higher-order inline functions we can now do non-local returns: inline fun using(closeable : Closeable, body : ()->Unit) { try { body() } finally { closeable.close() } } fun processStream(stream : InputStream) { using(stream) { if (stream.read() == 42) return // exits processStream } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 inline fun using ( closeable : Closeable , body : ( ) -> Unit ) { try { body ( ) } finally { closeable . close ( ) } } fun processStream ( stream : InputStream ) { using ( stream ) { if ( stream . read ( ) == 42 ) return // exits processStream } } Calling return from inside the function being passed to using, will exit the outer function processStream. In the case where the return type of processStream is different to Unit, the return must also provide a value. Type is no longer a keyword We can now use the word type as an identifier as it’s no longer a keyword. Unit is now a named object What used to be called Unit.VALUE is now called simple Unit . Foo.instance$ becomes Foo.INSTANCE$ In the Java code we used to access Kotlin’s singletons (named objects) as Foo.instance$ , now it’s Foo.INSTANCE$ . Similarly for class objects: was C.object$ , now C.OBJECT$ . Incremental Builds Kotlin’s goal has always been to be as fast as Java, and while we’re not there yet, we have taken one major step, and that is to provide incremental builds. In IntelliJ IDEA, we can toggle this option via a checkbox under Kotlin Compiler options: NOTE that this feature is experimental. If something doesn’t work correctly, run Rebuild Project. Bug reports are appreciated. You can also enable making projects automatically under Compiler options: JavaScript support We’ve been spending a lot of effort on the JavaScript backend, sorting out language issues and bringing the standard library up to part with the Java equivalent (to the extent possible). As such, code like the following now works when targeting JavaScript: val cars = listOf("Ford", "Audi", "Skoda", "Toyota", "Jeep") cars.filter { it.contains("o") } cars.forEach { println(it) } 1 2 3 4 5 val cars = listOf ( "Ford" , "Audi" , "Skoda" , "Toyota" , "Jeep" ) cars . filter { it . contains ( "o" ) } cars . forEach { println ( it ) } In addition to improving the standard library, we’ve also improved language support, now allowing for Delegation ( class Foo : Bar by baz ) ) Callable references for functions and properties ( ::foo ) ) Support for Long and improved support for Char types and improved support for types Inline functions support Multiple catch -blocks There have also been some breaking changes, namely: Native traits exist only at compile time Some changes in function name mangling Moving and renaming some packages js.* is now kotlin.js.* js.query.* is now jquery.* js.debug.* is now kotlin.js.* Changes in println() behavior: on node.js – write to stdout otherwise (in the browser) – buffered write to console.log, flush buffer to console on “ ” behavior: We’ll cover some more details about JavaScript separately. IntelliJ IDEA improvements Kotlin plugin for IntelliJ IDEA also has some new features and improvements. Extract Function Refactoring and Code Duplication Extract function now offers code duplication detection prompting us to replace similar code occurrences with the the function we’ve just extracted. Create From Usage Long-time awaited, especially for those of us that do TDD once in a while, is the Create From Usage intention. We can now create functions based on usage, and even extension functions Modules Up to recently, Kotlin would treat any module’s symbols or any library referenced from a project anywhere, visible to the entire project. For instance, if we have three modules: Ordering Invoicing Shipping Invoicing and Shipping depend on Ordering, but do not on each other, up to now, in the IDE, completion and autoimport would still show symbols from all modules in all modules. As of M9, it will only show symbols from those modules that are dependant. Find and Rename by Convention Kotlin allows for operator overloading. For instance, we can overload the + by creating a function named plus. Now, when renaming these, IntelliJ IDEA will automatically rename all corresponding usages. Much the same thing will happen when moving from it to explicit arguments in lambda expressions. Other IDE improvements In addition, there are some other improvements. In particular Debugger . Now supports delegated properties. . Now supports delegated properties. Completion . Overall improvements in completion in addition to completion for as when expected types are known at the point of invocation . Overall improvements in completion in addition to completion for as when expected types are known at the point of invocation Expand selection . Offering pretty much all the same functionality we currently have for Java . Offering pretty much all the same functionality we currently have for Java Java to Kotlin converter. Allowing for more conversion scenarios. as well as numerous bug fixes. Command line interface changes Some changes to the command line compiler also to make it simpler. We no longer have to indicate parameters -src/-sourceFiles but merely pass in options first and then source files: kotlinc-jvm <options> <source files> 1 kotlinc - jvm < options > < source files > A few options have changed, such as -output and -jar and a few others. Running kotlinc-jvm --help 1 kotlinc - jvm -- help will provide all options. In addition, some advanced settings have been hidden under the -X parameter. To obtain we simply execute: kotlinc-jvm -X 1 kotlinc - jvm - X Lastly we also prettified some of the output to indicate relative paths versus absolute. JVM Code Generation and Performance Improvements As mentioned previously, we’ve also been working on improving code generation for JVM, reducing byte code size and increasing performance of generated code. API Documentation In addition to Kotlin itself, we’ve also worked on moving the older API reference documentation from the old format to a completely new revamped format using markdown. You can find the API reference on the new site. Summary M9 is an important milestone, primarily because of the platform types. For us it’s really important to get feedback to determine whether these changes are in the right direction and if they’re making interop easier. So please try it out and let us know. To install M9, update the plugin in your IntelliJ IDEA 13.1 or 14 EAP, and as always you can find the plugin in our plugin repository. NOTE you may need to invalidate caches of the IDE and/or rebuild your project. Check out the release page and as always, feedback welcome! |
NY AG Wants Verizon, Lagging Upgrades Investigated by State PSC New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has written to the New York Public Service Commission, urging the agency to investigate Verizon and examine how deregulating the telecom giant has impacted state consumers and businesses. Verizon's refusal to upgrade aging DSL lines or expand FiOS has been a touchy subject of late, after a New York City study found the company failed utterly to live up to FiOS deployment promises in New York City. Schneiderman's letter (pdf) urges the PSC's investigation to explore "whether there is adequate competition for broadband service throughout the various regions of New York State, and whether there are any areas that are still essentially cable monopolies." The letter also urges the PSC to examine "whether telecommunications companies are making honest representations about infrastructure build-out," and "to fully understand the impact of deregulation on consumers and businesses." While New York City's stunted FiOS deployment gets most of the attention, New York State residents in Binghamton, Buffalo, Albany, Syracuse and many more rural markets have also been left on aging infrastructure that Verizon's trying to walk away from to focus on more profitable wireless service. The CWA has been highlighting these issues as the two sides hammer out a new labor contract. The CWA wants to make hay from Verizon's decision to largely give up on landlines, Schneiderman likely wants to win favor with the unions by pushing for an investigation that will likely never seriously happen, and Verizon continues to run as quickly as it can away from the fixed-line broadband business. The CWA wants to make hay from Verizon's decision to largely give up on landlines, Schneiderman likely wants to win favor with the unions by pushing for an investigation that will likely never seriously happen, and Verizon continues to run as quickly as it can away from the fixed-line broadband business. News Jump Tuesday Morning Links Monday Morning Links TGI Friday Morning Links Thursday Morning Links Wednesday Morning Links Tuesday Morning Links Friday Morning Links Thursday Morning Links - Valentines Edition Wednesday Morning Links Tuesday Morning Links ---------------------- this week last week most discussed Most recommended from 38 comments karlmarx join:2006-09-18 Signal Mountain, TN ·Charter 6 recommendations karlmarx Member It never fails to amaze me Verizon LIES. Period. It's written in their damn charter! Verizon, as a person, has an obligation to maximize shareholder return. Period. NOTHING about providing good service or good value is written. MAXIMIZE profit. Time and time again, it's pretty much corporate law that lying increases profit. Ergo, Verizon will LIE, every...single...chance...it gets. Period. Verizon does NOT EXIST to service customers, it exists SOLELY to maximize return to shareholders. Having said that, we gave corporations the same rights as people, why are we stupid to think they won't LIE to get the best returns. Verizon KNEW when they got the tax breaks, they would never meet the requirements. Verizon KNEW they would get a penalty. Guess what, the penalty is LESS than the profit, so what are you expecting them to do? There is only 1 solution to this problem. Make the EXECUTIVES personally responsible for failing to meet promises, with the threat of REAL JAIL TIME and loss of ALL THEIR ILL GOTTEN ASSETS. If the executives (or former executives) make a promise, hold them to it, just like you would hold an individual, and make the penalties FAR WORSE than the simple 'fine' that Verizon just considers 'the cost of doing business'. chrismitt join:2012-07-09 Orange, CA 5 recommendations chrismitt Member Good Fine the hell out of them force them to upgrade thos on dsl or worse over priced highly capped wireless IluvMoney (banned) join:2015-05-04 MiddleClass 5 recommendations IluvMoney (banned) Member Karl summed up the situation very well The CWA wants to make hay from Verizon's decision to largely give up on landlines, Schneiderman likely wants to win favor with the unions by pushing for an investigation that will likely never seriously happen, and Verizon continues to run as quickly as it can away from the fixed-line broadband business. Karl summed up the situation very well:It is all just political hot air, where the state and Verizon will do nothing. The AG is just running a PR game. Economist The economy, stupid Premium Member join:2015-07-10 united state ·AT&T FTTP ·Frontier FiOS ·Cox HSI ·AT&T U-Verse ·DSL EXTREME 1 edit 3 recommendations Economist Premium Member Failed to live up to promises? Shocking »Did Verizon Scam Pennsylvania? »www.prnewswire.com/news- ··· l?$G1Ref »www.teletruth.org/docs/L ··· 2002.pdf Shocking. Whether under the name Verizon, or BA, they have been scamming everyone for decades. Just ask PA which has been waiting more than 20 years for their widely available synchronous 45Mb service promised by BA in exchange in $2B in breaks (according to an economic analysis by Dr. Lee Selywn of Sloan/MIT) during testimony over the issue. |
The regime's air defenses have been weakened by the war, leaving room for low-risk air operations that could achieve important military and humanitarian objectives with reasonable investment of resources. On May 17, the Syrian regime lost Lt. Gen. Hussein Ayoub Ishaq, its top air-defense commander and one of the highest-ranking military officials killed since the conflict began in 2011. Although it is unclear exactly what impact the general's death will have on the war, the loss will likely come as a psychological blow that further degrades the morale of the air-defense forces. Given this development and the effects of three years of fighting, what kind of threat does the regime's air-defense system represent now? OVERVIEW One oft-cited risk of any U.S. or allied air operation in Syria is the regime's potential ability to defend its airspace. Built and maintained with Russian assistance to confront Israel's air force, Bashar al-Assad's air-defense system appeared to be formidable -- at least on paper -- before the onset of the armed rebellion. Since then, the system's ground-based capabilities, including surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and antiaircraft guns, have been reduced by a combination of factors: attrition of equipment, forces, and critical leadership; disruption of routine training and maintenance; probable neglect; diversion of personnel and equipment to support operations against the rebels; and rebel seizure of key deployment areas in northern and southern Syria. As for air-based capabilities, the Syrian air force -- once one of the largest in the Middle East -- is not believed to pose a serious risk to air operations. Over the past three years, it has suffered from pilot desertions/casualties, poor aircraft maintenance, and lack of the kind of pilot proficiency training needed to effectively impede a sophisticated strike package. Syria's aging Soviet fighter aircraft require extensive maintenance and spare parts to remain mission capable, a process that has been neglected during the war. The regime has devoted much of its remaining air capabilities to rudimentary -- yet lethal -- bombardment and basic resupply operations in support of its counterinsurgency campaign. Nevertheless, the regime's air defenses retain some capability, especially in the Damascus area, where ground-based defenses tasked with protecting key leadership positions and military facilities are dense and overlapping and have more modern or upgraded SAM systems. A U.S./allied air operation over that area would require extensive planning, support, and air assets (strike, surveillance, reconnaissance, support). In contrast, air operations over the highly contested southern and northern parts of Syria would not require a large campaign to destroy the regime's remaining local air-defense assets. That goal could also be achieved with relatively limited risk, setting conditions for an international humanitarian assistance campaign or efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict. CURRENT CAPABILITIES Prior to the war, the regime's air defenses included 22 early-warning sites, 130 active SAM sites, around four thousand air-defense guns, and a few thousand man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS). This allowed for dense coverage of major cities and economic centers closest to Israel, especially the coastal region, central-western Syria (Homs, Hama), the Damascus area, and the south. Northern and especially eastern Syria, which are much less heavily populated, were less heavily defended. Syrian air defenses are still well equipped today but have sustained considerable setbacks. Many systems have likely been maintained poorly, and their operators are probably distracted by the war and inadequately trained and exercised. Although the August-September 2013 chemical weapons crisis and the threat of U.S. strikes may have given the regime incentive to improve readiness, no significant air-defense exercises appear to have been conducted in some time. Equipment, personnel, and facilities have been lost in the course of the war or diverted to fighting the rebels, and a number of early-warning radar and air-defense sites in the north, in the Damascus area, and adjacent to the Golan Heights have been overrun by opposition forces, creating gaps or weakening coverage. Furthermore, the regime's air defenses are not properly integrated to ensure seamless and timely command, control, and communications (C3) against all types of threats. The system is capable of successfully engaging predictable and benign targets but is probably not agile enough to counter a well-orchestrated surprise attack. For example, the June 2012 shoot-down of a Turkish RF-4E reconnaissance jet showed that Syrian air defenses can still engage certain targets. Yet this was an isolated incident that occurred under ideal conditions against a single close-range, benign target. When confronted by a coordinated airstrike operation, regime forces would likely exhibit pervasive air battle mismanagement, including delays in detection and timely coordination of engagements to the unit level. Their ability to conduct sustained air-defense operations under attack is also questionable. Many missile support facilities have been lost or damaged in the course of the war, and the lines of communication over which redeployment and resupply operations would have to take place are under constant rebel threat. Even so, the regime does retain small numbers of advanced systems that are technically capable of taking out multiple simultaneous targets, including cruise missiles and highly maneuverable fighter aircraft. After Israel's unimpeded 2007 airstrike on the nuclear reactor at al-Kibar, Syria invested heavily in modern Russian systems to bolster its air-defense network. The focus was on upgrading the network's backbone, composed of Soviet-era SAMs from the 1950s and 1960s, including SA-2s, SA-5s, and SA-6s. Serious steps were also taken to upgrade the regime's SA-3s into a more mobile and digital system. In addition, Damascus acquired more sophisticated tactical SAMs, such as three batteries of the very capable SA-17 and three dozen of the close-range SA-22 systems that reportedly downed the Turkish jet in 2012. COMBAT OPERATIONS Syrian air defenses are probably not prepared to counter a limited strike that exploits their lack of systems integration. This Achilles heel derives from the regime's antiquated, semiautomated "man in the loop" C3 system, its overreliance on vulnerable communications networks, and its centralized air battle management construct. Given these issues, there would be significant lag time between initial detection of intruders by early-warning radars and the issuing of engagement orders to various air-defense sectors and air bases. Moreover, outdated early-warning radars and the C3 network's susceptibility to electronic attack would likely prolong this delay even further, forcing individual units or elements into isolated and autonomous operations and making them more susceptible to attack and jamming. These vulnerabilities have already facilitated multiple strikes by Israeli aircraft since 2007 and increasingly since 2013. The al-Kibar strike was conducted deep inside Syrian airspace, albeit in the northeast sector where air defenses are minimal. As part of that mission, Israeli fighter jets are said to have evaded air-defense sites near the Syria-Turkey border and along the coast with sophisticated electronic deception capabilities, opening a route from the Mediterranean Sea to the nuclear facility far inland. Israel has also reportedly conducted around a half-dozen airstrikes on military targets during the current conflict, including within the vicinity of the heavily defended capital. These limited strikes surprised the Syrians and were effectively unimpeded. According to U.S. media reports, last year's attacks on Damascus-area weapons caches were conducted by fighter aircraft employing standoff weapons, which can be launched without penetrating Syrian airspace or the densely overlapping air defenses protecting the capital. Such weapons were likely used to avoid the risk of operating in range of those defenses. IMPLICATIONS If the United States and its allies decided to launch air operations against Syria, they would face varying conditions depending on the campaign's scope and intent. Notably, the regime's air defenses could not effectively impede limited surprise attacks relying on standoff munitions. Such attacks would be analogous to the reported Israeli strikes against specific, well-defined targets. Air operations over the highly contested southern and northern parts of the country, such as Aleppo, Idlib, and the so-called Southern Front, would not require a large campaign to achieve localized air superiority. Allied operations to destroy the remaining air defenses in these areas could be conducted with limited risk while reaping several potential benefits, such as weakening regime military capabilities, supporting the provision of humanitarian assistance, altering the balance between moderate and extreme rebel groups, and enabling drone operations to gain intelligence and strike high-value targets. The capital air-defense sector still poses a credible threat to allied air operations. Where air defenses densely overlap and incorporate more sophisticated mobile SAMs (e.g., upgraded SA-6s and SA-3s or more modern SA-17s and SA-22s), the threat level increases and would pose a formidable challenge in the early stages of a campaign. To further complicate matters, these forces would likely disperse in the event of attack, remain dormant during initial operations, and then reappear in new locations to engage unaware aircraft. To dismantle the Damascus-area integrated air-defense system (IADS) and enable follow-on operations, allied forces would need to conduct an air campaign involving electronic, cyberwarfare, and ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) capabilities; standoff weapons for use against C3, fixed SAM, and early-warning radar sites; and, most likely, stealth aircraft to carry out strikes on the more advanced SAMs around Damascus. Given that U.S. forces have successfully conducted campaigns against very similar (and equally disjointed and degraded) air-defense systems, they could likely achieve air superiority in one to two weeks with zero to minimal casualties. Going forward, U.S./allied air operations in Syria must be weighed against a number of operational scenarios, using a clinical, up-to-date assessment of the regime's capabilities in those scenarios. It is far too simple to say that the Syrian air-defense network is either a major threat or no threat. Some operations with potentially important objectives, such as degrading regime military capabilities and supporting humanitarian missions, could be conducted at relatively low risk and with reasonable investment of resources. In short, U.S. air action in Syria does not have to be all or nothing. Maj. Chandler Atwood, USAF, is a visiting military fellow at The Washington Institute. Jeffrey White is a defense fellow with the Institute and a former senior defense intelligence officer. The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the authors; they do not reflect the official position of the U.S. government, Department of Defense, U.S. Air Force, or Air University. |
