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Army Chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa on Wednesday said the army fully supports the mainstreaming of the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (Fata), according to a statement issued by the military’s media wing. According to an Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) press release, Gen Bajwa on Wednesday promised a delegation from Fata that the army will pursue the process to mainstream Fata "in line with the aspirations of our tribal brothers”. On Monday, a last-minute decision by the government to once again delay the presentation of the Fata reforms bill had led to uproar in the National Assembly. Opposition lawmakers had announced a boycott of house proceedings until the much-delayed legislation was introduced. The intensity of the protest increased when two federal ministers — Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab Ahmed and Minister for States and Frontier Regions (Safron) retired Lt Gen Abdul Qadir Baloch — failed to give a satisfactory reason for the government’s decision to put off the introduction of a bill seeking to extend the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and the Peshawar High Court to the tribal areas. On Wednesday, delegations of tribal elders and a youth jirga from Fata called on the army chief at the ISPR directorate to convey their views on the mainstreaming of Fata and the way forward, read the ISPR's statement. Gen Bajwa was reported to have thanked the tribal elders and Fata's youth for their "determination and support" for peace and stability in the region and its socio-economic development. He advised the youth to continue to play a role in establishing peace in Fata and Pakistan, calling them “the future leaders”. |
NEW DELHI: Delhi BJP today accused Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal of garnering political mileage through controversies and of ignoring the problems of people by putting up a "facade" of honesty."It is clear that Kejriwal is trying to divert attention of the people from the issues of governance as he has failed to deliver on this front."He should give priority to addressing the problems of people of Delhi instead of trying to play to the gallery on old and stale issues which are already in public domain," said Delhi BJP President Vijay Goel.Kejriwal is "least bothered" about problems of people in Delhi and all his efforts are towards getting maximum political mileage through controversies in run up to Lok Sabha polls , Goel charged.Addressing a party function to commemorate the death anniversary of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya, Goel said "if the CM can order named FIRs in case of gas prices which appear to be beyond his jurisdiction, what is stopping him from naming former Congress Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and other Congress leaders in Commonwealth Games scam case? Why an unnamed FIR has been filed in this case?" said Goel."Kejriwal is trying to put a facade of honesty when two of his ministers - Somnath Bharti and Manish Sisodia - are indulge in questionable practices. Why is Kejriwal protecting them?," Goel added. |
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- An argument over presidential politics at an East Side bar ended when a man shot another man in the leg. The accused shooter, a 45-year-old Cleveland man, has not been formally charged and is not in custody. The 60-year-old shooting victim remained hospitalized as of Tuesday. The men met on the back patio of Winston's Bar, near East 131st Street and Miles Avenue, about 5 p.m., according to a police report. The men, who are both regulars at the bar, started talking about the presidential election. It's unclear which candidates the men supported, but the discussion escalated into a shouting match. The bar's owner jumped in to separate them, and brought the 60 year old into the bar. The 45 year old walked around the outside of the building and through the front door, which has a sticker declaring no firearms are allowed inside the bar. The argument rekindled. The 45-year-old man pulled a pistol from his pants and opened fire. His debate partner suffered a single gunshot to the leg. The shooter then ran out the bar's front door, jumped into a Cadillac truck and drove off, police said. The man was sentenced in April to 18 months of probation after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge related to a May 7, 2015 incident at the same bar. He and a woman got into a fight with two other women. The man struck the women with a bottle, according to court records. The man ran into the Cleveland police detective assigned to his case at Winston's Bar in October after he had posted bond. The officer was off-duty, and the man confronted him. The man told the officer that he was out of jail, and asked the officer what he wanted to do, according to court records. The officer left the bar and told Cuyahoga County prosecutors about the encounter. The bar has experienced violence before. In March 2015, 33-year-old Lamar Richards was shot dead in a parking lot next to the bar. The bar was also the scene of a police-involved shooting in July 2013. A 30-year-old man shot the bar's security guard in the leg after he was thrown out, then shot at responding police officers, according to police. Officers retuned fire, wounding the man. If you wish to discuss or comment on this story, please visit Tuesday's crime and courts comments section. |
But regardless whether Simonides himself was responsible for this shift, or whether he simply became the straw man associated with a larger trend sweeping the classical world, the shift toward monetizing poetry had long-lasting effects. In short order, money became widely recognized as a corrupting influence; Pindar, in his second Isthmian Ode, nostalgically laments earlier times when “The Muses were not mercenary in those days, nor worked for hire, nor were the songs of Terpsichore for sale.” And Horace, in his discussion of the poet Choerilus, whose pockets Alexander the Great filled “with lots of royal cash, as a reward for his misbegotten badly written verses,” adds that writers who work under such economic motives mar both their subject matter and their writing. There is a moral in the tale of pay-for-play poets like Choerilus, who was given a gold coin for each good verse he produced, and a beating for each bad verse: in the end, he was flogged to death for his writing. No matter. We have continued to blur and smudge both good deeds and good writing with money more or less constantly ever since then. Pindar’s lament against the Simonideses of the world has continued unabated to the present day. Writing for The Telegraph in 2014, Sameer Rahim complained: “You can’t go on a writer’s Facebook page or meet them for a drink without the discussion turning to what their publisher is doing—or not—to boost their sales, who the most ruthless agents are, or where to get the best-paid creative writing gigs.” Simonides’s original sin, for Rahim, continues to taint the work of writing, even to this day. Bothered by this endless avarice, Rahim wondered, “I know they have to eat, but when did it all become about the money?... Call me a romantic but it might actually benefit a writer not to rely on books as their main source of income.” Perhaps this age of capitalist greed is coming to an end; with the rise of online publishing, the material costs of publishing have all but vanished, allowing for a world once again untrammeled by commerce. “Luckily, the freedom offered by the Internet offers a chance to resurrect the idea of writing for love, not money,” waxes Rahim. “So far online self-publishing has been the preserve of fan fiction and erotica but it can’t be long before high-quality fiction starts to emerge.” In two thousand years, we have not strayed far from Pindar’s long-ago complaint: “Men used to write for love alone; now they write for money.” It would seem, perhaps, easy enough to go back, to separate writing from commerce. Rahim’s vision of writers holding other jobs and writing in their free time, their words no longer bound to feed them, is an easy enough solution. But the story of Simonides also suggests the way in which these two things—words and money—are closer in value than they appear. “Simonides appears to have been the first to introduce meticulous calculation into songmaking and to write songs for a wage,” writes one commentator of his legacy. Carson notes that in the Greek, the word smikrologia, “meticulous calculation,” can suggest not just “minute care about financial expense, miserliness,” but also “minute care about details of language, exact expression.” Dionysius of Halicarnassus, writing of Simonides, notes that one should “Watch very carefully Simonides’s choice of words and the exactitude with which he puts things together”; the word exactitude here is akribeia, which likewise has a dual meaning: it can mean “precision, accuracy, exactness of language” or “parsimony, frugality, stinginess with money.” Simonides, then, not only became the first to charge money for his words, but also, these sources suggest, awakened in Greek culture the fact that money and words bear an analogous relationship to each other. “Money had a radical impact on ancient culture,” Carson concludes; “Simonides reacted to it by inventing a poetry of radical economy.” Rather than simply stating that Simonides interrupted a literary economy of gift and patron, of charity and reciprocity, one might perhaps suggest instead that he revealed, or at least cemented, a latent relationship between language and currency that was always there. I have a small stack of gifts I’ve received from publishers I’ve written for: a few mugs, a tote bag, a T-shirt, some stickers, even a few 7” records. Primarily these are from small journals: places that weren’t even paying editors, let alone writers. I’ll write for free to help a new publication that I admire get off the ground, or because I admire their mission, or because the editor is a friend of mine. In a few cases I’ve been offered a small amount—barely more than an honorarium—that I’ve turned down to help defray the publisher’s costs. This is part of the gift economy of writing: Occasionally I’m asked to contribute a piece for no pay, and to do so as, more or less, a gift. And the implication here is always that one does such things out of love: love for new publications, love for new voices, and a love of seeing one’s own words in print. In such cases, asking for cash, or turning down an offer for lack thereof, is always gauche. Asked to write for love, not money, the writer is asked to exit the money economy and return to the gift economy. In 2007, poet Robert Hass suggested that this boomerang trajectory was the natural way of art. While institutions such as copyright exist “to put works of art on the market for a while,” Hass sees the situation as temporary: “then they come out of the market and back into the commons, because the commons is where they came from. And the way they came there is just as anybody here who ever wanted to write, wanted to write because they got gifted.” There’s something