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Shoutout to Ansley (pictured) and Brad, who will be tying the knot tomorrow during the Missouri State game. I'm told they need my approval to go through with the wedding, which they have...so long as my name is worked into the ceremony at some point. I can't imagine this will be a problem. Weather check: early morning (7-9 a.m.) showers and then 72 and mostly sunny by kickoff. Should be a perfect late morning/early afternoon. You have no idea how badly I want to wear my poncho to this game. Potentially large news from the world of college basketball, where the NCAA is reportedly discussing the possibility of moving the Final Four back to arenas after 2016. The next four Final Fours are locked in for domes in Atlanta (2013), Arlington, Texas (14), Indianapolis ('15) and Houston ('16). The only other viable cities to host are New Orleans (site of April's Final Four), St. Louis (2005), Detroit ('09), Phoenix (never has hosted) and Minneapolis (1992, 2001). Tampa-St. Petersburg hosted the event in 1999, but hasn't been considered since. San Antonio hosted in 1998, 2004 and '08, but Lewis said he was told the Alamodome is now too small. The last time the Final Four was held in an arena was 1996 at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. "The timing is that we're several years out, but historically, we've put out bids for Final Four cities sometime in the fall," Lewis said. "Before I pull off the dust on the RFP papers and just change the dates I want to know: Does the committee want to do this? I'm the new guy. I don't know where this will lead if anywhere but the right thing is to have the conversation to see if we want it (in) more than eight cities. Do we like playing exclusively in dome stadiums when it comes to something as significant as the national championship." A Final Four in one of the nation's best arenas? Hmm. CBS is sticking with its Sugar Bowl pick of Louisville vs. Alabama. I would attend that football game. If you can't make it out to tonight's women's soccer showdown between undefeated Louisville and Kentucky, you can still watch the game (at 7:30 p.m.) on WHAS 11.2, Insight 432, Comcast 207. Let's keep the dream of a season sweep of UK alive, ladies. On a related note, big fan of this: Big ups, marketing folks. Analyst Doug James says toughness is the main reason Louisville has been able to pull itself up by its bootstraps under Charlie Strong. When Charlie Strong started reassembling the pieces from Kragthorpe in December 2009, James was not obsessed with the offensive or defensive schemes that Strong favored. This is what James wanted to see: Toughness. "Coach Strong and his staff have brought toughness back to Louisville football," James said. "That was missing for a few years. Howard's teams had that toughness. So did Bobby Petrino's and John L's. "You watch Louisville play and you see guys flying around, making hits and performing like they're focused. They're not getting pushed around. They control the line of scrimmage." The U of L football twitter account tweeted around noon that there were just 400 available tickets remaining for tomorrow's game. If I had to guess, I'd say those have been snatched up by now and that this game will wind up being a sellout. That would be a nice little statement. Still really worried about Tommy Timmons, guys. Congratulations to Cardinal great DeJuan Wheat, who had his jersey retired by the Soles club in Mexico this week. DeJuan was referred to as "the prodigal son" in the club's press release. The Associated Press says this weekend is about avoiding the pattern of letdowns after big wins for Louisville. "It is a team that has a spread offense," Strong said, "so, they do a good job of throwing the ball around." Though Louisville sacked Smith twice, recovered two fumbles and held Kentucky to 93 rushing yards, Coach Charlie Strong wants more aggression from a defense used to creating opportunities for the offense. Since that unit is showing signs of holding up its end, he said the defense must step up as well. For this week, the Cardinals' overall plan is keeping up what they started on Sunday. "You like to think that we're more mature now that we've played a lot of games," Strong said. "You can always go back to last season, and we beat Kentucky and we followed it up and got beat. We cannot allow that to happen and we're at home. ... (You'd) like to think that you don't have to go through it again." If Louisville wins on Saturday it will be just the second time the Cards have won consecutive home games under Charlie Strong. Just wanted to give a quick shoutout to the Cards Nest group for your continued support. It's much appreciated. Despite a dominating win over an arch-rival in week one, Charlie Strong sees plenty of room for improvement heading into week two. The Cardinals (1-0) kicked off the season Sunday with a 32-14 victory over Kentucky behind 466 total yards of offense and a defense that had two sacks, recovered two fumbles and held the Wildcats to 93 yards on the ground. However, the Cardinals surrendered a total of 373 yards while possessing the ball for fewer than 24 minutes, a statistic that's a little troubling to Strong. "We just could've played better," he said. "I just expect more, maybe because I'm a defensive coach and I'm around the defense a lot." While some are high school football games have moved up their kickoff times tonight in an attempt to miss the inclement weather heading our way, Male's home game against U of L commit Kyle Bolin and Lexington Catholic will still be kicking off at 7:30. Major 2013-14 Louisville basketball scheduling news is already out, as the Cards and North Carolina will likely meet in the 2013 Hall of Fame Classic. The Hall of Fame announced Thursday that Louisville and North Carolina will headline the 2013 event at the Mohegan Sun. But the only way these two teams meet is if they either both win or lose their semifinal games. The other two teams in the event are scheduled to be Richmond and Fairfield. If you're a fan of Reddit, there are some Cardinal fans over there trying to get the U of L section jump-started so head over there and show them some love. A historical look at U of L vs. Missouri State from In the Huddle. And finally, beat Missouri State. |
As tempting as it is to call for better education, I’m not sure how effectively that serves us in real time. I’m familiar with the scientific process, for instance, and still believe evidence on the benefits of chocolate and procrastination, while dismissing anything that calls into question my way of life. But when we present specific scientific findings to the public, I think we could frame them more effectively to signal their degree of uncertainty and thus enduring credibility. As Tim Caulfield, an expert in science communication at the University of Alberta, has suggested,5 the media could preface any new finding with what the literature says, on balance, about the topic in question; readers might then understand that any marked aberration is less likely to be true. Another factor often lost in translation is evidence quality. Just as published clinical guidelines indicate the level of evidence supporting them, perhaps similar background on the hierarchy of evidence could accompany reports of new findings. Observational studies, which are more abundant and often more provocative than randomized, controlled trials, tend to be widely covered in the media. But whereas industry sponsorship of trials is frequently emphasized and used to call findings into question, no warning accompanies database analyses in which causality can be misleadingly implied. Relatedly, in Caulfield’s experience, the justification people most frequently invoke for dismissing scientific consensus that contradicts their beliefs is that science is corrupted — by political meddling, scientists’ ambitions, and industry funding.5 Yet, illogically, research published by a mindfulness practitioner is often believed, whereas a consensus from the National Academy of Sciences on genetically modified organisms isn’t.5 Unfortunately, when we are told our views are illogical, we don’t generally respond with more logical beliefs. Moreover, perceptions of corruption often arise from stories that, even if rare, are true. If we are ever to change perceptions, it is critical to recognize the power of such narratives in fueling distrust of science. The disproportionate representation of science’s warts typifies a broader “science is broken” narrative that emphasizes the ways science “isn’t working” at the expense of the ways that it is. We hear about experiments that can’t be replicated, negative findings that remain unpublished, and the ubiquity of bias; much of this criticism arises from within our own ranks. Academia is lambasted for an incentive structure favoring quantity over quality, secrecy over transparency, and exaggeration of the significance of our results. Meanwhile, remarkable gains in human longevity are just one manifestation of science’s success — but as a reporter once told me, “No one wants to hear about the plane that lands.” This preference for exposed folly, in a world where social media rewards those who speak loudest and with the most moral certitude, may foster a phenomenon social psychologists call pluralistic ignorance, in which most members of a group disagree with a norm or idea but think everyone else believes in it and so don’t speak up. Gilbert thinks a similar dynamic may be at play in the debate among psychologists regarding the field’s “replication crisis.” In 2015, a group of prominent psychologists published a study,6 widely covered in the media, concluding that over half of psychology experiments had failed to replicate. Gilbert and colleagues then published a letter pointing out three key flaws in the study’s own methods,7 suggesting that it therefore didn’t clarify the true frequency of failed replication. Unsurprisingly, the article saying psychology is in crisis received far more attention than the letter that said actually, we don’t really know. The letter did receive significant attention from psychology researchers, however, many of whom wrote to Gilbert, saying they agreed with him but had been afraid to speak up. Gilbert attributes that fear to a shift in the tone of public discussions of science, which I suspect contributes to broader conclusions that science is corrupt and thus can legitimately be ignored. Whereas people debating different viewpoints, a process that is critical to the advance of science, might once have concluded that “Dan Gilbert is wrong,” notes Gilbert, they now conclude that “Dan Gilbert is evil.” The fear of venturing into the fray means that the public hears far more from science’s critics than its champions. This imbalance contributes to “science is broken” narratives ranging from claims about the pervasiveness of medical error to the insistence that benefits of our treatments are always overhyped and their risks underplayed. The real uncertainty, if not frank falsehood, of many of these claims is thus obscured. Meanwhile, the consequent impressions of scientific foul play are easily generalized to the entire scientific enterprise the next time people encounter evidence they’d rather not believe. |
Team Record Last Week 1 Northwest Missouri State 6-0 1 2 Grand Valley State 6-0 2 3 North Alabama 3-1 3 4 Shepherd 5-0 4 5 Midwestern State 5-0 5 6 Sioux Falls 6-0 7 7 Emporia State 5-1 11 8 Ashland 5-1 14 9 Texas A&M-Commerce 4-1 6 10 Tuskegee 6-0 13 11 California (Pa.) 5-0 16 12 Harding 6-0 17 13 Indiana (Pa.) 4-1 9 14 Minnesota Duluth 5-1 19 15 Central Missouri 4-2 20 16 Valdosta State 4-1 21 17 West Georgia 4-2 10 18 Henderson State 5-1 8 19 LIU-Post 6-0 22 20 Azusa Pacific 5-1 12 21 Bemidji State 5-1 23 22 Slippery Rock 5-1 24 23 Fort Hays State 5-1 NR 24 Ferris State 4-2 15 25 Wayne State (Mich.) 5-1 NR Fort Hays State moved into the D2Football.com Top 25 Poll for the first time in program history on Tuesday (Oct. 11). The Tigers are ranked No. 23 in the latest poll. The D2Football.com poll is a supplemental poll generated by writers that are dedicated to covering NCAA Division II Football. The AFCA Poll released each Monday is the official Division II poll for national rankings.Fort Hays State is one of four MIAA teams referenced in this week's poll. Northwest Missouri State is No. 1 in the nation to match its AFCA Poll national ranking. Emporia State is No. 7 in the D2Football.com Poll, while ranking No. 12 in the AFCA Poll. Central Missouri is No. 15, but is behind FHSU in the receiving votes section of the AFCA Poll. FHSU is the second-highest team in the receiving votes section of the AFCA Poll released on Monday (Oct. 10).Fort Hays State (5-1 overall) heads to Washburn this weekend and currently sits in a tie with Emporia State in the MIAA standings for second place. Both are looking to chase down Northwest Missouri State, which is the only unbeaten team remaining in the MIAA.Below is the D2Football.com Poll for October 11, 2016. |
Steve McIntyre always told us to “watch the pea under the thimble” when it comes to climate change pronouncements, this is one of those cases. Yesterday, to much media fanfare, wailing, and gnashing of teeth NOAA pronounced that 2015 was the hottest year on record, ever! There’s only one problem with that…the Internet never forgets. Back in 1997 after the super El Nino made global temperatures soar, NOAA/NCDC produced this report: Source: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/199713 (h/t to Tom Nelson) Archived here: http://web.archive.org/web/20150504164341/http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/199713 In that 1997 report, they say clearly that the Global Average Temperature (GAT) was 62.45°F, based on a 30-year average (1961-1990) of the combined land and sea surface temperatures. Since we know the 1997 El Nino caused a record high spike in temperature, that means that for that 30 year period, there was no warmer GAT than 62.45°F up until that time. Yet in 2015, the claim for the “warmest ever” GAT is different: They say: During 2015, the average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.62°F (0.90°C) above the 20th century average. This was the highest among all 136 years in the 1880–2015 record, surpassing the previous record set last year by 0.29°F (0.16°C) and marking the fourth time a global temperature record has been set this century. Source: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/summary-info/global/201512 ( Note that they link in that quote, to an image which does not exist: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/global-land-ocean-mntp-anom/201501-201512.png ) In the 2015 Annual State of the Climate report referenced above, NOAA says that the temperature was 1.62°F (0.90°C) above the 20th century average. That’s an important number. While they don’t reference the absolute value of the 20th century average temperature for the globe in that report, we can find it here in the November 2015 State of the Climate Report: Source: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201511 ========================================================================== UPDATE: WUWT commenter “brian0918” points out that in other reports, NOAA give the 20th century global average temperature as 57°F – That may be they are referring to the 20th century average for the month of November in the initial report I cited, but don’t make it clear in the language used, or it may be a typo. Even so, it is still lower than 62.45°F. I made the corrections in the title and in the body of this post. ========================================================================== So here is the math for the claims, for 2015, to get the number, we have to add the yearly variation from the 20th century average to it to get the absolute number: GAT for 20th century = 55.2°F GAT for 1997 = 62.45°F GAT for 2015 is 1.62°F + 55.2°F = 56.82°F In any universe, 56.82°F is lower than 62.45°F by 5.63 degrees Fahrenheit. ====================================================== UPDATE: (using the 57°F 20th century GAT mentioned in comments) GAT for 20th century = 57°F GAT for 1997 = 62.45°F GAT for 2015 is 1.62°F + 57°F = 58.62°F In any universe, 58.62°F is lower than 62.45°F by 3.83 degrees Fahrenheit. ====================================================== Of course, apologists and NOAA itself will run to their statistical hidey-hole and say that the 1997 value isn’t about the 20th century temperature comparison, but only compared to the “30-year average (1961-1990) of the combined land and sea surface temperatures.”, and therefore the comparison is not a valid one. (Meanwhile NASA GISS uses a 1951 to 1980 baseline for their historical temperature claims today, which is an arbitrary choice) But, I say it doesn’t matter what they say. NOAA is charged with presenting factual evidence in the context of climatic history, and when they make claims of absolute temperature, they need to be darn sure they get it right. Otherwise, the press, supporters of the cause like Seth Borenstein at AP, and the folks at the Washington Post just blindly regurgitate what NOAA says without questioning it. To give an example of how the media can’t even do basic fact checking anymore, I calculated the GAT for 2015 is 1.62°F + 55.2°F = 56.82°F Simple math, right? Yet somehow, in press reports, that number got transposed to 58.62°F. Just look: (UPDATE: If the 57F 20th century GAT value is used referenced in updates above, then we get the 58.62 number that is cited – while my math was correct, I relied on the context from the November, SOTC report, which was not clear, I’ve made the appropriate corrections.) It appears that the source of that 58.62 number in error was Seth Borenstein at the Associated Press, though I can’t tell if he made the error himself, or quoted NOAA. This is what he wrote in the AP story: NOAA said 2015’s temperature was 58.62 degrees Fahrenheit (14.79 degrees Celsius), passing 2014 by a record margin of 0.29 degrees. That’s 1.62 degrees above the 20th-century average. NASA, which measures differently, said 2015 was 0.23 degrees warmer than the record set in 2014 and 1.6 degrees above 20th century average. The point to be made here is that NOAA professes to be an expert at telling the public what the temperature is, when so many contradictions and errors creep into what is presented to the public, we should all learn to take what NOAA says, and what the media says with a grain of salt. When you look at temperature that isn’t biased by continuous adjustments, such as NOAA’s highly questionable fiddling with sea surface temperature data this year, you find that 2015 was not the hottest record at all according to the U.S> Climate Reference Network data, which is a state of the art system designed to need no “corrections” of any kind. 2015 comes in third for the USA: Source: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets[]=uscrn¶meter=anom-tavg&time_scale=p12&begyear=2005&endyear=2015&month=12 While that USCRN data only spans a little more than a decade, it is instructive for comparison to claims made. NOAA doesn’t seem to like referencing this state of the art USCRN system in their public reports, preferring instead to rely on their old, messy, error prone, and highly adjusted COOP/USHCN network which has been shown to have significant biases. They claim in their SOTC report from Jan 2016 that it was the 2nd hottest year on record for the CONUS: In 2015, the contiguous United States (CONUS) average temperature was 54.4°F, 2.4°F above the 20th century average. This was the second warmest year in the 121-year period of record for the CONUS. Source: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/201513 As I’ve said before, NOAA can’t seem to keep historical temperatures static, and thus the claims made referencing them, accurate. They change from month to month, and when there is no firmament to the history they present, why trust them? Dr. John Christy said it best: “If you want the truth about an issue, would you go to an agency with political appointees?” Christy said. “The government is not the final word on the truth.” Reference: http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/17/exclusive-noaa-relies-on-compromised-thermometers-that-inflate-u-s-warming-trend/ If NOAA can’t keep a simple claim accurate, such as what the GAT was in 1997 versus 2015, why indeed should we trust them? We shouldn’t, we should question everything, always, because it seems the global temperature is not only nothing more than a statistical construct, it is as fickle as the political wind. Meanwhile, satellite temperature data, which NOAA and NASA don’t like to use, shows the Earth as third warmest in 2015. I’ll have more on this story via updates. UPDATE: Dr Richard Lindzen notes: MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen balked at claims of the ‘hottest year’ based on ground based temperature data. “Frankly, I feel it is proof of dishonesty to argue about things like small fluctuations in temperature or the sign of a trend. Why lend credibility to this dishonesty?” Lindzen, an emeritus Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT, told Climate Depot shortly after the announcements. “All that matters is that for almost 40 years, model projections have almost all exceeded observations. Even if all the observed warming were due to greenhouse emissions, it would still point to low sensitivity,” Lindzen continued. “But, given the ‘pause.’ we know that natural internal variability has to be of the same order as any other process,” Lindzen wrote. Lindzen has previously mocked ‘warmest’ or ‘hottest’ year proclamations. Read more: http://www.climatedepot.com/2016/01/20/mit-climate-scientist-dr-richard-lindzen-on-hottest-year-claim-why-lend-credibility-to-this-dishonesty/#ixzz3xueX8Qe4 Advertisements Share this: Print Email Twitter Facebook Pinterest LinkedIn Reddit |
With many different data plans out there, consumers may use their phones differently, with some sticking mostly to Wi-Fi while others use cellular without a care. A new report that recently came out aimed to find out how subscribers across the major four U.S. carriers are using the apps on their devices. A report from FierceWireless and consulting firm P3 shows that T-Mobile customers use their apps far more on cellular than customers of the other three carriers. According to the report, T-Mo subscribers had an average of 141 app sessions per day over cellular, compared to 102 by AT&T customers, 85 from those on Sprint, and 72 for Verizon customers. T-Mobile customers also consumed more data than their counterparts on other carriers, according to the report. T-Mo subscribers consumed an average of 139MB per day using apps over cellular and 268MB over Wi-Fi. To compare, the next closest was Sprint, whose customers consumed 89MB over cellular and 168MB over Wi-Fi. Other tidbits from the report show that T-Mobile customers relied on Wi-Fi for app usage the least of the four major carriers and that YouTube was the most-used app over both cellular and Wi-Fi for T-Mobile customers, followed by Facebook and then Netflix. P3 gathers its data from more than 6,000 smartphone users, and the data in this particular report was obtained between January and August 2016. This report gives an interesting look at how customers across the major U.S. carriers use their apps. Many people are on limited data plans, and so lots of consumers probably try to stick to Wi-Fi to avoid paying data overages. We’re now starting to see carriers like AT&T and Verizon move away from overage fees, though, and instead give their customers throttled data once they’ve used up their monthly data allotment. When it comes to T-Mobile customers, it’s not too surprising to see that app usage over cellular is higher than on the other three major U.S. carriers. Not only has T-Mo been offering unlimited data plans like Simple Choice Unlimited and T-Mobile One, but features like Music Freedom and Binge On have enabled T-Mo subscribers listen to music and watch videos over cellular without touching their high-speed data allotments. For a closer look at this report, hit up the FierceWireless link below. Via: Reddit Source: FierceWireless |
If her email practices foiled public-records requests or compromised classified information, those are “valid questions,” Mr. Sanders said. [... On the issue of Mrs. Clinton’s emails, Mr. Sanders didn’t say he regretted his debate remarks. “You get 12 seconds to say these things,” he said of the debate setting. “There’s an investigation going on right now. I did not say, ‘End the investigation.’ That’s silly.…Let the investigation proceed unimpeded.” In what the media is casting as a major shift, Bernie Sanders said on Wednesday that he supports ongoing investigation into Hillary Clinton's email practices as secretary of state:These comments are something of a shift, but the media is also probably overselling them. It's not a gaping contradiction to say that American voters are sick of the media hype over Clinton's emails and the degree to which that hype has crowded out substantive discussion of policy and also say that a nonpartisan investigation (i.e. not the House Benghazi Committee) is reasonable and valid. Time will tell if this marks a shift in how directly and on what topics Sanders will criticize Clinton—it's getting to be campaign prime time when candidates do take each other on more directly, and with Clinton's national poll numbers going back above 50 percent, Sanders has added incentive to be harsher. I still wouldn't look for him to start sounding like Donald Trump or even Jeb Bush in his criticisms of his competitor. |
The first blast, with modernised spelling of the title The title page of a 1766 edition of, with modernised spelling of the title The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women[1] is a polemical work by the Scottish reformer John Knox, published in 1558. It attacks female monarchs, arguing that rule by females is contrary to the Bible. Title [ edit ] The title employs certain words in spellings and senses that are now archaic. "Monstruous" (from Latin mōnstruōsus) means "unnatural"; "regiment" (Late Latin regimentum or regimen) means "rule" or "government". The title is frequently found with the spelling slightly modernised, e.g. "monstrous regiment" or "monstrous regimen". It is clear however that the use of "regimen[t]" meant "rule" and should not be confused with "regiment" as in a section of an armed force. Content [ edit ] The book was written anonymously from Geneva, Switzerland, against the female sovereigns of his day, particularly Mary of Guise, Dowager Queen of Scotland and regent to her daughter Mary, Queen of Scots, and Queen Mary I of England. Knox, a staunch Protestant Reformer, opposed the Catholic queens on religious grounds, and used them as examples to argue against female rule over men generally. Building on his premise that, according to Knox's understanding of the Bible, "God, by the order of his creation, has [deprived] woman of authority and dominion" and from history that "man has seen, proved, and pronounced just causes why it should be", he argued the following with regard to the specific role of women bearing authority: For who can denie but it repugneth to nature, that the blind shal be appointed to leade and conduct such as do see? That the weake, the sicke, and impotent persones shall norishe and kepe the hole and strong, and finallie, that the foolishe, madde and phrenetike shal gouerne the discrete, and giue counsel to such as be sober of mind? And such be al women, compared vnto man in bearing of authoritie. For their sight in ciuile regiment, is but blindnes: their strength, weaknes: their counsel, foolishenes: and judgement, phrenesie, if it be rightlie considered. His polemic against female rulers had negative consequences for him when Elizabeth I succeeded her half-sister Mary I as Queen of England; Elizabeth was a supporter of the Protestant cause, but took offence at Knox's words about female sovereigns. Her opposition to him personally became an obstacle to Knox's direct involvement with the Protestant cause in England after 1559. Legacy [ edit ] Around the 20th century, the work's title became a popular ironic cliché in feminist literature and art. Examples include the novels Regiment of Women (1917), A Monstrous Regiment of Women (1995), and Monstrous Regiment (2003), as well as the feminist British theatre troupe, the Monstrous Regiment Theatre Company. See also [ edit ] Notes [ edit ] ^ The title actually appears in all capitals, except for the last three words; in accordance with 16th-century orthographical norms, capitalized "trumpet" and "monstruous" are written TRVMPET and MONSTRVOVS. Further reading [ edit ] |
Huge news from The Boss. Bruce Springsteen has cancelled Sunday's show in Greensboro, NC because of the so called "Bathroom Law" that the state recently passed. A number of companies have come out against the law but Springsteen is the first high profile musician to cancel a show in the state. And he did it only two days before the show was to take place. In his words: I feel that this is a time for me and the band to show solidarity for those freedom fighters. As a result, and with deepest apologies to our dedicated fans in Greensboro, we have canceled our show scheduled for Sunday, April 10th. Some things are more important than a rock show and this fight against prejudice and bigotry — which is happening as I write — is one of them. It is the strongest means I have for raising my voice in opposition to those who continue to push us backwards instead of forwards. Read his full statement here. |
In this publicity photo provided by HBO, Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister, left, and Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister, are shown in a scene from HBO's "Game of Thrones," Season 2, in Dubrovnik, Croatia. (AP Photo/HBO, Paul Schiraldi) "Game Of Thrones" was seriously snubbed for 2013 Golden Globes nominations. The HBO's hit fantasy series didn't receive a single Golden Globe nomination for its second season. Last year, actor Peter Dinklage nabbed Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries or TV Movie for his portrayal of Tyrion Lannister on "Game Of Thrones," beating out Paul Giamatti, Guy Pearce, Tim Robbins, and Eric Stonestreet. Additionally, the series earned a nomination for Best Drama Series at the 2012 Golden Globes. "Game Of Thrones" has consistently seen high ratings for HBO, with April's Season 2 premiere bringing in 3.9 million viewers. The series will return for a third season on March 31, 2013. Tune in to see who wins at the 2013 Golden Globe ceremony at 8 p.m. EST on NBC, which will be hosted by "30 Rock" star Tina Fey and "Parks and Recreation's" Amy Poehler. |