On a mid-December evening, "The Magicians," a prospective Syfy fantasy series, was coming to life inside the Round Table Club, a 19th-century mansion adjoining Audubon Park. Outside in the fading dusk, streetcars rolled down St. Charles Avenue, and joggers logged miles around the park's oval path. Inside it was daytime, thanks to large screens bouncing bright artificial light onto the side of the building and into a few windows. In a banquet room on the main floor, director Mike Cahill ("Another Earth," "I, Origins") oversaw a scene in which Jason Ralph ("Looking," "Smash"), as lead character Quentin Coldwater demonstrated his character's prowess as a magician (special effects to be added in post-production). Upstairs, technicians worked with gear that would later levitate two characters during a bedroom scene. That kind of bedroom scene. "The Magicians" TV story comes from a trilogy of novels by Lev Grossman (2009's "The Magicians," 2011's "The Magician King" and 2014's "The Magician's Land"), the first of which New York Times reviewer Michael Agger said "could crudely be labeled a Harry Potter for adults." The description has endured, surfacing in media coverage of the Syfy series' ramp-up to pilot. The first book follows Coldwater from his Brooklyn home to Brakebills Academy, a secret college of magic, and then to Fillory, a kids-book fantasyland that proves to be a real place. Characters drink, take drugs, have sex, make magic, battle evil. The pilot, or prospective premiere episode on which Syfy will base its decision to order the show to series, wrapped a few days after the location scenes were shot at the Round Table Club (which also doubled for a local fraternity house in "American Horror Story: Coven"). Whether "The Magicians" will become a series and whether the series will shoot in New Orleans were unknowns as the new year began. As of mid-December, New Orleans had done its part to bring Grossman's world to TV. "You feel like the city itself is infused with a little bit of magic," said Sera Gamble ("Supernatural"), a writer and executive producer for the show. "That was the rumor I heard before I came here, and I feel like it's kind of true. "There are several major locations in the book. One is Brooklyn, so our first discussion was about, 'Do we want to shoot in New York or do we want to shoot somewhere else for New York?' The real piece of the puzzle was Brakebills, the graduate school of magic that Quentin gets into, and also Fillory, the magic land he's been reading about in books since he was little. "These places have to be profoundly magical and distinct from one another. The biggest, most important question for us was, where can we go where we can pull off New York to the satisfaction of our director Mike Cahill -- who lives in Brooklyn – and at the same time create a truly unique, distinctive magical landscape that doesn't feel the same as 'Game of Thrones' or doesn't feel the same as 'Harry Potter?' New Orleans was one of the first places that came up in the discussion. There's a beautiful lush wildness to the nature here. The old trees here are magnificent." Gamble got turned on to Grossman's books when Amazon recommended them to her based on prior purchases. "As soon as I finished the first one, I called my agent and asked if it was available (for option), which it wasn't at the time," Gamble said. Eventually it was, "basically through kismet," she said. Gamble, writer John McNamara ("Prime Suspect") and producer Michael London ("Milk") "optioned the rights to the books with our own money to write it on spec because we all just loved the books and really believed in them," Gamble said. "When you find a world that's really rich and feels real and gives you the opportunity to have fun and spectacle but also lets you feel a true emotional connection to the story and characters, you don't want to let that go," Gamble said. "That's the kind of a project, as a writer, you can't pass up. It doesn't happen often, but as a writer I'll move heaven and earth work on a show like that." Gamble said Grossman visited New Orleans to meet the cast, which also includes Sosie Bacon ("The Closer"), Arjun Gupta ("Nurse Jackie"), Jade Tailor ("True Blood"), Hale Appleman ("Teeth") and Stella Maeve ("Chicago P.D.). "Lev is excited," Gamble said. "It's been his baby for a long time. It's cool we're shooting it. He's been very involved in the process. He came down and met the actors, he answered some questions. I've been sending him some photos of trees with clocks in them. He's been having a great time from afar." Got a TV question? Contact Dave Walker at dwalker@nola.com or 504.826.3429. Read more TV coverage at NOLA.com/tv. He's @DaveWalkerTV on Twitter, and Dave Walker TV on Facebook. |
Yes, it’s happening. Microsoft is finally bringing the popular Windows Phone WordFlow keyboard to all Windows 10 devices, including PCs and tablets. The new keyboard in Windows 10 is mainly for tablet users who use the on-screen keyboard for text input on their Windows 10 tablets. The new keyboard in Windows 10 will support swipe input, just like the Windows Phone keyboard. It isn’t known when exactly the new keyboard for Windows 10 will arrive, but Microsoft already has some of the components that relate to the new keyboard in the latest internal builds of Windows 10. More specifically, Microsoft accidentally released Windows 10 internal build 16212 to Windows Insiders recently and it includes some new features on the frontend as well as a lot of other things behind the scenes. Windows 10 build 16212 includes components of the Composable Shell (aka CShell) that Microsoft has been working on for a while — and one of the components of CShell is the new TextInput component which is the new keyboard that’s coming to Windows 10. 16212 comes with a ComposableShell TextInput component and its based on Swiftkey — WalkingCat (@h0x0d) June 2, 2017 According to our sources, the new keyboard is built by Microsoft’s WordFlow team, but it is also going to use some bits from SwiftKey’s technology — a company Microsoft acquired back in 2016. |
California reservoirs holding nearly twice as much water as at the drought's height California's reservoirs are brimming after a winter of relentless storms and a late-spring heatwave that thawed the a big chunk of the snowpack. The Golden State's system of 154 major reservoirs is holding 32,464,000 acre-feet according to the most recent June 12 state report with data pulled from an array of entities that own and manage these bodies of water, including the Department of Water Resources, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers and several city water departments. The state's reservoirs held 25,628,000 acre-feet on the same date last year, when El Niño was expected to bring extraordinary weather systems, but instead hit us with weak storms dropping average precipitation. It's the number from 2015, when some California reservoirs were nearly dry, that reveals just how far we've come in two years. The state's reservoir system held 17,240,000 acre-feet back in 2015. That means we have nearly double the amount of water in reservoir storage this year compared to 2015. RELATED GALLERY: Before and after: California reservoirs in 2016 vs. 2701 Before and after: Twitchell Reservoir March 2016 vs. March 2017 Before and after: Twitchell Reservoir March 2016 vs. March 2017 Photo: NASA Landsat 8 Satellite / Catalin Trif Photo: NASA Landsat 8 Satellite / Catalin Trif Image 1 of / 72 Caption Close California reservoirs holding nearly twice as much water as at the drought's height 1 / 72 Back to Gallery "This is going to be a boon year for storage for California reservoirs," says Boone Lek with the California Department of Water Resources. "The storage is healthy and that's part of why we're out of the drought." The reservoir conditions were at 112 percent of average on June 12, and while Lek says the next report doesn't come out until early July, he's certain we're still well over 100 percent of normal. The only major reservoir that is not above normal is Lake Oroville, where levels have been reduced while crews work to repair a damaged spillway that caused flooding fears early this year." Keep in mind, this doesn't mean the reservoirs are completely full. Water managers have conducted releases from reservoirs all year to create space for more water that's pouring down from the mountains as a massive near-record-breaking Sierra snowpack thaws. Even in late spring and early summer, the releases have been major to counter the snowmelt. "Most of the reservoirs on the San Joaquin Reservoir have been making high releases in the past month," Lek says. "In 2015, I can tell you with high confidence that we weren't making any flood releases at this time of year." More than 1,000 reservoirs are spread up and down California, and 154 of the largest have a combined capacity of over 38,129,000 million acre-feet. Shasta - which can hold up to 4.5 million acre-feet of water - is the biggest, and an example of one of the state's reservoirs that's swelling after five years of drought (see drone footage of the lake filled with water above). The reservoir is currently holding 4.2 million acre-feet of water as of June 29, even with ongoing releases meeting environmental demands and creating room for runoff, and its at 115 percent of average. Back in 2015 when many house boating operations shut down because of lack of water, the lake held only 2.1 million acre-feet and was at 48 percent of average. "One of the things about this year is we have plenty of water," says Louis Moore, a deputy public affairs officer with the Bureau of Reclamation. "We have to meet a lot of demands, but we have plenty of water to work with. I was up at the lake last night for a meeting and there were houseboats all over the place." This story was updated on June 30, 2017, at 12:20 p.m. |
Did Leonardo decipher traces of ancient life centuries before Darwin? It was to be Leonardo da Vinci’s most impressive work yet. In 1483, the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, commissioned the up-and-coming artist to create a huge bronze statue of a horse, standing over 7 metres tall. Da Vinci spent the next 10 years perfecting a full-size clay model. Sadly, it was never cast in bronze. Tonnes of the metal were needed, and Sforza ended up using the earmarked supplies to make weapons for use against invading French troops. When the French army took Milan in 1499, its archers used da Vinci’s clay horse for target practice. Those years in Milan were nevertheless important for da Vinci, and not only for the many masterpieces he painted in that time. The polymath was also working on a very different project inspired by an intriguing feature of the surrounding countryside: embedded in the rocks there appeared to be a multitude of small stone sea creatures. “The hills around Parma and Piacenza show abundant molluscs and bored corals still attached to the rocks,” da Vinci wrote a few years later. “When I was working on the great horse in Milan, certain peasants brought me a huge bagful of them.” Da Vinci recorded his observations of these and other fossils in a secret notebook now known as the Codex Leicester. His findings have long been known to be ahead of their time, but a new analysis suggests that the work was even more advanced than previously thought, with da … |
(Austin, TX) – We’re very excited to finally release 2016 SPON — Méthode Gueuze this week! This beer has been three years, nine months in the making, and represents the culmination of patience, tradition, time, place, and people. We’re very proud of the way it turned out, and we really hope you enjoy it. Back in early 2016, we created four blends of 2016 SPON — Méthode Gueuze. All four blends will be released this weekend at Jester King by the glass and in bottles to go. Bottles To Go Between the four blends, we have approximately 4,700 bottles 375ml and 4,800 bottles 750ml for a total of approximately 9,500 bottles. Half of the 375ml and half of the 750ml bottles will be released on Friday the 18th and the other half on Saturday the 19th. The bottle limit is one bottle per customer per day 375ml and one bottle per customer per day 750ml, for a total of two bottles per customer per day (one 375ml and one 750ml). In summary, bottles to go looks like the following: Friday, November 18th at 4pm 2,350 bottles available of 375ml, $20, limit 1 2,400 bottles available of 750ml, $36, limit 1 Saturday, November 19th at 12pm 2,350 bottles available of 375ml, $20, limit 1 2,400 bottles available of 750ml, $36, limit 1 Any bottles not sold on Friday will roll into Saturday, and any bottles not sold on Saturday will roll into Sunday, and so on, until all bottles are sold out. Customers will have the choice of whichever blend(s) they’d like for their bottle(s) while supplies last. By the Glass All four blends of 2016 SPON — Méthode Gueuze will be available by the glass at our tasting room while supplies last. We actually have quite a few kegs, so while we can’t promise that all four blends will be on all weekend long, we don’t expect to run out of 2016 SPON — Méthode Gueuze by the glass all weekend. We’ll have all four blends pouring both inside and outside at our tasting room while supplies last. Cellar Beer / Events / Onsite at Our Tasting Room As we’ve mentioned before on our social media and on beer websites, we’ll be holding back a pretty significant chunk of 2016 SPON — Méthode Gueuze for cellaring, offsite events, and onsite drinking at our tasting room throughout the year — about 1,800 bottles (750ml). This is a style of beer that should cellar very, very well. We literally want to have a small amount of this beer available at the brewery in two to three decades from now! Jean Van Roy of Brasserie Cantillon is famous for giving his brewery visitors bottles of authentic Lambic and Gueuze from their birth year. We hope to someday do the same with our Méthode Gueuze. We also want to be able to send 2016 SPON — Méthode Gueuze to offsite events around the country and world in 2017. Finally, we want for people to be able to experience SPON — Méthode Gueuze at Jester King even if they can’t make it to the brewery this weekend. We’re going to make at least three cases of 750ml bottles (18 bottles) available at our tasting room every single weekend for the next year to purchase and drink at the brewery. We’re also very excited to have some complimentary food pairings for 2016 SPON — Méthode Gueuze. On Friday the 18th our friends at Antonelli’s Cheese Shop will have a free cheese pairing for the beer, and on Saturday the 19th, our friends at The Brewer’s Table will be serving pig tongue barbacoa tacos, wort pickles, persimmon hot sauce, with avocado hop cream! We sincerely appreciate all the enthusiasm, excitement, and support behind the release of SPON — Méthode Gueuze. This has been a very long and personal project for us. We’re truly excited to share the beer with you, get your feedback, and hopefully have you really enjoy it! If you have any questions about the release, please e-mail [email protected] Thanks and we hope everyone who joins us has a wonderful release weekend! Cheers, Jeffrey Stuffings Founder Jester King Brewery |
Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Is your butcher telling you porkies? Scientists at Manchester University are developing a test that can detect if your meat is lying to you. A growing number of food fraud cases have seen high quality meat bulked up with cheaper grades before being sold on to consumers - often with cheap pork being passed off as beef. But biologists in Manchester have now created a chemical test to differentiate between beef and pork. They hope it will lead to portable test kits - either using electric probes or disposable testing sticks - allowing food inspectors and even members of the public to carry out their own checks. Dr Drupad K Trivedi, a research associate from the University of Manchester, who has worked on the research since last summer, told the M.E.N.: “In theory you can look at all kinds of meats but we’re looking at these meats because there is a religious attachment and both are red meats that look similar during processing.” “Our presumption is suppliers are trying to make economic gains buy suppling cheaper meats. I hope it’s not as prevalent but that’s what were trying to figure out.” “This research is promising, as it could lead to easier, quicker, cheaper ways of analysing meat qualities. Read more: Read more: The scientist said that food fraud was an increasingly serious problem, with meat mixing often carried out by low level suppliers to supermarkets. Researchers at Manchester University have been examining metabolites - chemical fingerprints - which can show the precise extent of pork or beef present in a food sample. Although their study is still on-going, they hope a test can be created in the future. Dr Trivedi said they also hoped to look at how meat is farmed and processed. He added: “We are currently investigating how different diets fed to animals and methods of meat preparation affect the metabolites and primary metabolic pathways. This further research will help us confidently eliminate factors that may affect the metabolic signature of a meat species.” In the meantime Dr Drupad K Trivedi hopes their research will bring about awareness to meat mixing process. He added: “The eventual idea is to create something like an electronic probe or pregnancy stick-like test that can measure give a percentage reading measuring the metabolites in the meat or a yes or no answer.” |
Southampton manager Claude Puel has taken more than his fair share of stick from fans in recent weeks. The former Nice boss, who took over a squad once again picked apart by Premier League rivals in the wake of Ronald Koeman, has been criticised for his more conservative style of play by fans used to watching the more expressive styles of Koeman and before that Mauricio Pochettino. The fans do have a point, it’s now three games without a goal for the south coast side and, going into last night’s loss against Arsenal, they had only managed one shot on target in 180 minutes of football – a Dusan Tadic penalty saved by Hull ‘keeper Eldin Jakupovic. With goals seemingly hard to come by, Puel has handed fans some fantastic news ahead of their trip to Middlesbrough this weekend. Having recently returned to first team training after a shoulder injury sustained before Christmas in a Europa League draw against Hapoel Be’er Sheva, top scorer Charlie Austin could be set for a return to the fold. On the subject of the former QPR man, Puel said: “We will see for Charlie and for the other players, “The most important thing is to try to have a good balance in the physical fitness of the team between some players with good game time and other players who come back just into the training sessions, like Austin, perhaps Targett or Pied – we will see.” |
Trey is really combing the depths of the sonic ocean with his pedals right now, and I love it. Sometimes the tension and discordance become a lot to take, but he knows exactly what he’s doing and leads the listener to safety. It’s a new style of musical leadership for him. Rather than shredding and wailing, of which he’s admittedly a master, he’s creating new textures and landscapes and inviting his bandmates and the listener to follow. Sometimes it works, sometimes not as much, but it’s intriguing to hear him putting things in test tubes and hearing what happens. H/T: LOCKN’ may have happened weeks ago, but the footage from Lazy Lightning is still coming!Gin was one of the highlights of the 8/26 show, but didn’t resemble the Gin you would have heard 20, 10 or even 5 years ago. Phish.net member HDORNE describes the ‘sonic ocean’ that Trey creates:And thanks to LL you can relive this jam in beautiful 4K! |