beautiful and utopian here, but it’s worth recognizing that this is not a true gift economy in the sense first defined by Marcel Mauss and other anthropologists. Gift economies, above all, are a means of keeping goods in circulation, as well as cementing bonds. Receiving a gift, be it a banquet or a poem, is only the first part of the equation. The receiver is then expected—more than expected, obligated—to return the favor. And not just return it, but to exceed it; the gift given in return must be more valuable than the original gift. Asked to write for love, not money, the writer is asked to exit the money economy and return to the gift economy. This obligation is a means of ensuring that goods and services stay in circulation in a given community, and it is also the means by which social status is determined. In Potlatch—a festival of elaborate giving practiced by various cultures of the Pacific Northwest—the goal is to give so much, and so lavishly, that your benefactors are perpetually in your debt. As Mauss notes, the gift economy may be “apparently free and disinterested but nevertheless constrained and self-interested.” The gift, Mauss writes, appears generously given, but this is at best a “polite fiction, formalism and social deceit,” behind which lies “obligation and economic self-interest.” In gift economies, the obligation “to reciprocate worthily is imperative. One loses face for ever if one does not reciprocate,” writes Mauss. “The individual unable to repay the loan or reciprocate the potlatch loses his rank and even his status as a free man.” It may be that the term “gift economy” is a misnomer; it is a circulation economy, and it doesn’t work if it consists only of gifts given in one direction. Georges Bataille describes potlatch as “the solemn giving of considerable riches, offered by a chief to his rival for the purpose of humiliating, challenging, and obligating him. The recipient has to erase the humiliation and take up the challenge; he must satisfy the obligation that was contracted by accepting. He can only reply, a short time later, by means of a new potlatch, more generous than the first: He must pay back with interest.” Potlatch, like any gift economy, can never be a one-way process; those who receive gifts are indebted, and they are obligated to return the favor in order to save face. If editors and publishers—appealing to love, not money—ask for the gift of free words, then by the logic of the gift those writers can expect a return, with interest. Largesse only makes sense when it is constantly returned, when it is part of a great wheel of motion. The accusation of a writer’s stinginess can only be valid when it disrupts an already moving series of gifts and reciprocities. When this reciprocity is lacking, the humiliation lies entirely with those asking writers to give their words for free. Excerpted from Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, edited by Manjula Martin and published by Simon & Schuster. |
Our readers are often curious about the process of writing books, and we’re happy to provide access to the experts! In this installment of our Publishing U series, crime writer Leonard Chang shares his experience with keeping his head up while finding the right editor in a sea of not-so-enlightened ones. My latest novel, The Lockpicker, had a tortuous history, and made me question the sanity of agents, editors—and even myself. I will start by being so bold as to quote a rejection by an esteemed former editor, publisher, and literary agent who shall remain nameless, but who read The Lockpicker in manuscript form. He wrote a brief letter of praise, but ultimately rejected the novel. The line from his letter that shouted back at me was thus: What fails for me is that it [that] virtually nothing is made of the fact that these guys are Koreans. I suppose in the alleged melting pot of America that might be a good thing, but for the book it doesn’t lend anything even lightly exotic to the narrative or the characters. Before you get shocked or wince sympathetically, I must confess that this was not the first time I’d receive this kind of rejection. I won’t get into the identity and racial politics of why this critique is so pernicious, but it’s enough to say that exoticism for exoticism’s sake, especially from a Korean-American writer who sees himself as American and not exotic, is just, well, antiquated. Another rejection for another novel, another, longer quote from a legendary editor: The characters, especially the main character, just do not seem Asian enough. They act like everyone else. They don’t eat Korean food, they don’t speak Korean, and you have to think about ways to make these characters more ’ethnic,’ more different. We get too much of the minutiae of [the characters’] lives and none of the details that separate Koreans and Korean-Americans from the rest of us. For example, in the scene when she looks into the mirror, you don’t show how she sees her slanted eyes, or how she thinks of her Asianness. The Lockpicker is my eighth novel. Through the years, I’ve learned you cannot educate a hegemonic editor in power; you ignore him and move on. You find another editor, and you keep writing. There is no practical advice other than moving on. All my books have outlasted those naysayers. Quite literally: Those two editors above have since passed on, may they rest in peace. Meanwhile, I continue writing, no matter what the rejections may say. Being a novelist is very, very difficult, but I would argue that the journey of getting published is even more treacherous. Everyone gets stupid rejections, but there’s a special reward for those who soldier on in spite of them. I continued sending out the manuscript for The Lockpicker while occupying myself with other projects: I wrote another novel, Triplines, wrote for a TV show called Justified, and kept writing and submitting. When Black Heron Press accepted Triplines, I returned to The Lockpicker and knew it was the novel I wanted to write, the novel I wanted to read but didn’t see, and I knew those past critiques were wrong. I waited until Triplines was well under way in the publishing process, then submitted The Lockpicker to Black Heron. Their acceptance was probably the fastest I’d ever received. And here we are. If I had been deterred or demoralized by the initial rejections, if I had given up then, the manuscript would still be sitting in some drawer. Thank goodness I kept pushing forward, and I hope you, fellow writers, continue pushing forward, too. Related Comments comments |
DARE Scare: Turning Children Into Informants? WP 1/29/94 9:00 PM By James Bovard DRUG ABUSE Resistance Education (DARE) is currently being taught by police officers to more than 5 million children in more than 250,000 classrooms each year. The brainchild of former Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates, the DARE program is directed mostly at fifth and sixth graders, though its activities can span kindergarten through 12th grade. Gates made headlines in 1989 with his suggestion that drug users be taken out and shot, and his brand of philosophical moderation permeates the DARE approach to drug abuse. On its face, DARE seems unobjectionable. It seeks to maximize youngsters' hostility to drugs by teaching them perils of drugs and reinforcing the message with DARE frisbees, DARE wristwatches and an official DARE song ("Dare to keep a kid off dope/Dare to give a kid some hope"). Students are also able to win or purchase DARE pencils, erasers, workbooks and certificates of achievement. But along with the anti-drug paraphernalia may come a more ominous effect: children informing on their drug-using parents. The program was created partly as a result of Gates's frustrations with police sting operations in the schools. Until the late 1980s, Los Angeles police officers routinely went undercover as high school students in order to implore real students to buy drugs from them. In 1987, the American Civil Liberties Union complained, "When other adults try to get young people involved with drugs, we call it contributing to the delinquency of a minor. When the LAPD does it, we call it the school-buy program." Finding young people who would buy drugs proved quite easy. Unfortunately, it had little effect on drug use by students. As Gates told the Los Angeles Times last September, "We kept buying more and more. It was appalling, depressing. I finally said: `This is crazy. We've got to do something.' " The result was DARE. Winning the trust of youngsters is an essential feature of DARE. Policemen sit and talk with children during lunch hour and play games with them during recess. The federal Bureau of Justice Assistance noted in a 1988 report that DARE "students have an opportunity to become acquainted with the (police) officer as a trusted friend who is interested in their happiness and welfare. Students occasionally tell the officer about problems such as abuse, neglect, alcoholic parents, or relatives who use drugs." One of the first lessons found in DARE teaching materials stresses the "Three R's": "Recognize, Resist and Report." The official DARE Officer's Guide for Grades K-4 contains a worksheet that instructs children to "Circle the names of the people you could tell if . . . a friend finds some pills"; the "Police" are listed along with "Mother or Father," "Teacher"or "Friend." The next exercise instructs children to check boxes for whom they should inform if they "are asked to keep a secret" - the police are again listed as an option. Roberta Silverman, a spokeswoman for national DARE headquarters in Los Angeles, rejects the idea that DARE teaches or encourages informing. "When students begin the DARE program they are specifically advised not talk about their parents or friends. We are very clear that when DARE instructors are in the classroom, they are there as teachers, not law enforcement officers." Silverman says that the DARE Officer's Guide for Grades K-4 is not part of the DARE core curriculum. "It lays the groundwork for what the officers do later. It's more like generic safety instruction, teaching kids about personal safety. The part about keeping a secret is to get kids talking about molestation. It has nothing to do with drugs or with getting them to turn their parents in." Silverman also says that "any time a child makes a disclosure (of parental drug use) to an officer, the DARE officer would be required like any other teacher to report that to the proper authorities or agencies." Not surprisingly, children sometimes confide the names of people they suspect are illegally using drugs. A mother and father in Caroline County, Md., were jailed for 30 days after their daughter informed a police DARE instructor that her parents had marijuana plants in their home, according to a story in The Washington Post in January 1993. The Wall Street Journal reported in 1992 that "In two recent cases in Boston, children who had tipped police stepped out of their homes carrying DARE diplomas as police arrived to arrest their parents." In 1991, 10-year-old Joaquin Herrera of Englewood, Colo., phoned 911, announced, "I'm a DARE kid" and summoned police to his house to discover a couple of ounces of