The tea bar is carving its own space in the world of beverage service establishments. Some tea bars offer a place for busy professionals to grab a cup before work, while others are pioneering tea-forward cocktails to be enjoyed at night. Overall, this trend offers tea drinkers a contemporary space to enjoy a pot of their preferred drink. For now, tea bars are mostly found in cities or other busy areas with high populations of young adults. Their similarity to coffee shops appeals to on-the-go professionals, while their comfortable space can accommodate remote workers or groups of friends looking for a meeting place. As their popularity grows and cities become saturated with tea bar options, these establishments are likely to begin appearing in suburban areas as well. Plush seating, natural light, and rustic or minimalist decor may also contribute to an aesthetic that customers are eager to experience and share on social media. Often featuring cozy interior design and plenty of space to sit and relax while you finish a pot of tea, tea bars are also a great answer to the rising popularity of the Danish concept hygge , or the idea that contentment comes from comfort and quality time spent with loved ones. With health and wellness foods trending , tea is showing up on more and more establishments’ menus. Many types of tea can contribute to your wellness, including varieties with digestive benefits, stress-relieving properties, or energy boosts. As a result, tea bars can serve as havens for health-conscious patrons. There are a few main reasons that tea bars are quickly becoming more common. The customer base of a tea bar may look demographically different than a tea house as well. Tea houses generally have an upscale, formal atmosphere, which contrasts with the casual and relaxed environment found in most tea bars. As a result, tea bar patrons may be a generally younger crowd. While tea-forward establishments have previously been seen with tea houses, tea bars tend to have a different aesthetic and purpose. Victorian-style tea houses are ideal for customers who want to experience a traditional tea service, while tea bars offer a contemporary alternative to coffee houses. Tea bars are similar to coffee shops, but these trendy establishments make tea the spotlight of their menus. Some tea bars transition from day to night with tea-centric cocktails that bring a new wave of flavors for bartenders to experiment with. A tea bar may also have a tea sommelier, or tea expert, who offers customers information on how to enjoy their chosen variety and how to pair it with food items on the bar’s menu. While tea is often on the menu at coffee shops, a new type of establishment is emerging that makes tea the focus. Tea bars have started popping up in urban areas, and their popularity is causing a growth of modern shops that are dedicated to tea service . Below, learn more about what tea bars do, how they differ from traditional tea houses, and why they're becoming so popular. How to Pipe a Rose with Buttercream Icing If you run a bakery or another foodservice business that makes cakes, chances are you've created a few roses with buttercream icing. These decorations are an attractive addition to wedding and birthday cakes, but learning how to make roses with icing can be tricky. Regardless of what you decorate with your buttercream roses, the step-by-step instructions below will help you learn how to make icing roses perfectly every time. Plus, we share some helpful tips on how to make your icing the perfect consistency for piping. Step by Step Instructions: How to Make Buttercream Roses Step 1. Put the coupler into the pastry bag and slide it towards the tip of the bag. Step 2. Cut the bag to size and dry fit the coupler. Step 3. Attach the rose tip to the coupler and secure it with a coupler screw. Step 4. Fold down the edges of your pastry bag. Step 5. Add buttercream icing to the bag with a pastry spatula. Step 6. Pipe a base for the center cone of the rose onto the pastry nail. The larger the rose, the larger the base will need to be. Step 7. Create petals around the base, working in a counter-clockwise direction. Step 8. Continue creating small arches for each individual petal. Repeat this process until you have achieved the desired rose size. Step 9. Once your rose is finished, gently remove it from the nail with an offset baker's spatula. Step 10. Carefully place the finished rose on your cake. Step 11. Using green buttercream and a leaf tip, pipe leaves around your roses. Step 12. Your cake is ready to serve! Tips for Making the Best Buttercream for Piping Now that you’ve seen how to pipe roses, here are some tips that can help you make sure that your roses turn out neatly every time. Use the right icing recipe: Make a buttercream with a smooth texture and a bit of firmness. A recipe with too much stiff butter could make the icing hard to pipe. If you add too much sugar, your buttercream could become crumbly. With too little sugar, your icing will be loose and won’t hold the shape you pipe it into. Make a buttercream with a smooth texture and a bit of firmness. A recipe with too much stiff butter could make the icing hard to pipe. If you add too much sugar, your buttercream could become crumbly. With too little sugar, your icing will be loose and won’t hold the shape you pipe it into. Make sure your buttercream is the proper temperature: Warm buttercream will slip and slide and create wilty roses. Icing that is too cold can’t be piped easily, so you may have trouble creating smooth and delicate petals. Warm buttercream will slip and slide and create wilty roses. Icing that is too cold can’t be piped easily, so you may have trouble creating smooth and delicate petals. Don’t overwhip your buttercream: Buttercream that has been whipped for too long contains a lot of air pockets, which often burst as you’re piping the icing out of the bag. Buttercream that has been whipped for too long contains a lot of air pockets, which often burst as you’re piping the icing out of the bag. Plan your design before your place your roses: Use a round cookie cutter that is the same size as your roses to create slight impressions in the icing on your cake. This way, you can plan where your roses will go and decide how much buttercream you need to make for your design. Frosting roses are an attractive addition to a variety of desserts, but learning how to pipe a rose can be difficult. If you follow these simple step-by-step directions and our tips on how to make the best buttercream for piping, you can create elegant and colorful frosting flowers for your bakery's signature confections. Share Pin it Share Tweet What Is Club Soda? How to Use Sparkling Water Whether you are looking for a healthy alternative to soda or searching for the perfect mixer, you will likely come across club soda, tonic water, and seltzer water on your quest. While all of these options are carbonated and fun to drink, each one has unique components and is typically featured in different drinks. Below is a guide to help you decide which fizzy beverage is right for your needs. What Is Club Soda? Club soda is carbonated water with added compounds for taste. Although it may differ brand to brand, club soda usually contains ingredients such as sodium bicarbonate, sodium chloride, and potassium sulfate. Though club soda has zero calories and no caffeine, the sodium content may vary based on the brand and serving size of the liquid. Most brands of club soda have below 5% of your daily value of sodium, so you don’t have to worry about excessive sodium intake if you drink club soda in moderation. What Does Club Soda Taste Like? Club soda has a slightly more salty, mineral flavor than traditional seltzer. However, it still boasts a clean and fresh taste. What Is Club Soda Used For? Club soda is a great mixer for many cocktails. Club soda is a staple in a few well-known drinks like a Tom Collins, a gin rickey, or a paloma. You can also use club soda to make non-alcoholic drinks, like Italian soda or bubbly lemonade. Did you know? If you use club soda to replace water or milk in your dough and batter recipes, the results will yield an airier product. Who doesn’t like fluffy pancakes and waffles? What Is Seltzer Water? Seltzer water is simply water that has been carbonated artificially, although it may be possible to find naturally carbonated seltzer. It contains no other additives, like salts or sweeteners, so it has zero calories and no sugar. What Does Seltzer Taste Like? Seltzer water has a clean, simple taste. If you’re looking for a healthy alternative to soda, seltzer is a good place to start. Did you know? Seltzer originated in a small town called Selters in Germany. Beginning in the late 8th century, the area was renowned for the supposed healing properties of its natural springs. It became a symbol of health and wealth over the next centuries, as only the rich could afford importing this special water from Selters. What Is Tonic Water? In its simplest form, tonic water is carbonated water that has high-fructose corn syrup, sodium benzoate (a preservative), citric acid, and quinine (a naturally occurring compound) that adds to its flavor and calorie count. Tonic water is great in the classic gin and tonic or vodka tonic. What Does Tonic Water Taste Like? Tonic water has a bitter and somewhat sweet flavor. Did you know? Quinine was originally used as a medicine for malaria, so British soldiers would mix soda water, sugar, and eventually gin to help the bitter taste go down a little more easily. Quinine is also fluorescent, so the next time you get a chance, hold your gin and tonic underneath a black light! What Is Sparkling Water? Sparkling water is an umbrella term for any water that has been artificially carbonated with either hydrogen sulfide or, more commonly, carbon dioxide. Club soda, seltzer, and tonic water are all types of sparkling water with different ingredients and flavors. Mineral water is often categorized with sparkling water, but not all mineral water is carbonated. Sparkling water is an excellent alternative to soda or juice, as it is not loaded with sugar. Seltzer, club soda, and tonic water are all sound economic choices, costing around $1 for a one-liter bottle. Can Club Soda, Seltzer, and Tonic Water Be Used Interchangeably? Club soda and seltzer water can be used interchangeably with little to no flavor change, but tonic water should not substitute club soda or seltzer. With its distinct bitter or citrus flavor, tonic water may drastically affect the flavor of the drink you are trying to make. Conversely, replacing tonic water with club soda and seltzer in a drink will yield a more neutral taste than with tonic water. Create Your Own Carbonated Water Though $1 for a one-liter bottle is reasonable, making your own carbonated water can help save money for your business. A soda siphon and charger can be used to create seltzer easily and at a sensible price. The soda siphon is a one-time purchase, and you only need to replace the chargers every so often. Now that you are aware of the variances between club soda, seltzer, and tonic water, you can rest easy when choosing what to stock in your bar. Delight your guests with a new and special cocktail on your beverage menu by combining liquor, juice, and your choice of sparkling water. Share Pin it Share Tweet |
10 People Whose Lives Were Changed By Reddit If you want to learn about "community," you'd do well to pay attention to Reddit. Sure, the site is news aggregator with thousands of different communities across all types of interests. But there's more to it than that. When there's a cause that needs to be tackled, Reddit has shown time and time again that it's ready, willing, and able to step up to the plate. From political and legal issues to the stuff that's just plain fun, here's a look at what Reddit community members have done for each other. A schoolteacher received $16,000 worth of textbooks. One user, a schoolteacher, couldn't get enough textbooks for his students. The Reddit community raised over $16,000 to buy 125 books for his classes. Rob Zerban got campaign donations to run against Paul Ryan in the House of Representatives. Rob Zerban was running against Paul Ryan for the House of Representatives in 2012 and ran an "Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit. It got a lot of attention and Redditors ending up donating more than $5,000 to his campaign. Zerban's bid for the House was ultimately unsuccessful, but he's already putting together an exploratory committee to look into another run. Redditors fed the Boston police department in the wake of the recent bombing. It's true – Redditors ponied up the cash to send lots and lots of pizza to law enforcement officials as they investigated the Boston Marathon bombing. Please follow Business Insider on Twitter and Facebook. |
VMware NSX has quite a few different functionalities, some of those come from binaries installed directly in the ESXi kernel, others come from another important component of NSX, one that is often called the Swiss army knife of virtual networking : the Edge Services Gateway. The ESG gives you a bunch of different features, such as Routing, Firewalling, Load Balancing, multiple types of VPN connections and more. In this post, we’ll go through the functionality you get when using an NSX Edge Services Gateway to Load Balance network traffic and we’ll also have a look at how NSX stacks up to some of the big boys of load balancing, F5 and Citrix. Let’s start by going through (tab by tab) an example of an Edge Services Gateway Load Balancer setup in the vSphere Web Client. You’ll start by going to Networking and Security > NSX Edges > Double click an Edge Gateway. Global Configuration This is where you enable load balancing and a few other features, like Logging, which is self explanatory. You can also turn on Acceleration, which allows you to use a lighter version of the load balancing engine that is strictly focused on Layer 4 Load Balancing. It’s something you should use if you don’t plan on using the Layer 7 load balancing features, such as URL rewriting or Advanced Logging. You’ll need to use Application Rules to use those features. Here’s a link to some of the examples in the VMware documentation about that. Finally, Service Insertion is a feature that allows you to integrate NSX with a 3rd party vendor’s networking or security software solution. It basically allows these vendors to take advantage of the fact that NSX is hooked into every vNIC to inject additional services like IPS, IDS, 3rd part Load Balancing, etc. For example, Palo Alto has a Intrusion Prevention solution that uses these Service Insertion hooks. F5 offers a load a balancing solution that basically replaces the NSX Edge Gateway method by provisioning a full fledged virtual Big-IP appliances instead. Application Profiles Application Profiles let you define what type of traffic your application is expecting. Of course, http and https are the most common, but in reality, nothing is stopping you from load balancing any other type of traffic. This is also where you determine at what component SSL termination will take place, at the load balancer or on the servers behind the load balancer. If you choose to terminate SSL on the load balancer, you’ll need to provide a certificate, whether self-signed or by a CA. Another important feature in the Application Profile is Session Persistence, also know as sticky sessions, which ensures that a client always hits the same node behind the load balancer, respective of what conditions you set. Service monitors A service monitor does what it says, it monitors. Depending on the status of the servers in the Pool being monitored, the Service Monitor might mark a server or even an entire Pool as DOWN, if some or none of the servers are not responding to the checks you’ve configured. To set these up, all you need to do is configure a few parameters for your checks and you’re off to the races. Word of warning though: you might want to delay putting these in place until the application that you are load balancing is completely installed, otherwise the Service Monitor might mark your Load Balancing Pool as DOWN and your servers could become unreachable! Pools A Pool contains the list of servers and/or IP addresses of the servers that traffic will be load balanced to. Each Pool also has a Load Balancing algorithm assigned to it and optionally a Service Monitor as well. If you want the servers in your pool to see the load balanced traffic as coming from the actual client’s IP address, check the “Transparent” box. Otherwise, the servers will see the Edge Load Balancer’s internal IP as the source for all load balanced traffic. Virtual Servers A Virtual Server, also known as a VIP or Virtual IP, is the point of entry for the load balanced traffic. If you are hosting a website, the Virtual Server’s IP is what you’ll want to point your website URL to. Normally, every Virtual Server will have a Default Pool assigned to it so it knows where to send the traffic it receives. The configuration is pretty straightforward and most options are self-explanatory, as seen in the image below. AUTOMATING THE DEPLOYMENT OF LOAD BALANCERS If you’re planning on automating the deployment of NSX Edge Services Gateway Load Balancers, your options are pretty open, since NSX offers a (mostly) well documented REST API. Option 1 – vRealize Automation If you already have vRealize Automation in your organization, adding NSX Load Balancer automation into the mix is a breeze. Once vRA is configure to use NSX, all you’ll need is to go to the vRA Blueprint designer and add a “On demand Load Balancer” object onto your blueprint canvas, configure a few basic settings and that will ensure an ESG with Load Balancing functionnalities will be provisioned when that blueprint is requested. Option 2 – REST APIs If you don’t use vRealize Automation in your organization, well you’re still in luck, because deploying and configuring an Edge Service Gateway with Load Balancing is really not all that difficult if you know your way around a REST API. Here’s a quick jumpstart to point you in the right direction : To deploy an ESG, your REST API request will have to look like this : POST https://NSX-Manager-IP-Address/api/4.0/edges/ <edge> <datacenterMoid>datacenter-2</datacenterMoid> <name>org1-edge</name> <description>Description for the edge gateway</description> <tenant>org1</tenant> <fqdn>org1edge1</fqdn> … (Page 47 of the VMware NSX API Guide ) To activate and configure Load Balancing, your REST API request will have to look like this : PUT https://NSX-Manager-IP-Address/api/4.0/edges/edgeId/loadbalancer/config <loadBalancer> <enabled>true</enabled> <enableServiceInsertion>false</enableServiceInsertion> <accelerationEnabled>true</accelerationEnabled> … <virtualServer> … (Page 200 of the VMware NSX API Guide ) Option 3 – PowerNSX Finally, even if you know nothing about consuming REST APIs, you’ll still be taken care of! A community NSX pro named Nick Bradford created PowerNSX, a Powershell module that basically talks to the NSX REST API, but allows you to use a Powershell cmdlet based CLI. Here’s a link to the community project. Here’s a quick example to get up and running with PowerNSX to create an Edge Gateway and activate the load balancer on it : New-NsxEdge -Name VLB -Datastore Datastore1 (…) | Set-NSXLoadBalancer -Enabled Easy peasy. WHY CHOOSE NSX FOR LOAD BALANCING? Since NSX is a relatively new product, chances are that if you have significant experience with Load Balancing network traffic, you’ll most likely have worked with something like an F5 or a Citrix physical appliance. Those are great solutions for a lot of organizations, but being the physical solution they are, it can get a little cumbersome to deal with when you want to integrate them with a Cloud Management Platform or a SDN solution like NSX. Those 2 companies in particular do offer virtual load balancing solutions as well, and those can be very interesting if you’re already heavily invested in their respective ecosystem and planning to automate some load balancing functionality. Comparing that to NSX, consider that if you use vSphere (which you probably do, if you’re reading this blog!) NSX is meant for YOU. It’s a piece of cake to integrate NSX into an existing vSphere environment and if you use vRealize Automation as a Cloud Management Platform it’s a no contest when it comes to integration. F5 does offer an Orchestrator workflow package that can talk to its iControl REST API to help you get started, but there’s nothing quite like vRA and NSX native integration… That being said, I’m not saying that NSX is the “be all, end all” of load balancing, because there certainly will exist use cases for which physical load balancing just makes more sense. So when should you use virtual load balancing? As always, the answer is: “it depends” on requirements, constraints, use case, etc. VIRTUAL LOAD BALANCING ARCHITECTURE IMPACTS One more reason you’ll want to consider NSX Load Balancing is because of the potential positive architectural impacts this solution has. For example, the traditional Load Balancer architecture that is used when you have physical Load Balancing appliances, is to have that one (or two) boxes that traffic transits through to get to its destination. Those load balancers become a central point of convergence in your network and ensuring that they are well equipped for it becomes crucial. Contrast that with NSX, (or any other similar virtual load balancer for that matter) given the fact that Edge Gateways run in VMs, (which have a tiny footprint, by the way) that means you can provision as many as you want, each time for a different application or purpose. Basically, NSX gives you the flexibility to choose whether you want to use the typical single-point-of-convergence load balancing (scale up) architecture or a newer everyone-gets-their-own virtual load balancing (scale out) architecture. This flexibility is a factor to consider, because it can dramatically change your network design and have a significant impact on cost and maybe even your network’s security. Here’s a visual representation of both those architectures and how they differ : PERFORMANCE VS A PHYSICAL APPLIANCE Can you feel the anticipation in the air? Discussions around performance can often get heated… That debated has long ago been put to bed in the server world, but not quite yet in the Load Balancing space. But what you need to understand is that the same principles that applied to server virtualization apply to load balancer virtualization. The overhead from using a hypervisor is so insignificantly low that performance in the virtualized world is “””almost””” never a factor to consider and “””almost””” always are those concerns completely outweighed by all the positive impacts of using virtualization. In other words, a virtual Load Balancer should perform just as well or as bad as a physical Load Balancer with the same specs. So the real performance level comes down to right-sizing your Load Balancer for your use case and putting it in an optimal place in your network architecture. AVAILABILITY On the subject of Availability, whether you use Load Balancing for a world renown e-commerce website or for load balancing SMTP servers that simply exist to send you e-mail reminders to water your garden, NSX has you covered at the same level as when you buy redundant behemoth-spec’d hardware from F5 or Citrix. However instead of buying, racking and configuring 2 physical monsters, all you need to do is check a box when deploying an Edge Gateway to ensure that if your Edge fails, its identical partner Edge VM will be ready to take over the load within as little as 6 seconds. THE BOTTOM LINE The VMware NSX Load Balancer might not be the Ferrari of Load Balancers, but it definitely is a very reliable, pimped out BMW with a few nice extras. Dedicated physical load balancers like F5 Big-IP or Citrix Netscaler might have a few features here and there that NSX doesn’t have yet, but NSX more than makes up for it in two ways : (1) It is easy as pie to automate, either using vRealize Automation (which gives you pretty good load balancer automation out-of-the-box) or any other tool that automates it via NSX’s REST API. (2) Since the footprint of an ESG VM is so small, you can have dedicated load balancers for certain functions or certain customers. That allows for a different load balancing architecture than what we’re traditionally used to. Instead of having all the load balanced traffic converging on the physical load balancer, you could have every application have its own dedicated virtual load balancer inside its network. Finally, keep in mind that there are other virtual load balancers on the market, but those often come with an attached cost per virtual appliance and are likely not to offer the same level of out-of-the-box integration with other VMware products like vRealize Automation. So there it is. If you think this Load Balancing stuff is cool, wait just a little bit longer and you’ll see even more cool stuff coming from NSX, like Distributed Load Balancing! That will make DR scenarios look like a magic trick! |
Club CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said he was pleasantly surprised by how new Bayern Munich addition Renato Sanches performed at Euro 2016, while adding they might not have been able to afford him after his displays in France. Sanches, 18, was purchased by Bayern from Benfica ahead of the Euro in France for an initial €35 million, a fee that could rise as high as €45m based on performance bonuses. Following that, Sanches went on to play a significant role in helping Portugal win the Euro title, becoming the youngest player to play for his country's national team -- a record previously held by Cristiano Ronaldo -- and the youngest player to feature in a European Championship final in the 1-0 win versus hosts France. Renato Sanches' fee would have been out of Bayern's price range after the Euro, according to CEO Rummenigge. Rummenigge told Soester Anzeiger: "Was I surprised by Renato Sanches' performances at Euro 2016? Yes and no. "It's extraordinary when someone plays at the Euros like he did at the tender age of 18. I was nowhere near that level at the age of 18. But then again, he does seem to have extraordinary talents. "We are happy that we made the decision to sign him quite early, after the Champions League quarterfinal tie against Benfica. And we are very happy that we had the courage to spend big on him in April because €35m is a lot of money. "Bayern would not have been able to afford him had we tried to sign him after the Euros. We would be talking about crazy money now. And he would definitely not be playing in the Bundesliga next term then." |
There are ambitious Minecraft mods, then there's the kind that tries to turn Mojang's game into one of the best (and most epic) strategy games of all time, Civilization. This post originally appeared on Kotaku UK. CivilizationCraft, as it is so un-catchily named, does just that. You play like any other Civilization game, building your nation from one settlement to a globe-spanning empire (or 'civilisation', if you will). The multiplayer mod features a lot of what makes the Civ series so great, like trade goods, conflicts, tech trees, spies, wonders and diplomacy, among many others - oh, and mining. Because it's Minecraft. Obviously. You can see more images and read more in-depth descriptions of what CivilizationCraft entails right here. Try and resist getting involved after drinking all that in, I dare you. You can find the mod to download and servers to join on the CivCraft site, and more discussion is going on in the dedicated subreddit. Advertisement |
The mundanity of a local council meeting in Alaska was astonishingly broken when a decision to open up the forum to all religions resulted in a Satanist presenting the opening prayer – to Lucifer. When the local government of Kenai Borough decided to welcome other faiths to their assemblies they probably didn’t envisage opening up their doors to the Lord of Darkness. READ MORE: Satanic Temple rolls out after-school program for kids On Tuesday, Iris Fontana – reportedly a member of the Satanic Temple organization that views Satan as a symbol for rebellion and rational inquiry – gave the assembly invocation usually reserved for pastors. Meeting attendees were reminded that they did not have to participate in the opening ritual. Assembly members stood silently in a circle while Fontana asked them to “embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat of the tree of knowledge.” She then ended the surreal prayer with the words “Hail Satan.” While traditional Satanism may invoke well-worn images of horned beasts, cloaked figures, and fiery underground lairs, the Satanic Temple is an atheist organization. Its website explains that it does not promote evil or the belief in supernatural beings. Hello Monday... (Image from I Gatti deck) #thesatanictemple A photo posted by The Satanic Temple (@thesatanictemple) on Apr 11, 2016 at 2:04pm PDT “The Satanic Temple holds to the basic premise that undue suffering is bad, and that which reduces suffering is good. We do not believe in symbolic ‘evil.’ We embrace blasphemy as a legitimate expression of personal independence from counter-productive traditional norms,” it states. Footage of the unorthodox assembly opening, which preceded a fairly humdrum meeting regarding a $138,000 paving project and changing a hospital boundary, has been posted on the Kenai Peninsula Borough website. Over 100,000 sign petition opposing Satanic 'black mass' in Oklahoma government buildinghttps://t.co/62EbLr4xlapic.twitter.com/LEMERFzTPA — RT America (@RT_America) April 23, 2016 However, the excitement of a prayer to the supposedly God-banished angel has not gone down too well with some assembly members. “I appreciate what the Assembly President’s doing with the prayer issue and trying to be fair, but I find it ironic that the prayer from the atheist wasn’t really about doing good and making good decisions,” assemblyman Dale Bagley told Radio Kenai. He described the incident as “irritating” and questioned whether a local pastor would be allowed to make such a political statement. |