Journalist says... Lady Gaga's new album 'Born This Way' has been inspired by Nine Inch Nails, according to a journalist who has been given a preview of the album. Rolling Stone magazine's Matthew Perpetua was given the opportunity to listen to six songs from the much-anticipated record. He said the song 'Hair' contained influences of Nine Inch Nails circa 'Broken' era, while forthcoming single 'Judas' was a “pop banger”. 'Hair' and the song 'Edge Of Glory' also include guest appearances from E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons. Last month, another US journalist said 'Born This Way' contained hints of Guns N' Roses and Bruce Springsteen. The album is due to be released in May. The same-titled first single came out earlier this month. Meanwhile, Lady Gaga performed the first of two homecoming concerts in New York last night. Lady Gaga - Monster Ball |
Amazon is planning to open a drive-up grocery store in Seattle, newly discovered planning documents suggest. Permit filings uncovered by GeekWire show plans to renovate the former Louie’s Cuisine of China site, at 5100 15th Ave. N.W. in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, into a 9,759-square-foot retail space where customers can pick up groceries that they’ve ordered online, in what the project team calls “a new model of grocery shopping.” The company appears to be doing its best to keep its involvement under wraps. Planning documents filed with the city of Seattle use the mysterious moniker “Project X,” with no reference to the e-commerce giant. Even the people building the project don’t know what’s happening. “No idea,” one worker said when asked what would be going into the building. “We had to sign our life away. Half the guys in there don’t even know what they are working on.” “It’s a big secret — they won’t tell anyone,” another worker said. However, the description of the project matches, almost exactly, the language in planning documents for Amazon drive-up grocery stores planned in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition, Ware Malcomb, the same architect that designed Amazon’s planned drive up grocery stores in the Bay Area as well as its Prime Now delivery hub in Seattle, is listed as the architect for “Project X.” GeekWire has contacted Amazon seeking more details about the project, including the timeline for opening the new facility, and we’ll provide updates as we learn more. Here is how the business works, according to planning documents from the city of Seattle: When placing an online order, customers will schedule a specific 15-minute to two-hour pick up window. Peak time slots will sell out, which will help manage traffic flow within the customer parking adjacent to the building. When picking up purchased items, customers can either drive into a designated parking area with eight parking stalls where the purchased items will be delivered to their cars or they can walk into the retail area to pick up their items. Customers will also be able to walk into the retail room to place orders on a tablet. Walk in customers will have their products delivered to them in the retail room. Hours of operation are expected to be 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. At peak time, there will be approximately 15 employees working on site, and three to five people will be dedicated to bringing orders out to parked cars. About a quarter of all trips are expected to occur between 5 and 7:30 p.m. The average wait time is expected to be about five minutes. Word of the project has spread through the neighborhood. Tony Mazzarella is the owner of Mac’s Upholstery Shop, which has been in business since 1948 across the street from the future pick-up grocery. He is aware of the project and has no problem with it. However, Mazzarella is concerned about new development in the neighborhood and traffic issues. “I don’t care, it’s fine … it’s not going to bother me,” Mazzarella said of the new pick-up grocery store. “Those apartments across the street bother me, with no parking.” Plans for the Amazon grocery stores haven’t gone over well in the Bay Area with some residents and elected officials. They argue the stores would clog important arterials during commuting hours both with customers picking up orders and delivery trucks bringing product to the store. In the case of the San Carlos, Calif. store, Ware Malcomb pitched the project to city officials for approximately one year without disclosing that Amazon was the tenant. The site in Seattle is on the busy 15th Avenue corridor, with cars streaming off the Ballard Bridge into the longtime Scandinavian fishing enclave. The neighborhood has undergone a major transformation in recent years, fueled largely by the tech boom, with condo and apartment units springing up seemingly all over to accommodate an influx of new residents. In planning documents, the project team writes that six pick-up parking stalls should be sufficient to handle 99.7 percent of demand, and the nine customer pick-up parking spots on site — the document lists the number of parking stalls as both eight and nine — should be more than enough. There are another five parking spots on the site, according to planning documents. The move represents further commitment to the brick and mortar realm for the online shopping giant. Amazon opened its first physical bookstore at the University Village shopping center in Seattle late last year. It has also opened multiple local Prime Now hubs that offer one-hour delivery on many different types of items. Property records show that an entity related to a Seattle-based property management company and brokerage firm Real Property Associates bought the site in 2014 for about $2.5 million. RPA co-owner and managing broker Gordon Stephenson, who is also a member of Zillow’s board, is listed on permit records for Project X as the site’s owner. He did not immediately respond to an email request for comment. |
Plus: the origin of the Bray Unknowns’ name and the first player to miss a penalty in a shootout. Send questions and answers to knowledge@theguardian.com or tweet @TheKnowledge_GU “I know of clubs having fan shops and sometimes even playgrounds close to the stadium, but Union Berlin have their own petrol station, and it’s not even close to the ground,” notes Daniel Bickermann. “Any other clubs who own strange shops or businesses that seem unrelated to football?” Kevin Dennehy points us in the direction of another German club. “Not sure if this counts, but you could for a time buy a complete house from Bayern Munich. It’s a standard prefabricated job and includes a garage, which is very common in Germany and costs €190,000, which is actually good value for what you get. There’s one featured in this article: the house is finished in matching light switches, tiles, etc in red. It seems his wife (who refused to be photographed for the article) drew the line at the bedroom being bedecked in Bayern Munich tat, mind.” Cameron Shields ready to get a CR7 coffee. Cameron Shields sends in evidence of the Real Madrid Cafe in Dubai (where else?), while Marco De Luca gets his eyes down to bring us this little nugget of information. “My club, CF Os Belenenses is also the owner of a petrol station outside the Estádio do Restelo that was earlier leased to BP and now to Repsol. The club has also just taken back ownership of the Belenenses Bingo Hall located near the city centre (and actually much closer to Sporting and Benfica’s stadiums). Bingo Hall ownership is common among Portuguese clubs and an important source of revenue for some of them.” All this talk of sideline interests got us wondering about Superleague Formula, the motor sport league that involved cars representing football clubs, including Liverpool, Spurs, Milan, PSV Eindhoven, Porto, Galatasaray and Borussia Dortmund. It began in 2007 and went belly up in 2011. And guess what, Liverpool fans? While all that nasty business with Tom Hicks and George Gillett was going on at Anfield in 2009, you won the league – the Superleague! In a car driven by Adrián Vallés. Here’s the former Liverpool commercial director, Ian Ayre, talking about the club’s involvement in that uninspiring way only financial bods are capable of. “We get a guaranteed signing-on fee and each year we have a guaranteed revenue stream. We’re licensing our colours, our brand, into the series. The race series, the drivers, the tracks – all of that is covered by the race organisers and the series organisers,” said Ayre, which is pretty disappointing as the sight of Rafa Benítez furiously scribbling in his notepad after each lap would have been an entertaining one. It also got us thinking about what happened to the cars. Is Ryan Babel racing around Turkey in the Liverpool one? Maybe you bought one, or the clubs could have them on display? Is the winning 2009 car in the Anfield trophy cabinet? If you know, do get in touch. Known Unknowns “I wonder if any of your readers know where Bray Unknowns FC got their name?” asks Mischa Atkinson. “I would guess that it’s on a similar basis to the various Wanderers, Rangers, and Rovers (Bolton Wanderers, I understand, were so called because they had to leave their original ground) – but the Unknowns name seems altogether stranger, if you’ll pardon the pun.” Have any football teams won the league with a negative goal difference? | The Knowledge Read more “I am not 100% sure about this, but I have been told it is to do with the first world war,” writes Phil Farrell in Dublin. “Before the conflict, a team called Wicklow FC (Bray town is in County Wicklow) played at the club’s Carlisle Grounds (one of the oldest football stadiums in the world circa 1861). The team became the Unknowns around 1922. “Bray, as a seaside town, was exposed to the war with many Irish troops passing through on their way to ships. In addition, about 1,000 men from the town alone served in various Armed Forces (mainly British). After the war, a large cross was erected to the memory of these men, with 155 names listed. This cross currently stands beside the Carlisle Grounds. I have been told that the team re-formed after the war and renamed themselves the Unknowns out of respect to the unknown war dead from the town and its surroundings. They were admitted to the new League of Ireland in 1924. In the mid-1940s they fell out of the League but joined with a junior club called Wanderers, and together they became the Bray Wanderers of today. The Tel-el-Kebir United crest. Photograph: Public domain “Interestingly, a nearby club have a war-related name too. In South Dublin there is a side called Tel-el-Kebir United, whose crest features a sphinx. Founded in 1946, they are named after the 1882 British victory over the Egyptians. I guess a follow-up question to the Knowledge is: how many teams have war- or battle-related names?” A web trawl throws up this on Tel-el-Kebir: Tel El Kebir dairies were based in Monkstown and later became the Premier Dairies depot there, more famously they gave their name to TEK United who play in Rockford Park, a stone’s throw from where the old dairy used to be. Knowledge archive “Who was the first player to miss a penalty in a shoot-out in a football match in Britain?” asked Albert Lippett, in 2001. On 1 August 1970, a full-strength Manchester United team found themselves in Hull, playing in the semi-final of the Watney Mann Invitation Cup. The tournament was restricted to the two highest scoring teams from each division - excluding those recently promoted, relegated or in Europe. United made it by scoring 66 goals as they finished 8th in the First Division, while Hull qualified by topping the Second Division scoring charts with 72 goals in 42 games. Which football champions were top of their league for the shortest time? | The Knowledge Read more The FA had decided to allow – for the first time – penalty shoot-outs to be used if the matches were tied. Both Hull and United made it through their quarter-finals (against Reading and Peterborough respectively) and, when their match finished 1-1 after extra-time, the scene was set for the world’s first penalty shoot-out. George Best took the first penalty, scoring low to the keeper’s right. The next five penalties were also dispatched with ease. And then Denis Law stepped up and saw his penalty saved by Ian McKechnie, thus becoming the first player ever to miss in a shoot-out. Not that it mattered too much. Hull missed their next two penalties and United sneaked through to the final. You know the rest: that year the shoot-out was adopted by Uefa and Fifa, and before long England and missed penalties were going together as nicely as butter and hot toast. Can you help? “Which club’s badge has remained unaltered the longest?” asks Philip Genochio. “Derby have had the ‘ram’ for over 40 years but there must be badges with much greater longevity?” “Marx Lenin has just signed his first contract with Flamengo,” writes Nick Howe Bukowski. “Unfortunately he doesn’t seem to be a left winger (at least on the pitch that is). Are there any other footballers named after political leaders and thinkers?” “Thanks to a USA/Panama draw, Martinique’s win over Nicaragua means they lead Group B after one game in the Gold Cup, Concacaf’s regional tournament. Curious about a low-ranking team leading a group, I learned Martinique is not a member of Fifa and therefore not ranked (they are members of Concacaf and CFU). Are there other notable examples of a very low or non-ranked country leading a group in a regional or bigger tournament?” wonders Joseph T. “FK Partizan, current Serbian league and cup holders, are due to start their Champions League qualifying campaign; however, something even more interesting has come up during their 2017-18 pre-season: the fact that they now have two Nemanja Miletić’s in their squad,” exclaims Leo Crnogorcevic. “Both were born in 1991 and neither of them has a middle name. It appears as if they have collectively decided to be referred to as Nemanja ‘G’ and Nemanja ‘R’ after their fathers’ first names, respectively (in turn showcasing what a patriarchal society we live in where they’re not even using their mothers’ maiden names, although that’s a matter for another time). My question therefore is: has a club ever had two (or more) players with the exact same name in their squad, and how have they differentiated them?” |
Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF The AutoGlove, scheduled to enter production next month, bills itself as a mechanism that allows for “full-auto fire without ATF approval, tax stamp or firearm modifications.” Powered by a battery pack that can be attached to a user’s arm or body, the device looks like a military-inspired Power Glove and is designed to fire a standard semi-automatic firearm at a rate of up to 1,000 rounds per minute. The appeal of firing a machine gun should be obvious to anyone who’s wasted hours pumping quarters into T2: the Arcade Game in a movie theater lobby. Even a simulated automatic weapon is satisfying, and loud, and makes you feel powerful. But manufacturing a new machine gun for civilian use is illegal in the US, and civilians aren’t allowed to own one that was manufactured after 1986. So how do devices like the AutoGlove get past the authorities? “There’s been a longstanding cottage industry of companies trying to create attachments that mimic fully automatic fire in semi-automatic weapons,” Josh Sugarmann, Executive Director of the Violence Policy Center told Gizmodo. The AutoGlove “is just the latest example.” The general term for these devices is trigger activators and previous iterations include “bump fire stocks,” “hell-fire trigger systems,” and “BMF trigger activators.” They all use various mechanisms to “simulate automatic fire rates.” The AutoGlove is just a particularly effective and elegant evolution in the field. Advertisement The makers of the AutoGlove are keenly aware of the questionable legality of their device. The FAQ section on its website consists of a single question: “How is this legal?” The short answer is: it’s not entirely clear that it is. But the FAQ explains that the device’s manufacturers have worked closely with legal experts to study the laws and policy interpretations by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) and they have confidence that they are within their rights. They’re confident enough that pre-orders are currently available. One type of trigger activator that has previously received ATF approval is what’s known as bump fire stocks. These devices replace the traditional stock on a gun and use a sliding mechanism to take advantage of the gun’s natural recoil. The shooter keeps their finger in one place while using one hand to pull the gun forward and one hand to pull it backward. It certainly takes some practice to use a bump fire stock but it’s effective at simulating automatic fire. The ATF wrote an opinion letter giving bump fire stock manufacturer Slidefire permission before it released its product. The AutoGlove uses two mechanisms to rapidly pull a semi-automatic weapon’s trigger. The Trigger Assist Device (TAD) that depresses the trigger is controlled by a separate button. It’s attached to the shooter’s right trigger finger. When the finger is fully extended, there’s a bit of distance between the motorized trigger and the gun’s trigger. The user then uses “micro trigger pulls” to engage the device. Advertisement “I think it’ll be up to the ATF [to determine] the kind of semantic question about whether [the AutoGlove] falls within the definition of a single trigger pull,” Ari Freilich, Staff Attorney for the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence told Gizmodo. “If you press a button that automatically pulls a trigger, that button could be the trigger.” For what it’s worth, Josh Sugarmann tells us that “micro trigger pull” is not a technical or legal term. Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF The National Firearms Act (NFA) was created in 1934 and defines a machine gun as “any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.” That definition has been fairly sufficient ever since. Under the NFA’s guidelines, the preconditions to own a machine gun include strict background checks, a tax, a requirement to inform the chief local law enforcement officer, and other restrictions depending on location. In 1986, the Firearm Owners Protection Act (FOPA) banned the manufacture of fully-automatic machine guns for civilian use. That means there’s only a small pool of pre-‘86 firearms that gun owners can get their hands on even if they get through all of the regulatory requirements. The relatively small number of reported crimes using automatic weapons seems to indicate that the regulations work. Advertisement Gizmodo contacted the ATF to ask if they approved of the AutoGlove. Our request for comment was acknowledged but at the time of publication, we have not received a reply. Likewise, pro-gun organizations like the NRA and the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) have not returned our requests for comment on their official positions regarding trigger activators. Mark Oliva of the NSSF did tell us that lobbying for the right to own automatic weapons is “not a focus for groups in the industry and it’s not a particular focus for us.” And he said that changing regulations on silencers is a much greater priority for his organization. Indeed, everyone we talked to wanted to talk about silencers. “I know they’ve been working very hard this year in the legislature to weaken other aspects of the National Firearms Act to make firearm silencers unregulated again for the first time since the 1930s,” Freilich said. In June, when Congressman Steve Scalise was shot at a baseball practice DC, he was scheduled to appear on the Hill to discuss deregulating silencers. That legislation has been delayed while he recovers from his wounds. Advertisement Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF With gun ownership at a 40-year low, there are only so many customers to buy all this stuff. The hunt for new revenue streams—like silencers—is now in high-gear. Sugarmann says that the gun industry was as surprised by Trump’s election as everyone else. Before November, there was a basic assumption by retailers and manufacturers that a wave of firearm hoarding would come with a Clinton administration. Obama was the best thing that ever happened to the industry: during his term, it expanded by 158 percent thanks to right-wing rhetoric about the government taking away people’s guns. If gun laws remain the same, it’s entirely unclear what could be done to stop devices like the AutoGlove, or even if anyone should try. We do know that the frequency and lethality of mass shootings are increasing. And a faster rate of fire could only make things worse. At the same time, the AutoGlove is a pretty simple DIY device for anyone who wants to put in the effort to build their own. Advertisement My first reaction to the AutoGlove was fear. Then, I wanted to use it to play Duck Hunt. It’s a nifty gadget. As far as it’s intended use goes, it’s hard to say for certain that it should be legal. But as Sugarmann put it, “allowing people to buy devices that let semi-automatic weapons mimic full-auto fire doesn’t make anyone safer.” [AutoGlove USA via Task & Purpose] |