marijuana hidden in a bookshelf, according to the Rocky Mountain News. The boy sat outside his parents' home in a police patrol car while the police searched the home and arrested the parents. The policeman assigned to the boy's school commended the boy's action. Police and DARE officials keep no statistics on how many drug busts result from the program. And DARE officials say that reports of kids informing on their parents cannot fairly be attributed to DARE. "I think to focus on these few incidents is to do a disservice to people who are at the forefront of prevention efforts in this country," DARE's Silverman said. "There are 25 million kids who have been exposed to DARE and a handful of cases of informing that may or may not be related to DARE at all." Nine-year-old Darrin Davis of Douglasville, Ga., called 911 after he found a small amount of speed hidden in his parent's bedroom because, as he told the Dallas Morning News, "At school, they told us that if we ever see drugs, call 911 because people who use drugs need help . . . . I thought the police would come get the drugs and tell them that drugs are wrong. They never said they would arrest them. . . . But in court, I heard them tell the judge that I wanted my mom and dad arrested. That is a lie. I did not tell them that." The arrest wrecked his parents' lives, said the Dallas newspaper; both parents lost their jobs, a bank threatened to foreclose on their homes and his father was kept in jail for three months. Silverman says that the details of the case prove how murky such cases are. While Darrin Davis had been in a DARE program, she says that he did not report his parents to the DARE officer and that there was evidence that the parents were also involved in drug trafficking, thus putting their child at risk. "It's making a mountain out of a molehill," she says. Whatever DARE's effect on families, its record at discouraging drug use is the subject of some controversy. A study financed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse on the effect of DARE on Kentucky students between 1987 and 1992 reported "no statistically significant differences between experimental groups and control groups in the percentage of new users of . . . cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, alcohol and marijuana." More recently, the National Institute of Justice hired Research Triangle Institute (RTI) to survey and evaluate all the published research on DARE, and RTI's preliminary conclusions were largely negative. The RTI's evaluation concluded that only eight published studies of DARE's effectiveness were statistically valid. Susan Ennett, one of the lead researchers on the RTI project, concluded that these eight studies found that DARE's effects on drug use by children ranged from "limited to nonexistent." DARE says that other experts have criticized the methodology of the RTI study and notes that it has not yet completed the peer review process. DARE claims that of 23 studies of DARE, 20 found the program effective in shaping anti-drug attitudes and behavior. At a March 1993 conference about drug education at the University of California at San Diego, social science researchers agreed that after 10 years of operation there is little evidence that DARE actually reduces drug use among the young. William Hanson, one of the early advisers to DARE and currently a professor at Wake Forest University, said, "I think the program should be entirely scrapped and redeveloped anew." Many Americans, numbed by politicians' harsh rhetoric regarding drug use, may feel that policemen should be able to use any means available to detect drug users. Many DARE instructors have the best of intentions. But is that an excuse for government programs that endanger the bonds between children and parents? James Bovard is the author of the forthcoming book, "Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty" (St. Martin's Press). Copyright 1994 The Washington Post |
New Studies Question Whether Food Availability Determines Food Choices Get ready for the next Big Argument in the matter of our national weight gain and its most likely causes. The issue: Whether a scarcity of available healthy and nutritious food in certain economically stressed neighborhoods is a major contributor to the high rate of obesity among the urban poor. A broad array of people have embraced this notion, ranging from the most respected and influential, such as Michelle Obama, to those at the other end of the respect and influence spectrum, such as myself. I invoked the “food deserts” premise in my e-book, “115 Reasons Why It’s Not Your Fault If You’re Fat,” which you may recall thanks to my plug for it in my most recent post. But now come a pair of studies which question, and in fact claim to refute, (1) the assumption that poor urban neighborhoods are nutritional wastelands, all convenience stores and fast food joints with no sources of fruits and veggies, and (2) the notion that the kinds of food sold in a given neighborhood are associated with its rate of childhood and teenage obesity. Study No. 1 was conducted by Helen Lee of the Public Policy Institute of California, and drew upon census data to identify population clusters of poor families. In those clusters, she found more fast food and convenience outlets than in more prosperous neighborhoods, as expected, but also more supermarkets, sit-down restaurants and corner stores per square mile. Her conclusion, as she reported in a recent issue of Social Science and Medicine, is that the supposed food deserts are in fact vibrant with healthy food options. Already, consumer and public health advocates have noted that this is merely a mathematic overview of demographics and commercial food retailers, using methodology which is not flawless by any means. For one thing, it doesn’t delve into the quantity, quality, variety, freshness or affordability of the locally available produce. For another, urban communities have more food sources of all kinds per square mile because they generally have far more people per square mile. Business, of all kinds, goes where the customers are. This is especially true when many of the customers lack vehicles. And a square mile takes in a lot of territory when you put it downtown. There are, for example, plenty of fine restaurants in San Francisco that are within a mile of the Tenderloin, as gritty a pocket as you’d walk through in a hurry, but they might as well be on Neptune from the financial point of view of the ‘Loin’s residents. Study No. 2, authored by Roland Sturm of the RAND Corporation, analyzed data on the weight, height, location and eating habits of 13,000 California kids, correlated it with food outlets within 1.5 miles of their homes, and concluded that there was no association between what students eat, what kind of food is available to them nearby, and how much they weigh. This conclusion, however, does not appear to be airtight. One fairly large hole is that the weight, height and dietary information all came from reports and estimates made by the kids themselves. Studies have indicated that there is enough space between what we say we eat and what we actually eat to drive a Domino’s delivery van through. As to the notion that there is no connection between the type of food the kids eat and their weight, get serious. The vast majority of overweight people are that way because of the amount of calories they consume, and those calories do not appear out of thin air. They are provided in edible form by local merchants. Both of these studies will get a good hashing over by critics and supporters alike, and more comprehensive follow-up studies are as inevitable as negative political ads. In the meantime, the two studies seem to be leading the media toward a larger hypothesis: That trying to tinker with or nutritionally upgrade the kinds of food a community can obtain doesn’t have much effect on the kinds and amounts of food it actually buys and eats. There might be a lot of truth to this. Nonetheless, I’ve lived in both urban, low-income neighborhoods and comfortable middle-class communities, and eating a healthy diet is easier, more convenient and, perversely, cheaper in the latter than the former. And fewer people seem to be overweight in the latter. It will take an awful lot of research to convince me that my experience is an anomaly. By Robert S. Wieder, CalorieLab’s Senior Health Columnist since 2006. Author of several books, including 115 Reasons Why It’s Not Your Fault You’re Fat, Bob wrote for numerous national magazines after starting out as editor of the UC Berkeley humor magazine the California Pelican. He also put in a stint as a San Francisco-area stand-up comic. |
The Linguistic Aspect Of Natural Language Processing (NLP) Natural Language Processing is concerned with the exploration of computational techniques to learn, understand and produce human language content. NLP technologies can assist both human-human communication and human-machine communication, and can analyse and learn from the vast amount of textual data available online. However, there are a few hindrances to this vastly unexplored aspect of technology. We don’t consciously understand language ourselves as Homo Sapiens to begin with. The second major difficulty is ambiguity. Computers are extremely good at manipulating syntax, for example, count how many times the word and appears in a 120 pages document, but they are extremely weak at manipulating concepts. As a matter of fact, a concept is totally stranger to computer processes. On the other hand, natural language is all about concepts and it only uses syntax as a transient means to get to it. A computer is unaware about conceptual processing dimension makes it difficult to process natural language since the purpose of natural languages is to convey concepts and syntax is only used as a transient means in natural language. Such a limitation can be alleviated by making computer processes more aware about the conceptual dimension. This is almost a philosophical question. In natural language, syntax is a means, and concept is the goal. If you relate to transportation for example, a road is the means where getting from point A to point B is the goal. If extra-terrestrial would come to earth long before we are gone and would find roads all over the place, would they be able to make some sense about transportation just by analyzing the means? Probably not! You can’t analyze the means exclusively in order to fully understand an object of knowledge. When you think of a linguistic concept like a word or a sentence, those seem like simple, well-formed ideas. But in reality, there are many borderline cases that can be quite difficult to figure out. For instance, is “won’t” one word, or two? (Most systems treat it as two words.) In languages like Chinese or (especially) Thai, native speakers disagree about word boundaries, and in Thai, there isn’t really even the concept of a sentence in the way that there is in English. And words and sentences are incredibly simple compared to finding meaning in text. The thing is, many, many words are like that. “Ground” has tons of meanings as a verb, and even more as a noun. To understand what a sentence