Physicists have found the most convincing signs of a tetraneutron - a four neutron-no proton particle - to date, adding weight to the possibility that the hypothetical particle really does exist. According to theory, this highly elusive particle cluster is impossible, because of how unstable lone neutrons are, but scientists in Japan say they’ve spotted its signature during recent experiments. While the results need to be replicated independently before we can truly say the fabled tetraneutron exists, if other teams can confirm its existence, we’re going to have to make some serious changes to current understanding of nuclear forces. "It would be something of a sensation," nuclear theorist Peter Schuck from France's National Centre for Scientific Research, who wasn’t involved in the discovery, told Science News. Physicists have been searching for the tetraneutron for decades, and while this 1965 paper concluded that no evidence could be found and "the existence of tetraneutrons is most unlikely", four separate papers have since reported experimental observations of the particle. Most recently, theoretical physicist Francisco-Miguel Marqués and his team at the Ganil accelerator in France used a new technique to observe the particle - by watching the disintegration of beryllium and lithium nuclei. In 2002, they were smashing beryllium-14 particles into carbon particles in an attempt to blow apart beryllium’s cluster of four neutrons. As Esther Inglis-Arkell explains over at Gizmodo, when they happened, they should have observed four little flashes, but instead, they got one big flash, signalling that these neutrons broke off in a cluster. So why is the idea of four neutrons teaming up so impossible? "Well, the Pauli exclusion principle specifies that particles in the same system cannot be in the same quantum state. As a consequence of this, even two neutrons shouldn't be able to stick together, let alone four," says Inglis-Arkell. "However, four neutrons smashing at high speed into a carbon atom, and then reaching a detector at exactly the same place and exactly the same time is nearly as impossible as the idea that a basic tenet of physics needs to be modified." Marqués’s team found similar evidence in 2004, but no one’s been able to replicate their results, making true confirmation impossible… until now. A team from the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Science also worked with beryllium particles to produce what they’re calling tetraneutron states. They did this by firing a beam of helium nuclei (which have two protons and six neutrons) at liquid helium (which has two protons and two neutrons), and when the particles collided, four neutrons went missing. Their conspicuous absence lasted around 1 billionth of a trillionth of a second before reappearing as particle decay. "Whenever a pair of alpha particles was detected from these second collisions, simple counting dictated that four neutrons must have been left behind - but were they bound to each other as a single particle, or had they simply flown off in separate directions as debris?" one of the team, Susumu Shimoura, said to Shern Ren Tee at Asian Scientist. To confirm which was the more likely scenario, Shimoura and his team measured the energy given off by the particles in the reaction, and figured out that there wouldn’t have been enough to propel each of the missing neutrons away independently. "This confirmed that the four neutrons left behind were indeed bound into a tetraneutron particle," Tee reports. So what now? Separate teams of researchers are now needed to follow this team’s methodology and come up with the same result and disprove any competing explanations for what they saw. If they can do that, theoretical physicists the world over are going to have to nut out more accurate guidelines for how we understand nuclear forces to behave. And that’s a really exciting thing. It’s not every day that our fundamental understanding of the Universe has to be officially reestablished, and not only could we watch that happen, it could also lead to really important advances in our knowledge of how some of its most mysterious objects actually exist. "Both very large atomic nuclei (where neutrons outnumber protons about three to two, on average) and neutron stars contain large clumps of neutrons, whose behaviour remains very poorly understood," says Shimoura. The research has been published in Physical Review Letters. |
Each week we’ll roll out new rewards for the Featured Episode “Time and Tide.” Last week’s rewards were the Heavy Chronometric Polaron Turret and the Omni-Directional Chronometric Polaron Beam Array. The final reward is the Time and Tide Admiralty Bundle. In addition, the first completion of this mission on an account this week will grant a Featured Episode Weekly Reward Box. This box gives your choice of an Enhanced Universal Tech Upgrade or a Captain Specialization Point Box, which gives the character who opens it a Specialization Point. The Weekly Reward Box, Tech Upgrade, and Specialization Point Box are all Bound to Account, and may be freely traded between your characters. The Specialization Point Box requires the opening character to be level 50 or above. The Time and Tide Admiralty Bundle gives two Pass Tokens and a faction-appropriate One-Time Use Admiralty Ship card. Additionally, claiming the bundle for the first time permanently gives Captains the U.S.S. Pastak Admiralty Hero Ship! The Pastak is a Science-based hero ship, which ignores Science Events and gives +8 Science for every other ship sent on the same Admiralty mission. Captains who have not unlocked the Admiralty system can still claim the Time and Tide Admiralty Bundle to give themselves extra ships once the Admiralty system unlocks. All unlocked rewards will remain as selected options on “Time and Tide” once it is added to the normal Episode list. The Featured Episode Weekly Reward box will not be acquirable by running “Time and Tide” once this week is over. Make sure not to miss out! Jon “CrypticRock” Steady Systems Designer Star Trek Online |
Korea Train eXpress (KTX, 케이티엑스 Kei-ti-ek-seu) is South Korea's high-speed rail system, operated by Korail. Construction began on the high-speed line from Seoul to Busan in 1992. KTX services were launched on April 1, 2004. From Seoul Station the KTX lines radiate with stops at Seoul Station, Yongsan Station towards Busan and Gwangju, and from Gangnam District's Suseo Station with intermediate stations in New Dongtan City and Seoul Subway Line 1's Jije Station in Pyeongtaek. A new line from Wonju to Gangneung was completed in December 2017 to serve the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. Top speed for trains in regular service is currently 305 km/h (190 mph), though the infrastructure is designed for 350 km/h (217 mph). The initial rolling stock was based on Alstom's TGV Réseau, and was partly built in Korea. The domestically developed HSR-350x, which achieved 352.4 km/h (219.0 mph) in tests, resulted in a second type of high-speed trains now operated by Korail, the KTX Sancheon. The next generation KTX train, HEMU-430X, achieved 421.4 km/h in 2013, making South Korea the world's fourth country after Japan, France and China to develop a high-speed train running on conventional rail above 420 km/h. History [ edit ] Origins of the project [ edit ] The Seoul-Busan axis is Korea's main traffic corridor. In 1982, it represented 65.8% of South Korea's population, a number that grew to 73.3% by 1995, along with 70% of freight traffic and 66% of passenger traffic. With both the Gyeongbu Expressway and Korail's Gyeongbu Line congested as of the late 1970s, the government saw the pressing need for another form of transportation. The first proposals for a second Seoul-Busan railway line originated from a study prepared between 1972 and 1974 by experts from France's SNCF and Japan Railway Technical Service on a request from the IBRD.[3] A more detailed 1978-1981 study by KAIST, focusing on the needs of freight transport, also came to the conclusion that separating long-distance passenger traffic on a high-speed passenger railway would be advisable, and it was adopted in the following Korean Five Year Plan. During the following years, several feasibility studies were prepared for a high-speed line with a Seoul–Busan travel time of 1 hour 30 minutes, which gave positive results. In 1989, following the go-ahead for the project, the institutions to manage its preparation were established: the Gyeongbu High Speed Electric Railway & New International Airport Committee, and the High Speed Electric Railway Planning Department (later renamed HSR Project Planning Board). In 1990, the planned Seoul–Busan travel time was 1 hour 51 minutes, the project was to be completed by August 1998, and costs were estimated at 5.85 trillion South Korean won in 1988 prices, 4.6 trillion of which were to be spent on infrastructure, the remainder on rolling stock. As planning progressed, the Korea High Speed Rail Construction Authority (KHSRCA) was established in March 1992 as a separate body with its own budget responsible for the project. In the 1993 reappraisal of the project, the completion date was pushed back to May 2002, and cost estimates grew to 10.74 trillion won. 82% of the cost increase was due to a 90% increase in unit costs in the construction sector, mostly labour costs but also material costs, and the remainder due to alignment changes. To finance the project, the option of a build-operate-transfer (BOT) franchise was rejected as too risky. Funding included direct government grants (35%), government (10%) and foreign (18%) loans, domestic bond sales (31%) and private capital (6%). Creation of the system [ edit ] Start of high-speed line construction [ edit ] KTX network map KHSRCA started construction of the Seoul–Busan Gyeongbu high-speed railway (Gyeongbu HSR) on June 30, 1992, on the 57 km (35 mi) long section from Cheonan to Daejeon, which was intended for use as test track. Construction started before the choice of the main technology supplier, thus alignment design was set out to be compatible with all choices. Of the planned 411 km (255 mi) line, 152.73 km (94.90 mi) would be laid on bridges, and another 138.68 km (86.17 mi) in tunnels. However, plans were changed repeatedly, in particular those for city sections, following disputes with local governments, while construction work suffered from early quality problems.[14] Planned operating speed was also reduced from 350 km/h (217 mph) to the 300 km/h (186 mph) maximum of high-speed trains on the market. Three competitors bid for the supply of the core system, which included the rolling stock, catenary and signalling: consortia led by GEC-Alsthom, today Alstom, one of the builders of France's TGV trains; Siemens, one of the builders of Germany's ICE trains; and Mitsubishi, one of the builders of Japan's Shinkansen trains.[16] In 1994, the alliance of GEC-Alsthom and its Korean subsidiary Eukorail were chosen as winner.[17] The technology was almost identical to that found on the high-speed lines of France's TGV system.[18] Track-related design specifications included a design speed of 350 km/h (217 mph) and standard gauge.[19] Phase 1: Seoul–Daegu and conventional line upgrades [ edit ] Following the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the government decided to realise the Gyeongbu HSR in two phases. In a first phase, two-thirds of the high-speed line between the southwestern suburbs of Seoul and Daegu would be finished by 2004, with trains travelling along the parallel conventional line along the rest of the Seoul–Busan route. The upgrade and electrification of these sections of the Gyeongbu Line was added to the project, and also the upgrade and electrification of the Honam Line from Daejeon to Mokpo, providing a second route for KTX services. The budget for the first phase was set at 12,737.7 billion won, that for the entire project at 18,435.8 billion won in 1998 prices. While the share of government contributions remained unchanged, the share of foreign loans, domestic bond sales and private capital changed to 24%, 29% and 2%. The infrastructure and rolling stock were created in the framework of a technology transfer agreement, which paired up Korean companies with core system supplier Alstom and its European subcontractors for different subsystems.[25][26] Alstom's part of the project amounted to US$2.1 billion[19] or €1.5 billion.[17] Well ahead of the opening of the Gyeongbu HSR for regular service, in December 1999, 34.4 km (21.4 mi) of the test section, later extended to 57 km (35 mi), was finished to enable trials with trains. After further design changes, the high-speed tracks were finished over a length of 223.6 km (138.9 mi), with 15.0 km (9.3 mi) of interconnections to the conventional Gyeongbu Line, including at a short interruption at Daejeon.[27] The high-speed section itself included 83.1 km (51.6 mi) of viaducts and 75.6 km (47.0 mi) of tunnels.[28] Conventional line electrification was finished over the 132.8 km (82.5 mi) across Daegu and on to Busan, the 20.7 km (12.9 mi) across Daejeon, and the 264.4 km (164.3 mi) from Daejeon to Mokpo and Gwangju.[29] After 12 years of construction and with a final cost of 12,737.7 billion won,[30] the initial KTX system with the first phase of the Gyeongbu HSR went into service on April 1, 2004.[31] Phase 2: Daegu–Busan, extra stations, urban sections [ edit ] The Daegu–Busan section of the Gyeongbu HSR became a separate project with the July 1998 project revision, with a budget of 5,698.1 billion won, with funding from the government and private sources by the same ratios as for phase 1. In August 2006, the project was modified to again include the Daejeon and Daegu urban area passages, as well as additional stations along the phase 1 section. For these additions, the budget as well as the government's share of the funding was increased. Construction started in June 2002. The 128.1 km (79.6 mi) line, which follows a long curve to the northeast of the existing Gyeongbu Line, includes 54 viaducts with a total length of 23.4 km (14.5 mi) and 38 tunnels with a total length of 74.2 km (46.1 mi).[30] The two largest structures are the 20,323 m (66,677 ft) Geomjeung Tunnel, under Mount Geumjeong at the Busan end of the line;[34] and the 13,270 m (43,540 ft) Wonhyo Tunnel,[35] under Mount Cheonseong south-west of Ulsan, which will be the longest and second longest tunnels in Korea once the line is opened.[36] A long dispute concerning the environmental impact assessment of the Wonhyo Tunnel, which passes under a wetland area,[35] caused delays for the entire project.[37] The dispute gained nationwide and international attention due to the repeated hunger strikes of a Buddhist nun, led to a suspension of works in 2005,[38] and only ended with a supreme court ruling in June 2006.[39] With the exception of the sections across Daejeon and Daegu, the second phase went into service on November 1, 2010.[40] By that time, 4,905.7 billion won was spent out of a second phase budget, or 17,643.4 billion won out of the total.[30] The two sections across the urban areas of Daejeon and Daegu, altogether 40.9 km (25.4 mi), will be finished by 2014.[30] As of October 2010, the total cost of the second phase was estimated at 7,945.4 billion won, that for the entire project at 20,728.2 billion won.[30] The last element of the original project that was shelved in 1998, separate underground tracks across the Seoul metropolitan area, was re-launched in June 2008, when an initial plan with a 28.6 km (17.8 mi) long alignment and two new stations was announced.[41] Further upgrades of connecting conventional lines [ edit ] The electrification and the completion of the re-alignment and double-tracking of the Jeolla Line, which branches from the Honam Line at Iksan and continues to Suncheon and Yeosu, began in December 2003, with the aim to introduce KTX services in time for the Expo 2012 in Yeosu.[42] The upgrade will allow to raise top speed from 120 to 180 km/h (75 to 112 mph).[43][44] The section of the perpendicular Gyeongjeon Line from Samnangjin, the junction with the Gyeongbu Line near Busan, to Suncheon is upgraded in a similar way, with track doubling, alignment modifications and electrification for 180 km/h (112 mph).[43][44] The until Masan was opened on December 15, 2010.[45] The upgrade is to be complete until Jinju by 2012 and Suncheon by 2014.[43][44] The top speed of the AREX line, Seoul's airport link, is to be raised from 110 to 180 km/h (68 to 112 mph) for the KTX.[46] The Ulsan–Gyeongju–Pohang section of the Donghae Nambu Line is foreseen for an upgrade in a completely new alignment that circumvents downtown Gyeongju and connects to the Gyeongbu High Speed Railway at Singyeongju Station, allowing for direct KTX access to the two cities. On April 23, 2009, the project was approved by the government and a ground-breaking ceremony was held.[47] The altogether 76.56 km (47.57 mi) line is slated to be opened in December 2014.[47] On September 1, 2010, the South Korean government announced a strategic plan to reduce travel times from Seoul to 95% of the country to under 2 hours by 2020.[48] The main new element of the plan is to aim for top speeds of 230–250 km/h (143–155 mph) in upgrades of much of the mainline network with view to the introduction of KTX services.[48] The conventional lines under the scope of the plan include the above, already on-going projects, and their extensions along the rest of the southern and eastern coasts of South Korea, lines along the western coast, lines north of Seoul, and the second, more easterly line between Seoul and Busan with some connecting lines.[48] Further high-speed lines [ edit ] Honam HSR [ edit ] Until 2006,[49] the first plans for a second, separate high-speed line from Seoul to Mokpo were developed into the project of a line branching from the Gyeongbu HSR and constructed in two stages, the Honam High Speed Railway (Honam HSR).[50] The budget for the 185.75 km (115.42 mi) first stage, from the new Osong Station on the Gyongbu HSR to Gwangju·Songjeong Station, was set at 8,569.5 billion won.[50] The second stage, the 48.74 km (30.29 mi) remaining to Mokpo, was to be finished by 2017 with a budget of 2,002.2 billion won.[50] The Osong-Iksan section of the first phase is also intended for use as high-speed test track for rolling stock development, to be fitted with special catenary and instrumented track.[51] The ground-breaking ceremony was held on December 4, 2009.[52] As of September 2010, progress was 9.6% of the project budget then estimated at 10,490.1 billion won for the first phase, which was due for completion in 2014, while the estimate for the entire line stood at 12,101.7 billion won.[53] Suseo HSR [ edit ] First plans for the Honam HSR foresaw a terminus in Suseo Station, southeast Seoul.[50] The branch to Suseo was re-launched as a separate project, the Suseo High Speed Railway (Suseo HSR),[54] in June 2008.[55] Detailed design of the 61.1 km (38.0 mi) line[56] is underway since September 2010, with opening planned by the end of 2014.[57] For the longer term, new high-speed lines from Seoul to Sokcho on the eastern coast, and a direct branch from the Gyeongbu HSR south to Jinju and further to the coast are under consideration.[48] In conjunction with the award of the 2018 Winter Olympics to PyeongChang in July 2011, KTX service via the eastern coast line was anticipated; the expected travel time there from Seoul is 50 minutes. Jeju island [ edit ] In January 2009, the Korea Transport Institute also proposed a 167 km (104 mi) line from Mokpo to Jeju Island, putting Jeju 2 hours 26 minutes from Seoul.[58] The line would include a 28 km (17 mi) bridge from Haenam to Bogil Island and a 73 km (45 mi) undersea tunnel from Bogil Island to Jeju Island (with a drilling station on Chuja Island), for an estimated cost of US$10 billion.[58] As the proposal was popular with lawmakers from South Jeolla province, the government is conducting a feasibility study, but the governor of Jeju expressed skepticism.[59] The route Seoul-Jeju has been mentioned as the world's busiest air route with 9.9 million passengers in 2011. [60] Rolling stock [ edit ] The TGV derived KTX-I The initial KTX-I trainsets, also known as simply KTX or as TGV-K,[61] are based on the TGV Réseau, but with several differences.[25] 46 trains were built - the initial twelve in France by Alstom, the remainder in South Korea by Rotem.[62] The 20-car electric multiple units consist of two traction heads, that is powered end cars without passenger compartment, and eighteen articulated passenger cars, of which the two extreme ones have one motorised bogie each.[63] A KTX-I was built to carry up to 935 passengers at a regular top speed of 300 km/h (186 mph),[63] later increased to 305 km/h (190 mph).[64] The technology transfer agreement for the KTX-I did not provide for a complete control of manufacturing processes and some parts had to be imported. To increase the domestic added value, in 1996, an alliance of South Korean government research agencies, universities and private companies started a project named G7 to develop domestic high-speed rail technology. The main element of the G7 project was the 7-car experimental high-speed train HSR-350x, originally intended as the prototype of a train with 20-car and 11-car versions for 350 km/h (217 mph) commercial service.[61] The train was also known under the names G7, KHST[67] and NG-KTX, and was later officially renamed Hanvit 350.[61] The train was developed on the basis of the transferred TGV technology, but more advanced technology was used for the new motors, power electronics and additional brake systems, while the passenger cars were made of aluminum to save weight, and the nose was a new design with reduced aerodynamic drag.[70] Test runs were conducted between 2002 and 2008,[61] in the course of which HSR-350x achieved the South Korean rail speed record of 352.4 km/h (219.0 mph) on December 16, 2004.[71] The HSR-350x-derived KTX-II For less frequented relations and for operational flexibility, a 2001 study proposed a train created by scaling down the planned commercial version of the HSR-350x, by shortening the train, removing powered bogies from intermediate cars, and lowering top speed.[72] Hyundai Rotem received orders for altogether 24 such trains, called KTX-II, in three batches from July 2006 to December 2008.[73] Design speed is 330 km/h (205 mph), and revenue service speed is 305 km/h (190 mph).[74] The power electronics uses newer technology than the HSR-350x, and the front is a new design, too.[75] The trainsets, of which two can be coupled together, consist of two traction heads and eight articulated passenger cars, and seat 363 passengers in two classes, with enhanced comfort relative to the KTX-I.[76] The domestic added value of the trains was increased to 87%, compared to 58% for the KTX-I.[77] Imported parts include the pantographs,[78] semiconductors in the power electronics,[79] front design,[80] couplers and final drives.[81] The KTX-II was officially renamed as KTX-Sancheon (Hangul: KTX-산천)[82] after the Korean name of the indigenous fish cherry salmon[83] before the first units started commercial service on March 2, 2010.[84] However within weeks of its initial launch, mechanical and design flaws began to appear, in some cases causing trains to stop running and forcing passengers to leave the train and walk back to the station, and in one particular case derailing from the tracks on February 11, 2011. Although the trains were designed to be a domestically-built replacement for the French built Alstrom trains, due to over 30 malfunctions since March 2, 2010, Korail asked manufacturer Hyundai-Rotem to recall all 19 of the trains in operation after finding cracks in two anchor bands in May 2011. [85] Following the recall, the KTX-Sancheon trains were put back in service. In addition to the 24 initial KTX-Sancheon trains, which form the KTX-Sancheon Class 11, new batches have been ordered and delivered since, to provide service on the new Honam, Suseo and Gyeonggang lines. For the opening of the Honam HSR line, 22 trainsets, named Class 12, were delivered ahead of the 2015 opening. In addition, 10 trainsets have been delivered to provide service on the Suseo line, scheduled to open in December 2016 (Class 13), and 15 trainsets (Class 14) have been ordered for the Gyeonggang Line, which opened in late 2017 ahead of the 2018 Winter Olympics[86] In 2007, an alliance of government research institutes, universities and private companies launched the project to build a second experimental high-speed train, named HEMU-400X (later renamed to HEMU-430X).[87] With a budget of 97.4 billion won and a timetable lasting 6 years, the aim was to develop an experimental train capable of reaching 400 km/h (249 mph) in tests, as a basis for commercial trains operating at 350 km/h (217 mph).[88] Unlike all previous South Korean high-speed trains, the 6-car HEMU-400X will be fitted with distributed traction.[89] Detailed plans were presented in October 2010, when the train was expected to be completed in 2011 and to start line tests in 2012.[76] It was later renamed HEMU-430X, which achieved 421.4 km/h on the last day of March 2013, making South Korea the world's fourth country after Japan, France and China to develop a high-speed train running on conventional rail above 420 km/h. KTX-III, the commercial derivative of HEMU-430X, is expected to enter service in 2015.[90] KTX-III was intended to cut Seoul-Busan travel times to 1 hour 50 minutes with a maximum operating speed of 350 km/h (217 mph).[90] The targeted top speed was later increased to 370 km/h (230 mph).[76] In default configuration, the train is to seat 378 passengers in 8 cars, of which only the two driving trailers will be unpowered.[76] EMU-250 is expected to enter the service for Gyeongjeon line with newly built section Bujeon - Masan, in 2021. The name of train displays its original targeted top speed 250 km/h (155 mph), although later it is increased to 260 km/h (162 mph), with the designed maximum 286 km/h (178 mph). Although EMU-250 is a high speed train, its base will be different from former KTX. 19 trainsets (in which 6 sets are dedicated to Gyeongjeon Line) are newly ordered from KORAIL to Hyundai Rotem, and will be tested in 2019-2020. Each trainset has 6 cars with more than 381 passenger seats. List of KTX lines [ edit ] Operation [ edit ] Test ticket for KTX trial run Following a phase of test operation, regular KTX service started on April 1, 2004, with a maximum speed of 300 km/h (186 mph) achieved along the finished sections of the Gyeongbu HSR.[31] In response to frequent passenger complaints regarding speeds on the video display staying just below the advertised 300 mark, operating top speed was raised to 305 km/h (190 mph) on November 26, 2007.[64] Services [ edit ] Services Train # Daily Freq. (July 2018) Route Gyeongbu KTX HSR route 10x/20x 39–48 (Haengsin –) Seoul – Gwangmyeong – Daejeon – Dongdaegu – Ulsan – Busan via Gupo 25x/27x 6–8 (Haengsin –) Seoul – Gwangmyeong – Daejeon – Dongdaegu – Gupo – Busan via Suwon 23x 4 Seoul – Suwon – Daejeon – Dongdaegu – Ulsan – Busan Gyeongjeon KTX 40x/44x 12–14 (Haengsin –) Seoul – Gwangmyeong – Daejeon – Dongdaegu – Changwon – Masan (– Jinju) Donghae KTX 45x/49x 12–13 (Haengsin –) Seoul – Gwangmyeong – Daejeon – Dongdaegu – Pohang Honam KTX HSR route 50x 20–21 (Haengsin –) Yongsan – Gwangmyeong – Gongju – Iksan – Gwangju Songjeong (– Mokpo) via Seodaejeon 57x 8 (Haengsin –) Yongsan – Gwangmyeong – Seodaejeon – Iksan (– Mokpo) Jeolla KTX HSR route 70x 12 (Haengsin –) Yongsan – Gwangmyeong – Gongju – Iksan – Jeonju – Yeosu Expo via Seodaejeon 75x/78x 2–3 (Haengsin –) Yongsan – Gwangmyeong – Seodaejeon – Iksan – Jeonju (– Yeosu Expo) Gangneung KTX 80x/85x 18–26 (Seoul –) Cheongnyangni – Manjong – Pyeongchang – Gangneung Gyeongbu SRT 30x 40 Suseo – Daejeon – Dongdaegu – Ulsan – Busan Honam SRT 60x 20 Suseo – Gongju – Iksan – Gwangju Songjeong (– Mokpo) Frequency of KTX services (trains/week) KTX services are grouped according to their route, and within the groups, the stopping pattern changes from train to train.[91] KTX trains not deviating from the Seoul–Busan corridor are operated as the Gyeongbu KTX service. In 2004, the new service cut the route length from 441.7 to 408.5 km (274.5 to 253.8 mi),[27] and the fastest trains, serving four stations only, cut the minimum Seoul–Busan travel time from the Saemaul's 4 hours 10 minutes to 2 hours 40 minutes.[31] With the extension of the Gyeongbu HSR, from November 1, 2010, the minimum Seoul–Busan travel time reduced to 2 hours 18 minutes,[93] over a travel distance of 423.8 km (263.3 mi).[94] From December 1, 2010, Korail added a pair of non-stop trains[95] with a travel time of 2 hours 8 minutes.[96] Once the sections across Daejeon and Daegu are completed, cutting the Seoul–Busan travel distance to 417.5 km (259.4 mi),[30] plans foresee a further improvement of the four-stop travel time to 2 hours and 10 minutes. Some Gyeongbu KTX services use parts of the conventional line paralleling the high-speed line. From June 2007 until October 2010, some trains left the Gyeongbu HSR between Daejeon and Dongdaegu to serve Gimcheon and Gumi before the opening of an extra station for the two cities on the high-speed line.[98] From November 1, 2010, when most Gyeongbu KTX services began to use the new Daegu–Busan high-speed section, some trains remained on the Gyeongbu Line on that section, and additional trains began to use the Gyeongbu Line on the Seoul–Daejeon section to serve Suwon.[91] KTX trains using the Gyeongbu HSR only from Seoul to Daejeon and continuing all along the Honam Line are operated as the Honam KTX service. In 2004, the new service with a route length of 404.5 km (251.3 mi) between Yongsan in Seoul and Mokpo cut minimum travel time from 4 hours 42 minutes to 2 hours 58 minutes.[31] By 2017, this time is to be cut further to 1 hours 46 minutes. On December 15, 2010, the new Gyeongjeon KTX service started[45] with a minimum travel time of 2 hours 54 minutes[100] over the 401.4 km (249.4 mi) long route between Seoul and Masan.[101] The service is to be extended to Jinju by 2012.[54] A fourth line, the Jeolla KTX service will connect Seoul to Yeosu in 3 hours 7 minutes from September 2011.[102] From 2014, with the completion of the first phase of the Honam HSR, the travel time is reduce further to 2 hours 25 minutes.[103] From 2015, KTX trains are to reach Pohang from Seoul in 1 hour 50 minutes.[104] Tickets and seats [ edit ] Type of seats [ edit ] KTX offers two classes: First Class and Standard Class. Tickets also specify whether a seat is forward-facing or backward-facing according to the direction of travel. There are special reserved Family seats, which are grouped in four, including 2 forward-facing and 2 backward-facing seats. There are reserved seats and unassigned seats.[105] KTX trains have no restaurant cars or bars, only seat service.[63] From 2006, one car of selected KTX services functions as a moving cinema.