New Delhi: The record of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) during its three years in power has been impressive, judging by macroeconomic parameters, especially inflation. Politically too, the BJP has seen unprecedented ascendancy by wresting back power in Uttar Pradesh in March after a gap of 15 years and expanding its electoral footprint to the North-East. This in part explains why Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains India’s most popular political leader. ALSO READ: Timeline of policy initiatives in three years of Modi government Still, controversies associated with the actions of fringe saffron groups have left the BJP vulnerable to criticism. The next general election is due in 2019 and, to a large extent, the outcome will depend on Modi’s management of the optics and his government’s ability to generate jobs to meet the growing aspirations of voters. Here is a look at the key themes of the NDA’s three years in power. CONNECTIVITY Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurating the UDAN regional connectivity scheme in Shimla. Photo: Hindustan Times Positive 1. New integrated transportation initiative for roads, railways, waterways and civil aviation. 2. Sagarmala and Bharatmala programmes for the construction of new ports and expressways. 3. UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik) regional connectivity scheme with fares starting at about Rs2,500. Negative 1. Increasing number of railway accidents. 2. 23km per day of highway construction achieved vis-a-vis a target of 41km. 3. Air India’s finances are still precarious. The national carrier is still grappling with legacy issues. TERROR, DEFENCE AND FOREIGN POLICY India carried out surgical strikes across the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir. Photo: Tauseef Mustafa/AFP Positive 1. Carried out surgical strikes across the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir, resumed cordon and search operations in more than 20 villages in Shopian. 2. Combing operations launched against Maoists in Chhattisgarh. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “neighbourhood diplomacy" falling in place as relations with Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka look up. Negative 1. No strategy to pre-empt rebel attacks on security personnel in districts where Maoists are active. 2. Ties with Pakistan and China are icy despite Prime Minister Modi making trips to both countries (a December 2015 stopover in the former). 3. Relations with Russia—India’s once time-tested friend—too seem to be in the doldrums. FARMERS The Narendra Modi government has set an ambitious goal to double farm incomes in real terms by 2022. Photo: Mint Positive 1. New crop insurance scheme and higher funding for irrigation to counter weather risks. 2. Set an ambitious goal to double farm incomes in real terms by 2022, moving away from the historical focus on increasing production. 3. Initiated a range of marketing reforms to create a “one nation, one market" in agriculture. Negative 1. Decline in wholesale prices of vegetables and pulses has dented farm incomes. 2. A loan waiver in Uttar Pradesh led to a moral hazard problem and delay in repayment of loans in other states. 3. Acute drought in southern states led to a spike in farm suicides. GREEN ECONOMY AND ENERGY Clean and renewable energy generation has got a boost under the Narendra Modi government. Photo: Bloomberg Positive 1. Push for electric vehicles. 2. Rs42,000 crore unlocked for afforestation with Parliament passing The Compensatory Afforestation Fund Bill, 2016. 3. Clean and renewable energy generation gets a boost. Negative 1. Neglect of the forest and wildlife sectors. Decisions pending on a national forest policy, definition of forests, inviolate forest areas and a national wildlife action plan. 2. Activists allege that the government is favouring industries and indiscriminately giving green clearances, ignoring the toll taken on the environment. 3. Ganga clean-up is yet to gather momentum. FISCAL SITUATION Demonetisation drive led to short-term cash crunch, hit small and medium enterprises. Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint Positive 1. Got states on board to introduce the goods and services tax (GST), the biggest tax reform since independence. 2. Crackdown on black money leads to a surge in 2016-17 tax receipts, number of return filers. 3. Merger of railway budget with Union budget and shifting budget presentation date to 1 February from 28 February. Negative 1. Demonetisation drive led to short-term cash crunch, hit small and medium enterprises. 2. Pending cases of retrospective taxation on past transactions still unresolved. 3. Inability to bring back black money stashed away abroad by citizens. POLITICS The Narendra Modi government, in the past three years, has achieved unanimity on the economic reforms agenda with high parliamentary productivity. Photo: PTI Positive 1. Getting unanimity on the economic reforms agenda with high parliamentary productivity. 2. Series of electoral gains puts the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on the political forefront. 3. Expanding voter base of the BJP to Dalits and other backward classes, focus on expansion in the North-East. Negative 1. Failure to get consensus on reform policies like a proposed land bill. 2. Allegations of toppling elected state governments. 3. Problems within the NDA: the Peoples Democratic Party (Jammu and Kashmir), Shiv Sena (Maharashtra) and Telugu Desam Party (Andhra Pradesh) are annoyed with the BJP leadership. EMPOWERMENT—SOCIAL SAFETY, EDUCATION, JOBS, GENDER The Narendra Modi government has also introduced graded autonomy to promote quality in education. Photo: Mint Positive 1. Graded autonomy to promote quality in education. 2. Slew of social security measures to benefit the working class. 3. Six months of paid maternity leave for working women. Negative 1. The Women’s Reservation Bill is still pending. 2. New Education Policy still to be formulated. 3. Job creation yet to pick up pace. MINDSET CHANGE Narendra Modi has launched Swachh Bharat Mission to eliminate open defecation and promote cleanliness. Photo: AFP Positive 1. Swachh Bharat Abhiyan launched to eliminate open defecation and promote cleanliness. 2. Soviet-style five-year plans come to an end; 15-year vision, three-year action plan come into play. 3. Cashless economy. Negative 1. Hyper-nationalism as seen through the lens of social media trolling and rise of vigilante groups with little regard for human life. 2. Rise of vigilante groups with political agendas who attack minorities. 3. In spite of stricter laws, greater awareness and even campaigns, violence against women continues unabated. DIGITAL AND COMMUNICATIONS The Narendra Modi government has leveraged Aadhaar for improving service delivery to citizens, but leakage of biometric data has raised questions on that move. Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint Positive 1. Improving e-infrastructure, e-participation and government e-services for addressing transparency. 2. Unified Payments Interface (UPI)—a payment system that allows mobile-enabled money transfers between bank accounts. Promotion of the Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) for a less-cash economy. 3. Leveraging Aadhaar for improving service delivery to citizens. Negative 1. Call drops continue despite mobile phone services providers promising improvement. 2. Drop in digital payment transactions with the easing of a cash crunch that followed the demonetisation of high-value banknotes in November. 3. Leakage of Aadhaar data. OPTICS The Narendra Modi government has banned the red beacon—a symbol of so-called VIP culture—from all government vehicles. Photo: Hindustan Times Positive 1. Doing away with the red beacon—a symbol of so-called VIP culture—from all government vehicles. 2. Extending support to ending the practice of triple talaq. 3. Introducing the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (save the girl child, educate the girl child) scheme. Negative 1. Rise of vigilante groups called Gau Rakshaks, who target people suspected of harming cows or consuming beef. 2. Launch of the anti-Romeo squads in Uttar Pradesh, ostensibly to protect women from harassment, but seen widely as moral policing. 3. Ghar Wapsi (homecoming), aimed at promoting the conversion of non-Hindus to Hinduism, and campaign against Love Jihad, allegedly practised by Muslim men to win over Hindu women. |
SafetySnail Level 0 Re: PUDDLEDASH ~~~ local multiplayer octopus racing « Reply #3 on: July 19, 2016, 01:34:18 AM » Hey guys! Other developer tuning in here. I'll generally be working on level/game design and overall game feel, but I also like to try to contribute to the art and programming side of things too! Expect to see a bunch of posts about all of that stuff from me. Niall and I met on an animation forum years ago and have been working on games either together or independently since. We both have a love for the creative, problem solving and imaginative process used to make games. This year we got the opportunity to meet in person for the first time, Niall staying with me in Australia for around 2 months. We thought, "What better time to make a game together than now!", so that's what we're doing! Muddledash is a culmination of everything we find fun in games, It's an edge of your seat style, cutesy racing game with a lot of character and charm! Keep an eye on this log for more updates! « Last Edit: September 08, 2016, 02:30:22 AM by SafetySnail » Logged nialltl pode racer Level 0pode racer Re: PUDDLEDASH ~~~ local multiplayer octopus racing « Reply #4 on: July 20, 2016, 05:42:53 AM » we've also now got -- I wanted to talk a bit about LEGS. this was the first thing I tackled before really knowing what sort of form the game would eventually take. the first incarnation had been fixed-screen and tile based in my head, and initial tests were essentially a semicircle of raycasts out from the base of the player collider to see what it could hit in a certain range. it worked, but with the side-effect of being far too beetle-like: my initial plan was just to use the predicted foot positions as waypoints to anchor bouncy bézier curves around, but the circle-casting approach just gave far too limited results. aiming to up the ¡Wow! factor a bit I experimented with giving the 'pus a little springy knee jiggle: needless to say this is absolutely terrifying so I switched back to focusing on the base leg shapes. I added a couple more waypoints and instead switched the springs to the 'toes', i.e. the tips of the tentacles beyond the raycasted foot positions. in order to get more immediate control over the curves I progressively generate vertices along a sidenote: if you dig splines, the results were as follows: this felt a lot closer but clearly some fine tuning was in order - going down steps allowed the legs to become spaghetti far too easily, and they would generally look far too separate from the body during actual motion. this is in part due to the absurd movement speed, but I tackled that later. the next iteration involved the introduction of an amped up face, secondary motion of the hat, and the ability for legs to hang off the edges (colour coded red): a key factor in getting hanging leg rules working was just a matter of fine-tuning the threshold between 'the ground is close enough, snap down to it' and 'the ground is too far, just hang out in midair'. to support this there's an asymmetry in the x and y distances required before flagging a leg for repositioning, whereas before it was just a euclidean distance check. the added bonus of this is that when jumping there's a nice amount of squash & stretch going on. I tried revisiting the knee thing but ended up accidentally creating feral scurrying octodogs: this essentially brings the legs system up to date with what it currently is - except for rendering, which I'll tackle in another post. the main difference between this prototype and now, motion-wise, is that before the foot positions would just have their x positions randomly jittered a bit with each step. this became insufficient on curved surfaces, as feet would get pushed through into the level geometry, and they don't have colliders to push them out. the modification I made just involved projecting the new jittered feet position out along the normal of the collided surface - whether it's flat ground, curves or another player's head - and now it works a treat! -- hoping to do occasional tech posts like this, let me know if you enjoy them! @7box and Lo-Phi, thank you both! as SafetySnail mentioned we're both living together in the same house currently (essentially the same room when we're both home), so expect frequent updates.we've also now got a twitter where we'll be postin more stuff too.--I wanted to talk a bit about LEGS. this was the first thing I tackled before really knowing what sort of form the game would eventually take. the first incarnation had been fixed-screen and tile based in my head, and initial tests were essentially a semicircle of raycasts out from the base of the player collider to see what it could hit in a certain range. it worked, but with the side-effect of being far too beetle-like:my initial plan was just to use the predicted foot positions as waypoints to anchor bouncy bézier curves around, but the circle-casting approach just gave far too limited results.aiming to up the ¡Wow! factor a bit I experimented with giving the 'pus a little springy knee jiggle:needless to say this is absolutely terrifying so I switched back to focusing on the base leg shapes. I added a couple more waypoints and instead switched the springs to the 'toes', i.e. the tips of the tentacles beyond the raycasted foot positions. in order to get more immediate control over the curves I progressively generate vertices along a cubic hermite spline sidenote: if you dig splines, this presentation by squirrel eiserloh is a good read. I then added some extra rules to ensure all raycasts couldn't cluster to a single point, adding some randomization to their steps.the results were as follows:this felt a lot closer but clearly some fine tuning was in order - going down steps allowed the legs to become spaghetti far too easily, and they would generally look far too separate from the body during actual motion. this is in part due to the absurd movement speed, but I tackled that later.the next iteration involved the introduction of an amped up face, secondary motion of the hat, and the ability for legs to hang off the edges (colour coded red):a key factor in getting hanging leg rules working was just a matter of fine-tuning the threshold between 'the ground is close enough, snap down to it' and 'the ground is too far, just hang out in midair'. to support this there's an asymmetry in the x and y distances required before flagging a leg for repositioning, whereas before it was just a euclidean distance check. the added bonus of this is that when jumping there's a nice amount of squash & stretch going on.I tried revisiting the knee thing but ended up accidentally creating feral scurrying octodogs:this essentially brings the legs system up to date with what it currently is - except for rendering, which I'll tackle in another post. the main difference between this prototype and now, motion-wise, is that before the foot positions would just have their x positions randomly jittered a bit with each step. this became insufficient on curved surfaces, as feet would get pushed through into the level geometry, and they don't have colliders to push them out. the modification I made just involved projecting the new jittered feet position out along the normal of the collided surface - whether it's flat ground, curves or another player's head - and now it works a treat!--hoping to do occasional tech posts like this, let me know if you enjoy them! Logged twitter octopus racing -- Muddledash | first person skating -- flow state Bravo81 Founder - Greenlight Games Level 0Founder - Greenlight Games Re: PUDDLEDASH ~~~ local multiplayer octopus racing « Reply #8 on: July 22, 2016, 10:33:07 AM » I don't even know where to start with this, it looks epic. The thought of cooperatively stabbing each other in the back to win sounds awesome. I thought I'd reach out and introduce my company Greenlight Games, we're creating a small portfolio of published games and I'd love to help publish yours. We don't just message every game going, we pick ones that stand out. We've only published one title so far and that was DEUL, it came out in January as a soft release and will be hitting 1 million players this weekend. http://www.deulgame.co.uk If you're interested we would advertise PuddleDash via social media, exhibitions & help you get through Steam Greenlight. It would be great to chat more, please message me or fire me an email: [email protected] I'm not here to pretend we're a huge publisher but we've done very well so far and I'm sure we could both gain from working together. Hey guys,I don't even know where to start with this, it looks epic. The thought of cooperatively stabbing each other in the back to win sounds awesome.I thought I'd reach out and introduce my company Greenlight Games, we're creating a small portfolio of published games and I'd love to help publish yours. We don't just message every game going, we pick ones that stand out.We've only published one title so far and that was DEUL, it came out in January as a soft release and will be hitting 1 million players this weekend.If you're interested we would advertise PuddleDash via social media, exhibitions & help you get through Steam Greenlight. It would be great to chat more, please message me or fire me an email:I'm not here to pretend we're a huge publisher but we've done very well so far and I'm sure we could both gain from working together. Logged http://www.greenlightgames.co.uk Founder - Greenlight Games SafetySnail Level 0 Re: PUDDLEDASH ~~~ local multiplayer octopus racing « Reply #9 on: July 23, 2016, 08:02:02 AM » Let's talk about level design! One of the major design points we had when coming into this game was the ability to slow down the leaders of the pack without anyone being frustrated. We wanted to approach it in a way that would make people feel bested but not beaten. Tight races feel really fun and being able to potentially take the lead at any point keeps the game exciting. Originally the game was focused almost solely on getting ahead via the use of traps that slowed players in front of you and as a result I found myself coming up with a lot of unavoidable traps that just didn't feel fun. I wanted players to always have the opportunity to avoid dangerous situations if they played smart and looked ahead. With this in mind we came up with 3 trap mechanics targeted at helping players at the back of the pack. -Flatgrass Grows in areas that are either unavoidable or give a significant speed boost to the player. Flat grass slows the first player that runs through it but then flattens to the ground allowing others to pass through with ease. This forces leading players to either take a hit to their speed or choose a less favourable route. -Seedshooters Dangerous in tight spaces, seedshooters are activated by the octopodes. Once enough have trampled on them they shoot a seed that bounces itself along the level, knocking down anything in its way. Fortunately the seeds are quite small and can be avoided with a well timed leap in the right direction. -Flip/timer switches Switches activate swinging/rotating platforms in the level, these tiles may offer faster routes for those who flip them or may force a player further ahead through a tougher area. Players still gotta be careful - if used to re-direct someone else they may also have to take the same route. Some flatgrass in action Along with these 3 traps we've also implemented a fun attack - slamming! The slam can be activated while in the air, it causes the player to shoot towards the ground at high speeds, potentially knocking out anyone underneath. It also has the added bonus of shooting you along curves if you time it just right. With the traps and how they work clear it was much easier to come up with what I thought were some great levels. Unfortunately I later found out was not at all the case! Not so great level design Although the traps worked really well, kept the pack quite tight and the races exciting there were a lot of issues with the way the octopodes actually moved around the level. We quickly found that obstacles that changed direction or that required any sort of wall jump style movement were at best frustrating and at worst completely unfair. The moveset we have is best designed for downward movement, but we ain't making Downwell! Muddledown We had to think a lot about the way to approach obstacles. It's pretty straightforward to design for a single player, but taking advantage of and exploiting multiplayer takes a lot of experimentation to strike the balance between playability and intrigue. Hitting curves and getting a good flow going was great, and being able to break someone elses stride felt really rewarding. Because of this, levels with multiple high and lowground routes worked great. Fortunately we'd had some tiles made up from an old game we worked on that suited this need perfectly. Nice curves gurl Alternate routes Tiles! Just missing a ramp or getting hit off your path is now all part of the fun and you know that you'll have every opportunity to hit someone with a revenge slam and get ahead again! We had to think a lot about the way to approach obstacles. It's pretty straightforward to design for a single player, but taking advantage of and exploiting multiplayer takes a lot of experimentation to strike the balance between playability and intrigue.Hitting curves and getting a good flow going was great, and being able to break someone elses stride felt really rewarding. Because of this, levels with multiple high and lowground routes worked great. Fortunately we'd had some tiles made up from an old game we worked on that suited this need perfectly.Just missing a ramp or getting hit off your path is now all part of the fun and you know that you'll have every opportunity to hit someone with a revenge slam and get ahead again! Thank you all very much, we aim to make the gummiest, hattiest game of 2016!Let's talk about level design!One of the major design points we had when coming into this game was the ability to slow down the leaders of the pack without anyone being frustrated. We wanted to approach it in a way that would make people feel bested but not beaten. Tight races feel really fun and being able to potentially take the lead at any point keeps the game exciting.Originally the game was focused almost solely on getting ahead via the use of traps that slowed players in front of you and as a result I found myself coming up with a lot of unavoidable traps that just didn't feel fun. I wanted players to always have the opportunity to avoid dangerous situations if they played smart and looked ahead.With this in mind we came up with 3 trap mechanics targeted at helping players at the back of the pack.