means, you have to understand the meaning of the words, and that’s no simple task. The crazy thing is, for humans, all this stuff is effortless. When you read web page with lists, tables, run on sentences, newly made up words, nouns used as verbs, and sarcasm, you get it immediately, usually without having to work at it. Puns and wordplay are constructs people use for fun but they’re also exactly what you’d create if you were trying your best to baffle an NLP system. The reason for that is that computers process language in a way totally unlike humans, so once you go away from whatever text they were trained on, they are likely to be hopelessly confused. Whereas humans happily learn the new rules of communicating on Twitter without having to think about it. If we really understood how people understand language, we could maybe make a computer system do something similar. But because it’s so deeply buried and unconscious, we resort to approximations and statistical techniques, which are at the mercy of their training data and may never be as flexible as a human. Natural language processing is the art of solving engineering problems that need to analyze or generate natural language text.The metric of success is not whether you designed a better scientific theory or proved that languages X and Y were historically related. Rather, the metric is whether you got good solutions on the engineering problem. For example, you don’t judge Google Translate on whether it captures what translation “truly is” or explains how human translators do their job. You judge it on whether it produces reasonably accurate and fluent translations for people who need to translate certain things in practice. The machine translation community has ways of measuring this, and they focus strongly on improving those scores. When is NLP used? NLP is mainly used to help people navigate and digest large quantities of information that already exist in text form. It is also used to produce better user interfaces so that humans can better communicate with computers and with other humans. Saying that NLP is engineering, we don’t mean that it is always focused on developing commercial applications. NLP may be used for scientific ends within other academic disciplines such as political science (blog posts), economics (financial news and reports), medicine (doctor’s notes), digital humanities (literary works, historical sources), etc. Although, it is being used also as a tool within computational X-ology in order to answer the scientific questions of X-ologists, rather than the scientific questions of linguists. That said, NLP professionals often get away with relatively superficial linguistics. They look at the errors made by their current system, and learn only as much linguistics as they need to understand and fix the most prominent types of errors. After all, their goal is not a full theory but rather the simplest, most efficient approach that will get the job done. NLP is a growing field and despite many hindrances, it has come forward and shown us tremendous capabilities to abstract and utilize data. It teaches us that simplicity is the key at the end of the day. |
Horror cinema has been a self-aware genre for at least twenty years, if you count 1996’s hyper-meta slasher flick Scream as the start of the era—longer if you take into account Abbott and Costello meeting Frankenstein in 1948 or Evil Dead II parodying its predecessor in 1987. But in recent years, horror’s tendency toward metafiction has become even more granular. Whereas the classic franchises commented on the genre of horror itself, modern films are looking within their own bodies of work. This year sees two “modern classic” franchises reinvent themselves: Both Blair Witch (2016) and Rings (2017) reference their source material—that is, their original films—by treating them as “creepypasta,” the next evolution of urban legends for those who grew up on the internet. But first, let’s look at how we told scary stories in the ’90s. Fed on a steady diet of ’80s slasher films, Scream‘s teen protagonists deconstructed and lampshaded the horror-movie tropes in which they were caught during Ghostface’s rampage, to the point that there were few surprises—you could “game” the horror movie when it happens to you, was the lesson. What’s more, as the real killers demonstrate with their preplanned alibi, you could even make the case that consuming that much horror drives you to pick up a knife yourself. Just like Ghostface, the killer in 1998’s Urban Legends taps into a healthy reserve of horror for their killing spree—but instead of tropes, it recreates the chilling urban legends shared among this same generation (a few years older, now in college). Each murder is modeled after a story, down to the pervasive ambiance and the grisly details: the creepy gas station owner scaring off a poor girl when he’s trying to warn her about the backseat hitchhiker armed with an axe; the unlucky boyfriend strangled on the roof of the car, killed when his panicked girlfriend speeds away and leaves him dangling; the girl who is killed in the dark under the guise of a kinky encounter, only for her roommate to see written in blood the next morning Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light? And it’s all revenge for a botched attempt at acting out an urban legend, which ended with an innocent guy dead. Urban Legends and Creepypasta Urban legends, as I grew up with them (in the ’90s and early 2000s) via late-night Snopes reading on the family desktop computer and wide-eyed retellings at sleepovers and sleepaway camp, were spread through word of mouth and then the internet, or vice versa. By contrast, creepypasta is less an established legend and more an immersive, mutable, ongoing story. Aja Romano’s primer on The Daily Dot, despite being four years old, is the best resource I’ve found for defining its origins and key characteristics: Creepypasta came out of “copypasta”, chunks of text that can be easily copied/pasted without attribution. However, creepypasta sticks with you because of its eerie content: “their horror often enhanced by their brevity, their journal-style format, or their casual, ‘here’s a creepy thing that happened to me once’ narrative style.” Mirroring urban legends, creepypasta stories obsess over the potential evils lurking within modern technology, especially those related to communication: a TV set that leads into another dimension, a cursed video game, a malignant computer file. Romano also writes: “Creepypasta also often reveals a sense of deep distortion of reality, the kind of just-slightly-off view of the world that only comes from the collective imagination of 4channers, Something Awful goons, redditors, and others who’ve found themselves glued to their computer at 3am reading about Mothman, Chupacabra, or other modern-day monsters.” Like, say, Slender Man: David Cummings, narrator of the NoSleep podcast, inspired by Reddit’s r/nosleep, hits upon the most compelling aspect of these kinds of stories, in a Den of Geek piece on the history of creepypasta: “A lot of the stories are really well-crafted and well-told, but they’re not necessarily literary. You don’t get these grandiose descriptions. They’re breatheless [sic]. ‘Oh my God, I just ran out of my friend’s house and I have to tell you what happened.’ There’s an immediacy and a believability.” The goal of each story on the podcast and the subreddit is to be scary, personal, and above all else: believable. There is a near fanatical devotion to the suspension of disbelief on r/NoSleep that has seemingly created the prototype for nearly all internet scary storytelling. Among the extensive rules and guidelines for the site is the phrase, “Suspension of disbelief is key here. Everything is true here, even if it’s not. Don’t be the jerk in the movie theater hee-hawing because monkeys don’t fly.” Cummings also makes a distinction between generic creepypasta and these detailed stories, which he likens to campfire tales, but for the sake of this article, I will refer to all of them under the catch-all name creepypasta. This suspension of disbelief doesn’t exist when you’re reading an email chain letter or Snopes entry. While listeners to an urban legend can egg on the storyteller with their bated breath and whispers of and then what?, r/nosleep commenters and other creepypasta enthusiasts actively immerse themselves in the story. The original posters (OPs) share updates and follow-ups, turning one-offs into multi-chapter sagas, and readers clamor for more, demanding to know what happened to the narrator or throwing in their own experiences that use the yes and rule of improv to strengthen the strands of the story. Instead of trying to debunk the story, they accept it as “truth” no matter how implausible. With everyone buying into the “authenticity” of these creepypasta stories, you remove the dimension of trying to step outside of the story by disproving it. Everyone is invested, which makes it ten times scarier. Once you forwarded the scary chain letters to the next victims, they were out of sight, out of mind—with creepypasta, even lurkers are participants. Rings The Ring franchise best exemplifies this shift in storytelling. The Ring, the 2002 American remake of the 1998 Japanese horror film Ring, turns the chain letter into a cursed VHS tape: Once you watch the surreal, disturbing film, you’re haunted by Samara for seven days, until she comes staggering out of your television… unless you make a copy of the video and force someone else to watch it, passing along the curse. While The Ring Two (2005) was an uneven sequel, the supplementary short film Rings introduced a fascinating bit of worldbuilding: As more and more people figure out the secret to surviving Samara’s curse, the number of survivors grows. In turn, a subculture arises: “rings,” groups of people who have watched the video and challenge themselves to get to seven days—fighting the physical and psychological trauma of Samara’s haunting—before indoctrinating others. In a prescient bit of storytelling, screenwriter Ehren Kruger channels YouTube—which would become popular that year—by having members of the rings record and document their experience pushing the seven-day deadline. While Rings is a prequel to The Ring Two (the former leads right into the opening scene of the latter), some have theorized that it’s also the source material for the next installment Rings, due out in 2017—not least because they share the same name. In fact, it was Vulture’s writeup of the first Rings trailer that first gave me the inspiration for this piece: Instead of the VHS tape, they observed, the infamous video can now be played on infinite screens, from an email attachment to in-flight entertainment. What’s more, the official synopsis corroborates these theories: A young woman named Julia become concerned when her boyfriend begins delving into the rings subculture, curious about the video’s origins. In trying to deter him from the same fate others have fallen to, she stumbles upon the horrifying knowledge that there is a “movie within the movie” that no one has ever seen before. Julia apparently becomes a key figure, because as you can see from the