[106] Ticket prices [ edit ] Differential fare reductions before and after the launch of KTX service KTX fares were designed to be about halfway between those for conventional trains and airline tickets. The fare system implemented at the start of service in April 2004 deviated from prices proportional with distance, to favour long-distance trips. On April 25, 2005,[108] fares were selectively reduced for relations under-performing most. Seoul-Busan Standard Class fares one-way, reserved, for adults; November 1, 2010 Service Mon-Thu Fri-Sat KTX[94] 51,800 won 55,500 won KTX (via Miryang)[94] 47,900 won 51,200 won KTX (via Suwon)[94] 42,100 won 45,000 won Saemaul[110] 39,300 won 41,100 won Mugunghwa[111] 26,500 won 27,700 won From November 1, 2006, due to rising energy prices,[112] Korail applied an 8-10% fare hike for various train services, including 9.5% for KTX.[113] The price of a Seoul-Busan Standard Class ticket increased to 48,100 won.[112] From July 1, 2007, KTX fares were hiked another 6.5%, while those for the slower Saemaeul and Mugunghwa services on the parallel conventional route were raised by 3.5 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively.[114] However, new reduced weekday and unassigned seat fares were also introduced.[114] After the November 1, 2010, start of service on the Daegu–Busan section of the Gyeongbu HSR, the fare for KTX trains using the new section was set about 8% higher than for the old route via Miryang, while that for the new services via Suwon was set lower.[93] Discounts [ edit ] Korail's standard discounts for children, disabled, seniors and groups apply on KTX trains, too.[115] For frequent travellers, Korail's standard discount cards, which are categorised according to age group, apply with the double of the standard discount rates; while discount cards for business and government agency workers apply with the normal rate; both types of discounts are up to 30%.[115] Season period tickets with discounts of up to 60% can also apply to KTX trains.[115] Discounts for family seats (37.5%) and backward facing seats (5%) are specific to the KTX.[115] In addition to Korail's small general discounts for tickets purchased in a vending machine, via cell phone or the internet, discounts of 5–20% apply to a limited number of seats on KTX trains when purchased in advance.[115] For travellers who transfer to other long-distance trains towards destinations beyond KTX stops, transfer tickets with 30% discount apply.[115] Korail pays a refund for late KTX trains, which reaches 100% for trains with a delay above one hour.[42] Korea Rail Pass, a period ticket Korail offers to foreigners, also applies to KTX.[116][117] For passengers using the Korea-Japan Joint Rail Pass, a joint offer of Korail, Japanese railways and ferry services, the discount on KTX trains is 30%.[118] Passenger numbers and usage [ edit ] Forecasts [ edit ] Forecast made in… KTX opening year ridership forecast in passengers/day[119] Gyeongbu Honam Total 1991 196,402 - 196,402 1995 190,203 - 190,203 Dec 1998 Nov 1999 141,497 22,818 164,315 Aug 2003 115,828 36,085 151,913 When the project was launched, KTX was expected to become one of the world's busiest high-speed lines. The first study in 1991 forecast around 200,000 passengers a day in the first year of operation, growing to 330,000 passengers a day twelve years later.[42] In forecasts prepared after the decision to split the project into two phases, the expected first year ridership of Gyeongbu KTX services was reduced by about 40%. With the estimate for the Honam KTX services added to the plan, opening year forecasts ranged between 150,000 and 175,000 passengers a day.[119] Actual initial ridership after the opening of the first phase in 2004 was well short of initial expectations at around half of the final forecast.[121] In October 2010, before the opening of the second phase, Korail expected ridership to rise from the then current 106,000 to 135,000 passengers a day.[122] Ridership evolution [ edit ] KTX was introduced on 1 April 2004. In the first 100 days, daily passenger numbers averaged 70,250, generating an operational revenue of about 2.11 billion won per day, 54% of what was expected.[121] On January 14, 2005, Prime Minister Lee Hae Chan stated that "the launch of KTX was a classic policy failure" due to construction costs significantly above and passenger numbers well below forecasts.[123] However, ridership increased by over a third on the Gyeongbu KTX and over a half on the Honam KTX in two years. Daily operating profit rose to 2.8 billion won by December 2005, when financial break-even was forecast at a ridership level of around 100,000 passengers a day, which was expected by the end of 2006.[125] The 100 millionth rider was carried after 1116 days of operation on April 22, 2007, when cumulative income stood at 2.78 trillion won.[126] KTX finances moved into the black in 2007.[127] The next year, with revenues equal to US$898 million and costs equal to US$654 million, KTX was Korail's most profitable branch.[128] By the sixth anniversary in April 2010, KTX trains travelled a total 122.15 million kilometres, carrying 211.01 million passengers.[129] Punctuality gradually improved from 86.7% of trains arriving within 5 minutes of schedule in 2004[130] to 98.3% in 2009.[129] In 2009, the average daily ridership was 102,700.[129] As of April 2010, the single-day ridership record stood at 178,584 passengers, achieved on January 26, 2009, the Korean New Year.[130] By the tenth anniversary KTX had travelled a total 240 million kilometres, carrying 414 million passengers.[131] Market share and effect [ edit ] Gyeongbu corridor Honam corridor Evolution of modal shares on selected relations with KTX service The introduction of high-speed services had the strongest effect on long-distance relations with a significant portion of the journey on the high-speed line, like Seoul–Busan: KTX took both the majority of the market and the bulk of rail passengers in the first year already, increasing the total share of rail from around two-fifths to a market dominating two-thirds by 2008. On long-distance relations with significant distances along conventional lines and resulting more modest travel time gains, that is along the Honam Line, the KTX and overall rail market share gain decreases with distance. On medium-distance relations like Seoul–Daejeon, KTX gained market share mostly at the expense of normal rail express services and air traffic, and helped to increase the total share of rail. On short distance intercity relations line Seoul–Cheonan, due to the modest gains in time and the location of KTX stops outside city cores, KTX gains were at the expense of conventional rail, while intercity rail's modal share was little changed.[130] By 2007, provincial airports suffered from deficits after a drop in the number of passengers attributed to the KTX.[133] With lower ticket prices, by 2008, KTX has swallowed up around half of the airlines' previous demand between Seoul and Busan (falling from 5.3 million passengers in 2003 to 2.4 million).[134] Though some low-cost carriers failed and withdrew from the route, others still planned to enter competition even at the end of 2008.[135] Budget airlines achieved a 5.6% growth in August 2009 over the same month a year earlier while KTX ridership decreased by 1.3%, a trend change credited to the opening of Seoul Subway Line 9, which improved Gimpo International Airport's connection to southern Seoul.[136] In the first two months after the launch of the second phase of the Gyeongbu HSR, passenger numbers on flights between Gimpo and Ulsan Airports dropped 35.4% compared to the same period a year earlier, those between Gimpo and Pohang Airports 13.2%.[137] Between Gimpo Airport and Busan's Gimhae International Airport, airline passenger numbers remained stable (+0.2%), as a consequence of a budget airline competing with large discounts and aggressive marketing.[137] In the first month of Gyeongjeon KTX service, express bus services between Seoul and Masan or Changwon experienced 30–40% drops in ridership.[138] Technical and operational issues [ edit ] State of infrastructure [ edit ] Lawmakers criticised the safety of Korail's tunnels after the Ministry of Construction and Transportation submitted data to the National Assembly on June 13, 2005. The ministry added fire prevention standards to high-speed line design standards only in November 2003, thus they weren't applied to the by then finished tunnels of the first phase of KTX. Consequently, few tunnels had emergency exits, and in high-speed railway tunnels, the average walking distance in case of an emergency was 973 m (3,192 ft), with a maximum of 3,086 m (10,125 ft), against a norm of emergency exits every 500 m (1,640 ft) in other countries.[139] A contingency plan for fires in KTX tunnels was incorporated into a national disaster manual in November 2005.[140] On October 5, 2008, it was revealed by lawmakers that inside Hwanghak Tunnel, from December 2004, inspectors have monitored the progression of several cracks and minor track displacements, which continued after maintenance work in March–April 2007 and again in March 2008.[141] The operator claimed that a February 2007 on-site inspection found the problems not safety-relevant, but pledged further maintenance, and an investigation into the causes was launched.[142] Tunnel reinforcement was under way in 2010.[143] Incidents and accidents [ edit ] Annual number of breakdowns and failure rate Operation irregularities mostly concerned the rolling stock, but also signalling, power glitches and track problems. The number of incidents decreased from 28 in the first month to 8 in the fifth. The failure rate decreased sharply by the fifth year of operation.[130] Later, in the first eight months of regular service until October 2010, KTX-II trains broke down 12 times.[145] Causes for breakdowns in the first years of operation involved inexperienced staff and insufficient inspection during maintenance.[146][147] Lawmakers from the Grand National Party published an investigation in October 2006 and expressed concern about the practice to use parts from other trains for spare parts,[148] but Korail stated that that is standard practice in case of urgency with no safety effect, and the supply of spare parts is secured.[149] Korail is also conducting a localisation program to develop replacements for two dozen imported parts.[130] On June 13, 2007, near Cheongdo on the upgraded Daegu–Busan section, a damper acting between two cars of a KTX train got free at one end due to a loose screw and hit the trackbed, throwing up ballast that hit cars and caused bruises to two people on the parallel road, until the train was stopped when passengers noticed smoke.[150] On November 3, 2007, an arriving KTX-I train collided with a parked KTX-I train inside Busan Station, resulting in material damage[151] of 10 billion won[152] and light injuries to two persons.[153] The accident happened because the driver had fallen asleep and disabled the train protection system,[154] and led to the trial and conviction of the driver.[155] The railway union criticised single driver operation in conjunction with the two and a half hours rest time the driver had between shifts.[153] On February 11, 2011, a KTX-Sancheon train[156] bound for Seoul from Busan derailed on a switch in a tunnel 500 m (1,600 ft) before Gwangmyeong Station,[157] when travelling at around 90 km/h (56 mph).[158] No casualties were reported, only one passenger suffered slight injury, but KTX traffic was blocked for 29 hours while repairs were completed.[156] Preliminary investigation indicated that the accident resulted from a series of human errors.[157] Because workers improperly repaired a point along the tracks.[159] Investigators found that the derailment was caused by a switch malfunction triggered by a loose nut from track, and suspected that a repairman failed to tighten it during maintenance the previous night.[157] The switch's detectors signalled a problem earlier, however, a second maintenance crew failed to find the loose nut and didn't properly communicate the fact to the control center, which then allowed the train on the track.[157] The rail union criticised Korail's use of hired repairmen.[157] there were no problems with the train according to investigation.[159] On July 15, 2011, 150 passengers were evacuated from a train when smoke started coming out of the train when it arrived at Miryang Station at 11:30 AM.[160] On July 17, 2011 at around 11 AM, a train stopped abruptly and stranded some 400 passengers in the 9.975 km (6.198 mi) Hwanghak Tunnel for over an hour.[160][161] The train resumed service after emergency repairs to a malfunctioning motor.[162] A Korail spokesperson stated that the reason for the stop was due to "faults in the motor block that supplies power to the wheels". The same day, the air conditioning broke down on another train leaving Busan at 1:45 PM. Over 800 passengers were transferred to another train at Daejeon when the problem could not be fixed.[160] On December 7, 2018, a KTX train carrying 198 passengers derailed about five minutes after leaving Gangneung for Seoul injuring 15 passengers. The train was travelling at about 103 kph when almost all of its cars left the rails.[163] Passenger comfort and convenience [ edit ] Passenger surveys in the first months found that the limited capacity of bus connections[164] and the lack of subway connections for intermediate stations, especially the newly built stations Gwangmyeong and Cheonan-Asan, was the problem mentioned most often. A better connection to Cheonan-Asan Station was provided by an extension of Seoul Subway Line 1 along the Janghang Line, opened on December 14, 2008.[166] Gwangmyeong Station was linked to the same subway line by a shuttle service on December 15, 2006, but it made little impact[167] due to the longtime differences between KTX and subway train schedules.[168] The noise level in the trains during tunnel passages was also subject to passenger complaints.[169] A reduction by 3–4 dB was achieved by retrofitting all trains with longer mud flaps at car ends until May 2006 to smooth the airflow at the articulated car joints.[169] However, measurements in 2009 found significantly higher interior noise levels at some locations in two tunnels.[170] Window thickness and sound insulation was improved in the KTX-II.[171] The isolation of KTX-I trains against pressure variations during tunnel passages[63] was insufficient for some passengers, leading to efforts to reinforce pressurization in newer generations of trains.[70] Some KTX passengers found high-speed travel in backwards facing seats dizzying.[164] Swivel seats, which can be turned into the direction of travel, installed only on First Class in KTX-I trains,[63] were made standard on both classes on newer generations of trains.[173] See also [ edit ] References [ edit ] Citations |
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday finally raised interest rates after a year of anticipation and for only the second time since 2006. The decision to hike rates by just a 0.25 percentage point to a range of 0.50% – 0.75% was unanimous and coupled with a more optimistic outlook by the U.S. central bank for future rate hikes. “Our decision to raise rates…is a reflection in the confidence we have in the progress the economy has made and our judgment that progress will continue,” Fed Chief Janet Yellen said at a press conference following the decision. “And the economy has proven to be remarkably resilient, so it is a vote of confidence in the economy.” Yellen offered a carefully choreographed public message after the conclusion of the Federal Open Market Committee’s final two-day meeting of the year. The policy-making committee cited continued economic improvement including “solid” job gains, increased consumer spending and rising inflation. The Federal Reserve also increased its outlook on anticipated interest rate hikes from 2 to 3 in 2017, though the Chairwoman Yellen stressed the pace of those rate would remain “gradual,” as it expects only “moderate” economic growth over the next year. The central bank estimates only a 2.1% annualized economic growth for 2017, with unemployment rate of 4.5% and core inflation rising to 1.9%. “We’re operating under a cloud of uncertainty at the moment and we have time to wait and see what changes occur and factor those into our decision making as we gain greater clarity,” Ms. Yellen said. “Market participants are uncertain too, and I would expect changes in our understanding in what’s going to happen to also affect market prices as we move forward.” However, the latest forecast looks a lot like the forecast last December, which projected 4 rate hikes and some analysts are suggesting it is still too aggressive. “I think the bite out of growth from the higher rates we’ve already seen from the back up in the long end of the curve will mean two rate increases next year,” said Constance Hunter, chief economist at KPMG. “Add to that the fact we only need about 134,000 average job growth next year to get to the 4.5% unemployment rate with the current participation rate, and we’re already looking at a slower growth trajectory.” A Labor Department report released earlier this week indicated inflation was not going to hit the Fed’s 2% target anytime soon. The U.S. dollar (USDUSD) has surged post-election relative to the currencies of its main trading partners after slipping from June 2014 to January 2016, causing deflation to be imported, which in turn has kept inflation below the Fed’s 2% target. |
Buy Photo Ford tests an autonomous Fusion recently in Dearborn. The automaker plans to bypass semi-autonomous driver-assist systems in its quest for fully driverless vehicles by 2021. (Photo: David Guralnick, The Detroit News)Buy Photo Ford Motor Co.’s declaration it will have a fully driverless car without a steering wheel or pedals for braking and acceleration in 2021 represents a bold jump — and a different strategy than General Motors and Tesla. Company executives said Tuesday they plan to leapfrog semi-autonomous drive-assist systems like GM’s Super Cruise and Tesla’s Autopilot that require drivers to take control at a moment’s notice. Going straight to a car that doesn’t need a driver, steering wheel or pedals offers bigger benefits to passengers and is more profitable, the automaker said. The cars would be available only for commercial applications like ride-sharing in major cities at first. Raj Nair, Ford’s head of global product development and chief technical officer, said full autonomy extends driving opportunities to the disabled and elderly that semi-autonomous systems don’t offer. And it allows ride-sharing services to cut out a large expense: drivers. “We abandoned the stepping-stone approach of driver-assist technologies and decided we’d take the full leap to deliver a fully autonomous level four-capable vehicle,” Nair said. He says it’s safer to develop a system that can be in control 100 percent of the time. “We believe we’re taking a unique approach in the industry.” Karl Brauer, senior analyst with Kelley Blue Book, said the industry is facing “a philosophical fork in the road.” A gradual transition lets automakers learn from their mistakes, he said. But, Brauer added, “Some could argue it’s not worth the resource investment versus targeting [fully autonomous] from the start.” Ford isn’t necessarily alone in taking this route, but is offering more concrete details, he said. Google Inc. has said from the start it eventually will offer autonomous pods without steering wheels, but has not given a specific date. Automotive supplier Delphi is working on a fully driverless taxi service in Singapore by the end of the decade. GM on faster track Ford’s timetable would still put it behind GM, which announced similar intentions to offer autonomous cars through commercial services within “the next couple years.” GM and its recently acquired Cruise Automation subsidiary already are testing self-driving Chevrolet Bolt EVs with drivers behind the wheel in San Francisco and Scottsdale. GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra, however, has said GM believes the steering wheel, brake and accelerator should remain until safety is proven. Big challenges remain before Ford could offer driverless ride-sharing or ride-hailing. Nair noted that current laws assume there’s a driver in control; they’d have to be rewritten. And Ford has not announced if it will partner with a third-party company like Uber or Lyft, or will develop a service of its own. Executives on Tuesday announced a number of investments and acquisitions to help Ford achieve its 2021 goal. President and CEO Mark Fields said the company will expand its Silicon Valley offices from one 30,000-square-foot building to three buildings totaling 180,000 square feet by the end of next year. It will double its staff to 260 by the end of 2017. Ford also announced a $75 million investment in LiDAR-maker Velodyne. Light Detection and Ranging sensors are one way autonomous cars “see” the road, by sending out beams of laser light to the road that correspond to a highly detailed map. Velodyne says its sensors are capable of producing 300,000 to 2.2 million data points per second with a range up to 200 meters at centimeter-level accuracy. “From the very beginning of our autonomous vehicle program, we saw LiDAR as a key enabler due to its sensing capabilities and how it complements radar and cameras,” Nair said. “Ford has a long-standing relationship with Velodyne and our investment is a clear sign of our commitment to making autonomous vehicles available for consumers around the world.” Acquisitions, investments The investment in Velodyne is part of the supplier’s latest $150 million round of funding, which includes $75 million from Chinese search-engine company Baidu Inc. Ford also said Tuesday it has acquired Israel-based software company SAIPS, which creates algorithms for computer vision and machine learning. It also now has an exclusive licensing agreement with machine-learning company Nirenberg Neuroscience. Those are only the latest partnerships by Ford: Last month, the automaker said it was investing in 3-D mapping company Civil Maps. Earlier this year, it invested $182 million in software company Pivotal. Michelle Krebs, senior analyst with Autotrader.com, said Ford’s announcements are “intended to let the world — especially Wall Street — know that it is moving forward in future mobility.” “General Motors has been grabbing all of the headlines of late, and Ford can’t be happy about that, especially as some Wall Street analysts have wondered if Ford is falling behind in future mobility,” she said. Wall Street shrugged at Tuesday’s news: Ford stock closed down 9 cents to $12.34 a share, a drop of 0.7 percent. Ford has been developing autonomous car systems for about a decade, and is testing driverless Fusions in Michigan, California and Arizona. It claims its fleet of 30 test vehicles is the largest in the industry. As part of those tests, Ford earlier this year became the first automaker to test autonomous vehicle sensors in the snow and ice at MCity, a test center in Ann Arbor. mmartinez@detroitnews.com (313) 222-2401 Twitter.com/MikeMartinez_DN Staff Writer Melissa Burden contributed. Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/2bx6FQn |
Korea Economic Reader Seoul, Korea Updates and Commentaries Click here to view this message online. Tweet Coyner's Comment Often I suggest to Don Kirk and his fellow journalists that the big story of what is happening in South Korea is under-reported or even neglected. That is the wide-spread situation of under-employed young people who find themselves denied opportunities to follow in the footsteps of their fathers as employees of medium-sized and larger companies. It’s great to be entrepreneurial, but it is something else when one is forced to fend for oneself, given the lack of meaningful employment opportunity. To Mr Kirk’s credit, he delves into this topic. Taking into account the economic environment he accurately describes, it comes as no surprise that many of the best of young Koreans dream of emigration. And those who do emigrate at an early age, find themselves being pulled back to Korea by family ties, but too often without adequate chances of finding employment. After a three-month hiatus, largely spent in Thailand and Myanmar, I am resuming my photographic reportage projects. One of which is “Korea Ink” that explores the lives of young people who openly display tattoos. While the project includes foreigners, perhaps the most interesting images and stories are of Koreans. Indelibly marking one’s body is an affront to traditional Confucian values and historically linked to organized crime. But all such Koreans I have encountered while carrying out this project are well educated and remarkably polite - and even respectful to me as an older person. From these interactions and experiences, I have labeled this larger, if under-reported, part of society as the ‘Alternative Culture.’ Unlike the ‘counter cultures’ fond in the west, most of the participants were originally involuntary joiners. Simply stated, they were not permitted to join mainstream society in roles they deemed appropriate to their backgrounds and education levels. As a result, they have been searching about, looking for a lifestyle that can find economic and social traction in this overly competitive society. Eventually, many of these young people, especially as they reach age 30, realize their old dreams need to be replaced with new ones And as part of the overall experience, many adopt ‘alterative culture’ appearances, including hairstyles and tattoos, often mistaken to be punk by foreigners. I find irony in the below suggestion that the Korean malaise is largely caused by foreign and macroeconomic forces. Certainly the below-mentioned factors are relevant. But even if they were removed, the basic problem will remain. South Korea has and will continue to have a too large a population of highly educated young people unable to find suitable employment given the size of the economy and the over dominance of the chaebol in providing an iadequate number of meaningful careers within South Korea. The long-term ramifications are unclear. But historically, in other nations, all of this could be the foundation for signfiicant unrest and possibly rebellion. The safety valve is, and will continue to be, emigration. What 'Korean Miracle'? 'Hell Joseon' Is More Like It As Economy Flounders Don Kirk Forbes Asia Feb. 27, 2016 http://www.forbes.com/sites/donaldkirk/2016/02/27/what-korean-miracle-hell-joseon-is-more-like-it-as-economy-flounders/#73f252a93c4f Pessimism pervades the Korean economy, from financial to shopping markets, from homes to work places, as China’s economic woes, declining exports and low job prospects gnaw into the fabric of the “Korean Miracle.” Nowadays, on the streets of Seoul, in coffee shops, on the Internet, you’re likely to find more people complaining about “Hell Joseon” – Korea’s historical name when the Yi or Joseon dynasty held sway for more than 500 years – than talking up the wonders of economic success. As “Hell Joseon” gains currency, you hardly hear the term “Korean Miracle” in a milieu of glittering shopping centers, skyscrapers, expressways, superfast trains and all the hi-tek gadgets and gizmos of an advanced society. That’s just window-dressing and superficial appearances, says Paik Sang-eun, tutoring students preparing for the critical national examination that will determine what level college they attend – and whether they have a prayer of finding work at a prestigious company or, for that matter, any company. “I got laid off my job in downsizing,” she says. “Nobody hires middle-aged people. Young people can’t find jobs. Old people are living in poverty.” The problem is reaching near-crisis proportions while President Park Geun-Hye calls for “a second miracle on the Han River” – the broad, twisting waterway that bisects Seoul. “The growth rate has not been as large as expected,” Yoo Il-Ho, deputy prime minister and minister of strategy and finance, admitted at a briefing that I attended. “Young people have experienced dissatisfaction.” While the government “has the major policy goal of creating jobs,” he said, “today we are no longer experiencing growth as in the past.” Yoo, whose long title translates as finance minister, still predicted, “Korea will be back on track to achieve 3.1% growth this year” – a rate “higher than those of many other major economies:” What’s happening – and what’s likely? Yoo blames much of the trouble on China, by far Korea’s largest market. “The financial market instability in major economies amid slowdowns in China and other emerging economies has brought a high level of uncertainty to the global economy,” he acknowledged. No, he said, in understatement, “The economy has not fully picked up momentum” – “China’s economic slowdown and low oil prices are adversely affecting Korea’s exports.” One of the most disturbing statistics of late was that exports, on which the Korean “miracle” relies, dropped 18.8% year-on-year in January, raising fears that Korea may be in for a slump reminiscent of the 1997-1998 economic crisis. But why would the precipitous drop in the price of crude have such an impact on exports from Korea, which has to import all its oil? As Lee Keun-Tae, economist at the LG Economic Research Institute, explained to Yonhap, the Korean news agency, ”Falling crude prices are a big drag on emerging economies, which will inevitably hurt South Korean exports.” With exporters in “acute fiscal crises,” said Yonhap, orders from the Middle East for construction, shipbuilding and other industrial products plummeted last year to $14.7 billion, down 52% from 2014 and the lowest since 2006. Talking to heads of state agencies, Finance Minister Yoo said “exports have been in the doldrums due to fast-falling oil prices, Chinese financial turmoil and Japan’s negative interest rate.” Korea’s corporate sector, powered by the mighty chaebol or conglomerates that control the economy, is “losing corporate competitiveness,” Yonhap news quoted him as saying, amid “low growth in the world economy.” Even if the economy is not doing nearly so badly as in the dark days of late 1997 and early 1998, Koreans carry bitter memories of what came to be known as “the IMF crisis” – a reference to the country’s going to the International Monetary Fund to bail out the economy. The IMF at the time issued strict guidelines on credit for debt-ridden chaebol, stopping them from borrowing freely from overly friendly banks with no real collateral to back up the loans. A poll conducted by Chosun Ilbo shows that a majority of Koreans – 58.6% — believe conditions are as bad now as they were then. Women – “more sensitive to fluctuation in household finances,” according to Chosun Ilbo — were more negative than men, 60.1% as opposed to 57%. That’s not too surprising considering that Korean women, often held back professionally, tend to take charge at home – and household debt led by mortgages, the paper reported from the Bank of Korea, exceeds 1.2 trillion won, about $965 million, up 11.4% from 2014. Young people are the most pessimistic – 72.7% of those in their 20’s believe the country is approaching a crisis. One student told me that many in the graduating class of his college, embarrassed by their failure to find jobs, don’t attend graduation ceremonies. Most postpone marriages until they’re at least 30, he said, while almost everyone he knows wants to go overseas for work or study – anything to get out of “Hell Joseon.” The saddest aspects of Korea’s economic malaise is a high suicide rate – highest among the 34 members of the Organization of Economic Development. Suicide ranks as the top cause of death among those aged 10 to 39. At the other end of the scale, suicides are highest among those 65 and older in a society in which children are less likely to care for their aging parents than in the days of yore. While the air slowly leaks out of the Korean economic balloon, the dollar keeps gaining in value against the won. The dollar, valued at about 1,100 Korean won in January 2015, has soared since then to 1,245 won. That should be good for exports – but not for typical Koreans paying ever higher prices on local markets. As elsewhere, the sense is that the rich are getting richer while ordinary people are squeezed relentlessly. “South Koreans continues to suffer from small injustices that reflect the existence of two realities here,” wrote Koo Se-woong in “Korea Exposé,” a critical website that he edits. One is “available only to those from the right backgrounds and another that is experienced by everyone else.” To read more of Don Kirk's commentaries on Asia news, click on www.donaldkirk.com, and the details of his books are available here. Share the Korea Economic Reader with others! If you wish others to receive this clipping service, please offer their email addresses. To get a copy of our latest book Doing Business in Korea, a comprehensive , updated and expanded overview of conducting business affairs in Korea, go to the Seoul Selection web site. This book is also available on iPad and Kindle (Korea Apple ID holders are excluded from ordering from iTunes, but may be accessed via free Kindle app for iPads ). Visit us at www.softlandingkorea.com The KER is sponsored by Onsite Studios commercial & family photographic services. www.onsitestudios.biz |