-FlatgrassGrows in areas that are either unavoidable or give a significant speed boost to the player. Flat grass slows the first player that runs through it but then flattens to the ground allowing others to pass through with ease.This forces leading players to either take a hit to their speed or choose a less favourable route.-SeedshootersDangerous in tight spaces, seedshooters are activated by the octopodes. Once enough have trampled on them they shoot a seed that bounces itself along the level, knocking down anything in its way. Fortunately the seeds are quite small and can be avoided with a well timed leap in the right direction.-Flip/timer switchesSwitches activate swinging/rotating platforms in the level, these tiles may offer faster routes for those who flip them or may force a player further ahead through a tougher area. Players still gotta be careful - if used to re-direct someone else they may also have to take the same route.Along with these 3 traps we've also implemented a fun attack - slamming! The slam can be activated while in the air, it causes the player to shoot towards the ground at high speeds, potentially knocking out anyone underneath. It also has the added bonus of shooting you along curves if you time it just right.With the traps and how they work clear it was much easier to come up with what I thought were some great levels. Unfortunately I later found out was not at all the case!Although the traps worked really well, kept the pack quite tight and the races exciting there were a lot of issues with the way the octopodes actually moved around the level. We quickly found that obstacles that changed direction or that required any sort of wall jump style movement were at best frustrating and at worst completely unfair.The moveset we have is best designed for downward movement, but we ain't making Downwell! « Last Edit: September 08, 2016, 02:30:57 AM by SafetySnail » Logged nialltl pode racer Level 0pode racer Re: PUDDLEDASH ~~~ local multiplayer octopus racing « Reply #12 on: July 25, 2016, 08:20:57 PM » from the get-go I've wanted procedural levels. just naively placing fully random geometry would be guaranteed to create some very unpleasant or even impossible scenarios, depending on how carefully set the constraints are. due to this fact I decided to go for a technique of combining hand-made level ‘fragments’ or rooms together contiguously. this is similar to what Spelunky does – have a fundamentally tile-based layout divided into chunks, such that each chunk is a hand-made room. rooms are then combined with a few connective rules to ensure that you have a guaranteed solution path. a key connective rule for Puddledash we decided on was to never have two ‘up’-traveling rooms in a row, as vertical movement in multiplayer platformers gets slow and often too punishing if e.g. one player slips and falls off a platform. we want these races to be close! the big thing I aimed to exploit here was that we AREN’T making a tilebased game – I didn’t want rooms to have to be constrained to a grid. initial test rooms we made so my initial attempt was to have rooms built such that they contained ‘start’ and ‘end’ points. when a new room was added, it would just ensure its start point was aligned with the previous room’s end points. initial tests of this were super promising: however, we ran into problems very quickly. there were 2 fundamental problems: 1) it's very hard to ensure rooms never overlap or spiral into each other 2) difficult to know whether we’d designed a ‘valid’ room with correct start and end points that would work in all cases after battling with this for a while, I started to look at exactly how Spelunky does it, and what constraints are placed on each room. if anybody is interested in this and isn’t familiar with the article, darius kazemi made spelunky-style level generator with placeholder rooms. solution shown in white I battled for a day with implementing a spelunky-style algorithm to get a guaranteed solution path before realising it made no sense for Puddledash. the room-generation rules in the article hinge on downward movement – if you want to ensure that levels can twist around on themselves (as we would like) things get more complicated, particularly with variably sized rooms. it was at this point that I realised I could instead create a path that loops in on itself while still guaranteeing a solution by building a MAZE plausible level path in magenta I settled on a fixed width and height standard for all rooms – my logic was that if we wanted rooms of different dimensions, they would only need to be integer multiples of the base width and height. then in cases where we had e.g. two rooms traveling left in a row, it would be a potential candidate for spawning a 2x-width room. I implemented the maze just using a basic depth first search graph traversal (for those inclined, - ..but hold on a second, didn’t we agree we never wanted two ‘up’ tiles in a row? oh yeah, ok. well we can’t just remove additional ‘up’ tiles since we could overlap ourselves. let’s just identify where we have multiple ups in a row and stair-step them along the last direction of movement, shifting the level as we go. => => see? -- so basically screw the maze. I looked a little into modifying the directional heuristic such that it never goes up more than once in a row, but it was very difficult for me to make heads and tails of on a conceptual level and I’d been spending a lot of time in what felt like a hole. so I tried to shift perspective, searched around a bit, and came across the term ‘self-avoiding walk’, which is exactly what I’m after (given the upward movement constraint). the maze was essentially just a conduit for this all along. the random walk code I wrote is not very tough to grasp but took a while to get bulletproof. the theory is: - pick a random direction – if it’s not visited, add a room here - if all possible positions from the current room are taken and we still need to place more rooms, backtrack (delete rooms) and try a new path I also of course made sure it couldn’t pick ‘up’ more than once in a row. I actually ended up prototyping this in flash of all things for quick visualisations and so the recursion wouldn’t destroy my computer while I debugged it. this gives a nice little path! the next hell-hole we collectively dived into was getting a consistent room ‘tileset’ to work with, but SafetySnail may put up a post about that later. the last thing to do is bias our random direction sampling to favour horizontal motion over vertical, as our game is one of more scurrying than falling. final horizontally biased level path and that’s the level generation at present! always guaranteed to have a connected solution path, randomized and (hopefully) fun, particularly so once we get enough variation in each room’s tileset. I’ll also be adding probabilistic trap locations, so even rooms themselves will have a bit of randomised procedural cajun flavour sprinkled atop. SafetySnail is working hard at creating some fun tilesets. in the meantime I’m going to be fleshing out the level gen to ensure you can’t take unintended shortcuts by walling in appropriate path edges, and some other ZANY trap / traversal mechanics. also, as ever, we greatly appreciate all the interest so far! nothing warms us more than your cheerful moods. for the past few days straight I’ve been working solely on level generation. it turned out to be a lot harder than I expected, and I went in with the expectation of it being pretty hard already.from the get-go I've wanted procedural levels. just naively placing fully random geometry would be guaranteed to create some very unpleasant or even impossible scenarios, depending on how carefully set the constraints are. due to this fact I decided to go for a technique of combining hand-made level ‘fragments’ or rooms together contiguously.this is similar to what Spelunky does – have a fundamentally tile-based layout divided into chunks, such that each chunk is a hand-made room. rooms are then combined with a few connective rules to ensure that you have a guaranteed solution path. a key connective rule for Puddledash we decided on was to never have two ‘up’-traveling rooms in a row, as vertical movement in multiplayer platformers gets slow and often too punishing if e.g. one player slips and falls off a platform. we want these races to be close!the big thing I aimed to exploit here was that we AREN’T making a tilebased game – I didn’t want rooms to have to be constrained to a grid.so my initial attempt was to have rooms built such that they contained ‘start’ and ‘end’ points. when a new room was added, it would just ensure its start point was aligned with the previous room’s end points. initial tests of this were super promising:however, we ran into problems very quickly. there were 2 fundamental problems:1) it's very hard to ensure rooms never overlap or spiral into each other2) difficult to know whether we’d designed a ‘valid’ room with correct start and end points that would work in all casesafter battling with this for a while, I started to look at exactly how Spelunky does it, and what constraints are placed on each room. if anybody is interested in this and isn’t familiar with the article, darius kazemi made a great breakdown of how it’s done.I battled for a day with implementing a spelunky-style algorithm to get a guaranteed solution path before realising it made no sense for Puddledash. the room-generation rules in the article hinge on downward movement – if you want to ensure that levels can twist around on themselves (as we would like) things get more complicated, particularly with variably sized rooms.it was at this point that I realised I could instead create a path that loops in on itself while still guaranteeing a solution by building a MAZEI settled on a fixed width and height standard for all rooms – my logic was that if we wanted rooms of different dimensions, they would only need to be integer multiples of the base width and height. then in cases where we had e.g. two rooms traveling left in a row, it would be a potential candidate for spawning a 2x-width room. I implemented the maze just using a basic depth first search graph traversal (for those inclined, this post is a nice conceptual breakdown of it, plus implementation!). the level path is then found by solving the maze with another depth-first search.- ..but hold on a second, didn’t we agree we never wanted two ‘up’ tiles in a row?oh yeah, ok. well we can’t just remove additional ‘up’ tiles since we could overlap ourselves. let’s just identify where we have multiple ups in a row and stair-step them along the last direction of movement, shifting the level as we go.see? it ẁor͞ks p̱̻̠̺e̛̝̗̮r̷̼̳̰̜f̱e̵̩͍͙͇̦c̜̲̼͔͕̖̜t̩̰̫l͖̀y̺̦͉̲̜̰ --so basically screw the maze. I looked a little into modifying the directional heuristic such that it never goes up more than once in a row, but it was very difficult for me to make heads and tails of on a conceptual level and I’d been spending a lot of time in what felt like a hole. so I tried to shift perspective, searched around a bit, and came across the term ‘self-avoiding walk’, which is exactly what I’m after (given the upward movement constraint). the maze was essentially just a conduit for this all along.the random walk code I wrote is not very tough to grasp but took a while to get bulletproof. the theory is:- pick a random direction – if it’s not visited, add a room here- if all possible positions from the current room are taken and we still need to place more rooms, backtrack (delete rooms) and try a new pathI also of course made sure it couldn’t pick ‘up’ more than once in a row. I actually ended up prototyping this in flash of all things for quick visualisations and so the recursion wouldn’t destroy my computer while I debugged it.this gives a nice little path! the next hell-hole we collectively dived into was getting a consistent room ‘tileset’ to work with, but SafetySnail may put up a post about that later.the last thing to do is bias our random direction sampling to favour horizontal motion over vertical, as our game is one of more scurrying than falling.and that’s the level generation at present! always guaranteed to have a connected solution path, randomized and (hopefully) fun, particularly so once we get enough variation in each room’s tileset. I’ll also be adding probabilistic trap locations, so even rooms themselves will have a bit of randomised procedural cajun flavour sprinkled atop.SafetySnail is working hard at creating some fun tilesets. in the meantime I’m going to be fleshing out the level gen to ensure you can’t take unintended shortcuts by walling in appropriate path edges, and some other ZANY trap / traversal mechanics.also, as ever, we greatly appreciate all the interest so far! nothing warms us more than your cheerful moods. « Last Edit: July 25, 2016, 09:40:36 PM by nialltl » Logged twitter octopus racing -- Muddledash | first person skating -- flow state nialltl pode racer Level 0pode racer Re: PUDDLEDASH ~~~ local multiplayer octopus racing « Reply #14 on: July 27, 2016, 05:18:09 PM » glad the tech is interesting, hearing that somebody reads it is good motivation to do more. we're just going to work as hard as we can on it in the timeframe that we're together, focusing on the core gameplay. if people are interested in it by the time we're saying our in-person goodbyes and we've still got a lot we wanna do (and there are already plenty of great ideas floating around) the scope has a bit of elasticity to it. we both love working on it, and at the bare minimum we'll have an alpha of sorts within the next couple of months. our next big milestone is that we'll be showcasing it in person at on another note, I've made it a bit easier to visually tell when your octopus is capable of wallclimbing with this cheeky wee ledge-grab: @Natman that's high praise! knowing people are playing it alongside each other and slamming each other in the face with their tentacles is a dream. the social aspect of this is definitely one of the major driving motivations here. it was actually after seeing the highlights footage for ARENA GODS that I started focusing on creating scenarios that would allow people to start screaming at each other while they play (more on that soon).glad the tech is interesting, hearing that somebody reads it is good motivation to do more.we're just going to work as hard as we can on it in the timeframe that we're together, focusing on the core gameplay. if people are interested in it by the time we're saying our in-person goodbyes and we've still got a lot we wanna do (and there are already plenty of great ideas floating around) the scope has a bit of elasticity to it. we both love working on it, and at the bare minimum we'll have an alpha of sorts within the next couple of months.our next big milestone is that we'll be showcasing it in person at GameFest at the University of Wollongong to get some early feedback and testing with real life human beings. it's a 24-hour all nighter event and we hope to get some good notes + maybe footage out of it! expect more on that front soon!on another note, I've made it a bit easier to visually tell when your octopus is capable of wallclimbing with this cheeky wee ledge-grab: Logged twitter octopus racing -- Muddledash | first person skating -- flow state nialltl pode racer Level 0pode racer Re: PUDDLEDASH ~~~ local multiplayer octopus racing « Reply #15 on: July 28, 2016, 06:17:29 PM » there were some issues along the way involving multi-camera depth buffers: I call it 'judgment of the octogods' another aim for puddledash is to have fully procedural colour palettes, so every level has a different feel. right now we're just working within one palette for the sake of fast prototyping but I'll hopefully be digging my paws into that soon and have a post about it. just know that the tones we're choosing aren't final! I spent yesterday working on getting things set up so that SafetySnail can get crackin on more room design, among other things. this involved doing some brief tests of the sprite integration. here's a basic test of parallax layers formed of many heads:there were some issues along the way involving multi-camera depth buffers:I call it 'judgment of the octogods'another aim for puddledash is to have fully procedural colour palettes, so every level has a different feel. right now we're just working within one palette for the sake of fast prototyping but I'll hopefully be digging my paws into that soon and have a post about it. just know that the tones we're choosing aren't final! Logged twitter octopus racing -- Muddledash | first person skating -- flow state |