trailer, Samara takes a special interest in her: It’s difficult to truly parse out the differences between urban legends and creepypasta. For one, they both rely on the stories getting retold or duplicated. But with the former, it’s not an identical copy; details are added or dropped in a game of Telephone, and the narrator’s relationship to the characters (“my brother’s girlfriend/old classmate/boss”) changes as a new storyteller relates the tale. Urban legends was always more traditional storytelling; there’s a level of detachment even if you claimed that the story in question really happened—because it always happened to someone else, however many degrees removed. But because creepypasta is told in the first-person, no matter how many times the same creepypasta story link gets sent around, the narrator remains the same. In Rings, Samara tries to reincarnate herself through Julia: In addition to the quintessential Ring experience of yanking a massive hairball out of her throat, Julia has burn marks on her hands that spell out “rebirth” in a foreign language, while her skin is slowly peeling away. No matter how many sets of eyes are fixed on the video, no matter how many times the horror is copied and redistributed, it never stops being Samara’s story. Blair Witch Rings’ theatrical release has been pushed to January, but another game-changing horror franchise has already debuted a sequel well ahead of Halloween: Blair Witch, a direct sequel to 1999’s found-footage phenomenon The Blair Witch Project. (Like Rings, it’s technically the third film in its franchise, but we don’t talk about Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2: Gas Leak Year.) One, because it was awful, churned out on the heels of the first movie’s success; two, because it went super-meta, tracking a bunch of tourists who want to explore the woods after seeing the found-footage phenomenon The Blair Witch Project. By ignoring Book of Shadows, the new film re-grounds itself in a world where the Blair Witch is still a local legend—and the only footage that Blair Witch protagonist James Donahue is concerned with is the videotape from the original story—shot by his sister Heather, from her fatal foray into the woods 17 years ago. Again, it’s a matter of proximity to the story. If the plot of Blair Witch were simply about James watching this mysterious footage of his sister’s final days, it would be an urban legend. But because James (along with his friends, a film student, and the locals who found the videotape) ventures into the woods, compelled by the slim possibility that his sister is still alive, and records the whole thing—then it becomes creepypasta. Of course, it’s all very calculated. Heather Donahue is a real person, an actress and filmmaker who suffered professionally because of how the studio faked her death to ratchet up the “authenticity” of their found-footage horror film in a pre-social media era where that kind of hoax couldn’t be debunked so easily. Nowhere in The Blair Witch Project does Heather mention a brother; he’s clearly been retroactively written in to provide emotional grounding for the sequel. In fact, the studio doesn’t actually refer to Heather by name in Blair Witch, out of respect. It’s clear from the trailers and the film that James is going into the woods after his missing sister, but it’s never explicitly said. Furthermore, while Blair Witch delivered scares in the vein of its predecessor, it failed to replicate the multifaceted effect of The Blair Witch Project, according to Screen Rant’s review: Where The Blair Witch Project featured a convincing and gut-wrenching depiction of real human beings crumbling in the face of physical and emotional exhaustion, regardless of the overarching supernatural storyline, Wingard’s film is populated with people and situations that exist to define the Blair Witch legend more than the cast and events at hand. Viewers gain a clearer understanding of the Blair Witch herself, and the reach of her powers, but this comes at the expense of established plot lines and relationships that go next-to-nowhere. Emphasis mine—these thinly-drawn characters bring to mind creepypasta commenters, who play along with the narrator to keep the momentum of the story going, rather than trying to trip him/her up with logic or proof. In both cases, these franchises are effectively ignoring their hasty sequels in favor of reimaginings, after a decade or more to think on the material. By treating their original installments as creepypasta, they open up a whole new dimension of the impact that The Ring and The Blair Witch Project have on their respective universes. Channel Zero Then there’s Syfy’s new horror anthology series Channel Zero, which literally draws from real creepypasta as source material. Kris Straub’s “Candle Cove” taps into what is apparently a universal discomfort with ’70s-era public access television, the kind of surreal stuff you might catch on a drowsy summer afternoon and never be able to find again. Until, of course, the internet: “Candle Cove” is written as a series of message-board posts as members of a nostalgia-centric forum slowly realize that they all watched the same bizarre kids’ series, with its fourth-wall-breaking messages and disturbing violence against puppets, during their childhoods. Or did they? As their memories of the program become increasingly horrific, one of the original posters, mike_painter65, reveals an unsettling discovery: After asking his nursing-home-bound mother if she remembered the show, she said that he would just tune the TV to static and watch dead air for 30 minutes: “you had a big imagination with your little pirate show.” Straub told Den of Geek that he never intended for “Candle Cove” to be a hoax: “[I]t’s an epistolary story in the format of forums. It had my name on it and all, but when people shared it, that all got stripped away. So as a creator I get bent out of shape about that—but as a consumer, I see the power that that had in letting the legend grow. People didn’t know if it was real or not. They still don’t.” Now, the “Candle Cove” story makes up the arc for the first six-episode season of Channel Zero: Child psychologist Mike Painter returns to his hometown despite his traumatic memories of his twin brother’s disappearance decades before. But when more children from the town go missing, Mike discovers the terrifying link: the hypnotic, disturbing program Candle Cove. Straub doesn’t seem to be involved beyond granting permission to screenwriter Max Landis to option the material. In a recent interview with Birth.Movies.Death., co-creator Nick Antosca—who cut his teeth on Hannibal—explains how “Candle Cove” was the core for the series, but also how much he built around it: Because Kris’s story is not a traditional narrative—because it’s formatted as message board posts—it actually gave us more freedom in terms of adaptation. I wanted to stay true to the spirit of the story and preserve the feeling it gave me when I read it. We recreated the puppet show as faithfully as possible, and then built the world around it. The Candle Cove season is personal for me in a lot of ways, because the nature of Kris’s story required a lot of invention. The town of Iron Hill is inspired by the rural area in Maryland where I grew up. So it’s a balancing act, and a challenge—bring new ideas to the table, but honor and preserve the original story. Hannibal was good training for that. Fangoria favorably reviewed the pilot, praising the decision of “utilizing the untrustworthy narrator, which allows the show to be flexible with its use of reality in order to provide it’s [sic] most macabre moments.” Antosca also described the series to Collider as “almost […] like a nightmare you’d have after reading the original Creepypasta.” The end result, according to Vox, is a mix between Stranger Things and True Detective: a supernatural horror menaces the children of a small town, but rather than inspiring a ragtag group of kids to reenact Dungeons & Dragons IRL, the prevailing mood is (as the kids would say) bleak AF. It’s interesting to consider that alongside a 2014 interview with Straub, when he was just discussing the film rights with a studio and where he explained why any sort of sequel to his original creepypasta inevitably fails, when asked if any of the unofficial sequels were his favorites: Oh man, none of them are my favorites. The reason is that they all try very hard to explain what Candle Cove is, when not knowing is why the story resonated. There’s this string of fanfics where it’s revealed that Candle Cove is the work of an old Nazi named Altman Bachmeier. You tell me why a Nazi would be hanging out in West Virginia or Kentucky in 1971, and why he’d bother making a puppet show to scare kids. I guess “Nazi” is shorthand for “the most evil thing anyone can think of.” While I doubt that Syfy will go the same route, by this reasoning, any explanation they come up with will be entirely separate from the impact of Straub’s story. His “Candle Cove” ends with the twist about the static; there’s no need to explore beyond the bounds of the story, as the mere question of how all of these children tapped into the same nightmarish show is enough to give readers existential chills. That doesn’t mean that Channel Zero: Candle Cove shouldn’t try, only that the answer may not be satisfying for the audience who originally made Straub’s story go viral. In lieu of a proper campfire, Natalie Zutter will link you to her favorite urban legend and creepypasta: “People Can Lick Too” and “Under or Over.” She dares you to frighten her with your favorite scary stories on Twitter. |