Get the biggest daily news 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 BABIES who receive antibiotics before they reach six months may be 70% more likely to develop asthma. One course of drugs in the first few months raises the risk by 40%, but a second treatment boosts this to 70%, a study claims. Previous studies have linked antibiotics to asthma but scientists have disagreed over whether the children may have developed the condition anyway. Latest research from Yale University in the US claims taking the drugs early is more risky, even if the child does not come from an asthmatic family. Experts blamed the medication – often prescribed to treat child chest infections – for interfering with the balance of microbes which would normally defend against illnesses. About 1.1 million UK children have asthma, with more boys affected than girls. The scientists studied 1,400 children given antibiotics before the age of six months to see if they developed asthma before they turned six years old. Research leader Dr Kari Risnes said: “Our study should encourage doctors to avoid unnecessary antibiotic use, especially in low-risk children.” |
Senate Funding Bill For State Dept. Asks It To Figure Out Ways To Stop Bad People From Using Tor from the good-luck-with-that dept ...the Committee requires that spend plans submitted by the Department of State and BBG pursuant to section 7078(c) of the act include a description of safeguards to ensure that circumvention technologies are not used for illicit purposes, such as coordinating terrorist activities or online sexual exploitation of children. ... made available for the research and development of new tools or techniques authorized in paragraph (A) only after the BBG CEO, in consultation with the Secretary of State and other relevant United States Government departments and agencies, evaluates the risks and benefits of such new tools or techniques, and establishes safeguards to minimize the use of such new tools or techniques for illicit purposes. It would appear that Congress is not so happy that the State Department is a major funding source for the Tor project. Tor, of course, is the internet anonymyzing system that was originally developed with support from the US government as a way to promote free and safe access to the internet for people around the globe (mostly focusing on those under threat in authoritarian countries). Of course, other parts of our government aren't huge fans of Tor, because it doesn't just help activists and dissidents in other countries avoid detection, but also, well, just about anyone (except on days when the FBI decides to hack their way in ).There has, of course, always been some tension there. There are always the conspiracy theorists who believe that because Tor receives US government funding it is by default compromised. Those tend to be tinfoil hat wearing types, though. The folks who work on Tor are not exactly recognized for being particularly friendly to intrusive government surveillance. They tend to be the exact opposite of that. And, of course, part of the Snowden revelations revealed that Tor was one tool that still stymied the NSA in most cases.But it appears that Congress may be quietly trying to undermine this. On Friday, Politico had a tiny blurb in passing about how the latest State Department appropriations bill making its way through Congress includes some references to stopping "circumvention technologies" from being used by bad people. The Politico report suggests this is designed to apply more broadly to encryption, but reading the specifics it appears to be targeted straight at Tor. Here's the Senate report on the appropriations , where it discusses funding related to "internet freedom."That, of course, was the reasoning behind Tor in the first place, but here Congress is now trying to put some limitations on what the State Dept. can do with its funds, including demanding that it seek out ways to stop bad guys from using technology like Tor. In the report, it's described this way:In the full bill , the key section notes that the funding shall only be available for internet freedom after efforts are made to stop bad people from using the tools.In case you're wondering, the "BBG CEO" is the CEO of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the US government agency that manages media efforts around the globe, such as the Voice of America.Make no mistake, this appears to be an attempt to sneak in an attack on Tor via Congress into the State Dept. Tor has been developed to provide the best absolute anonymity/privacy tools for people using the internet -- with the acknowledgement that it can be misused, because the people developing it recognize that the best way to protect the vast majority of its users is to build a system that is truly secure -- not one that artificially tries to limit its uses. Hopefully, this provision is changed, or else it may be eventually leveraged as a way to attack Tor, to attack Tor's funding and try to get the State Department to stop supporting such useful projects. Filed Under: congress, funding, state department, tor |
Streaming media devices are great for TV, but not decor. This explains some of the popularity of easily hidden dongles. The Xiaomi Mi Box, though, is pretty enough to keep in plain view, and backs up the good looks with impressive specs. Even the best designers can't do much in the "rounded black square" genre, but the Mi Box makes the most of it. It's about the same length and width as the Apple TV, but half as thick, softly rounded, and smooth like a skipping stone. The Mi Box joins a wave of Android TV set-top boxes that can stream 4K and come with Google Cast baked in. The tech inside is equally slick. The Mi Box joins a wave of Android TV set-top boxes that can stream 4K and come with Google Cast baked in. It's also HDR capable, even if most TVs and content aren't. It has a voice remote, if you like shouting more than typing them. The optional gaming controller shakes and rumbles and vibrates, though you presumably can BYOBluetooth controller of choice. Beyond that, the Mi Box does everything you’d expect of an Android TV, if you expect much at all. Although Chromecast has seized significant territory in the streaming market, its more ambitious cousin lacks the visibility of Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, or Roku. That's changing as devices proliferate and apps like ESPN, Disney, and Spotify join the ecosystem. As pretty as the Mi Box is, the most notable thing about it may be the fact it's coming to the US at a time and price TBA. Xiaomi is hugely popular in China, known mostly for smartphones that offer Apple-like design and capability at a crazy low price. Xiaomi sells a handful of products here already, including a $15 (!) fitness tracker, but they've generally been low-profile. The Mi Box provides a more overt introduction to a company that does what so few can: Consistently offer well-designed, high-performing products that cost less than you'd expect. |
MILAN - Inter's new Home and Away kits for the 2016/17 season reflect both the passion of our fans around the world and the history and tradition of our club. On the Home shirt, the Nerazzurri’s iconic black and blue stripes now have a new energy, boasting a subtle tonal linear graphic to represent the speed and vibrancy of the Inter players. The sleeves and shoulders are a contrasting black to give the kit an intimidating aesthetic and emphasise the power of the shoulders. The Home shirt also features a modern crew-neck collar with ‘Inter’ on the back in yellow. The sides of the kit have a black stripe that runs the length of the shirt and black shorts, which expands when the player is in motion to provide greater ventilation and reveal bold flashes of blue underneath. For the first time ever Inter will wear vibrant yellow home socks with a black linear graphic on the calf, and contrasting with the shirt and socks they brilliantly highlight the most dynamic part of a footballer’s body, the lower legs, to accentuate speed. All the details are in yellow: Pirelli in the centre on the front of the shirt, Driver on the back below the number, the swooshes on the shirt, shorts and socks, and the numbers and players' names. The Away shirt remains white, but the iconic horizontal black and blue chest band has been transferred to the sleeves. In another modern twist the black half of the band now features thin blue pinstripes, while the blue half has thin black pinstripes. The sleeves and shoulders are white, but in a separate panel to emphasise the power of the shoulders. The Away shirt also boasts a modern v-neck collar with a tonal band on the back, and ‘Inter’ on the back neck rib. The sides of the kit have a black stripe that runs the length of the shirt and matching white shorts, which expands when the player is in motion to provide greater ventilation and reveal bold flashes of blue underneath. The new Away socks are blue with a black linear graphic on the calf, and contrasting with the shirt and socks they brilliantly highlight the most dynamic part of the footballer’s body, the lower legs, to accentuate speed, and provide a final flourish of colour. While this new kit acts as a proud symbol of the club, it has also been designed to allow players to be fast, and perform at their absolute best, boasting the latest Nike innovations in performance technology, fabric construction and moisture management. Nike Dri-FIT Technology Nike Dri-FIT technology draws sweat away from the body to the exterior of the shirts and shorts, where it quickly evaporates. This allows players to perform at their best by remaining cooler, drier and more comfortable. The laser-cut ventilation holes and mesh panels in key areas of the kit are designed to improve performance by increasing air circulation and helping regulate players’ temperatures. The shirt is crafted using mesh fabric that makes up the full front and back panels of the shirt, increasing airflow and facilitating enhanced movement. Commitment to Sustainability Nike employs sustainable innovation for its football kits with the use of recycled polyester, delivering unrivaled performance and lower environmental impact. The kit’s shirt and shorts are constructed with recycled polyester fabric, which is made from recycled plastic bottles melted down to produce a fine yarn. Each kit is made using approximately 16 recycled plastic bottles. Since 2010, Nike has diverted more than three billion plastic bottles from landfills into recycled polyester, enough to cover about 5,200 football pitches. For more information, visit nikebetterworld.com. The new Inter Home and Away kits will be available from 7 July 2016 at store.inter.it, nike.com and official Inter and Nike retailers Versión Española 日本語版 Versi Bahasa Indonesia Versione Italiana |
Thai Pumpkin Custard Ingredients 1 Japanese Pumpkin 10 cups of water (for steaming) 5 eggs 1 cup of Coconut Milk 1/3 cup of Coconut Palm Sugar Pinch of Salt Pinch of Cinnamon 1 Tsp. Vanilla extract Cooking Instructions Cut out the pumpkin just like you would for Halloween. Cut out the top, remove all the seeds and the stringy insides. In a mixing bowl crack the eggs, add coconut milk, salt , cinnamon, vanilla and palm sugar. Stir well till the palm sugar is blended into the mixture Pour the mixture into the pumpkin Bring water to a boil in a steamer. Then place the pumpkin and the pumpkin lid inside the steamer basket. Don’t cover the pumpkin with the lid. Set the pumpkin lid in the steaming basket off to the side so it cooks too. Now place the basket onto the steamer and cover the basket with the lid. Steam for about 45 minutes. When you think it's time, open the steamer and stick a fork into the custard to check if it is done. If the fork comes out all wet and runny you need to steam it a little longer. Remove the basket from the steamer and let the pumpkin cool down. When you are ready to serve , take a knife and cut a wedge out of the pumpkin just as if it were a pie. The custard should be firm enough to stand on its own and not be runny. Serve to your guests. They can eat the whole thing…pumpkin and custard. |
Metrolinx has reached a deal with Shoppers Drug Mart to sell Presto cards through the company’s stores. Starting this week the electronic fare cards will be on sale at 10 Shoppers locations in Toronto on a trial basis, with the aim of rolling out the program to more of the stores later this year. The cards cost $6 and can be loaded with money to pay for trips on 11 transit agencies in the GTHA and Ottawa, including GO Transit and the TTC. Metrolinx has made a deal to sell Presto fare cards at Shoppers Drug Mart stores. ( Randy Risling / Toronto Star ) Presto users will be able to buy cards, load money onto them and check their balances at Shoppers stores, with the help of a mobile point-of-sale device that Metrolinx finished developing earlier this year. Customers will also be able to set child, student and senior transit discounts on the cards. Minister of Transportation Steven Del Duca, acting Metrolinx CEO John Jensen, Liberal MPP Han Dong and TTC chair Josh Colle announced the partnership Monday afternoon at a Shoppers outlet on King St. W. Del Duca hailed the agreement as “good news” for the region’s transit users. Article Continued Below “This is one more way Ontario is working to innovatively transform the transit experience with the goal of making public transit a better, more convenient and more accessible choice for people to use every day,” he said in a statement. The ability to set discounts on the fare cards at Shoppers stores will provide more options to senior and student TTC riders, who until now have had limited options to set up discounted fares on their Presto cards. Special seniors Presto cards have been available at a limited number of Gateway Newsstands, but customers otherwise have had to go to TTC headquarters at Davisville station to enable their cards for senior or student discounts. Metrolinx, the provincial transit agency for the GTHA, owns the fare card system, and announced its intention for a Presto retail partnership two years ago. Read more: Article Continued Below TTC wants report on fares lost because of malfunctioning Presto readers At a Metrolinx board meeting in April 2016, Presto executive vice-president Robert Hollis said teaming up with a private retailer would help the agency expand the reach of the fare card program. “One of the challenges is, how do we get cards in people’s hands?” he said. “We view it as a very positive way to actually accelerate our card rollout.” At the time, Hollis said he hoped to announce the partnership by the summer of 2016. The TTC is gradually switching to the Presto system, and after initial reliability problems with card readers on streetcars and buses, TTC and Metrolinx officials say the devices are performing much better. Presto readers have been installed on all TTC buses and streetcars, and in at least one entrance of every subway station since the end of 2016. Uptake is growing but Presto users still make up only about 11 per cent of TTC customers. TTC spokesperson Brad Ross said Friday the agency plans to stop selling older fare media like tokens and tickets by the beginning of 2018, and sometime next year will stop accepting any form of payment except Presto. The TTC’s monthly passes are expected to be migrated from Metropasses to Presto later this year. Presto cards are currently sold at 60 Gateway Newsstands across the TTC network, according to the transportation ministry. They can also be ordered online. According to the ministry of transportation, more than 2.7 million of the cards are now in use in the GTHA and Ottawa. The partnership with Shoppers won’t cost Metrolinx or the TTC any money. A Metrolinx spokesperson said it would generate revenue for the provincial agency, but declined to say how much or disclose the terms of the deal. The initial Shoppers locations in Toronto that will sell the cards are: Agincourt Mall — 2330 Kennedy Rd. Eglinton and Dufferin — 1840 Eglinton Ave. W. Hudson’s Bay Centre — 20 Bloor St. E. King and Peter — 388 King St. W. King and Strachan — 901 King St. W. Queen and Carlaw — 970 Queen St. E. Queen and Bathurst — 524 Queen St. W., Unit A. Queen Street West — 1033 Queen St. W., Unit A. Weston and Lawrence — 1995 Weston Rd. Westway Plaza — 1735 Kipling Ave. Read more about: |
- Triple H held a conference call to promote WWE NXT "Takeover: Respect" this week and made the following comments, courtesy of EVOLVE's mailing list, when asked if he saw WWN Live's EVOLVE as a feeder system: "As far as EVOLVE and Gabe (Sapolsky) as kind of a feeder system, yeah. I look at all of that as feeder system. I love what Gabe does. I love what EVOLVE does. I think that they are one of the sounder promotions as far as how they handle their talent, as far as how they tell their stories, and as far as how they handle their in-ring product. I do see them as a feeder system. I support them. I supported their shows. A lot of our talent has come through there over the years and they've learned a lot from there. Everybody speaks highly of them, speaks highly of Gabe in that process and that's important to me, as well. It's the quality of the people. Yeah, do I support them? Do I see them as a feeder for us? If I had somebody that I didn't have room here for at the PC or I wanted to give them some further training out there before I had a space for them here, would I send them to Gabe? Absolutely. I think they are a very important part of the business, and I know it's a struggle out there, to keep things rolling, to keep things kinda alive if you are a small promotion, and some of the other, if this makes sense, bigger small promotions are making that more difficult sometimes, for the smaller promotions, so, you know, I support them in anyway I can. If I can help them out, I love to and, you know, promote their events. I think having that healthy independent undercurrent to the business is vitally important and I don't want to see that go away." WWN President/CEO Sal Hamaoui and WWN VP Of Talent Relations, Creative & Marketing Gabe Sapolsky responded with these comments: "The WWN Family is something we've been building for years and it is very flattering to get this kind of recognition. We are proud to have so many talents like Seth Rollins, Daniel Bryan, Dean Ambrose, Neville, Kalisto and Luke Harper, among others, on the WWE roster. We look forward to seeing how even more former WWN talents progress in NXT. Having an industry leader like Triple H say those things about EVOLVE helps push us forward as we get ready for our next WWNLive.com live iPPVs on October 18th and 19th in New York. Thank you." - Hamaoui "First, everyone in the WWN Family wants to thank Triple H for his comments. We are humbled and appreciative. This support is unprecedented. We are proud to be part of the independent undercurrent and will enthusiastically continue to promote and present today's new stars. It continues on October 17th in Queens, NY and October 18th in Long Island, NY with two EVOLVE live iPPVs at WWNLive.com. These shows are especially interesting after Triple H's comments because we feature several new and rising talents to go along with our regular, standout stars. It is obvious that the progressive NXT brand is offering more opportunities and exposure to independent wrestlers than anytime in history. Who will make the most of these opportunities? Who is next? We might very well find out at EVOLVE 49 and EVOLVE 50 this month. Join us either in person or on live iPPV and show your support for the next superstar. You, the people who support us and the wrestlers with ticket and iPPV buys, make it all possible. Thank you." - Sapolsky |
Story highlights Children like Daniel Penado Zavalva are fleeing Central American countries Thousands enter U.S. illegally each year hoping to be reunited with families U.S. border facilities are overwhelmed, bringing immigration back to forefront Authorities are scrambling to find solutions amid allegations of abuse Daniel Penado Zavala was 17 when he made a heart-wrenching decision to leave his family behind in San Salvador and try to make a new life where it was safer. He saw gang members target and kill young people like him. After his stepfather was slain, Daniel's mother was left to support him and his three siblings. He, too, would be a victim if he resisted the wishes of thugs, he thought. That's how life had become for people without means in El Salvador. Gang members infiltrated public schools, he said, and threatened kids to join their ranks. He scraped together $7,000 -- a huge sum of money for a family like his -- to pay a coyote, or smuggler, to arrange a harrowing journey, first to Mexico and then over the Texas border. Daniel's is not an unfamiliar story anymore. Thousands cross the southern U.S. border illegally each year in hopes of better lives. Daniel Penado Zavala fled violence in his native El Salvador and hopes to make a better life in America. JUST WATCHED Undocumented children flood U.S. border Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Undocumented children flood U.S. border 02:38 JUST WATCHED How easy is it to cross the U.S. border? Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH How easy is it to cross the U.S. border? 02:59 JUST WATCHED 'It's a bad day for immigration reform' Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH 'It's a bad day for immigration reform' 05:10 But now the problem has reached epic proportions, with children like Daniel fleeing the Central American countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. And they are arriving in the United States alone -- without a parent or guardian. Many are hoping to be reunited with parents or relatives already living in America, and they cross the border without papers because there are virtually no legal ways for them to immigrate. Nor can their undocumented parents return home to get them. The number of children making these journeys by themselves has doubled each year since 2010. U.S. authorities estimate that between 60,000 and 80,000 children will seek safe haven this year. Immigrant rights agencies project that number could soar to 130,000 next year. That's more than all the people who came over from Cuba during the Mariel boatlift in 1980, which would make this the largest refugee crisis on U.S. soil since then. Some of the children are as young as 4. They have notes pinned to their shirts giving authorities a name and phone number or address of a relative in the United States. Suddenly, U.S. Border Patrol agents are finding themselves having to care for thousands of young lives while enforcing the law. To complicate matters, immigrant advocates say the crisis has proven to be fertile ground for human traffickers who are quick to take advantage of the chaos. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott cited a 92% increase in the number of immigrants 18 and younger who are being arrested at the border with Mexico. In a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, Abbott asked for $30 million to help secure the border. "With the Border Patrol's focus shifted to this crisis," Abbott said, "we have grave concerns that dangerous cartel activity, including narcotics smuggling and human trafficking, will go unchecked." Everyone involvaed has gone into emergency mode, said Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), a national non-profit immigrant child advocacy group. "Right now," she said, "we are in triage." Immigration reform has stalled in Washington, but the shocking new reality has brought the issue back to the forefront. It has overwhelmed U.S. facilities along the border and forced federal authorities to scramble to find viable solutions. They've had to open temporary shelters because the existing ones are filled to capacity. Journalists are not allowed inside, but leaked photographs of a Border Patrol holding facility in Nogales, Arizona, show cramped cells without enough food, beds, toilets or showers. They seem more befitting of refugee camps Americans hear of in war-ravaged regions of the developing world than right here at home. From those less-than-ideal conditions have risen allegations of sexual abuse, threats of violence, strip searches and filthy conditions. A complaint filed Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union and four immigrant rights groups lists accusations made by 116 children. Half described a lack of medical care. Others describe ice-cold holding cells in which bright fluorescent lights were kept switched on day and night. About 70 percent of these children said they were held by the Border Patrol longer than the statutory limit of 72 hours. Recently, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said the Coast Guard and military are being deployed to transport and help house unaccompanied minors. He also said he is discussing faster repatriation with the ambassadors of the three Central American countries of origin. Immigrant advocates say federal authorities should not have been surprised by a trend that advocates on the border have seen coming for years. When you have a confluence of violence and poverty, they say, people flee. "We've had children dying here in the desert," said Isabel Garcia, an immigrant rights activist with the Arizona-based Coalicion de Derechos Humanos (Coalition for Human Rights). "It really is unacceptable, the entire thing." Why are they coming? The office of Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar released this photo showing crowding at a Customs and Border Protection detention facility in South Texas. A child on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border fence looks into Arizona during a special 'Mass on the Border' on April 1, 2014 in Nogales, Arizona. On a recent morning on Capitol Hill, Daniel told a small panel of lawmakers the tale of his perilous journey to the U.S. border. How he waded through a river infested with alligators, drank its murky waters, slept in a locked room with 20 people. After the coyote abandoned him, he crossed the U.S. border and walked the desert alone without water or food. He lay down on the parched ground and abandoned hope. "I started crying and thinking this was the end," he said, recounting his journey for CNN. He hoped that the Border Patrol would find him. He prayed to God that someone would find his body to take back to his family. He found the strength to go on only when he thought of Magaly, the 13-year-old sister he left behind in San Salvador. He loved her deeply and wanted so much to be able to send money home to pay for a good education -- one that would help her stay safe. There's little doubt that poverty and violence are two big reasons for the rising tide of Central American children fleeing their homes. A United Nations report published in March found that most children feared for their safety in their home countries. U.N. refugee agency staff interviewed more than 400 children in U.S. custody and listened to stories similar to Daniel's. A 17-year-old boy who fled Honduras said, "My grandmother is the one who told me to leave. She said: 'If you don't join, the gang will shoot you. If you do, the rival gang will shoot you, or the cops. But if you leave, no one will shoot you.'" A 14-year-old girl from El Salvador said: "The biggest problem is the gangs. They go into the school and take girls out and kill them. ... I used to see reports on the TV every day about girls being buried in their uniforms with their backpacks and notebooks. I had to go very far to go to school, and I had to walk by myself. There was nowhere else I could go where it would be safer." The report found a strong link between regional violence and insecurity and new displacement patterns -- children migrating northward. "This new trend is heartbreaking," said Nicole Boehner, who works as a protection associate for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the United States and oversaw the research for the March report. She said the first priority right now should be the protection and safety of the children, who have lived through trauma. "These are incredibly courageous children who have made a decision that no child should have to make," Boehner said. "Think about how hard it is to make a decision to leave home and travel somewhere completely foreign because of the need for safety. "They showed incredible courage," she said. "They deserve to be protected. And they deserve to have a childhood." Beyond the short-term need to ensure safe environments for the children, Boehner said ultimately, the waves of child migration will have to be addressed as a foreign policy issue. "This is a regional problem and requires a regional response," she said. But not everyone agrees with the U.N. assessment. Many blame the Obama administration for fostering a misconception that if you are a child who ends up in America illegally, you will get a free pass to stay. Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia called the surge in children an "administration-made disaster." "Word has gotten out around the world about President Obama's lax immigration enforcement policies, and it has encouraged more individuals to come to the United States illegally, many of whom are children from Central America," said Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Obama's critics blame policies such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which offers relief for certain undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children. Johnson, the Homeland Security secretary, suggested that Central American families believe that their undocumented children may be spared from U.S. deportation under DACA, even though those arriving now do not meet the eligibility criteria. Immigrant families also may be assuming their undocumented children would someday be eligible for a proposed pathway to citizenship, Johnson said. But current immigration reform proposals don't make such offers. "Those apprehended at our border are priorities for removal," Johnson said. "They are priorities for enforcement of our immigration laws regardless of age." Despite the reality, many Central Americans are holding onto hope. Sgt. Dan Broyles, a deputy constable in Hidalgo County, Texas, said he has been helping Border Patrol agents for decades and has never seen anything like the current crisis. "We're not having to chase them down anymore," he said. "They come over here and they want to get caught. They make no quarrels about getting caught." Beyond the journey After two days in the Texas desert, Daniel came across a house. The owners fed him and called the Border Patrol. He was given a health screening and underwent a routine process of fingerprinting and identification. Then he was sent to a shelter, like all the others who are coming across now. The laws are different for citizens of contiguous countries who cross the border. Unaccompanied children from Mexico and Canada are repatriated unless they are determined to be victims of trafficking. But with non-contiguous countries, children are taken into U.S. custody. Federal law says minors cannot be held at a Border Patrol facility for more than 72 hours. They have to be processed and then either sent to live with a relative in the United States or released to a shelter operated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which falls under the Department of Health and Human Services. The refugee office operates about 100 permanent shelters for unaccompanied minors, said spokesman Kenneth Wolfe. Right now, they are filled to capacity. The surge in children crossing the border has forced authorities to open three temporary shelters at military bases -- Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, Fort Sill in Oklahoma and Naval Base Ventura County in California. In Daniel's case, authorities contacted his aunt in Alexandria, Virginia, and he was sent to live with her until his immigration status is resolved. That's how it works for many of the children entering America now. If authorities can find a relative, the children are put on buses that take them to cities and towns across the nation. But often that's when another set of problems begin. Beyond the life-and-death journey, beyond the crisis that's making headlines lies another journey, one that can be equally perilous for a child in a different sort of way. The law mandates that a child must at some point appear before an immigration judge, who could decide to grant special immigrant juvenile status if that child has been abused, abandoned or neglected and is unable to be reunited with a parent. That status gets children permanent residency in the United States -- also known as a green card -- although they are barred from petitioning for a green card for their parents and cannot petition for a green card for their siblings until becoming U.S. citizens. Or children may file a petition for asylum if they fear persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group or political opinion. Either way, without a lawyer, it's hard for children to argue their case. And in many cases, they're not able to, said Stacie Blake, director of government and community relations for the non-profit U.S. Committee on Refugees and Immigrants. "That's the trick," she said. "Everyone has an immigration hearing scheduled but everyone has to find an attorney. There's no system in place for children." In Daniel's case, for instance, his family could not afford a lawyer and he missed his chance to petition for special juvenile status. He is now 19, an adult, and no longer qualifies for that. Immigrant advocates say they have seen young children appear on their own in court, not knowing how to make a case for themselves. It's a situation that's made even more difficult by the fact that few are able to obtain proof of what happened to them in their homelands. Often, there are no police reports or other documents, so judges have to rely on the veracity of their stories. Immigrant rights groups say they are scrambling to recruit more lawyers who are willing to represent undocumented children for free. Young, the president of KIND, said her group has trained 7,000 such lawyers since 2009. "But the problem is you can't just hand a volunteer attorney who is a corporate lawyer and say, 'Have at it,'" she said. "You need to train that lawyer in immigration law." And there isn't always the money to do that, she said. The bottom line is there aren't enough lawyers to go around. "Imagine a kid who is 5 who does not have representation," Young said. "That child is likely to be deported." Add to that equation an already burdened immigration court system, and many children find themselves in legal limbo for years. Michelle Abarca, a lawyer with Americans for Immigrant Justice in Miami, said on some days she has as many as 30 cases on the court docket. "I equate it to working in the ER," she said. Undocumented in America Another photo released by Rep. Cuellar's office shows immigrants housed at a crowded Customs and Border Protection detention facility a in South Texas. Daniel is a junior in high school now. He learned English as a second language and does fairly well with grades. His lowest has been a C, he said. After school, he works as a mechanic and dreams of becoming an engineer in the Air Force. He joined the ROTC program at his high school and proudly wore his uniform when he appeared on the Hill. He broke down in tears as he described for lawmakers how he made it to America. "It was a terrible idea to come over like that. I don't want anybody to come like that," he told CNN. "I wanted to testify. I want people to know what happened to me. I don't want anybody else to experience that." He sends money home for his sister's education at a private school, where she is safer and further out of the reach of violent gangs. He promised his two younger brothers that if he has the opportunity to go to college and get a better job, he would help them, too. He is part of a fast-growing population of young Central Americans who find themselves in a land of opportunity but without documentation. Immigration reform could help alleviate the current crisis, depending on the legislation. Immigrant rights activists say that legalizing the undocumented, even if they're not given a pathway to citizenship, would let Central Americans travel back to their homelands to visit the children they left behind. That could help reduce the number of children crossing over the southern U.S. border. "I hope the government decides to protect people and we can have the opportunity to live here," Daniel said. "It's very hard without anything that recognizes us." He regrets that he could not afford a lawyer when he still qualified for special juvenile status. He is waiting his day in immigration court. He knows there's a chance he will be deported to San Salvador. It's a thought that haunts him every day. |
How Negative Thought Spirals Lead to Unhappy Marriages 90% of the arguments we have with our spouses are pointless and blown way out of proportion. Disagreements come about primarily due to unrelated issues, or because we’re in a negative emotional state when a neutral, minor situation arises. For example: You’re stressed out at work and come home to see a load of laundry has been forgotten in the washer for the past two days. You go down the spiral of negative thought: “Oh my God. How ridiculous. Is there some reason she can’t do a simple load of laundry responsibly? Do I need to do everything? I’m not her father so why does she make me responsible for her like a child? This is just like that time she forgot to feed the dog and didn’t realize it til 10 pm. How can she be so irresponsible all the time?” You then proceed to chastise your wife in a way that makes her defensive and angry. Rightfully so, it’s a load of freaking laundry. This launches the two of you into a total meltdown and you don’t speak for three days. Or how about this classic: Your sister-in-law, who you can’t stand, is having an engagement party for her second engagement… four months after her divorce. You just found out your husband RSVPed ‘yes’ without even asking. You think to yourself: “Why the hell would she be throwing an engagement party when she’s already been married once? She blew it already and isn’t entitled to all the fun little perks the second time around. How is my husband ok with this? He knows they got divorced because of her and now here she is getting engaged again so quickly? Doesn’t he value marriage? Doesn’t he value me? Is this the example he wants to set for our kids? He is so thoughtless. He communicates like a four-year-old. Who does he think he is that he can just decide for me?” And so on, and so forth. You freak out on him the next time he crosses your path because he clearly doesn’t value you as an equal or care about your marriage. Woah. What’s the common thread between both of these scenarios? The argument you ended up starting with your spouse wasn’t of any importance and was really about something completely unrelated. In the first example, stress played a big part in the negative thought spiral that led the husband to lose it. In the second scenario, a personal dislike of someone turned into a negative thought spiral that led to a wife insisting her husband didn’t care about their marriage, or see her as an equal. Sound far-fetched? OK. I’ll prove it. What was the last argument you started with your spouse? I guarantee that if you deconstruct the argument backwards, from the fight to what you were thinking beforehand to what was going on before that, 90% of the time it will play out along the same script. First, you experience a crappy emotion or are in a bad mood. You’re stressed out about work, money, health, whatever. You’re angry. You’re hungry or tired. You are pissed that you just got a parking ticket. Something has put you in a crappy emotional state. Then, add a neutral minor situation. It’s not good or bad, it just is. It’s just reality, it’s just life. Your husband forgot to stop and pick-up toothpaste on his way home from work. Your wife picks you up some girl scout cookies because she knows you like them, even though you’re trying to lose weight. Minor stuff. Those two things collide in a perfect storm. You get stuck in a negative thought spiral. It’s like headed down an ugly rabbit hole. You start out in a fairly rational place but, 15 rapid thoughts later, you’re convinced that you’re going to have to get a divorce because you only have two days worth of toothpaste left in the house and your husband thinks he’s above helping out. You then unleash your crazy onto your spouse who is totally blindsided and thinks you’ve been possessed. Most of the time it escalates and puts little hairline cracks in the foundation of your marriage. Cracks mean an unhappy marriage, on both sides. Accumulate enough cracks or go unhappy for long enough and the marriage ends. crappy emotion + neutral minor situation = negative thought spiral = stupid arguments = unhappy marriages Yes, that’s a simplification but it’s often over complicating that leads us to not see what’s going on clearly. When you put everything into its simplest form, it becomes easier to prevent. Repairing is harder than preventing. How do you identify a negative thought spiral? It’s actually pretty easy if you’re trying to be more aware. First comes the crappy emotional state that puts you at risk for a negative thought spiral. Then when something happens, even something neutral, your thoughts start coming quicker. They get progressively more negative and you get progressively more upset. The key is to either stop it from happening entirely or shift your thought process when it begins to go that direction. The more you practice being aware of your thoughts, the more harmony you will have in your relationship, the less likely you will end up in an unhappy marriage. Isn’t that what all we want anyway? |
Instead, officials say, the band and its accomplices painstakingly restored the coins, then fooled the Bundesbank into redeeming them for paper currency or money transfers into bank accounts. Last week, German authorities arrested six men in and around Frankfurt in connection with the case. The investigation is continuing, said Doris Möller-Scheu, a Frankfurt prosecutor. No Bundesbank employees are suspected in the fraud, authorities said. But the case is an embarrassment for the central bank, long a symbol of German prudence and monetary stability. Photo Three of the six men arrested were flight attendants who worked for airlines with routes between China and Germany. The attendants took advantage of their exemption from baggage weight requirements to carry the coins from China to Frankfurt, prosecutors said. The female flight attendant, who authorities said was not arrested because she had not redeemed any money, told them that Chinese friends had given her the coins to exchange abroad because domestic banks would not take them, according to Sing Tao, a Hong Kong newspaper. All six suspects, ages 28 to 45, are being held awaiting trial, and so far none are cooperating with authorities, Ms. Möller-Scheu said. They face fraud and counterfeiting charges that carry maximum sentences of 10 years in prison. Under German law, the names of suspects are typically not released. The fraud ring, which officials said had been operating since 2007, took advantage of the way the two-piece coins are made. The 2-euro coin has a nickel and brass alloy center, or “pill,” surrounded by a nickel and copper ring. The 1-euro coin has a copper and nickel pill surrounded by a nickel and brass ring. Advertisement Continue reading the main story When the coins were removed from circulation, a subcontractor separated the rings from the pills before the metal was sold to Chinese recycling companies. Somehow, the thieves discovered that they could put the pills and rings back together, bring them to Germany and redeem them at the Bundesbank. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. Prosecutors said they were just beginning to investigate how the scam worked in China. During raids of 10 buildings in and near Frankfurt on March 30, the police seized a machine that they think was used to reassemble coins. But Ms. Möller-Scheu said it was likely that most of the labor-intensive work of reassembling coins was done in China. “It wouldn’t pay with the hourly wage here,” Ms. Möller-Scheu said. “It had to be a low-wage country.” How does someone inconspicuously redeem tons of reassembled coins? It was not as hard as it might seem, the Bundesbank says. Chinese companies recycle enormous amounts of washing machines, autos and other worn-out goods from Europe, often finding euros, which they then send back for redemption. Photo “It wasn’t so unusual to get coins from China,” said Susanne Kreutzer, a Bundesbank spokeswoman. “That is a business model for some people.” The thieves packed the coins in official-looking safe bags, which are used to trade coins for cash and are easily available on the Internet, prosecutors said. Some genuine coins were mixed in to fool inspectors, who make spot checks of redeemed coins. The accomplices could turn in the coins at any of the Bundesbank’s 47 branches in Germany, although large amounts would be accepted only at the branch in Mainz, about 40 kilometers, or 25 miles, west of Frankfurt. Ms. Kreutzer said there had been other occasions when the Bundesbank suspected that people were redeeming invalid coins, but last week was the first time authorities could make an arrest. Advertisement Continue reading the main story One question raised is why the coins were not more thoroughly damaged when they were taken out of circulation. It is not clear which of Europe’s central banks might have been responsible for the coins involved in the Bundesbank scam. The Bundesbank said it could not have been the source of the coins, because it rendered old euro pieces unusable by crimping them with deep ridges. Ms. Möller-Scheu said there was no evidence to support a report in the news magazine Der Spiegel that the coins had come from Italy and Greece. In any case, Bundesbank officials said they did not think the scheme could be carried out in the future. In January, new European Union rules took effect placing tighter restrictions on the redemption of coins. “This business model won’t work any more,” said Ms. Kreutzer of the Bundesbank. |
Estonia is one of those countries that are hard to find on a map. (Full Disclosure: we tried and failed.) It’s a compact European republic, bordered by Russia and looking out at Finland across the chilly Baltic Sea. Despite a tiny population of just 1.3 million, Estonia is also home to one of the best custom builders in Europe—Andres Uibomäe of Renard Speed Shop. We’ve been drooling over his builds for about six years now, but this vintage-styled BMW R90/6 cafe racer is the best yet. Most R90 customs accentuate the solid mass of the engine with an equally chunky tank, but we love the low-rise, sleek approach chosen by Renard. And there’s a good historical basis for that—with a nod towards the BMW Type 255 Kompressor ridden by Georg ‘Schorsch’ Meier to victory in the 1939 Isle of Man TT. Shop boss Andres wanted to build a bike that was easy to ride and easy on the eye. “The main goal was to build a factory racer-style bike that still had great riding properties, and I think it turned out great,” he says. The donor BMW was in good condition, but that didn’t stop Andres and his team from stripping it right down. Then they tackled the bodywork, starting with a fuel tank from a classic Moto Guzzi V7 Special—narrowing and stretching it to refine the shape. Out back, they’ve slimmed and trimmed the subframe to complement the tank. The tailpiece is an aftermarket fiberglass unit, originally intended for an Aermacchi racer. Renard made it fit, and then sunk an LED tail light into the back of it. The seat pad’s been finished off in perforated leather. To get the stance just right, the guys shaved a couple of inches off the front forks. The rear shocks are repurposed air units from a vintage CZ motocrosser—Renard stretched them and mounted them with an offset, to tuck against the rear wheel. This is where some guys would call it done and move on, but the Renard crew were itching for more stopping power. So they set to work overhauling the wheels and brakes at both ends—starting with a new pair of Borrani rims. The front rim is laced to a Triumph Bonneville hub; Renard wanted to add a bigger disc, but felt that the old BMW hub wouldn’t cope. So they’ve added a caliper from Beringer, mounted on a custom adaptor bracket. The guys designed the bracket by first 3D-scanning the fork, then CNC-milling the final part. Converting the rear from a drum to a disc brake proved to be even more effort. The solution was a mix of a KTM front disc, a BMW R1200S caliper, and a Beringer master cylinder. “We wanted to use a Beringer caliper too,” the Andres explains, “but it was simply too wide.” “At the moment everything works just fine, and you can remove the rear wheel without removing the swing arm. This saves a lot of time and nerves!” It’s all top-drawer stuff—but the tires are Firestones. So we asked Renard why they made such a controversial choice. “The tires were used due to the client’s wishes,” they say. “We’ve never used them before. We’re looking forward to spring, so that we can test them to see if they are as slippery as some people say. But to be honest, looking at their compound, they seem to be totally rideable.” There’s nothing else on the R90/6 that hasn’t been overhauled in some way. The engine was rebuilt with new rings, seals and gaskets, the cylinders were honed, and the carbs rebuilt. There’s some trickery going on in the airbox too—Renard kept the original unit, but added two velocity stack-style intakes. The result is a little more airflow, without sacrificing reliability. Andres tells us that he finds it weird that no one’s tried this setup before. On the electrical front, Renard re-wired everything around a new Motogadget m-Unit controller, and installed an updated electronic ignition. The battery was moved to a custom-made box, located just behind the transmission. There’s a Motogadget speedo too, mounted in a stunning one-off bracket. The rider hangs on via a new set of clip-ons, sporting Beringer controls with Renard’s proprietary clamp-mounted switches. Tarozzi rear-sets are mounted on hand-made, stainless steel mounts. It’s a beautifully judged build, full of smart design decisions. If the bike whipped past you in a blur of speed on a country road, you’d struggle to tell which era it came from. But up close, the quality craftsmanship snaps into sharp focus. That makes it one of the best BMW café racers we’ve seen. What better way to put Estonia on the map? Renard Speed Shop | Facebook page | Instagram |
Pernell Cox lives in the affluent, predominantly African American neighborhood of View Park in Los Angeles.Yet a Consumer Reports and ProPublica investigation found that a safe driver in View Park pays 13 percent more on average than one who lives in a white neighborhood of comparable risk."Learning that our community might be targeted for higher insurance rates than the risk is a reason for people to be angry," Cox said.And the price disparity based on ZIP codes is not just happening in California. Three other states - Missouri, Texas and Illinois - also provided data used in the investigation.Otis Nash has lived in the mostly African American neighborhood of East Garfield Park in Chicago for his entire life."I feel like it's pretty much like anywhere else. You get some traffic in the morning, but that's anywhere because you have people going to school and going to work," Nash explained.Nash is rated a good driver and pays almost $200 a month for his Geico auto insurance policy.Christopher Day, who is also rated a good driver and lives 14-miles away in the mostly white neighborhood of Andersonville in Chicago, pays around $115 a month for a Geico policy with more coverage for liability, but less for comprehensive and collision."We looked at 34 different insurers in Illinois, and 33 of them had, on average, a difference between minority and non-minority neighborhoods of higher than 10-percent," said Julia Angwin, a senior reporter with ProPublica.The Illinois Department of Insurance called the methodology "incomplete" and said it "does not tolerate discrimination."And the California Department of Insurance criticized the approach by Consumer Reports and ProPublica. Liberty Mutual, the parent company of Safeco, says it was "committed to competitively priced car insurance options."Geico did not comment.Nash said he hopes rates become fairer, but for now, Geico was among the cheaper insurance companies he could find in Chicago.But Cox shopped around in Los Angeles and found a $400 annual savings with a different insurer.To see the full investigation and to look up your premium versus similar zip codes, click here |
Sporting Kansas City midfielder Kevin Oliveira earned his senior debut for Cape Verde on Saturday, entering as an 85th-minute substitute in a 2-0 World Cup qualifying loss to Senegal in the Cape Verdean capital of Praia. Seeking their first-ever appearance in the FIFA World Cup, Cape Verde battled resolutely against a heavily favored Senegal side before conceding an 82nd-minute strike to West Ham United forward Diafra Sakho. The deficit prompted Cape Verde head coach Lucio Antunes to summon Oliveira as another playmaking source in the final moments. The Blue Sharks pushed forward for an equalizer, but Senegal struck on the counter to double their lead through Cheikh Ndoye in stoppage time. The defeat could prove costly for a Cape Verde outfit that falls to third place in Group D of CAF Qualifying. Only the top finisher will advance to the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia next summer. Oliveira and Cape Verde will end their qualifying campaign on Monday Nov. 6, traveling to face Burkina Faso at Stade du 4 Août in the capital city of Ouagadougou. 2018 FIFA World Cup Qualifying CAF Third Round – Group D Team PTS W L D GF GA GD Senegal 8 2 0 2 6 2 +4 Burkina Faso 6 1 1 3 6 6 0 Cape Verde 6 2 3 0 4 8 -4 South Africa 4 1 2 1 6 6 0 Oliveira, 21, signed an MLS contract for Sporting KC on Sept. 15 and made his top-flight debut a day later in a win against the New England Revolution. He has spent most of 2017 with the Swope Park Rangers, where he has tallied three goals and five assists for the playoff-bound USL club. Oliveira is one of two SPR players who have broken into their respective senior national teams in senior months. Defensive midfielder James Musa, who inked an MLS contract with Sporting KC on Aug. 11, featured twice for New Zealand last month as the All Whites defeated Solomon Islands on aggregate to advance to a two-legged World Cup playoff in November. Musa, 25, was an unused substitute in New Zealand's 2-1 friendly loss at Japan on Friday in Toyota, Japan. Yuya Osako's penalty put the hosts ahead in the 50th minute, but Burnley forward Chris Wood drew the All Whites level eight minutes later. Shu Kurata's 87th-minute strike ended up separating the sides in a match that served as New Zealand's tune-up for their all-important playoff next month, coming against the fifth-place finisher in South America's CONMEBOL qualifying region. |
It is with *great* pleasure that I email to announce the release of Cython version 0.13! This release sets another milestone on the path towards Python compatibility and brings major new features and improvements for the usability of the Cython language. Download it here: http://cython.org/release/Cython-0.13.tar.gz == New Features == * Closures are fully supported for Python functions. Cython supports inner functions and lambda expressions. Generators and generator expressions are __not__ supported in this release. * Proper C++ support. Cython knows about C++ classes, templates and overloaded function signatures, so that Cython code can interact with them in a straight forward way. * Type inference is enabled by default for safe C types (e.g. double, bint, C++ classes) and known extension types. This reduces the need for explicit type declarations and can improve the performance of untyped code in some cases. There is also a verbose compile mode for testing the impact on user code. * Cython's for-in-loop can iterate over C arrays and sliced pointers. The type of the loop variable will be inferred automatically in this case. * The Py_UNICODE integer type for Unicode code points is fully supported, including for-loops and 'in' tests on unicode strings. It coerces from and to single character unicode strings. Note that untyped for-loop variables will automatically be inferred as Py_UNICODE when iterating over a unicode string. In most cases, this will be much more efficient than yielding sliced string objects, but can also have a negative performance impact when the variable is used in a Python context multiple times, so that it needs to coerce to a unicode string object more than once. If this happens, typing the loop variable as unicode or object will help. * The built-in functions any(), all(), sum(), list(), set() and dict() are inlined as plain `for` loops when called on generator expressions. Note that generator expressions are not generally supported apart from this feature. Also, tuple(genexpr) is not currently supported - use tuple([listcomp]) instead. * More shipped standard library declarations. The python_* and stdlib/stdio .pxd files have been deprecated in favor of clib.* and cpython[.*] and may get removed in a future release. == Python compatibility == * Pure Python mode no longer disallows non-Python keywords like 'cdef', 'include' or 'cimport'. It also no longer recognises syntax extensions like the for-from loop. * Parsing has improved for Python 3 syntax in Python code, although not all features are correctly supported. The missing Python 3 features are being worked on for the next release. * from __future__ import print_function is supported in Python 2.6 and later. Note that there is currently no emulation for earlier Python versions, so code that uses print() with this future import will require at least Python 2.6. * New compiler directive language_level (valid values: 2 or 3) with corresponding command line options -2 and -3 requests source code compatibility with Python 2.x or Python 3.x respectively. Language level 3 currently enforces unicode literals for unprefixed string literals, enables the print function (requires Python 2.6 or later) and keeps loop variables in list comprehensions from leaking. * Loop variables in set/dict comprehensions no longer leak into the surrounding scope (following Python 2.7). List comprehensions are unchanged in language level 2. == Incompatible changes == * The availability of type inference by default means that Cython will also infer the type of pointers on assignments. Previously, code like this cdef char* s = ... untyped_variable = s would convert the char* to a Python bytes string and assign that. This is no longer the case and no coercion will happen in the example above. The correct way of doing this is through an explicit cast or by typing the target variable, i.e. cdef char* s = ... untyped_variable1 = <bytes>s untyped_variable2 = <object>s cdef object py_object = s cdef bytes bytes_string = s * bool is no longer a valid type name by default. The problem is that it's not clear whether bool should refer to the Python type or the C++ type, and expecting one and finding the other has already led to several hard-to-find bugs. Both types are available for importing: you can use from cpython cimport bool for the Python bool type, and from libcpp cimport bool for the C++ type. == Contributors == Many people contributed to this release, including: * David Barnett * Stefan Behnel * Chuck Blake * Robert Bradshaw * Craig Citro * Bryan Cole * Lisandro Dalcin * Eric Firing * Danilo Freitas * Christoph Gohlke * Dag Sverre Seljebotn * Kurt Smith * Erik Tollerud * Carl Witty -cc _______________________________________________ Cython-dev mailing list Cython-dev@codespeak.net http://codespeak.net/mailman/listinfo/cython-dev |