Brian Wilde, CTV Montreal I understand the frustration. That was an epic collapse. A lot of mistakes were made. However, the worst thing you can do as an organization is compound them by making more mistakes while trying too hard to correct your previous ones. The type of mistake that the Habs have made, a team can completely recover from. You cannot recover from Scott Gomez, at $7.3 million, not getting a goal in almost a season, but you can recover from your goalie being injured. You can recover from Jeff Petry getting injured. You can recover from not getting a top-six forward fast enough. You can recover from signing about three lines worth of third liners. None of these errors hurt 2017. Let's assess what the Habs’ problems are and how they, this summer, have made an attempt to correct them. I don't believe they have the right coach in place, but now they have a man who can help whoever is at the helm. Michel Therrien's best time with the Habs was when he had Gerard Gallant at his side and we can see now in Florida what Gallant can do. Now, Therrien has Kirk Muller at his side. Muller will manage the forwards and the power play. More than that, he will manage the personal relationships, as Gallant also did. That go-between is a good idea; sort of a good cop, bad cop scenario. Muller, who has the title of associate coach, has head coach experience as well and he will be able to help with in-game bench management and be another voice that will say, when David Desharnais hasn't gotten a point in 34 games on the first power play unit, "Hey, maybe that's not working," slightly faster. Here we have Bergevin not firing his head coach as would be conventional, but addressing the issue by basically saying two minds are better than one. It's a great decision because Therrien needs a foil. He can be a bit of a bull dog. If you have four assistant coaches but they are all of one mind - Therrien's - you really only have one coach there, don't you? What has Bergevin done to correct the biggest issue, which is that the Habs didn't have a .915 backup goalie for Carey Price? The answer is nothing, and that's what the answer should be. You don't spend a lot on backup goalies in a tight cap world. You just can't. The sacrifice you make to have a great backup is felt down the roster, where that money isn't being spent on a defenceman or a forward. If Price suffers another injury, then Bergevin will leap into action for relief, but he can't do that now. That would make no sense. So the biggest reason that the Habs suffered last year, the injury to Price, cannot be preemptively handled. You wait and you hope. That's all there is. Bergevin shows intelligence with his inaction on this front. The biggest need that the Habs have right now is top-six forward help to get some scoring. Year after year, the Habs are around 16th in the league in goals for. You're just not going to win the Cup with that average performance. Last year, he rolled the dice on projects Zack Kassian and Alexander Semin. They didn't work. That could not have gone more wrong, with both not making it even to December. This year, he won't try that again. I believe you can make the argument that Bergevin has made mistakes, but he is smart enough to learn from them and not repeat them. July 1 approaches. Bergevin will hunt for a top-six forward among the unrestricted free agents. This doesn't mean he will land one. In fact, I bet he doesn't, but when he doesn't, please look at the contracts the unrestricted free agents were given. If David Backes is getting five to seven years at the age of 32, do you really think that is a smart signing? Often the smartest thing that you do is the thing that you don't do. If he doesn't land one, then they'll hope that someone on the roster like Artturi Lehkonen or Sven Andrighetto can step in and improve. That's going to frustrate many, but it's still smarter than Backes: good for two years and then perhaps an albatross for four. That brings us to Andrew Shaw, who the Habs just acquired for two draft picks. Shaw is an NHLer. He has Stanley Cups. He was instrumental in winning those Cups with a gritty, in-your-face style that annoys the opposition, much like Brendan Gallagher does. The two draft picks who were given up have a one-in-eight chance of being anyone of any importance in the league. There is so much consternation over second round picks when they so often don't make the league. “Yeah, but PK Subban was a second rounder.” Yes, he was. There have been great ones, but that doesn't change the math. The math is terrible when it comes to a second round pick making the league. The math is perfect that Shaw will contribute to the Habs for the next half-dozen years. Keep in mind, this player was only even available because the Hawks are so tight to the cap that they couldn't keep him. Shaw has played with Toews, so he has the ability to play with anyone in any role. He also has good power play skills, being his annoying self in front of the net. He's not the second liner you want in a bona fide way, but he can fill the role in a pinch. For me, you brought in a warrior on a team that got described too often last season as having a non-ice pack game. The other deal was moving Lars Eller. This is a player I believe played his best hockey in the playoffs, so I don't like this deal. I feel Eller, when given the role of shutting down the other's team's best, can do an exceptional job. You need that in the playoffs. I know I am in the minority on this, but I think this is a big loss. He absorbed hard minutes starting in the defensive zone with poor linemates against the other team's best players. Not a lot of easy in there, but he handled it. Bergevin said the arrival of Phillip Danault ended the need for an Eller on the team. Danault is no Eller. I think Bergevin has made a mistake here, but again, not one that destroys the chance for success next year. In the draft, I felt certain they were going to look for scoring help, but when you have a chance to get the youngest winner of the OHL's defenseman of the year award in the league's history with the ninth pick, you take him. Sergachev is an outstanding pick by the Habs here. He will be a first-pairing defenceman for years to come. Timmins and Bergevin did extremely well. Logan Brown at the ninth spot was a bit scary, actually. The one thing you want to make sure that you do is not get surprised. Brown could be a gem, but he could also be a bit of a surprise. Not Sergachev. He will be a great NHL defenceman. A lock NHLer. That's good management. So what's the problem beyond the carry over frustration of last season? You can check off every issue that the Habs had last season as being taken care of except the signing of a top flight first or second line forward, and that is what Bergevin is working on now. I remain confident in this general manager. And here is the biggest reason for my confidence... He refuses to do a massively stupid thing out of impatience and pressure. He refuses to go for it in a stupid way. Yes, that has made him conservative. Yes, that has frustrated the impatient. However, let's evaluate those before him: $7.3 million for an already clearly deteriorating Scott Gomez while losing a star in the making in Ryan McDonagh is not a Bergevin error. Acquiring Tomas Kaberle who couldn't even get regular shifts for the Boston Bruins in their Cup run, then struggled in Carolina is not a Bergevin error. These errors destroy your hopes for a long time. They're core pieces and you can't get your core wrong. The Habs may have won the Cup if they had McDonagh instead of the Rangers, or at least they would have made the Cup final for the first time since 1993. Some errors cost so bad, but not Bergevin's. They're always minor mistakes. That's smart management: conservative, but smart. Added to his challenge, this is a hard market. Many players don't want to come here because of the fish bowl they live in, the taxes they pay, the weather they endure, the French language they can't speak or read. This makes Bergevin's job harder. He's in the foxhole with Therrien and I don't get that, but he's a good GM. I think the Habs will have a huge bounce back year if Price stays healthy. I think they'll move from 16th in goals scored in the league to much higher with an improved power play under the guidance of Kirk Muller. So that's the promise of more goals scored and fewer goals allowed. I believe what happens when you allow fewer and score more is WIN. The Habs will win far more next season and, if Price is healthy, make a strong run in the playoffs. I feel this even before July 1, and if Bergevin does acquire a top-six forward on that day then that's another reason that the goals will be better than 16th in the league. Put me down for hockey in May. |
Pillsbury Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough & Peanut Butter Cookie Cups Recipe Last year the holiday season was tough for me because being gluten free during the holidays means having to opt out of eating cookies and cakes and all that bad stuff at parties. I even wrote a post on Being Gluten Free during the Holidays. It’s not easy. But when you are super strict with your diet, it is what it is. Do I crave sweet stuff? Sure, sometimes. The cravings are not at all like what they used to be but I do like to indulge in some of my holiday favorite traditions like cookies and cake every now and again. It’s just that if I eat them, I have to make my own gluten free version or find somewhere that does. I had heard that Pillsbury now makes gluten free dough and had been meaning to try it out. Pillsbury lists all sorts of gluten free products they make on their gluten free section of their website and they all look pretty good. They sent me a couple vouchers in the mail to try out their new products which was super awesome. Perfect timing with the holidays! I’ve been wanting to bring some gluten free goodies to holiday parties and colleagues so this gave me the perfect opportunity to do so. I bought a couple containers of the gluten free chocolate chip cookie dough and decided to get creative with the recipes. First I went to the Pillsbury Pinterest board to get some ideas for what to make with the gluten free chocolate chip cookie dough. All these foods that I haven’t eaten in so long can now be made gluten free using this gluten free chocolate chip cookie dough. This is dangerous folks. Very dangerous. I saw this Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cup recipe and decided that is the recipe I have to try. I used to love eating the cookies with the peanut butter cups in the center but I never thought it was possible to make them gluten free. Time to put the gluten free chocolate chip cookie dou gh to work. The Recipe These cookies were so easy to make! Here’s what you will need: One container of Pillsbury Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough One bag of Resses Peanut Butter Cup Miniatures. Note: Do NOT use the Reeses Peanut Butter Bells. They use a gluten binding agent to shape the Reeses into a bell shape and it is NOT gluten free. Please check all labels. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Spray a muffin tin. I don’t have a mini muffin tin so I used a regular one and it worked out fine. Next, scoop the Pillsbury Gluten Free Chocolate Chip cookie dough into flat tablespoons full of dough and drop into the pie tin. Bake for 10 minutes or so. Unwrap Reeses peanut butter cups. Take the cookies out of the oven and drop the peanut butter cups into the center of each cookie. Let cool and then refrigerate for one hour. Eat and enjoy! I really enjoyed making these Peanut Butter cookie cups using the Pillsbury Gluten free Chocolate Chip cookie dough (probably a little too much). Before the holidays are over I want to try and make the gluten free chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich recipe from their Pinterest page as well! Disclosure: This article is sponsored by Pillsbury but all thoughts and opinions are my own. What about you? Have you ever used Pillsbury gluten free cookie dough? Post in the comments and let me know. |
A new technology that may assist in the treatment of brain cancer and other neurological diseases is the subject of an article in a recent issue of the journal Technology, published by World Scientific Publishing Company. According to the authors, the current medical use of chemotherapy to treat brain cancer can be inefficient because of the blood-brain-barrier that impedes the delivery of drugs out of blood vessels and into the tumor. The researchers from the Virginia Tech -- Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences described in their article that they have created "a tool for blood-barrier-brain disruption that uses bursts of sub-microsecond bipolar pulses to enhance the transfer of large molecules to the brain." The members of the biomedical school are: Rafael V. Davalos, associate professor of biomedical engineering; John H. Rossmeisl Jr., and Thomas Rogers-Cotrone of the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine; Christopher Arena, Paulo A. Garcia, and Michael B. Sano of the Bioelectromechanical Systems Laboratory; and John D. Olson of the Center for Biomolecular Imaging. Garcia is also employed by the Laboratory for Energy and Microsystems innovation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Arena holds a second appointment with the Laboratory for Ultrasound Contract Agent Research at the University of North Carolina -- North Carolina State University, Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering. The new tool is called Vascular Enabled Nanosecond pulse or VEIN pulse. It will "reversibly open the blood-brain-barrier to facilitate the treatment of brain cancer," Davalos explained. "The sub-lethal nature of these electrical bursts indicates that the VEIN pulse may be useful for treating other neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, and Alzheimer's disease," Davalos added. In their testing, the VEIN pulse treatments were administered using minimally invasive electrodes inserted into the skull of each of the 18 anesthetized male rats. They varied the pulse duration within a burst, the total number of bursts (90 to 900), and the applied field. A key element of their success was that the pulses alternated in polarity to help eliminate muscle contractions and the need for a neuromuscular blockade. The research was supported by the Golfers Against Cancer, the Center for Biomolecular Imaging in the Wake Forest School of Medicine, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and an NSF I-Corps Award. The next step in this research would be to move to large animal, pre-clinical trials. Davalos has been using electrical impulses in his biomedical research since his days as a graduate student at the University of California -- Berkeley. More recently, in a February 2011 article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Davalos, Gacia and Rossmeisl were among the authors who described a successful use of irreversible electroporation to achieve complete remission and improved quality of life in a seven-year old Labrador retriever with a large and complex tumor. |
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The push for criminal justice reform, the legislation seen as having the best chance of passing Congress this session, has stalled as key senators hold slim hopes of passing anything before the end of year. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who played a key role in negotiating the compromise that ultimately became the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, said in an interview Wednesday the bill is stalled for now. “I don’t see how it gets done before” July 15, Grassley said, referencing the day the senators depart from Washington and won't return until after Labor Day. “It’s a real big disappointment to me because we’ve worked so hard to do what the leadership wanted to get out more Republican sponsors." Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat in the chamber and an author of the justice reform bill, said Republicans had offered him “little to no hope” that the legislation would move forward. He called it a “missed opportunity.” Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the Republican whip and a lead sponsor of the measure, said he’d hoped the House would move more quickly and provide momentum in the Senate, but “apparently we ran out of time.” Time will be in short supply the rest of the year. After its summer recess, Congress will be in session for five weeks in September and October. Then lawmakers leave again until after the election, when they will only have a few weeks to wrap up end-of-the-year matters. Asked if he held out hope that a reform measure could pass this fall, Cornyn said he was optimistic, but that “obviously, the clock is not our friend, so it’s going to be a challenge.” Overhauling criminal justice laws, which has support across the ideological spectrum, was at the top of the to-do list for President Obama and many lawmakers. But the effort has lost momentum in recent weeks. In his second term, Obama has worked quietly with lawmakers from both parties to encourage passage of justice reform legislation and has touted its benefits for more than a year. Obama began the year optimistic that sentencing reforms, along with ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, enjoyed bipartisan support and could become legacy-burnishing legislative achievements on which to end his presidency. It is now more likely that he could wind up empty-handed, bequeathing trade and justice debates to his successor. Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to Obama, told RealClearPolitics the president is "disappointed" Congress will leave Washington without acting this summer. "While the President and his Administration will continue to work to secure passage of meaningful criminal justice reform legislation -- reforms which would enhance public safety and save money and already have bipartisan support from Members of Congress, law enforcement, veterans, faith and civil rights groups -- we are disappointed that it appears that Congress is poised to leave for the summer without acting on this historic opportunity,” Jarrett told RCP in a statement. The United States spends an estimated $80 billion a year to incarcerate criminals. Obama recently pointed to savings, safety and justice as rationales for reform legislation while addressing a medal of valor ceremony for police and public safety officers at the White House. “We’re going to keep pushing Congress to move forward in a bipartisan way to make our criminal justice system fairer and smarter and more cost-effective and enhance public safety and ensure the men and women in this room have the ability to enforce the law and keep their communities safe,” he said. To drive home his conviction that incarceration hurts prisoners’ children, families and communities, Obama commuted the sentences of 348 non-violent drug offenders. He met with some of the offenders, and was the first sitting president to visit a federal cellblock last summer. Momentum for the justice reform legislation moved slowly over the last 18 months as lawmakers sought to compromise. Durbin and conservative Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah sponsored legislation that would have reduced certain mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenses, while Cornyn and Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island sponsored legislation establishing programs to reduce the number of repeat offenders. In October, legislation was introduced that combined the two issues – it would reduce some mandatory minimum sentences while giving judges more discretion over sentencing, and also would create new recidivism programs to allow some non-violent offenders to earn reduced sentences. The legislation passed in committee, but several Republican senators complained it was too lenient on violent criminals. The senators worked to assuage those concerns and announced a new compromise in May, but it has gone nowhere in the last month, with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declining to put it on the Senate floor, where appropriations bills, partisan warfare over gun control and efforts to combat the Zika virus, among other issues, have taken priority. Durbin directly blamed McConnell for the lack of movement, saying that the majority leader had “five Republican senators vocally, publicly opposing it, and he didn’t want to take them on." David Popp, a spokesman for McConnell, said in a statement, “"Discussions continue within our Conference on the issue." Senators have said recently they hoped the House would pass legislation to kick-start Senate action. In the House, however, the Judiciary Committee has moved at a slower pace on a package of justice-system reform bills. A Republican committee aide told RCP the House has passed nine bills dealing with sentencing and prison reform, over-criminalization and asset forfeiture. The committee is considering four remaining justice reform bills, which supporters hope will pass there and come to the House floor as a package. It’s uncertain whether that will happen before the summer recess. “The goal is to wrap up our initiative here in the committee level before we head out to the recess,” the committee aide said. “That’s not confirmed at this time, but we’re hopeful that’s what we could do." Grassley expressed some optimism, saying there was a “good chance” the legislation could pass in the fall, either in the five weeks after Labor Day or in the lame-duck session after the election in November. But he said that decision is up to McConnell. “There’s one person that decides what the agenda of the United States Senate is,” Grassley said, adding that he thought McConnell would “give fair consideration to it." Still, even if the timing works out for both chambers to pass legislation before the election or after a new president is elected, there are policy disagreements that could prevent anything from becoming law. Republicans insist there must be reforms to mens rea, Latin for “guilty mind,” the principle that a person must have some level of criminal intent to be found guilty of a crime. A version of that reform is in the House legislation, but not in the Senate version. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has said mens rea reform must be attached to any criminal justice legislation. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has been pushing for the mens rea legislation to be included in the Senate’s version of the justice reform. “All they have to do is put a mens rea clause in there and it would get done,” Hatch said. “All they’ve got to do is accept my language and I would certainly weigh in and help them to pass the bill.” Democrats, however, strongly object to including that proposal. Their opposition stems in part from the belief that it would create a difficult standard for prosecutors and could make it easier for some who commit white-collar or corporate crimes to avoid prosecution. Hatch “obviously has his own agenda, his own bill, his own issue, and he’s trying to hitch a ride,” Durbin said. “If his mens rea bill is as good as he thinks it is, it will stand on its own. It really has no relationship to what we’re trying to achieve here with criminal justice reform.” Whitehouse, one of the Democratic senators who co-authored the justice reform legislation, blamed the Koch brothers, who have been outspoken in pushing for reforms to the justice system. Whitehouse suggested they only backed justice reform as a way to push mens rea, and said it has “totally tanked” the bipartisan effort. “They figured they could get something moving with their right hand and then stuff their corporate protection mens rea reform in, once it got going, with their left hand,” Whitehouse told RCP. “I think that’s a fatal poison pill on what had been a good faith effort between Republicans and Democrats.” He said the legislation was “dead as a doornail unless the Koch brothers say we’re not going to insist on mens rea reform and get out of everybody’s way. But they pull the chains of almost every Republican around here so it makes it hard to go forward without their blessing. Particularly the leadership folks who are dependent on the Koch brothers for all of the party money." Cornyn, who co-authored his portion of the bipartisan legislation with Whitehouse, said the Democratic senator’s criticism was unfair. “I think he’s sort of putting the cart ahead of the horse,” Cornyn said, pointing out the mens rea reform is not part of the Senate bill, though he supports efforts to add it into a final package. “I don’t see that as an obstacle of actually getting something done." Mark Holden, general counsel at Koch Industries, said Whitehouse was “misinformed” and that his criticism of the Koch brothers was “completely inaccurate.” Holden said that while they wanted comprehensive criminal justice reform that would include mens rea reforms akin to what's in the House bill, they support both the House and Senate efforts and wanted some form of the legislation to pass, even if it doesn’t ultimately include mens rea. "We want to see something happen and we’ve been saying that for over a year now,” Holden said. “If Congress can’t agree, if the House bill doesn’t survive, that’s up to Congress, not up to Koch. I’m hopeful that the House will pass their legislation, the Senate will pass their legislation and they’ll work it out.” Given all the problems ahead for justice reform, Durbin was pessimistic that anything would happen this year, saying it’s a “long shot” that something might move in the weeks after the election. He held out some hope for the future though, and indicated that he thought the effort could be revived if Democrats won back the Senate majority in November. “It’s the end of this Congress and we have to start over,” Durbin said. “Maybe with a Democratic majority in the Senate it will be better." Cornyn, too, shared optimism that no action this year did not necessarily mean the end of criminal justice reform in Congress. “Fortunately, this is bipartisan and so I think regardless of who’s elected president and who’s in the majority and who’s in the minority, we can still get this done next year if we can’t get it done before then,” Cornyn said. White House Reporter Alexis Simendinger contributed to this report. |