The Difference Between Mass and Class Why is it important to know the difference between mass and class? The chances are that there can be no conscious revolutionary practice without making this distinction. We are not playing around with words. Look. We are living in a mass society. We didn’t get that way by accident. The mass is a specific form of organization. The reason is clear. Consumption is organized by the corporations. Their products define the mass. The mass is not a cliche — ‘the masses’ — but a routine which dominates your daily life. Understanding the structure of the mass market is the first step toward understanding what happened to the class struggle. What is the mass? Most people think of the mass in terms of numbers — like a crowded street or stadium. But it is actually structure which determines its character. The mass is an aggregate of couples who are separate, detached and anonymous. They live in cities physically close yet socially apart. Their lives are privatized and depraved. Coca-Cola and loneliness. The social existence of the mass — its rules and regulations, the structuring of its status, roles and leadership — are organized through consumption (the mass market). They are all products of a specific social organization. Ours. Of course, no one sees themselves as part of the mass. It’s always others who are the masses. The trouble is that it is not only the corporations which organize us into the mass. The ‘movement’ itself behaves as a mass and its organizers reproduce the hierarchy of the mass. Really, how do you fight fire? With water, of course. The same goes for revolution. We don’t fight the mass (market) with a mass (movement). We fight mass with class. Our aim should be not to create a mass movement but a class force. What is a class? A class is a consciously organized social force. For example, the ruling class is conscious and acts collectively to organize not only itself, but also the people (mass) that it rules. The corporation is the self-conscious collective power of the ruling class. We are not saying that class relations do not exist in the rest of society. But they remain passive so long as they are shaped solely by objective conditions (i.e. work situations). What is necessary is the active (subjective) participation of the class itself. Class prejudice is not class consciousness. The class is conscious of its social existence because it seeks to organize itself. The moral of the story is: the mass is a mass because it is organized as a mass. Don’t be fooled by the brand name. Mass is thinking with your ass. Primacy of the Collective The small group is the coming together of people who feel the need for collectivity. Its function is often to break out of the mass — specifically from the isolation of daily life and the mass structure of the movement. The problem is that frequently the group cannot create an independent existence and an identity of its own because it continues to define itself negatively, i.e. in opposition. So long as its point of reference lies outside of it, the group’s politics tend to be superimposed on it by events and crises. The small group can be a stage in the development of the collective, if it develops a critique of the frustrations stemming from its external orientation. The formation of a collective begins when people not only have the same politics, but agree on the method of struggle. Why should the collective be the primary focus of organization? The collective is an alternative to the existing structure of society. Changing social relations is a process rather than a product of revolution. In other words, you make the revolution by actually changing social relations. You must consciously create the contradictions in history. Concretely, this means: organize yourselves, not somebody else. The collective is the organizational nucleus of a classless society. As a formal organization, it negates all forms of hierarchy. The answer to alienation is to make yourself the subject, not the object, of history. One of the crucial obstacles to the formation of collectives is the transitional period — when the collective must survive side by side with a disintegrating movement and a mass society. The disintegration of the movement is not an isolated phenomenon but reflects the weakening of the major institutions in American society responsible for our alienation. Many people are demoralized by this process and find it bewildering because they actually depend subconsciously on the continued existence of these institutions. We are witnessing the break-up and transformation of an institution integral to society — the mass market. The mass market is corporate structure which few These contradictions make it imperative that any people who decide to create a collective know exactly who they are and what they are doing. That is why you must consider your collective as primary. Because, if you don’t believe in the legitimacy of this form of organization, you can’t have a practical analysis of what is happening. Don’t kid yourself. The struggle for the creation and survival of collectives at this moment in history is going to be very difficult. The dominant issue will be how collectives can become part of history — how they can become a social force. There is no guarantee and we should promise no easy victories. The uniqueness of developing collectives is their definitive break with all hierarchic forms of organization and the reconstructing of a classless society. The thinking of radical organizers is frozen in the concept of the mass movement. This form of struggle, no matter how radical its demands, never threatens the basic structure — the mass itself. Under these circumstances it takes great effort to imagine new forms of existence. Space must be created before we can think of these things and be able to establish the legitimacy of acting upon them. The form of the collective is its practice. The collective is opposed to the mass. It contradicts the structure of the mass. The collective is anti-mass. Size of the Collective The aim of any organization is to make it as simple as possible, or as Marshall McLuhan puts it, “high in participation, low in definition.” The tendency is just the opposite. Our reflex is to create administrative structures to deal with political problems. Most people cannot discuss intelligently the subject of size. There is an unspoken feeling either that the problem should not exist or that it is beneath us to talk about it. Let’s get it out in the open. Size is a question of politics and social relations, not administration. Do you wonder why the subject is shunted aside at large meetings? Because it fundamentally challenges the repressive nature of large organizations. Small groups that function as appendages to larger bodies will never feel like small groups. The collective should not be larger than a band — no orchestras or chamber music please. The basic idea is to reproduce the collective, not expand it. The strength of a collective lies in its social organization, not its numbers. Once you think in terms of recruiting, you might as well join the Army. The difference between expansion and reproduction is the difference between adding and multiplying. The first bases its strength on numbers and the second on relationships between people. Why should there be a limit to size? Because we are neither supermen nor slaves. Beyond a certain point, the group becomes a meeting and before you know it you have to raise your hand to speak. The collective is a recognition of the practical limits of conversation. This simple fact is the basis for a new social experience. Relations of inequality can be seen more clearly within a collective and dealt with more effectively. “Whatever the nature of authority in the large organization, it is inherent in the simple organization unit.” (Chester Barnard, The Function of Executives, 1938). A small group with a ‘leader’ is the nucleus of a class society. Small size restricts the area which any single individual can dominate. This is true both internally and in relation to other groups. Today, the mode of struggle requires a durable and resilient form of organization which will enable us to cope both with the attrition of daily life and the likelihood of repression. Unless we can begin to solve problems at this level collectively, we are certainly not fit to create a new society. Contrary to what people are led to think, i.e. united we stand, united we fall, it will be harder to destroy a multitude of collectives than the largest organizations with centralized control. Size is a key to security. But its real importance lies in the fact that the collective reproduces new social relations — the advantage being that the process can begin now. The limitation on size raises a difficult problem. What do you say to someone who asks, “Can I join your collective?” This question is ultimately at the root of much hostility (often unconscious) toward the collective form of organization. You can’t separate size from the collective because it must be small in order to exist. The collective has a right to exclude individuals because it offers them the alternative of starting a new collective, i.e. sharing the responsibility for organization. This is the basic answer to the question above. Of course, people will put down the collective as being exclusive. That is not the point. The size of a collective is essentially a limitation on its authority. By contrast, large organizations, while having open membership, are exclusive in terms of who shapes the politics and actively participates in the structuring of activities. The choice is between joining the mass of creating the class. The revolutionary project is to do it yourself. Remember, Alexandra Kollontal warned in 1920, “The essence of bureaucracy is when some third person decides your fate.” Contact Between Collectives The collective does not communicate with the mass. It makes contact with other collectives. What if other collectives do not exist? Well, it should take to itself until the day they do. Yes. By all means, the collective also communicates with other people, but it never views them as a mass — as a constituency or audience. The collective communicates with individuals in order to encourage self-organization. It assumes that people are capable of self-organization, and given that alternative, they will choose it over mass participation. The collective knows that it takes time to create new forms of organization. It simply seeks to hasten the crumbling of the mass. Much of the problem of ‘communication’ these days is that people think they have got to communicate all the time. You find people setting up administrative functions to deal with information flows before they have any idea what they want to say. The collective is not obsessed with ‘communicating’ or ‘relating’ to the movement. What concerns it is the amount of noise — incessant phone calls, form letters, announcements of meetings, etc. — that passes for communication. It is time we gave more thought to what we say and how we say it. What exactly do we mean by contact? We want to begin by taking the bureaucracy out of communication. The idea is to begin modestly. Contact is a touching on all sides. The essential thing is about its directness and reliability. Eyeball to eyeball. Other forms of communication — telephone, letters, documents, etc. — should never be used as substitutes for direct contact. In fact, they should serve primarily to prepare contacts. Why is it so important to have direct contact? Because it is the simplest form of communication. Moreover, it is physical and involves all the senses — most of all the sense of smell. For this reason, it is reliable. It also takes account of the real need for security. Those who talk about repression continue to pass around sheets of paper asking for names, addresses, and telephone numbers. There are already a number of gatherings which appear to involve contact but in reality are grotesque facsimiles. The worst of these and the one most people flock to is the conference. This is a hotel of the mind which turns is all into tourists and spectators. A lower form of existence is the endless meeting — the one held every night. Not to mention the committees formed expressly to arrange meetings. The basic principle of contact between collectives is: you only meet when you have something to say to each other. This means two things. First, that you have a concrete idea what it is you want to say. Secondly, that you must prepare it in advance. These principles help to ensure that communication does not become an administrative problem. The new forms of contact have yet to be created. We can think of single examples. A member of one collective can attend