(the wife of the Prophet) I never remembered my parents believing in any religion other than the true religion (i.e. Islam), and (I don't remember) a single day passing without our being visited by Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) in the morning and in the evening. When the Muslims were put to test (i.e. troubled by the pagans), Abu Bakr set out migrating to the land of Ethiopia, and when he reached Bark-al-Ghimad, Ibn Ad-Daghina, the chief of the tribe of Qara, met him and said, "O Abu Bakr! Where are you going?" Abu Bakr replied, "My people have turned me out (of my country), so I want to wander on the earth and worship my Lord." Ibn Ad-Daghina said, "O Abu Bakr! A man like you should not leave his home-land, nor should he be driven out, because you help the destitute, earn their livings, and you keep good relations with your Kith and kin, help the weak and poor, entertain guests generously, and help the calamity-stricken persons. Therefore I am your protector. Go back and worship your Lord in your town." So Abu Bakr returned and Ibn Ad-Daghina accompanied him. In the evening Ibn Ad-Daghina visited the nobles of Quraish and said to them. "A man like Abu Bakr should not leave his homeland, nor should he be driven out. Do you (i.e. Quraish) drive out a man who helps the destitute, earns their living, keeps good relations with his Kith and kin, helps the weak and poor, entertains guests generously and helps the calamity-stricken persons?" So the people of Quraish could not refuse Ibn Ad-Daghina's protection, and they said to Ibn Ad-Daghina, "Let Abu Bakr worship his Lord in his house. He can pray and recite there whatever he likes, but he should not hurt us with it, and should not do it publicly, because we are afraid that he may affect our women and children." Ibn Ad-Daghina told Abu Bakr of all that. Abu Bakr stayed in that state, worshipping his Lord in his house. He did not pray publicly, nor did he recite Quran outside his house. Then a thought occurred to Abu Bakr to build a mosque in front of his house, and there he used to pray and recite the Quran. The women and children of the pagans began to gather around him in great number. They used to wonder at him and look at him. Abu Bakr was a man who used to weep too much, and he could not help weeping on reciting the Quran. That situation scared the nobles of the pagans of Quraish, so they sent for Ibn Ad-Daghina. When he came to them, they said, "We accepted your protection of Abu Bakr on condition that he should worship his Lord in his house, but he has violated the conditions and he has built a mosque in front of his house where he prays and recites the Quran publicly. We are now afraid that he may affect our women and children unfavorably. So, prevent him from that. If he likes to confine the worship of his Lord to his house, he may do so, but if he insists on doing that openly, ask him to release you from your obligation to protect him, for we dislike to break our pact with you, but we deny Abu Bakr the right to announce his act publicly." Ibn Ad-Daghina went to Abu- Bakr and said, ("O Abu Bakr!) You know well what contract I have made on your behalf; now, you are either to abide by it, or else release me from my obligation of protecting you, because I do not want the 'Arabs hear that my people have dishonored a contract I have made on behalf of another man." Abu Bakr replied, "I release you from your pact to protect me, and am pleased with the protection from Allah." At that time the Prophet (ﷺ) was in Mecca, and he said to the Muslims, "In a dream I have been shown your migration place, a land of date palm trees, between two mountains, the two stony tracts." So, some people migrated to Medina, and most of those people who had previously migrated to the land of Ethiopia, returned to Medina. Abu Bakr also prepared to leave for Medina, but Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said to him, "Wait for a while, because I hope that I will be allowed to migrate also." Abu Bakr said, "Do you indeed expect this? Let my father be sacrificed for you!" The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "Yes." So Abu Bakr did not migrate for the sake of Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) in order to accompany him. He fed two she-camels he possessed with the leaves of As-Samur tree that fell on being struck by a stick for four months. One day, while we were sitting in Abu Bakr's house at noon, someone said to Abu Bakr, "This is Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) with his head covered coming at a time at which he never used to visit us before." Abu Bakr said, "May my parents be sacrificed for him. By Allah, he has not come at this hour except for a great necessity." So Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) came and asked permission to enter, and he was allowed to enter. When he entered, he said to Abu Bakr. "Tell everyone who is present with you to go away." Abu Bakr replied, "There are none but your family. May my father be sacrificed for you, O Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)!" The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "i have been given permission to migrate." Abu Bakr said, "Shall I accompany you? May my father be sacrificed for you, O Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)!" Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "Yes." Abu Bakr said, "O Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)! May my father be sacrificed for you, take one of these two she-camels of mine." Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) replied, "(I will accept it) with payment." So we prepared the baggage quickly and put some journey food in a leather bag for them. Asma, Abu Bakr's daughter, cut a piece from her waist belt and tied the mouth of the leather bag with it, and for that reason she was named Dhat-un-Nitaqain (i.e. the owner of two belts). Then Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) and Abu Bakr reached a cave on the mountain of Thaur and stayed there for three nights. 'Abdullah bin Abi Bakr who was intelligent and a sagacious youth, used to stay (with them) aver night. He used to leave them before day break so that in the morning he would be with Quraish as if he had spent the night in Mecca. He would keep in mind any plot made against them, and when it became dark he would (go and) inform them of it. 'Amir bin Fuhaira, the freed slave of Abu Bakr, used to bring the milch sheep (of his master, Abu Bakr) to them a little while after nightfall in order to rest the sheep there. So they always had fresh milk at night, the milk of their sheep, and the milk which they warmed by throwing heated stones in it. 'Amir bin Fuhaira would then call the herd away when it was still dark (before daybreak). He did the same in each of those three nights. Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) and Abu Bakr had hired a man from the tribe of Bani Ad-Dail from the family of Bani Abd bin Adi as an expert guide, and he was in alliance with the family of Al-'As bin Wail As-Sahmi and he was on the religion of the infidels of Quraish. The Prophet (ﷺ) and Abu Bakr trusted him and gave him their two she-camels and took his promise to bring their two she camels to the cave of the mountain of Thaur in the morning after three nights later. And (when they set out), 'Amir bin Fuhaira and the guide went along with them and the guide led them along the sea-shore. |
This article is over 3 years old The British singer says the plan, which the government says will save endangered native animals, ‘is taking idiocy just too far’ British singer Morrissey is a seasoned animal rights advocate and, heaven knows, he’s now miserable about Australia’s plan to slaughter 2m cats. Morrissey has called an Australian government plan to cull feral cats “idiocy”, calling the animals smaller versions of Cecil the lion, the noted Zimbabwe-based predator who was shot by a US dentist in July, sparking outrage. Brigitte Bardot to Greg Hunt: killing two million feral cats is ‘animal genocide’ Read more “We all know that the idiots rule the earth, but this is taking idiocy just too far,” Morrissey said in a statement released to several British music news websites. “The cats, who keep the rodent population under control, will be killed in a ferocious manner, using Compound 10/80, which is a gut-wrenching poison of the most unimaginable and lengthy horror. “The people of Australia would never agree to this – but of course they will not be consulted, because the Australian government as ruled by Tony Abbott is essentially a committee of sheep-farmers who have zero concerns about animal welfare or animal respect. “The cats are, in fact, 2m smaller versions of Cecil the lion.” Australia’s environment minister, Greg Hunt, clearly not considered a charming man by Morrissey, has called feral cats a “tsunami of violence and death” that are killing vast numbers of Australia’s native wildlife. Australia has the worst mammal extinction record in the world, with animals such as bandicoots and poteroos wiped out in large areas of the country due to feral cats and other introduced pests. Hunt’s plan to kill 2m of these cats by 2020 has, however, proved controversial in some quarters. The French actor Brigitte Bardot wrote an angry open letter to the minister calling the cull “inhumane and ridiculous.” Morrissey, like Bardot, is a veteran animal rights campaigner. The former Smiths frontman, who released an album called Meat is Murder, has been a vegetarian since he was 11 and has previously railed against McDonald’s in Canada over its seal cull and celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver for the promotion of meat eating. A spokeswoman for Hunt said that feral cats were the biggest threat to more than 120 endangered species in Australia. Sorry Brigitte Bardot, but Australia's hordes of feral cats have got to go | Oliver Milman Read more “With around 20m feral cats in Australia and with each feral cat estimated to kill at least five native animals a day, they pose an enormous threat to our native species,” she said. “Any culling of feral cats should be humane and must not subject feral cats to unacceptable suffering.” “The government has invested $4.1m in developing humane, target-specific feral cat bait called Curiosity. The toxin in Curiosity works in a way that is similar to the cat falling into a deep sleep and not waking up.” |
Calif. bar reportedly selling 40-oz bottles of Colt 45 with brown bag for $15 Keep clicking to see San Francisco's most outrageously priced food. @JVR24_/Twitter Keep clicking to see San Francisco's most outrageously priced food. @JVR24_/Twitter Image 1 of / 13 Caption Close Calif. bar reportedly selling 40-oz bottles of Colt 45 with brown bag for $15 1 / 13 Back to Gallery Some are lamenting it as "gentrification at its finest," and others believe someone is "just trolling us now," but whatever the case, Saint Felix in Los Angeles is actually peddling a $15 40-ounce bottle of Colt 45 malt liquor — complete with a brown paper bag. The beer, which has been called both the "most patriotic drink in America" as well as "rank and rancid like a rotting gazelle," has a storied place in pop culture and a strong hipster (and "Star Wars" fan) draw. The L.A. bar reportedly added the item to their menu years ago, and is now pricing it for around 500 percent the cost of its store shelf price — no Zig-Zags included. That's a markup that's not unusual, save for that the main selling point of this malt liquor is that it's cheap. . |
Sentence 1: After a morning of Thrift Store hunting, a friend and I were thinking of lunch, and he suggested Emil's after he'd seen Chris Sebak do a bit on it and had tried it a time or two before, and I had not. Sentence 2: He said they had a decent Reuben, but to be prepared to step back in time. Sentence 3: Well, seeing as how I'm kind of addicted to late 40's and early 50's, and the whole Rat Pack scene, stepping back in time is a welcomed change in da burgh...as long as it doesn't involve 1979, which I can see all around me every day. Sentence 4: And yet another shot at finding a decent Reuben in da burgh... Sentence 5: well, that's like hunting the Holy Grail. Sentence 6: So looking under one more bush certainly wouldn't hurt. Sentence 7: So off we go right at lunchtime in the middle of...where exactly were we? Sentence 8: At first I thought we were lost, driving around a handful of very rather dismal looking blocks in what looked like a neighborhood that had been blighted by the building of a highway. Sentence 9: And then...AHA! Sentence 10: Here it is! Sentence 11: And yep, there it was. Sentence 12: This little unassuming building with an add-on entrance with what looked like a very old hand painted sign stating quite simply 'Emil's. Sentence 13: We walked in the front door, and entered another world. Sentence 14: Another time, and another place. Sentence 15: Oh, and any Big Burrito/Sousa foodies might as well stop reading now. Sentence 16: I wouldn't want to see you walk in, roll your eyes and say 'Reaaaaaalllly?' Sentence 17: This is about as old world bar/lounge/restaurant as it gets. Sentence 18: Plain, with a dark wood bar on one side, plain white walls with no yinzer pics, good sturdy chairs and actual white linens on the tables. Sentence 19: This is the kind of neighborhood dive that I could see Frank and Dino pulling a few tables together for some poker, a fish sammich, and some cheap scotch. Sentence 20: And THAT is exactly what I love. Sentence 21: Oh...but good food counts too. Sentence 22: We each had a Reuben, and my friend had a side of fries. Sentence 23: The Reubens were decent, but not NY awesome. Sentence 24: A little too thick on the bread, but overall, tasty and definitely filling. Sentence 25: Not too skimpy on the meat. Sentence 26: I seriously CRAVE a true, good NY Reuben, but since I can't afford to travel right now, what I find in da burgh will have to do. Sentence 27: But as we sat and ate, burgers came out to an adjoining table. Sentence 28: Those were some big thick burgers. Sentence 29: A steak went past for the table behind us. Sentence 30: That was HUGE! Sentence 31: And when we asked about it, the waitress said 'Yeah, it's huge and really good, and he only charges $12.99 for it, ain't that nuts?' Sentence 32: Another table of five came in, and wham. Sentence 33: Fish sandwiches PILED with breaded fish that looked amazing. Sentence 34: Yeah, I want that, that, that and THAT! Sentence 35: My friend also mentioned that they have a Chicken Parm special one day of the week that is only served UNTIL 4 pm, and that it is fantastic. Sentence 36: If only I could GET there on that week day before 4... Sentence 37: The waitress did a good job, especially since there was quite a growing crowd at lunchtime on a Saturday, and only one of her. Sentence 38: She kept up and was very friendly. Sentence 39: They only have Pepsi products, so I had a brewed iced tea, which was very fresh, and she did pop by to ask about refills as often as she could. Sentence 40: As the lunch hour went on, they were getting busy. Sentence 41: Emil's is no frills, good portions, very reasonable prices, VERY comfortable neighborhood hole in the wall... Sentence 42: kind of like Cheers, but in a blue collar neighborhood in the 1950's. Sentence 43: Fan-freakin-tastic! Sentence 44: I could feel at home here. Sentence 45: You definitely want to hit Mapquest or plug in your GPS though. Sentence 46: I am not sure that I could find it again on my own...it really is a hidden gem. Sentence 47: I will be making my friend take me back until I can memorize where the heck it is. Sentence 48: Addendum: 2nd visit for the fish sandwich. Sentence 49: Excellent. Sentence 50: Truly. Sentence 51: A pound of fish on a fish-shaped bun (as opposed to da burgh's seemingly popular hamburger bun). Sentence 52: The fish was flavorful, the batter excellent, and for just $8. Sentence 53: This may have been the best fish sandwich I've yet to have in da burgh. |
Image caption Ireland applied for a package of loans from the EU and IMF last November Ireland is to get an interest rate cut on the emergency loans it has acquired from EU bodies, the BBC has learned. Currently, Ireland pays an average rate of 5.8% on loans agreed with the IMF, fellow Eurozone countries and a special fund set up by the European Commission. It is unclear how much of a cut this will entail, but a 1% cut could be worth up to 400m euro ($572m; £349m). Sources say a special written procedure will be adopted ahead of the meeting of EU finance ministers on 17 May. This speeds up the implementation of a rate cut as it would bypass the need for a full vote by all 27 EU commissioners on the matter. Concessions? Although Britain is not a member of the Eurozone, it would be involved in any agreement to change Ireland's bail-out loans. That is because the UK pays into the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism as part of the EU Commission's budget affecting all 27 member states. Britain is also making a bilateral loan to the Irish government of £3.2billion (€3.8bn). Last November, Ireland applied for a package of loans from the IMF and EU worth €85bn - €17.5bn of which comes from Ireland's own National Pension Reserve. It is unclear what type of concessions Ireland will have to make under the terms of any rate reduction. The Irish government has long said that it would never give up its low corporation tax rate of 12.5% as part of any deal, even though France and Germany have argued that some change to that rate would be required. EU watchers have suggested that Ireland may need to change its corporation tax base rather than the 12.5% rate. That could mean that large firms headquartered in Ireland might only be allowed to use revenue earned in Ireland rather than EU-wide for corporation tax purposes. The Irish government spokesperson said: "The reduction in the interest rate has still to be agreed by the member states and this will be discussed in due course". Some of the world's largest companies have their EU bases in Ireland including Facebook, Google, Intel and Microsoft. |
Latest Substratum Update Adds Full Android O Theming, Dynamic Refresh Mode and More There have been a lot of changes happening with Substratum lately, but Android O support has been highly anticipated. An update pushed out last month showed the team was preparing to add support, but we didn’t know when the update would be rolled out to the public. Yesterday, it was announced that the latest version of Substratum, version 670, will now work on devices running API level 26 (aka the Android O Developer Preview). There are some other big changes pushed in this update, but Android O support is definitely the biggest. We’re told that themers will need to test this release with their themes and that users may need to wait until an updated version of their favorite theme(s) before it works properly. This release of Substratum also prepares for all of the API 26 changes (including API deprecation changes) so Substratum should be good to go as soon as the final version of Android O is released. Along with Android O support, this new update also includes a new Dynamic Refresh Mode feature. What this means is, when you install a new theme onto your device, the application will automatically refresh the list of themes (without you manually having to swipe down to refresh). Another new feature is something the team is calling full Binderfacer support. This is something the team is calling the Interfacer module with its Binder implementations. Version 670 of Substratum also comes with some changes that themers can look out for. In particular, it includes a theme authorization fix and are recommending themers update to the latest version of Substratum as well as version 7.0.5 of their template in order to fix an issue that was causing the Substratum filter to error out. For those interested, you can find the full developer changelog listed below… |
The New England Patriots are cruising through the New York Jets, to nobody’s surprise, so when the Patriots got the ball back deep in New England territory with 1:30 left in the half and a comfortable 20-0 lead, Bill Belichick didn’t plan on trying to score again. Instead, the Patriots ran the ball twice with Dion Lewis for 3 yards each, setting up a third down that likely would’ve been one more running play to end the half. But Todd Bowles called a timeout, hoping to give the Jets one more chance to score. Apparently, it didn’t sit too well with Belichick. Tom Brady passed for 9 yards and a first down on the next play, and Belichick called a timeout. Then New England passed deep on back-to-back plays — drawing a 47-yard pass interference penalty on the first and connecting with James White for a 25-yard touchdown on the next. The moral of the story? If Belichick shows you mercy, just accept it. The alternative is much worse. |
First Circle (Limbo): For developers who can’t pick a language or platform as their given specialty. Punishment: All souls chained to this level will walk door to door with their résumé, only to have each one slammed in their faces with the phrase “You have no strengths!” Second Circle (Lust): Taking into account who we have to face each day at work and their respective level of resembling a troglodyte, we can go ahead and eliminate this possibility. Punishment: Not applicable. This level of hell is empty. Third Circle (Gluttony): For programmers who create memory leaks and perpetual loops, eating up all the memory and CPU cycles on the system. Punishment: Every single day, these offenders are presented a choice to either write an enterprise server application (with an embedded demoscene) that can run efficiently with only 2K of RAM or to eat an entire Alienware computer case. Fourth Circle (Greed): For IT managers who wouldn’t share resources or knowledge with other managers. Punishment: Chained to a wall and gagged, these souls must watch silently as their peers take credit for all of the damned’s projects and heap praises upon each other. Fifth Circle (Anger): For admins who blow their top and acerbically berate all users, both advanced and novice in technical knowledge. Punishment: Surrounded by blaring alarms about hard drives losing disk space, they will sit at a terminal for eternity and their fingers will only be able to repeatedly type ‘fsck’ (and other variations with more vowels). Sixth Circle (Heresy): For the sales managers at software companies who know the limitations of the product being sold but then promise everything else to the customer. Punishment: Unfortunately, this level of hell is full of innocent software developers. As with the world of the living, the salesmen have talked their way out of punishment and somehow placed the full load of misery onto the developers. Seventh Circle (Violence): For the developers whose nonsensical code causes headaches and dizziness to those who review it. Punishment: While being flogged with the “computer-mice-o-nine” tails, they must write the code for their next project through only the smashing of their heads against a vintage IBM Model M keyboard. ‘Click-clank-click’ will be the only soundtrack for eternity. Eight Circle (Fraud): For all IT staff who knowingly have taken one shortcut in their lives when they should have done things the right way. Punishment: Due to overcapacity (in that all fellow IT staff belong here), a huge volume of sinners will need to take turns being in the pit in order to accommodate the space. The punishment has yet to be determined since the domain model hasn’t taken all factors (like performance requirements) into account yet. Ninth Circle (Treachery): For any CIO/CTO who had a productive, strategic vision for the company but then abandoned that vision at the first sign of trouble (or a golden parachute). Punishment: Much like those stuck in Limbo, these souls must forever be denied employment by various prospective employers…but they must suffer while chained to an ex-spouse who perpetually complains about a lack of alimony or child payments. Footnote: The title would be nine levels of hell, but since the second level is empty and the sixth level is misused, there’s actually only seven. That seems to fit, though, since nothing in tech has an implementation which matches the specs. Peter Bolton is the author of Blowing the Bridge: A Software Story and has also been known to be a grumpy bastard on occasion. Advertisements |
MUMBAI: Sitting in the very first row at the India’s Best Companies to Work For Awards on Friday, Intuit India managing director Vijay Anand and his team were seen to be growing more and more excited as the evening wore on. Anand already knew his company was high up in the rankings since ET had done an interview with his team for an article on Intuit's corporate culture but he didn't know exactly where it was placed.By the time Google came in at third position, the Intuit team was holding its collective breath. When American Express was named second, they were in a state of jubilation. From its number 10 ranking in 2016, Intuit India had climbed nine paces, to emerge as India's best workplace in 2017.Now in its tenth year, The Economic Times-Great Place to Work Institute study has seen a considerable amount of churn. Many veterans of the top ten have given way to newcomers like Adobe (which has climbed up to 6), NetApp (at (7) and Pitney Bowes (at 9). IT and IT-enabled companies continue to dominate the top 10, with Lemon Tree Hotels and DHL being the notable exceptions at number 4 and 10, respectively. But the CXOs gathered for the award ceremony didn’t seem too worried about their changing fortunes in the rankings – they were just glad to be participating and happy to cheer their peers.Addressing the audience, special guest and former member of the Planning Commission Arun Maira said the country needs a movement to make India the best place to work. "Human resources are our most abundant resource. And unlike buildings and machinery, it is a resource that constantly appreciates through learning," he said.And what makes for a great place to work? "It's not a number you can easily capture in an Excel sheet, but it's still very palpable. Trust, pride and camaraderie are the signs of a great place to work and we feel these in our hearts and minds," said Maira.In his address, chief guest and former Microsoft chairman Bhaskar Pramanik compared the present day corporate work culture to that of his early career with companies like DCM and Nelco. "These old companies were hierarchical, but there are some things they had in common with today’s best companies. The peer environment was excellent, the quality of people was the best and there were great opportunities for learning," he said.On the subject of the increasing use of artificial intelligence in the workplace, Pramanik said that it is the middle level jobs that will be performed by robots. "We will always need people for work that requires lifting and moving, and also for higher level jobs that need creativity and intuition," he said. |
Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - The victim of a Monday night shooting on the south side of town has died, making this the second homicide in Little Rock today, and the city's 23rd homicide of the year. Police say the shooting happened in the 8300 block of Stanton Road. When police arrived, the victim had been shot in the torso and was in critical condition. Police say he was shot around 9:30 p.m. and passed away around 10:15 p.m. The victim is described as a Hispanic man in his mid-20s, who is believed to be the victim of a car-jacking robbery. Police describe the suspect in this car-jacking/robbery/shooting as a black male, around 5-feet-10-inches tall, in his mid-20s, and wearing a white t-shirt. The shirt was reportedly covering the suspect's face at the time. The suspect car description is a brown, Nissan Maxima, around the years 2004-2007, with Arkansas license plates. Because the victim was Hispanic, Lt. Steven McClanahan said the situation is "sketchy, with the language barrier." He said they are trying to use their resources to communicate with his friends and family. Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The LRPD responded to a second shooting Monday night in the 10000 block W. Markham at a Motel 6, around the same time as the shooting on Stanton Rd. Police say the victim of the W. Markham shooting is in serious condition. They believe it may have been related to a parental custody exchange. Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The LRPD says they have no reason to believe the two shootings are connected, but it does raise concern. "We do need to be somewhat concerned about this," Lt. McClanahan said. After two homicides Monday, and a third shooting in which someone was injured, Lt. McClanahan says no arrests have been made in any of the cases and our city does need to be on high alert. If you have any information, call the LRPD. |