At the beginning of this year, I set out to start using AWS API Gateway to proxy requests to an AWS Lambda backend. I quickly became frustrated at how complex configuring API Gateway was. As a result, I set out to create a solution that would replace API Gateway by proxying a full HTTP request in JSON format to a Lambda function. The end result was very nice and extremely easy to use, and I had some intention of creating a paid service based on it. However, I got really busy with my actual job and those intentions never became a reality. In late September, AWS announced support for new API Gateway proxy integration types that included Lambda proxy integration. What they have done here mirrors my own solution almost exactly, which is great for 2 reasons: 1. It verifies that I am not a raving madman (at least in this context) 2. It greatly simplifies configuring API Gateway to work with Lambda I have decided to dust off the Python framework that I wrote to process such requests and open source it as Sippy Cup. It is an extremely minimal framework with usage similar to Flask and Chalice, albeit with an intentionally reduced feature set. It works by taking the input from API Gateway and converting it to a WSGI environment that is used to create Werkzeug-based Request and Response objects. Sippy Cup can be installed using pip… pip install sippycup … and using it should seem very familar to those that have experience with similar frameworks . . . |
Images by Monash University , via Physorg We love seeing designers come up with ideas for solar powered fresh water purification and generation for underdeveloped areas. While most of them won't pan out, it keeps the spark going for figuring out ideas that will work. One such contender is the Solarball by Jonathan Liow, a graduate student at Monash University. He's come up with a very clever design for a portable, and durable, solar powered water purifier that looks just like a modified hamster ball. The Solarball was designed to help those people in areas that lack clean drinking water. It can produce up to 3 litres -- or just over 3 quarts -- of clean water every day provided there is ample sunlight. It is a simple design which makes it user friendly, and has a weather resistant construction so it should last a long time in hot climates. Monash University reports, "The spherical unit absorbs sunlight and causes dirty water contained inside to evaporate. As evaporation occurs, contaminants are separated from the water, generating drinkable condensation. The condensation is collected and stored, ready for drinking. Manufacturing issues will of course include using a material -- most likely a plastic -- that is durable enough to not break down after sitting in the sun constantly. Also, the matter of capacity is a bit of an issue. With less than a gallon a day produced by the ball, it would take a couple of these balls per person to satisfy drinking and cooking water needs. For a whole village, it'd take a little herd of these balls. That leans toward the impractical side. However, the design is definitely a great start. Robaid reports, "Solarball has been named as a finalist in the 2011 Australian Design Awards - James Dyson Award. It will also be exhibited at the Milan International Design Fair (Salone Internazionale del Mobile) in April 2011." Follow Jaymi on Twitter for more stories like this More on Solar Water Concepts Solar Powered "Swater" Concept Collects and Purifies Water In the Desert Solar Powered Rain Catchment Offers Shelter and a Fresh Drink French Press-Style Filter Concept for Water on the Go |
It seems like we finally received a confirmation that Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and PES 2016 will run at 1080p/60FPS on Xbox One. The details comes from our friend at Gamekyo, who went hands-on to test both MGS V: The Phantom Pain and PES 2016 at E3 2015 on Xbox One, and received a confirmation on 1080p/60FPS from Julien Merceron, Technical Director on Konami's Fox Engine. According to details posted on Gamekyo, development teams behind both these games were able to achieve 1080p/60FPS mark thanks to the new Xbox One SDK. Here is what Gamekyo wrote on their website (translated): "The great info is that both games on Xbox One will be in 1080p/60fps. We heard that by Julien Merceron, involved in the development of Konami's Fox Engine. Thanks to the new SDK, developers were able to upgrade low resolution textures to high definition ones. Ground Zeroes and Pes 2015 were both 720p resolution on Xbox One." We have contacted Konami and Hideo Kojima for a official and final confirmation on this. So stay tuned, we will update this post as soon as we get to hear something from them. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain will launch on September 1 and PES 2016 will launch on September 17. |
Ahead of the launch of the 2017 NRL Fantasy season, NRL.com's Lone Scout has the rundown on every club's big buys for the upcoming season, plus the player prices for every player in the game. Read on below for your club's best Fantasy prospects and start planning your squad for when the game opens in the coming weeks. Broncos 2017 NRL Fantasy guide Raiders 2017 NRL Fantasy guide Bulldogs 2017 NRL Fantasy guide Sharks 2017 NRL Fantasy guide Titans 2017 NRL Fantasy guide Sea Eagles 2017 NRL Fantasy guide Storm 2017 NRL Fantasy guide Knights 2017 NRL Fantasy guide Cowboys 2017 NRL Fantasy guide Eels 2017 NRL Fantasy guide Panthers 2017 NRL Fantasy guide Rabbitohs 2017 NRL Fantasy guide Dragons 2017 NRL Fantasy guide Roosters 2017 NRL Fantasy guide Warriors 2017 NRL Fantasy guide Wests Tigers 2017 NRL Fantasy guide |
Tasmanian beekeepers are threatening a pollination ban if the island state's GM-free status is rescinded. Tasmanian beekeepers say they will refuse to pollinate certain vegetables if the moratorium on genetically modified crops is lifted in Tasmania, which would lead to millions of dollars in lost revenue. Tasmania is currently GM-free, but the state government is conducting a review of the ban. President of the Tasmanian Beekeepers Association Lindsay Bourke says the Tasmanian honey industry depends on non-GMO status for access to European and Asian markets. "One of the vegetable crops that we pollinate will be devastated, because we won't go anywhere near it," he said. "We won't go and pollinate if there is a GMO crop alongside that. "We will go and produce honey." Mr Bourke won't specify which vegetable crops may not be pollinated. But the peak body for dairy farmers in Tasmania says that if the moratorium is not lifted, dairy production in the state will be at a commercial disadvantage. One of the vegetable crops that we pollinate will be devastated, because we won't go anywhere near it President of the Tasmanian Beekeepers Association, Lyndsay Bourke Executive officer of Dairy Tas, Mark Smith, says while Victoria does not have a ban on GMO, pastoralists have access to grasses with higher yields and lower inputs. He says the debate over whether or not the ban should be lifted, should be based on science. "The assessment will need to be done by people who can have a good clear objective look at it. "They need to have a good clear look at the situation, so that we're not driven by fear, misinformation and assumption," he said. |
Daniel Murphy and Anthony Rendon celebrate after they both scored on a two-run single from Michael A. Taylor in the fifth inning. (Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images) SAN FRANCISCO – Something sinister hovered in the air Tuesday night, somewhere between the marine layer and the field at AT&T Park where the Washington Nationals beat the San Francisco Giants, 6-3. A combination of day-old angst and mutual uncertainty added an edge to the evening chill, looming like an accelerant above dying embers, a spark away from combustion. Both teams said all the right things about the issue being handled, the feud complete, the trouble behind them. But it was not until the innings went on, the hours passed, and baseball consumed them again that the tension seemed to cool in the breeze off the bay. A day after one of the more explosive moments in Nationals history, they outlasted the Giants in a slow, slogging game that seemed to signal a detente. Before the game, Manager Dusty Baker suggested the best retaliation would be to beat the Giants on Tuesday night. That is exactly what his Nationals did, moving to 32-19 overall in the process with their 15th win in May. At first, it seemed even the smallest spark could reignite the angst, a pitch thrown a bit too far inside, a malicious glance, or something like that. Disputes like the one in which Bryce Harper and Hunter Strickland involved their teammates and coaches Monday afternoon are not easily left behind. But the umpires did not warn either side before the game, seemingly certain that the whole thing was over. Harper said as much before the game, that by heading to the mound he ensured the feud would end right then and there. [Bryce Harper suspended four games for fight; Giants’ Hunter Strickland gets six] Even so, the game felt like it was being played on a tightrope early on, one filled with checkpoints that must be safely passed, lest the whole thing plummet into frustrated chaos once again. The first checkpoint was Harper’s first at-bat, which came against Jeff Samardzija, the former Notre Dame football star who had hunted him during the brawl. He pitched to Harper, largely staying away in a seven-pitch at-bat. Harper grounded out to first and trotted back to the dugout. His teammates created two runs after that, when Ryan Zimmerman drove in Trea Turner, and Daniel Murphy drove in Zimmerman. The next checkpoint was Buster Posey’s first at-bat. Though Posey played no role in the brawl – in fact, he was noticeably inactive as it began – he is the closest thing to Harper on the Giants’ roster, a star, a face of the franchise, an indispensable presence. He came to bat with a man on second and two down in the first – in other words, with a base open, but also in a situation starter Gio Gonzalez would want to escape, not escalate. He did not throw at Posey, of course. He walked him, and was therefore left to get out of a first-inning jam while his fastball sat at 87 and 88 mph, instead of the usual 90 and 91. “There was none of that in my mind,” Gonzalez said. “…I think that was done after yesterday. We had to just go out there and play the game. We couldn’t let that be more than it should have been.” [Svrluga: Even the Giants thought Hunter Strickland crossed the line against Bryce Harper] The early evening revolved around Harper and Samardzija all the same, as three straight singles brought Harper to the plate with the bases loaded and one out in the second. Harper struck out looking, at which point the crowd that booed Harper when he came to the plate stood and cheered him back to the dugout. Harper struck out looking again in the fourth, stranding Jayson Werth at third after the 38-year-old’s first triple since 2015. Harper looked frustrated with the call, but controlled himself, chatting with home plate umpire Mike DiMuro for a few seconds without ever devolving. Samardzija’s evening ended after that at-bat, after 100 pitches in four laborious innings and thousands of boos for Harper, who finished 0 for 5. “What happened yesterday is over,” Baker said. “I just hate that everyone is making Bryce the culprit. He was really the victim. Things will subside.” Outside of Harper, the offense hummed. By the sixth inning they amassed 13 hits and scored more runs than they had in a week. Daniel Murphy and Trea Turner added three hits each. Werth, Ryan Zimmerman, and Michael A. Taylor each had two. Even Gonzalez drove in a run with an RBI single. Gonzalez, who never even came close to hitting anyone Tuesday night, did not have a 1-2-3 inning in any of his 6 1/3 innings of work. Nevertheless, he held the Giants down in a tightrope walk of his own. He danced around base runners in every inning except the second, when two of them scored. [Boswell: Earl Weaver had it right when it comes to baseball brawls] Matt Albers relieved Gonzalez, and allowed one inherited runner to score, but nothing more in two innings of work. Koda Glover pitched the ninth, and dispatched the heart of the Giants’ order with no trouble to earn his fourth save in five days. “The Bryce and Strickland thing kind of settled itself,” Glover said. “We’re here to win.” A night after the brawl, a baseball game broke out, pushing the cloud of Monday’s chaos away for now. The Nationals won that game, securing a series win in the process, and with it the best revenge of all. |
Danny Fingeroth SAN DIEGO – Superman, Batman, Captain American and a slew of other superheroes have something in common besides funny-looking tights. They were all created by Jews, many from Eastern European backgrounds. Jewish comics creators and co-creators include Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel (Superman); Bob Kane and Bill Finger (Batman); Will Eisner (The Spirit); Jack Kirby (Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk, the X-Men); Jack Kirby and Joe Simon (Captain America); and of course Stan Lee (who helped create Spider-Man and a whole bunch of others). This is more than a coincidence, argues Danny Fingeroth, former editorial director of the Spider-Man comic books, in his upcoming book Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics and the Creation of the Superhero. While he may not go as far as some authors who claim Superman is an incarnation of Moses, he does believe the Jewish heritage of their creators influenced the first generation of superheroes and the worlds in which they lived. In an interview with Wired News, Fingeroth – author of 2004's well-received Superman on the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us about Ourselves and Our Society – talked about Jews and superheroes prior to this weekend's Comic-Con, the world's largest comics convention. Wired News: How do you think the lives of Jewish comics creators influenced the fictional worlds they created? Danny Fingeroth: You had a bunch of young men whose parents were immigrants, writing stories about a very idealized world, where force is wielded wisely and people are judged by their individual character, not by who they are or who their parents were. For the guys who made the comics, it was a way to transcend who you were and become locked into and involved with the American mainstream, to blend in. WN: Do you think Jews worked in comics because they couldn't get jobs elsewhere? Fingeroth: That was a big part of it. Because of various types of prejudice, things were closed off to Jews in the first half of the 20th century. Maybe it's hard to believe now, but Jews were not accepted in a lot of the publishing or advertising industries. There was a great deal of discrimination. There were no official policies like “No Jews allowed,” but you could interview all you want and still not get work you might have been highly qualified for. WN: Many superheroes, if not all of them, are outsiders in some way in their civilian incarnations. They're orphans, weaklings, ordinary men. Is there a connection here to their creators being Jewish? Fingeroth: Historically, the racist caricature of the Jew is of someone who somehow is simultaneously weak and yet controls the world, or significant aspects of it. So one could say that the wimpy secret identity was the Jewish creators' ways of saying that we're powerful, in an individual sense, not wimps, and guided, individually and as a group, by the selfless desire to do good. Of course, this is all reading things into the work way after the fact. None of the creators consciously thought about this stuff when they were writing and drawing the stories. It's also a comment on the immigrant desire, Jewish and otherwise, to both be part of the society – be Clark Kent – and also be separate from it as a being of superhuman power. On a larger metaphorical level, it's about the need we all have to feel that we are more than the world thinks we are. "If only they knew my secret, they'd be sorry for the way they treated me!" WN: Do you think the heritage of the creators made them especially interested in secret identities? Fingeroth: I think they were interested in the part of the psyche that compels us to operate on multiple levels, playing different roles depending on the circumstances. I don't know if there's anything exclusively Jewish about that, although as a group with a history of being persecuted, doing what you can to achieve harmony with the dominant society could make someone preoccupied with what role they're playing when. WN: Do you think the creators consciously thought of the Jewish influences on their work? Fingeroth: They were sitting around thinking, “How can I make a living and move out of my parents’ house or help my parents out? How can I survive the Depression as a creative person, when there aren't many options?” They were 18, 19, 20 years old. Some of them were from really poor families and couldn’t afford to go to college. What were they going to do? What I also found was that a lot of early comics creators were from families that, when they were kids, had been relatively prosperous and then lost everything in the (stock market) crash of 1929 that heralded the beginning of the Great Depression. They had this weird background of having been fairly secure as kids, and suddenly having nothing at all. It's like Superman having his whole planet blown up, or Bruce Wayne (Batman) having his parents murdered, or Peter Parker (Spider-Man), already an orphan as a baby, having his adoptive father – Uncle Ben – murdered. WN: How did these men look at being Jewish? Did they tend to be very observant? Fingeroth: No. I think back in the '30s and '40s, if you were Orthodox, you wouldn’t do something like comics. I think it was considered something not serious. (Today), you can see 125,000 people migrate to San Diego to the Comic-Con to pray in the Church of Popular Culture. There's something about being able to take a lot of what would ordinarily be religious impulses (and direct them) into creating fiction. It's like a religious substitute, where nobody ever – well, hardly ever – gets into violent confrontations about if their favorite superhero is somehow better than someone else’s. WN: Did critics – including psychologist Frederic Wertham, who helped launch public and political outrage against comic books in the 1950s – ever pick up on the fact that many comics creators were Jewish? Fingeroth: Wertham was from a more-well-to do German/Austrian Jewish background, as opposed to the mostly Russian- and Polish-descended Jewish men and women who worked in comics (along with Italian-Americans and people of all sorts of backgrounds). In hindsight, you could see his hostility to comics as his seeing the comics publishers and creators as being the cultural equivalent of junk dealers, an embarrassment to Jewish people. WN: You're Jewish yourself. Are you worried that your book might give ammunition to anti-Semites who like to make claims about Jewish domination? Fingeroth: My joke is that it's of most interest to Jews and anti-Semites. Most other people don’t give a shit. I think it's one of the best things I've written, but it was one of the hardest to write, too, because of how careful I wanted to be about how I framed things so as not to give ammunition to bigots who might want to twist what I was saying. I ultimately decided that if I was going to write this book, and I did and do think it was important to write, I had to put that fear out of my mind and figure that if someone has a reason to hate Jews, they don’t need to me as an excuse to do it. WN: What is the legacy of the superheroes these men created? Fingeroth: Seventy years later, these characters, such as Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man (who was created in the 1960s) are still such powerful archetypes that nothing has come along to replace them. The creations of these mostly Jewish guys now being interpreted by people from all backgrounds because their appeal is universal. The characters and what they symbolize mean a lot to people – although what they symbolize is different for each reader or moviegoer. People find the most lasting superheroes entertaining, of course, but also inspiring. Steroids Scandal Hits Major League Superheroes Meet Avi Arad, the Man Who Launched the Superhero Craze Mr. Comics Talks Comics |