the meeting of another collective or there may be a joint meeting of the groups as a whole. The first of these appears to be the more practical, however, the drawback is that not everyone is involved. There are undoubtedly other forms of contact which are likely to develop. The main thing is to invent them. Priority of Local Action The collective gives priority to local action. It rejects the mass politics of the white nationalists with their national committees, organizers, and the superstars. Definitely, the collective is out of the mainstream and what is more it feels no regrets. The aim of the collective is to feel new thoughts and act new ideas — in a word to create its own space. And that, more than any program, is what is intolerable to all the xerox radicals trying to reproduce their own images. The collective is the hindquarters of the revolution. It makes no pretence whatsoever in regard to the role of the vanguard. Expect nothing from them. They are not your leaders. Leave them alone. The collective knows it will be the last to enter the new world. The doubts people have about local action reveal how dependent they are on the glamour of mass politics. Everyone wants to project themselves on the screen of revolution — as Yippies or White Panthers. Having internalized the mass, they ask themselves questions whose answers seem logical in its context. How can we accomplish anything without mass action? If we don’t go to meetings and demonstrations, will we be forgotten? Who will take us seriously if we don’t join the rank and file? Slowly you realize that you have become a spectator, an object. Your politics take place on a stage and your social relations consist of sitting in an audience or marching in a crowd. The fragmentation of your everyday experience contrasts with the spectacular unity of the mass. By contrast, the priority of local action is an attempt to unify everyday life and fragment the mass. This level of consciousness is a result of rejecting the laws of mass behavior based on Leninism and TV ideology. It makes possible an enema of the brain which everyone so desperately needs. You will be relieved to discover that you can create a situation by localizing your struggle. How can we prevent local action from becoming provincial? Whether or not it does so depends on our overall strategy. Provincialism is simply the consequences or not knowing what is happening. A commune, for example, is provincial because its strategy is based on petty farming and glorification of the extended family. What they have is astrology, not a strategy. Local action should be based on the global structure of modern society. There can be no collective action without collectives. But the creation of a collective should not be mistaken for victory nor should it become an end in itself. The great danger the collective faces historically is that of being cut off (or cutting itself off) from the outside world. The issue ultimately will be what action to take and when. Whether collectives become a social force depends on their analysis of history and their course of action. In fact, the ‘provinces’ today are moving ahead of the centers in political consciousness and motivation. From Minnesota to the Mekong Delta, the revolt is gaining coherence. The centers are trying to decipher what is happening, to catch up and contain it. For this purpose they must create centralized forms of organization — or ‘co-ordination’ — as the modernists call it. The first principle of local action is to denationalize your thinking. Take the country out of Salem. Get out of Marlboro country. Become conscious of how your life is managed from the national centers. Lifestyles are roles designed to give you the illusion of movement while keeping you in your place. “Style is mass chasing class, and class escaping mass.” (W. Rauschenbush, “The Idiot God Fashion,” Woman’s Coming of Age, eds Schmalhausen and Calvert, 1931). Local action gives you the initiative by enabling you to define the situation. That is the practice of knowing you are the subject. Marat says: “The most important thing is to pull yourself up by your own hair, to turn yourself inside out and see the whole world with fresh eyes.” The collective turns itself inside out and sees reality. The Dream of Unity The principle of unity is based on the proposition that everyone is a unit (a fragment). Unity means one multiplied by itself. We are not going to say it straight — in so far as unity has suppressed real political differences — class, racial, sexual — it is a form of tyranny. The dream of unity is in reality a nightmare of compromise and suppressed desires. We are not equal and unity perpetuates inequality. The collective will be subject constantly to pressure from outside groups demanding support in one form or another. Everyone is always in a crisis. Given these circumstances, a group can have the illusion of being permanently mobilized and active without having politics of its own. Calls for unity channel the political energies of collectives into support politics. So, as a precaution, the collective must take time to work out its own politics and plan of action. Above all, it should try to foresee crisis situations and their ‘rent-a-crowd’ militancy. You will be accused of factionalism. Don’t waste time thinking about this age old problem. A collective is not a faction. Responding to Pavlov’s bell puts you in the position of a salivating dog. There will be no end to your hunger when who you are is determined by someone else. You will also be accused of elitism. This is a risky business and should not be dismissed lightly. A collective must first know what is meant by elitism. Instead of wondering whether it refers to leadership or personalities, you should first anchor the issue in a class context. Know where your ideas come from and what their relation is to the dominant ideology. You should ask the same questions about those who make the accusations. What is their class background and class interest? So far many people have reacted defensively to the charge of elitism and, thus, have avoided dealing with the issue head on. That in itself is a class reaction. The internal is the mirror of the external. The best way to avoid behaving like an elite is to prevent the formation of elitism within the collective itself. Often when charges of elitism are true, they reflect the same class relations internally. The ways of undermining the autonomy of a collective are many and insidious. The call for unity can no longer be responded to automatically. The time has come to question the motives and effectiveness of such actions — and to feel good (i.e. correct) in doing so. Jargon is pigeon talk and is meant to make us feel stupid and powerless. Because collective action is not organized as a mass, it does not have to rely on the call of unity in order to act. “Does ‘one divide into two’ or ‘two fuse into one’? This question is a subject of debate in China and now here. This debate is a struggle between two conceptions of the world. One believes in struggle, the other in unity. The two sides have drawn a clear line between them and their arguments are diametrically opposed. Thus, you can wee why one divides into two.” (Free translation from the Red Flag, Peking, September 21, 1964). The Function of Analysis Not only can there be no revolution without revolutionary theory, there can be no strategy without analysis. Strategy is knowing ahead of time what you are going to do. This is what analysis makes possible. When you begin, you may not know anything. The purpose of analysis is not to know everything, but to know what you do know and know it good — that is collectively. The heart of thinking analytically is to learn over and over again that the process is as important as the product. Developing an analysis requires new ways of thinking. Without new ways of thinking we are doomed to old ways of acting. The question of what we are going to do is the hardest to answer and the one that ultimately will determine whether a collective will continue to exist. The difficulty of the question makes analysis all the more necessary. We can no longer afford to be propelled by the crudest forms of advertisement — slogans and rhetoric. The function of analysis is to reveal a plan of action. Why is there relatively little practical analysis of what is happening today? Some people refuse to analyze anything which they cannot immediately comprehend. Basically they have a feeling of inadequacy. This is partly because they have never had the opportunity to do it before and, therefore, don’t know they are capable of it. On the other hand, many activists put down analysis as being ‘intellectual’ — which is more a commentary on their own kind of thinking than anything else. Finally, there are those who feel no need to think and become very uncomfortable when somebody does want to. This often reflects their class disposition. The general constipation of the movement is a product of all these forces. One reason for this sad state of affairs is that analysis gives so little satisfaction. This is another way of saying that it is not practical. What has happened to all thinking can best be seen in the degeneration of class analysis into stereotyped, obese definitions. There is little difference between the theory-mongers of high abstraction and the sloganeers of crude abstraction. Theory is becoming the dialect of robots, and slogans the mass production of the mind. But just because ideas have become so mechanical does not mean we should abandon thought. Most people are willing to face the fact that they are living in a society that has yet to be explained. Any attempt to probe those areas which are unfamiliar is met with a general hostility of fear. People seem afraid to look at themselves analytically. Part of the problem of not knowing what to do reveals itself in our not knowing who we are. The motivation to look at yourself critically and to explain society comes from the desire to change both. The heart of the problem is that we do not concretely imagine winning, except perhaps, by accident. Analysis is the arming of the brain. We’re being stifled by those who tell us analysis is intellectual when in reality it is the tool of the imagination. Just as you can’t tolerate intellectualism, so you cannot act from raw anger — not if you want to win. You must teach your stomach how to think and your brain how to feel. Analysis should help us to express anger intelligently. Learning how to think, i.e. analysis, is the first step toward conscious activity. No doubt you feel yourself tightening up because you think it sounds heavy. Really, the problem is that you think much bigger than you act. Be modest. Start with what you already know and want to know more about. Analysis begins with what interests you. Political thinking should be part of everyday life, not a class privilege. To be practical, analysis must give you an understanding of what to do and how to do it. Thinking should help to distinguish between what is important and what is not. It should break down complex forces so that we can understand them. Break everything down. In the process of analyzing something you