Aphex Twin made headlines this week by releasing his first official music video in 17 years. Fizzing glee at the idea of a new work from the Limerick-born, Cornish-raised Richard D James is par for the course, but few were prepared for the fact that said work would be directed by a kid from Co Dublin. Ryan Wyer, 12, from Rush in Fingal, is the first person to direct a video for Aphex Twin since 1999’s Windowlicker, the bombastic and satirical promo directed by Chris Cunningham. Not for nothing is it frequently cited as one of the greatest music videos ever made. Wyer’s promo for Cirklon3 is a little less produced, consisting of his friends and family manically dancing and pulling faces, festooned with Aphex masks and logo tees. This is not Wyer’s first video treatment of Aphex Twin’s work. The young director is clearly a fan, having soundtracked James’s music on his YouTube channel, with one particularly vibrant and joyous example is his video for Minipops 67 [120.2][source field mix], the lead track from 2014’s Choice-nominated album Syro. When he made the video, Wyer would have been just 10 or 11 years old. Public resurgence Aphex has himself undergone something of a public resurgence of late, following years of near-ascetic solitude, and more than a decade in which his attitude to press engagements could generously be described as hostile. Then last year, with little forewarning, he released between 270 and 300 tracks via various Soundcloud pages. These releases covered a span of nearly 20 years and included both re-worked or alternate versions of classic Aphex or AFX tracks, as well as dozens – if not hundreds – of brand new works, seemingly orphaned from any release schedule. A bit of digging through the vast web of commentary attached to those tracks appears to show an early acknowledgment of Wyer’s work from the notoriously distant artist, with reference in comments to Aphex Twin’s Cheetah7-Teac that drew admiring notice from James for Wyer. “[A]mazing, no words fot his [sic] kid, wow love his ambient one in the car :))))”. Wyer’s biggest fan is of course his mum. Writing on her Facebook page she said: “It’s really amazing, no one gets it how music is Ryan’s passion, even though it’s a bit crazy what he listens too. Kids give him such a hard time but he’s always persisted with what he likes. It’s good to be different; you don’t always have to fit in and do what others want you to do . . . All the trips to Tower Records for you’re crazy CDs have paid off.” |
1. Overview JUnit is one of the most popular unit-testing frameworks in the Java ecosystem. Although the current stable version is JUnit 4.12, a 5.1.0 version contains a number of exciting innovations, with the goal to support new features in Java 8 and above, as well as enabling many different styles of testing. This article is follow up of our preview of JUnit 5. 2. Maven Dependencies Setting up JUnit 5.x.0 is pretty straightforward, we need to add the following dependency to our pom.xml: <dependency> <groupId>org.junit.jupiter</groupId> <artifactId>junit-jupiter-engine</artifactId> <version>5.1.0</version> <scope>test</scope> </dependency> It is important to note that this version requires Java 8 to work. What’s more, there is now direct support to run Unit tests on the JUnit Platform in Eclipse as well as IntelliJ. You can, of course, also run tests using the Maven Test goal. On the other hand, IntelliJ supports JUnit 5 by default. Therefore, running JUnit 5 on IntelliJ is pretty simple, simply Right click –> Run, or Ctrl-Shift-F10. 3. Architecture JUnit 5 is composed of several different modules from three different sub-projects: 3.1. JUnit Platform The platform is responsible for launching testing frameworks on the JVM. It defines a stable and powerful interface between JUnit and its client such as build tools. The final objective is how its clients get integrated easily with JUnit in discovering and executing the tests. It also defines the TestEngine API for developing a testing framework that runs on the JUnit platform. By that, you can plug-in 3rd party testing libraries, directly into JUnit, by implementing custom TestEngine. 3.2. JUnit Jupiter This module includes new programming and extension models for writing tests in JUnit 5. New annotations in comparison to JUnit 4 are: @TestFactory – denotes a method that is a test factory for dynamic tests @DisplayName – defines custom display name for a test class or a test method @Nested – denotes that the annotated class is a nested, non-static test class @Tag – declares tags for filtering tests @ExtendWith – it is used to register custom extensions @BeforeEach – denotes that the annotated method will be executed before each test method (previously @Before) @AfterEach – denotes that the annotated method will be executed after each test method (previously @After) @BeforeAll – denotes that the annotated method will be executed before all test methods in the current class (previously @BeforeClass) @AfterAll – denotes that the annotated method will be executed after all test methods in the current class (previously @AfterClass) @Disable – it is used to disable a test class or method (previously @Ignore) 3.3. JUnit Vintage Supports running JUnit 3 and JUnit 4 based tests on the JUnit 5 platform. 4. Basic Annotations To discuss new annotations, we divided the section into the following groups, responsible for execution: before the tests, during the tests (optional) and after the tests: 4.1. @BeforeAll and @BeforeEach Below is an example of the simple code to be executed before the main test cases: @BeforeAll static void setup() { log.info("@BeforeAll - executes once before all test methods in this class"); } @BeforeEach void init() { log.info("@BeforeEach - executes before each test method in this class"); } Important to note is that the method with @BeforeAll annotation needs to be static, otherwise the code will not compile. 4.2. @DisplayName and @Disabled Let’s move to new test-optional methods: @DisplayName("Single test successful") @Test void testSingleSuccessTest() { log.info("Success"); } @Test @Disabled("Not implemented yet") void testShowSomething() { } As we can see, we may change display name or to disable the method with a comment, using new annotations. 4.3. @AfterEach and @AfterAll Finally, let’s discuss methods connected to operations after tests execution: @AfterEach void tearDown() { log.info("@AfterEach - executed after each test method."); } @AfterAll static void done() { log.info("@AfterAll - executed after all test methods."); } Please note that method with @AfterAll needs also to be a static method. 5. Assertions and Assumptions Please refer to this tutorial on JUnit5. 6. Exception Testing There are two ways of exception testing in JUnit 5. Both of them can be implemented by using assertThrows() method: @Test void shouldThrowException() { Throwable exception = assertThrows(UnsupportedOperationException.class, () -> { throw new UnsupportedOperationException("Not supported"); }); assertEquals(exception.getMessage(), "Not supported"); } @Test void assertThrowsException() { String str = null; assertThrows(IllegalArgumentException.class, () -> { Integer.valueOf(str); }); } The first example is used to verify more detail of the thrown exception and the second one just validates the type of exception. 7. Test Suites To continue the new features of JUnit 5, we will try to get to know the concept of aggregating multiple test classes in a test suite so that we can run those together. JUnit 5 provides two annotations: @SelectPackages and @SelectClasses to create test suites. Keep in mind that at this early stage most IDEs do not support those features. Let’s have a look at the first one: @RunWith(JUnitPlatform.class) @SelectPackages("com.baeldung") public class AllTests {} @SelectPackage is used to specify the names of packages to be selected when running a test suite. In our example, it will run all test. The second annotation, @SelectClasses, is used to specify the classes to be selected when running a test suite: @RunWith(JUnitPlatform.class) @SelectClasses({AssertionTest.class, AssumptionTest.class, ExceptionTest.class}) public class AllTests {} For example, above class will create a suite contains three test classes. Please note that the classes don’t have to be in one single package. 8. Dynamic Tests The last topic that we want to introduce is JUnit 5 Dynamic Tests feature, which allows to declare and run test cases generated at run-time. In contrary to the Static Tests which defines fixed number of test cases at the compile time, the Dynamic Tests allow us to define the tests case dynamically in the runtime. Dynamic tests can be generated by a factory method annotated with @TestFactory. Let’s have a look at the code example: @TestFactory public Stream<DynamicTest> translateDynamicTestsFromStream() { return in.stream() .map(word -> DynamicTest.dynamicTest("Test translate " + word, () -> { int id = in.indexOf(word); assertEquals(out.get(id), translate(word)); }) ); } This example is very straightforward and easy to understand. We want to translate words using two ArrayList, named in and out, respectively. The factory method must return a Stream, Collection, Iterable, or Iterator. In our case, we choose Java 8 Stream. Please note that @TestFactory methods must not be private or static. The number of tests is dynamic, and it depends on the ArrayList size. 9. Conclusion The write-up was a quick overview of the changes that are coming with JUnit 5. We can see that JUnit 5 has a big change in its architecture which related to platform launcher, integration with build tool, IDE, other Unit test frameworks, etc. Moreover, JUnit 5 is more integrated with Java 8, especially with Lambdas and Stream concepts. The examples used in this article can be found in the GitHub project. |
Edward Regec of Akron, Ohio, helps set up a tent belonging to his son, Tony Avitar, outside the Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, Best Buy store on Nov. 19, 2013. The father and son hope to find good deals on televisions and laptops. (Photo11: Karen Schiely, AP) Story Highlights Best Buy bargain-hunters are setting up tents in front of the store For some, it's more about socializing than shopping For others, the cold and discomfort are worth it to get 50% off Some shoppers refuse to lose out on a bargain — even if it means camping out 24/7 for more than a week. Shoppers across the country are setting up camp in front of Best Buy electronics stores to snag the best deals on Black Friday. Intrepid consumers started lining up Monday at a Best Buy in suburban Akron. Jonas Allooh was first in line, putting up his 10-person tent to simulate the comforts of home: bed, generator, space heater, TV, game console and microwave oven. Allooh, who graduated in August from Kent State University with a doctorate in audiology, has some time on his hands as he looks for a job. Camping out for Black Friday deals has become a tradition for him, he says. He's been doing it for four years with his buddies, who've been doing it for about seven years, he says. "They are seasoned pros," he says about his friends. "We've got a propane heater. And we threw a tarp over the tent to keep out the cold. And we have lots and lots of blankets." The hearty shoppers have created a community of people camping out until the post-Thanksgiving sales. Allooh and his two brothers — they're identical triplets — and their friends were eager to be first in line, so Allooh set up camp on Monday. Since then, shoppers have erected two more tents. Allooh is eyeing a 27-inch computer monitor and some gifts for "someone who doesn't know what we are getting her." It's his mom, Molly Sebring, who laughed talking about her son's urban camping adventure. Still, he's not completely sure what, if anything, he wants to buy. "I have plenty of time to look at the flyer," he says. For him, it's more of a social event than a shopping event. Last year, he left right before the store opened and shopped online. As for Thanksgiving dinner, his mom isn't so sure she'll spend Thanksgiving with her sons if they spend it in the tent. "It's awful cold in that tent, even with the heater," Sebring says. Allooh says he hopes friends will relieve them so they can have Thanksgiving dinner at home. Tony Avitar, who was first in line last year, set up the second tent. Avitar "came earlier than he had planned to because he saw the other tent was here," his parents, Ed and Janet Regec of Akron, told the Akron-Beacon Journal. The Cuyahoga Falls Best Buy is offering deals on 60-inch flat-screen TVs for $998, iPads for $300 and digital cameras half off at $800. The chain retailer will open at 6 p.m. nationwide on Thanksgiving Day. In Jacksonville, N.C., Robert Prine told WITN that he set up his tent Wednesday afternoon. He's in line for a coveted Xbox One gaming system, which goes on sale early Friday at midnight. He also wants to snag a Black Friday deal on a 65-inch Samsung TV that he says will save him $1,000. He told the station that he has camped out before for Black Friday, but never longer than 48 hours. In Beaumont, Calif., Victoria Torres is the veteran Black Friday shopper/camper of a small troop of about 10 people. She's been camping outside the Best Buy for Black Friday sales for five years. "When we need something and we can't afford it, we come out here on Black Friday, because they've got the good deals," she told the station. She was in line Monday. She said she looks forward to it every year. "It gets a little cold," Torres said, "but it's worth it." Follow @marisol_bello on Twitter. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/I89VPz |
It was a beautiful night in late August. We were playing BYU at home in the first game of the season — the 14th season of my career. I was standing there on the field trying to catch my breath and contemplating my next move. We were trailing by 18 with less than six minutes left in the game, but we had the ball on the Cougars’ 10-yard line. I had just thrown an incomplete pass on third-and-three and was hoping our coach would let me and the offense stay on the field. I felt like I just needed one more chance. Yes, I had thrown an interception earlier in the game, but since then I had been slinging the ball around pretty well. As I waited for our coach’s decision, I did a quick mental check of my body. My back and neck were stiff. My knees had that familiar throbbing pain. Some blood was dripping down my right shin. Nothing dramatic. Nothing that would keep me off the field. Actually, on the football scale of aches, I was feeling pretty good. My arm was warm, ready to throw 100 more passes, and I was particularly happy about my mullet, now sneaking out of the back of my helmet, lightly cooling my neck. All was good. We were going for it. As the formation got signaled in from the sideline, everyone started to move. “Ace Right! Ace Right! Ace Right!” I yelled, while glancing quickly from the sideline to the play clock. Thirty-five, I think to myself. O.K., we’re alright. Receivers buzzed past, lining up, reminding me how open they had been on the last play. I ignored them, as my mind was occupied. It was a crucial fourth-down play. Take what they give you, repeated in my head again and again. Make the routine play, I tell myself. My eyes flashed back to the play clock. Thirty seconds. Alright. The play-call got signaled in: Gun Ace Right Z Motion 82 Lasso X Spot F Corner. Milliseconds after getting the call, I turned around and began to dissect what was in front of me. Scanning from right to left, I hypothesized what the defense was running. Four-three, Mikes on left and probably Cover 4. Gonna have the flat early, spot if the ’backer buzzes past and maybe the corner late. Now I need to tell my line the protection and who the Mike is. I lean over the top of my center and point out the middle linebacker. “Eighty-two, Mike is 34! Eighty-two, Mike is 34!” I yelled. My eyes shifted back to the play clock. Twenty-five. We’re fine. I backed up from the line and took my position behind the center. My toes precisely positioned 4½ yards from the ball. My eyes scanned the field for any late changes in coverage. I took one last look around to make sure my guys were set. Then one last look at the play clock. Twenty-three. Let’s do it. Settling my feet in, I put my receiver in motion and he started sprinting across the field. “Ready!” I yell as he crosses in front of me. “Set-hut!” The ball was snapped. Everything lurched into motion. At that moment, for me, everything slowed down. The ball floated back from my center toward me as I turned my body, ready to run to my left. I aligned the fingers on my right hand with the laces as my left foot hit the ground behind me. Blurry figures became either comforting targets or dangerous vultures. As my right foot hit the ground, I realized that my first option, the flat route, wasn’t open. My left foot came down again, then my right, as I saw that my second option, the spot route, was also covered. A sickening feeling came over me. The defense was closing in. I had no shot to run for it. O.K., square your body up and try to hit the corner route, I thought. I swung my body around 90 degrees to put myself in a position to make the throw. My right hand held the ball firmly as the rest of my arm went into motion. Simultaneously, my hips turned around, bringing me off of the ground. One by one, my fingers left the ball, making it into a spiral. The forward motion of my arm propelled the ball and I watched as it floated away like a piece of drift wood taken by the tide. I felt like I was suspended in mid-air, willing the pigskin to land into my receiver’s hands for a touchdown. Here on earth, objects fall with a constant acceleration of 9.81 meters per second. When we leave the ground, we’re going back down. At that particular moment, the force coming to bring me back down to earth was a 235 pound linebacker. The first sharp pain I felt was in my ribs as his forearm slammed into me. Soon the rest of his body followed as he hit me from behind. His other arm wrapped around me and I began to fall forward, my head snapping back violently. For an instant we were both parallel to the ground. I threw my left arm out in front of me but it crumbled under the weight of the two of us. My head smacked off of the turf and everything went black. The only word I know to describe the first few moments after a concussion is limbo — there are a few moments between the world that you were just a part of and your new brain-injured reality. When I regained consciousness, I knew I was on the ground. My head was seized with tremendous pressure, and that same awful, familiar depression from previous head injuries came over me — like a dark, heavy blanket, swallowing me up. I tried to fight it: Just get up. Get the hell up! I opened my eyes. My distorted vision quickly came back to focus, and I saw high-powered stadium lights shining on me. I realized I was at the game. The other team was celebrating like maniacs so I knew that my pass had fallen incomplete. Hands helped me up, and some of my teammates surrounded me out of concern. As I began to jog off the field, I turned to my teammate and asked what happened. Through his facemask, I could see a confused look. I then realized that my words weren’t coming out in English. After a second or two of unintelligible blabber, I was able to say, “What happened?” “It was incomplete. You alright?” he responded. My vision blurred again. Once I got to the sideline and I was met by teammates and doctors. They asked question after question. I responded to most of them with, “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” But I knew immediately that I was not. I knew I had just played the last snap of my career. It was my 13th concussion — a baker’s dozen of brain injuries since I took my first head hit at the age of 11. I understand the weight of this number, and I totally get why people look shocked when I tell it to them. It took 13 for me to finally take a stand and say enough is enough. About a week after I had slowly removed myself from the turf in the first game of the season, I retired from football. A 20-year-old, at the peak of his athletic career, walking away from the game he felt like he had been born to play. It’s been a year and a half since I made that decision. I still feel the lingering effects from my many concussions. Life is a balancing act now. Some days it’s hard to wake up before noon. Sometimes I don’t want to leave my bed at all. In high school, I had a 3.9 GPA. Now I have trouble focusing and performing well in my graduate-school classes. I am 22 years old. My back, neck and knees shouldn’t hurt as badly as they do. I get headaches occasionally and migraines if I cry. My eyes hurt when I roll them up and to the left. At times I feel isolated and forget all about my supportive friends and family. Most days, my mind races in a panicked frenzy. On the outside, you would have no idea there was anything going on. I look like a normal 22-year-old college grad. But like a duck peacefully cruising along in a stream, I appear calm even though there are two feet paddling at full speed just under the surface. I want to be happy. I want to be stronger than this force outside of my control that is holding me back. This is the hardest part. Sometimes it’s nice to admit that things aren’t O.K.: “Hello, my name is Casey, and I have anxiety and depression.” It may be permanent. It may be just the beginning. I don’t know what the future has in store for me and it will be some time before the medical field can paint a clearer picture for me. I may have CTE right now. I might have dementia at 50. My entire future is uncertain. I am not alone. There are millions of athletes (regardless of sport or gender) who already have, or who will soon go through, similar experiences. I hate that this is my reality, but I truly believe that everything happens for a reason. I think that I have gone through all of this so that I could see the ugly side of sports. As a kid, I felt like I was crazy. There was pressure on me to be on the field, and because of that I would convince myself that I felt fine after suffering a head injury even when I didn’t. I tried to ignore whatever concerns I had. But I was not crazy. And neither is anyone with a similar experience. It is smart to worry to about your health and well being. It is smart to ask questions. I often hear people say that football players know what they’re getting themselves into — it’s part of the job. I disagree. Those who play football, particularly those who begin in their youth, are given a glamorized version of the sport – one where camaraderie, discipline, toughness and leadership are highlighted and the wretchedness is ignored and swept under the rug. As a result, we fall in love with and value the good and push aside the bad. In a perfect world, the goal of any given collegiate football coach would be to take an 18-year-old “boy” and produce well-rounded, well-equipped, strong and confident man. Sadly, this ideal is far from reality. There are many cases when a lifetime spent playing this game results in a person becoming mentally and physically battered, more confused about the world than when they came into the sport. In that sense, many of us feel used. Thankfully, the science community has our best interests in hand. We now know that repeated head trauma can lead to devastating brain diseases, including CTE, dementia, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The evidence is so strong that even the NFL has conceded the link between CTE and football-related head trauma. Of course, I miss the sport and the life I decided to walk away from. From time to time I’ll catch myself daydreaming, picturing myself throwing a perfect dime to the back corner of the end zone, threading the needle between two defenders for a touchdown. Then I’ll visualize that indescribable, out-of-body experience of an entire stadium of fans leaping to their feet in celebration. I’ll scan the crowd and see old women high-fiving drunk college students, or middle-aged men embracing in a giant bear hugs, their beers spilling as they jump up and down. However, those daydreams are usually spoiled by the thought any of my number of concussions. I would always tell myself that one day football would end and it would only be one chapter of my life. Because I thought this way, it allowed me to look at the sport with a critical eye. There are problems with the game that need to be addressed. As it is played right now, tackle football — with its pads and helmets — puts players in harm’s way, all of the time, regardless of age and ability. I want to say to all former, current and future athletes who have or will suffer a concussion: Do not hide it. Tell your coaches, medical staff, parents, friends and teammates. Get treatment. The cycle of silence hurts more and more people each year. I probably should have stopped playing football in eighth grade after my third concussion, but I was afraid to speak up. Afraid of disappointing people who had invested in my career. Afraid of who was I was without football. I wish I hadn’t hid the three concussions I had in one week during my junior year of high school, but I was afraid that college recruiters would find out. I definitely should have said something after smacking my head on the turf while playing SMU during my first collegiate start, but again, I was afraid. Afraid of what was beyond the familiar realm of the gridiron. Afraid of the unknown. I’m not afraid anymore. I don’t feel trapped inside of a game. There is life outside of the white lines. A lot of life. Stepping away from football was one of the scariest things I’ve ever had to do. I felt lost for a long time. For a little over a year, I felt like I was somewhere, deep in the ocean, being pulled by the currents. But what pulled me back from the depths was hope. Hope that things would get better. So I began to say to myself the same thing I said to myself while I was laying on the field after the last play of my career. Just get up. Get the hell up! So I began to swim. Sometimes against the current and sometimes with, but I kept moving. And after a while something amazing happened. I found my passion: being an advocate for player safety. I have talked in front of legislators at my state capitol, spoken on a panel at SXSW, was the keynote speaker for the Brain Injury Alliance of Connecticut’s annual conference and been on numerous television and radio shows. I am writing a book and trying with all of my might to get on the speaking circuit. I will be donating my brain to the Concussion Legacy Foundation. This summer I am going to drive cross-country. I also have a luscious mullet-mustache combo, play guitar, do yoga, hike, swim, golf, work out, read, and meditate. Yes some days are tough, but a positive outlook is possible and necessary. Life is good, never forget that. If you have a passion for something, go after it, no matter what anyone says. Most importantly, wake up every morning and thank the wild and wacky cosmos that you have another chance to kick some metaphysical ass. If you feel alone, you aren’t. Chances are, there are a lot of people out there who have some idea of what you’re going through. Just keep looking. Reach out. My email is caseycochran12@gmail.com. One day at a time, we can make a difference. |
Should bike helmets be mandatory? Bicycle Network reviews its support of Australian law Updated Australia's biggest bike-riding organisation is open to changing its near 30-year support for mandatory helmet laws, and it's looking to the people to help guide its decision. Key points: Bicycle Network undertakes policy review on helmet stance Review invites public to take part in an online survey, will consider expert studies Policy review is expected to be completed by April 2018 Love them or hate them, wear them on your head or leave them swinging from the handlebars, helmets are one of the more divisive issues among cyclists. Bicycle Network, which boasts a 50,000-strong membership, has supported mandatory helmet wearing for people who ride bikes since Australia introduced them in the early 1990s. It is now undertaking a policy review to assess its long-standing position on the issue — which could lead to a change. As part of the review, the group is inviting everyone to take part in an online survey. Bicycle Network chief executive Craig Richards said the group had received more than 10,000 responses since the survey opened at the beginning of the month. "We've got a huge response in a short period of time, which I guess goes to show just how interested so many people are ... in this question of mandatory helmet laws," he said. "Helmets is one of the hot topics in bike world that comes up ... people from overseas who look at Australia think it's an odd position to take, because they don't have mandatory helmet laws. "Some people in Australia say 'there's nothing to think about, of course it should be compulsory, they protect your head and your head's important. We don't want bike riders getting hurt.' "There's both side of the coin, people have opinions on either side, some very strong opinions ... but we're doing our best to remain as neutral as we can, look at both the arguments from both sides, look at the evidence on both sides, then make a decision on the policy." Bicycle Network seeks out expert opinion Mr Richards said the survey was just one part of the organisation's overall review of its position. They are also combing through expert studies on the matter — and are calling for anyone with information they think could make a difference to let them know. "We'll ask the experts' opinion, and we'll also do a literature review ... the review of credible studies into the world of mandatory helmets, it's a huge number of studies," he said. "So there's a fair bit of work in making sure we review that carefully. "We'll also look at other evidence and statistics, so we'll take all these bits of evidence, we'll weigh them up, and that's how we'll make a decision on what the policy should be. "We want to make sure we haven't missed any ... we're in the process of combing through them, looking at them carefully, if other people have particular pieces of research they think are important we ask they please point us to them." Mr Richards said they wanted the policy review done by April next year. Social media offers mixed reaction ABC Brisbane's Facebook page put the question "should bike helmets be mandatory" to its followers on Monday. The responses varied: Duncan Walker: Yes especially as I had concussion from a fall from a bike with a helmet on. The doctors said I would have been brain damaged had I not been wearing a helmet. Yes especially as I had concussion from a fall from a bike with a helmet on. The doctors said I would have been brain damaged had I not been wearing a helmet. Johnny Worthington: Inside a very messy discussion, I would hope that everyone would agree that for kids under 18, yes, it should be mandatory. Inside a very messy discussion, I would hope that everyone would agree that for kids under 18, yes, it should be mandatory. Phillip Clarke: If people don't want to wear one then no public medical funds when they have an accident. If people don't want to wear one then no public medical funds when they have an accident. Jim Fazl: They should be mandatory. Just like seatbelts, helmets save lives and prevent serious injury. They should be mandatory. Just like seatbelts, helmets save lives and prevent serious injury. Steve Sturges: No, optional after the age of consent. No, optional after the age of consent. Diane Noel: Whatever, let natural selection decide. Whatever, let natural selection decide. Peter Whitty: Nope. Survived just fine for years before the nanny states. The survey is available at the Bicycle Network website. Topics: community-and-society, charities-and-community-organisations, australia, brisbane-4000 First posted |
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