by Congressman Dennis KucinichWith Additional Material by David Swanson and Elizabeth de la Vegatrade paperback edition • 156 pages • 5.5 x 8.5 • ISBN: 978-1-932595-42-0Feral House offers this important and urgent publication of Dennis Kucinich’s Articles of Impeachment this election season in two formats: an offset-printed paperback book available for the cost of $12 and a free downloadable PDF available.David Swanson’s additional article explains how the Impeachment process is possible and necessary even after the, and how they can be used for prosecution of crimes.More than two centuries ago, the Founders of this country set forth a procedure for Congress to follow in the event of grave abuse of power by the Chief Executive. That process is impeachment. In the face of the monumental deceit and disregard for the Constitution that we have witnessed on the part of the President over the past seven years, Congressman Kucinich’s initiation of this process is neither fanciful nor futile, neither vengeful nor vindictive; it is the sober fulfillment of his sworn duty as a Congressman to follow the law without regard to personal consequence and misguided political stratagem. It is, quite simply, an act of patriotism.—Elizabeth de la Vega, Former Federal Prosecutorand author of United States v. George W. Bush et. al.This collection of impeachable offenses should be viewed as a sampling of the crimes and abuses of President George W. Bush and his subordinates. Bush has had many accomplices — first and foremost Vice President Cheney. But our Founders created a single executive precisely so that we could hold that one person accountable for the actions of the executive branch. It is high time we did so, and millions of Americans will be urging their representatives to support the effort being led by Congressman Kucinich.These articles establish, and hearings would establish further, that President Bush was ‘the decider’ behind countless abuses of power. And, of course, his public comments have time and again advertised his indifference to the laws he is violating. Not only does overwhelming evidence show us that Bush knew his claims about WMDs to be false, but the president has shown us that he considers the question of truth or falsehood to be laughably irrelevant. When Diane Sawyer asked Bush why he had claimed with such certainty that there were so many weapons in Iraq, he replied: “What’s the difference? The possibility that [Saddam] could acquire weapons, If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger.”What’s the difference? Hundreds of thousands of corpses and a fatal blow to the rule of law among nations. That’s the difference. Unless we remove impeachment from the Constitution by failing to exercise it, in which case truth will no longer matter any more than justice or peace.— David Swanson, creator of ImpeachCheney.org, Washington Directorof Democrats.com and co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org.Overload is the main problem—I call it outrage fatigue. The sheer multitude, not to mention magnitude, of impeachable offenses tends to dull the senses. The opportunity to dig into just one or two provided some space and focused the mind.At the same time, the deeper one digs, the more unimaginable the dirt that comes up. Earlier, I had not taken the time to sift through the abundant evidence of the unconscionable ways in which George Bush and George Tenet teamed up—including, in Tenet’s case, lying under oath—to stave off charges of misfeasance/ malfeasance before the attacks on 9/11.The Founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to create a system in which we could protect ourselves from unbridled power. Today, we cannot let a 21st Century string of abuses and usurpations stand without challenge.But the experience of the past several years shows that there is a very high hurdle in our way: no Common Sense. I refer, of course, to the courageous independent journalism of the likes of Tom Paine who stirred the innate dignity of Americans toward sacrifice for independence and freedom. Tom Paine would be horrified to see what has become of his profession today—with browbeaten journalists and former general officers doing the bidding of the corporations that own/pay them.In my view,Impeachment proceedings may be the only way to force the captive media to inform normal citizens about what has been going on in our country. Thomas Jefferson underscored the importance of this when he said: “Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”—Ray McGovern; former Army officer and CIA analyst;co-founder, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for SanityPresident Bush, Cheney and other US officials have violated numerous domestic and international laws governing crime of aggression, war crime, torture, etc., and they should be not only impeached by the US Congress but also be prosecuted by a special prosecutor, to the full extent of the law before or after impeachment. That is the best way to uphold the US Constitution and the rule of law at home and abroad.—John Kim, Esq., Attorney; author of The Crimeof Aggression Against IraqThe breadth of impeachable offenses committed by the Bush/Cheney administration is likely unparalleled in our nation’s history. Equally unparalleled, and in many cases even more alarming and outrageous, is the lack of accountability brought to the perpetrators of these High Crimes and Misdemeanors. It is the Constitutional duty of members of Congress—members from any political party—to bring such accountability, particularly when the list of crimes began with the very acts that brought this administration into office during their elections, and right up through today when the same sort of crimes continue, and are in place to try and affect our next Presidential Election.This is not about politics, it’s about the Constitutional duty of Congress. If a line in the sand is not drawn immediately and clearly in the face of such corruption and disdain for our American values, such as the Rule of Law, the historical bar for criminality in our Executive Branch will have been forever lowered, no matter who happens to serve in the White House in the future.—Brad Friedman, creator/ editor of The Brad Blog, and co-founderof the watchdog organization VelvetRevolution.us.“I have provided the legal architecture and evidence for a trial to prosecute the President for murder. My book lends credence to a powerful case for impeachment laid out persuasively by Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s 35 Articles of Impeachment.”— Vincent Bugliosi, Former District Attorney, author ofThe Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder |
Xbox 360 4GB E Console includes: 4GB Xbox 360 E console 1 Black Wireless Controller Built in Wi-Fi 1 month of Xbox LIVE Gold The best value in games and entertainment! With the largest library of games, Xbox 360 has something for everyone. Play blockbuster titles like Halo, Forza Motorsport, and Madden/FIFA. Enjoy unrivaled multiplayer games online with friends, and watch HD movies, TV shows, live events, music and sports. Plus, the spacious 4GB hard drive gives you more storage for games, entertainment and demos. And now with a sleek new design, Xbox 360 looks better than ever.* Features: Enjoy the largest library of games, with blockbuster titles and unrivaled multiplayer Watch HD movies, TV shows, live events, music and sports More storage for games and movies with a spacious 4GB hard drive Own the sleek new Xbox 360 There were no answered questions or comments placed on this listing. You must have Javascript enabled to ask and answer questions Your question and answer privileges have been disabled. You must log in to view questions and answers on this listing. We recommend reading questions before you make any purchases. Question submitted Note: You must log in to ask or answer questions posted. We recommend reading questions before you make any purchases. Available only to approved bidders. You must be an authenticated member to ask questions Find out more about becoming authenticated Your account is in debt Your current account balance is You must credit your account to use this feature. Firearms licence # Firearms licence holder name First name is required Last name is required Your current account balance is Please note you will lose your question and answer privileges if your account is in debt for more than 2 weeks. Credit your account I confirm that I am over 18 years old. To prevent your personal details being misused please do not put emails or phone numbers in questions. Failure to comply may result in the suspension of your account. The seller cannot add a Buy Now price once bidding has started. |
“Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct ‘wiretapping’ against the then president-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.” GCHQ spokesman GCHQ — Britain’s communications intelligence agency — has issued a statement denying it wiretapped Donald Trump in the weeks after he won the US election. Follow us on Twitter: @Intel_Today Judge Andrew Napolitano The claims of GCHQ involvement were initially made by former judge Andrew Napolitano. White House press secretary Sean Spicer Sean Spicer quoted judge Napolitano as saying: “Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command.” “He didn’t use the NSA, he didn’t use the CIA, he didn’t use the FBI and he didn’t use the Department of Justice, he used GCHQ.” Analysis — Gordon Corera, BBC security correspondent It is unusual for GCHQ to comment directly on a report about its intelligence work, normally preferring to stick to the policy of neither confirming nor denying any activity. The phrase “utterly ridiculous” is also very unusual for the agency. But it’s a sign of just how seriously they take it. The allegations are so sensitive that the agency clearly felt they could not let them go unchallenged. GCHQ The UK intelligence machinery includes the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the Security Service (MI5: Military Intelligence, Section 5), the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), as well as the Defence Intelligence (DI). The GCHQ main mission is to provide government departments and the military with signals intelligence (SIGINT), which it obtains by monitoring all manner of electronic communication and information systems, including the internet. The GCHQ is also tasked with the responsibility to keep government communication safe and to keep the national infrastructure (water, power, communications and so on) safe from interference and disruption. GCHQ (former) Director Robert Hannigan On January 23 2017, Robert Hannigan, who has held the post of GCHQ Director since 2014, announced he was stepping down for family reasons. “Sources have told BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera that the resignation was not the result of any concerns over policy in the UK or in the US.” Rubbish? British officials were quick to rubbish Judge Napolitano’s claims earlier this week. A government source reportedly said the claim was “totally untrue and quite frankly absurd”. The British official told Reuters that: “Under British law, GCHQ can only gather intelligence for national security purposes” and noted that the US election “clearly doesn’t meet that criteria”. Blast from the Past In february 2000, Both the BBC and the Guardian reported that Baroness Thatcher ‘may’ have been spying on her own cabinet. How? Former agent Mike Frost –a Canadian citizen — said he had spied on the two ministers through the Echelon surveillance system. Mike Frost, who worked for Canadian intelligence from 1972 until 1992, claimed the five countries could circumvent domestic laws against spying on citizens by asking another Echelon member to do it for them. “The UK Parliament now have total deniability. They didn’t do anything… we did it for them.” US will ‘not repeat’ claims No 10 has been assured the allegations would not be repeated, a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said. “It had been made clear to US authorities the claims were ridiculous and should have been ignored.” REFERENCES Britain’s GCHQ agency denies wiretapping Donald Trump — BBC March 17 2017 US will ‘not repeat’ claims GCHQ wiretapped Donald Trump — BBC March 17 2017 = UK: GCHQ denies wiretapping Donald Trump |
Highcharts Export Server Options Your Highcharts configuration object. { "xAxis": { "categories": [ "Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "Jun", "Jul", "Aug", "Sep", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec" ] }, "series": [ { "data": [1,3,2,4], "type": "line" }, { "data": [5,3,4,2], "type":"line" } ] } Image file format image/png image/jpeg image/svg+xml application/pdf Width The exact pixel width of the exported image. Defaults to chart.width or 600px. Maximum width is 2000px. Scale A scaling factor for a higher image resolution. Maximum scaling is set to 4x. Remember that the width parameter has a higher precedence over scaling. Constructor Either Chart or StockChart depending on what product you use. Chart StockChart Map Callback The callback will be fired after the chart is created. function(chart) { chart.renderer.label('This label is added in the callback', 100, 100) .attr({ fill : '#90ed7d', padding: 10, r: 10, zIndex: 10 }) .css({ color: 'black', width: '100px' }) .add(); } Use styled mode? Enabling styled mode requires manually importing a CSS theme below. No Yes CSS This CSS will be embedded in a style tag appended to the document head, regardless of wether or not styled mode is enabled. Async Rendering If enabled, the page rendering will wait for any of the included JavaScript resources to call highexp.done(); before rendering the chart. If the function isn't called within 6 seconds, the rendering will timeout. No Yes JavaScript This JavaScript will be appended to the document head prior to rendering the chart. This page allows you to experiment with different options for the export server. |
The United States and China have reaffirmed their commitment to a "complete, verifiable and irreversible" denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, Reuters reported Saturday. President Trump's Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis hosted Chinese officials at the State Department on Wednesday. Tillerson said earlier in the week that he planned to press China on resolving the North Korean crisis. On Saturday, Chinese state media reported that the talks reached consensus. "Both sides reaffirm that they will strive for the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," the official Xinhua news agency said. According to Reuters, Trump is expected to meet with China's President Xi Jinping in Hamburg at the G20 summit next month. ADVERTISEMENT On Tuesday, Trump tweeted that China’s efforts to halt the North Korean threat have been unsuccessful. “While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out," Trump said. "At least I know China tried!” A U.S. official said that the talks Wednesday "elevated" the level of dialogue between the two countries. “This discussion elevates the level of dialogue with the Chinese in a way that in our view will enable in-depth consideration in areas of cooperation,” said acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs David Helvey. |
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS / AP) — A religious organization has filed a lawsuit against the city of San Francisco to remove an open-air urinal it calls unsanitary and indecent from a popular park. The Chinese Christian Union of San Francisco filed a civil complaint last week demanding the city remove the concrete circular urinal from the iconic Dolores Park. The group and its legal representatives, Pacific Justice Institute, say the urinal, which is out in the open and screened only with plants for privacy, “emanates offensive odors,” ”has no hand-washing facilities” and “it’s offensive to manners and morals.” “It’s just like a sex party,” said the Pacific Justice Institute’s Frank Lee. “You know they have a lot of places they can have a sex party, but not in a public park!” • ALSO READ: Camera Captures Passersby Ignoring Brazen San Francisco Bicycle Theft The lawsuit further alleges that the facility installed in February discriminates against women and the disabled and exposes those who use it to “shame and embarrassment.” “The open-air urination hole violates the privacy of those who need to use the restroom but would be required to expose their bodies and suffer shame and degradation of urinating in public view,” it says. Dr. Brad Dacus, President of the Pacific Justice Institute, said the open air urinal exposes those who use it to shame and embarrassment and discriminates against women and the disabled. “This blatantly violates the Unruh Act, the Restoration act of 1973, and of course the American Disabilities Act,” said Dr. Dacus. Supervisor Scott Wiener disagreed with the statement. “The claim that this discriminates on based on gender, disability doesn’t make much sense to me because we have two beautiful restroom buildings in this same park that are accessible to everyone,” said Wiener. Wiener said it was Dolores Park neighbors who asked and approved the open air urinal to keep people from doing their business in public places. “They would just pee in the bushes. Drop their pants — men and women — and go wherever,” said park goer Chuck Louden. “The alternative is worse. The alternative is unsightly; it’s unsanitary.” But not all park users agree this is the right solution to that problem. “There’s enough public toilets around. Put it somewhere where you don’t have to watch people go for a pee,” said park goer Gwen Jones. “I’m here to enjoy the park and better things than that.” The City Attorney’s office said in a statement that it will defend against the litigation and pointed out the 16-acre park is well-known for its “counter culture, immodest sunbathers, pot brownie vendors, spectacular city views, and famously irreverent ‘Hunky Jesus’ contest.” The office said residents advocated for the facility, called a “pissoir” (pronounced piss-WAH), to stop people from urinating on walls, bushes and sidewalks. “If I had to predict the top 100 things in Dolores Park likely to offend these plaintiffs, I wouldn’t have guessed that this would make the cut,” City Attorney spokesman Matt Dorsey said in the statement. The urinal is part of a $20 million renovation plan that now has put more than two dozen toilets in Dolores Park along with other upgrades. San Francisco has a long, sometimes creative, history of dealing with public urination. Last summer, the city painted nearly 30 walls with a repellant paint that makes urine spray back on the offender. In 2002, the city increased the possible fine for the crime up to $500, but that did little to deter the practice. TM and © Copyright 2016 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2016 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. |
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