will discover that there are different ways of acting which were not apparent when you began. This is the pleasure of analysis. To investigate a problem is to begin to solve it. The Need for New Formats The need for new formats grows out of the oppressiveness of print. We must learn the techniques of advertisement. They consist of short, clear, non-rhetorical statements. The ad words. The ad represents a break with the college education and the diarrhea of words. The ad is a concentrated formula for communication. Its information power has already outmoded the school system. The secret is to gain as much pleasure in creating the form as in expressing the idea. How do we defend adopting the style of advertising when its function is so oppressive? As a medium we think it represents a revolutionary mode of production. Rejecting it has resulted in the stagnation of our minds and a crude romanticism in political culture. Those who turn up their noses at ads think in a language that is decrepit. Using the ad technique transforms the person who does it. It makes writing a pleasure for anyone because it strives in orality in print. What we mean by the use of ad technique is to physically use it. Most of the time we are unconscious of ads and, if we do become conscious, we don’t act upon them — don’t subvert them. Ads are based on repetition. If you affect one of them, you affect all of them. Know the environment of the ad. The most effective way to subvert an ad is to make the contradiction in it visible. Advertise it. The vulnerability of ads lies in the possibility of turning them against the exploiters. Jerry Rubin says you should use the media all the time. At least he goes all the way. This is better than the toe-dipping approach that seems so common these days. Of course, there are groups who say don’t use it at all and they don’t. They will probably outlast Jerry since the basic technique of mass media is over-exposure. That is why Jerry has already written his memoirs. The Situationists say: “The revolt is contained by over-exposure. We are given it to contemplate so that we shall forget to participate.” We are not talking about the packaging of politics. Ramparts is the Playboy of the Left. On the other hand, the underground press is pornographic and redundant. Newsreel’s projector is running backwards. And why in the era of Cosmopolitan magazine must we suffer the stodginess of Leviathan? We much prefer reading Fortune — the magazine for ‘the men in charge of change’ — for our analysis of capitalism. There is no getting around it — we need new formats, entirely new formats. Otherwise we will never sharpen our wits. To break out of the spell of print requires a conscious effort to think a new language. We should no longer be immobilized by other people’s words. Don’t wait for the news to tell you what is happening. Make you headlines with presstype. Cut up your favorite magazine and put it together again. Cut big words in half and make little words out of them — like ENVIRON MENTAL CRISIS. All you need is a good pair of scissors and rubber cement. Abuse the enemy’s images. Turn the Man from Glad into a Frankenstein. Making comic strips out of great art. Don’t let anything interfere with your pleasure. Don’t read any more books — at least not straight through. As G.B. Kay from Blackpool once said (quoting somebody else), “Reading rots the mind.” Pamphlets are so much more fun. Read randomly, write on the margins and go back to comics. You might try the Silver Surfer for a start. Self-Activity Bad work habits and sloppy behavior undermine any attempt to construct collectively. Casual, sloppy behavior means that we don’t care deeply about what we are doing or who we are doing it with. This may come as a surprise to a lot of people. The fact remains: we talk revolution but act reactionary at elementary levels. There are two basic things underlying these unfortunate circumstances: 1) people’s idea of how something (like revolution) will happen shapes our work habits; 2) their class background gives them a casual view of politics. There is no doubt that the Pepsi generation is more politically alive. But this new energy is being channelled by organizers into boring meetings which reproduce the hierarchy of class society. After a while, critical thinking is eroded and people lose their curiosity. Meetings become a routine like everything else in life. A lot of problems which collectives will have can be traced to the work habits acquired in the (mass) movement. People perpetuate the passive roles they have become accustomed to in large meetings. The emphasis on mass participation means that all you have to do is show up. Rarely, do people prepare themselves for a meeting, nor do they feel the need to. Often this situation does not become evident precisely because the few people who do work (those who run the meeting) create the illusion of group achievement. Because people see themselves essentially as objects and not as subjects, political activity is defined as an event outside them and in the future. No one sees themselves making the revolution and, therefore, they don’t understand how it will be accomplished. The short span of attention is one tell tale symptom of instant politics. The emphasis on responding to crisis seems to contract the span of attention — in fact there is often no time dimension at all. This timelessness is experienced as the syncopation of over-commitment. Many people say they will do things without really thinking out carefully whether they have the time to do them. Having time ultimately means defining what you really want to do. Over-commitment is when you want to do everything but end up doing nothing. The numerous other symptoms of casual politics — lack of preparation, being late, getting bored at difficult moments, etc. are all signs of a political attitude which is destructive to the collective. The important thing is recognizing the existence of these problems and knowing what causes them. They are not personal problems but historically determined attitudes. Many people confuse the revolt against alienated labor in its specific historical form with work activity itself. This revolt is expressed in an anti-work attitude. Attitudes toward work are shaped by out relations to production, i.e. class. Class is a product of hierarchic divisions of labor (including forms other than wage labor). There are three basic relations which can produce anti-work attitudes. The working class expressed its anti-work attitude as a rebellion against routinized labor. For the middle class, the anti-work attitude comes out of the ideology of consumer society and revolves around leisure. The stereotype of the ‘lazy native’ or ‘physically weak woman’ is a third anti-work attitude which is applied to those excluded from wage labor. The dream of automation (i.e. no work) reinforces class prejudice. The middle class is the one that has the dream since it seeks to expand its leisure-oriented activities. To the working class, automation means a loss of their job, preoccupation with unemployment, which is the opposite of leisure. For the excluded, automation doesn’t mean anything because it will not be applied to their forms of work. The automation of the working class has become the ideology of post-scarcity radicals — from the anarchists at Anarchos to SDS’s new working class. Technological change has rescued them from the dilemma of a class analysis they were never able to make. With the elimination of working class struggle by automation (the automation of the working class) the radicals have become advocates of leisure society and touristic lifestyles. This anti-work attitude leads to a utopian outlook and removes us from the realm of history. It prevents the construction of collectivity and self-activity. The issue of how to transform work into self-activity is central to the elimination of class and the reorganization of society. Self-activity is the reconstruction of the consciousness (wholeness) of one’s individual life activity. The collective is what makes the reconstruction possible because it defines individuality not as a private experience but as a social relation. What is important to see is that work is the creating of conscious activity within the structure of the collective. One of the best ways to discover and correct anti-work attitudes is through self-criticism. This provides an objective framework which allows people the space to be criticized and to be critical. Self-criticism is the opposite of self-consciousness because its aim is not to isolate you but to free repressed abilities. Self-criticism is a method for dealing with piggish behavior and developing consciousness. To root out the society within us and to redefine our work relations a collective must develop a sense of its own history. One of the hardest things to do is to see the closest relations — those within the collective — in political terms. The tendency is to be sloppy, or what Mao calls ‘liberal,’ about relations between friends. Rules can no longer be the framework of discipline. It must be based on political understanding. One of the functions of analysis is that it be applied internally. Preparation is another part of the process which creates continuity between meetings and insures that our own thinking does not become a part-time activity. It also combats the tendency to talk off the top of one’s head and pick ideas out of the air. Whenever meetings tend to be abstract and random it means the ideas put forward are not connected by thought (i.e. analysis). There is seldom serious investigation behind what is said. What does it mean to prepare for a meeting? It means not coming empty-handed or empty-headed. Mao says, “No investigation, no right to speak.” Assuming a group has decided what it wants to do, the first step is for everyone to investigate. This means taking the time to actually look into the matter, sort out the relevant materials and be able to make them accessible to everyone in the collective. The motive underlying all the preparation should be the construction of a coherent analysis. “We must substitute the sweat of self-criticism for the tears of crocodiles,” according to a new Chinese proverb. Struggle on Many Levels Struggle has many faces. But no two faces look alike. Like the cubists, we must look at things from many sides. The problem is to find ways of creating space for ourselves. The tendency now is toward two-sidedness which is embedded in every aspect of our lives. Our language poses questions by making us choose between opposites. The imperialist creates the anti-imperialist. Before ‘cool’ there was hot and cold. ‘Cool’ was the first attempt to break out of two-sidedness. Two-sidedness always minimizes the dimensions of struggle by narrowly defining the situation. We end up with a one dimensional view of the enemy and of ourselves. Learn to be shrewd. Our first impulse is always to define our position. Why do we feel the need to tell them? We create space by not appearing to be what we really are. Shrewdness is not simply a defensive tactic. The essence of shrewdness is learning to take advantage of the enemy’s weaknesses. Otherwise you can never win. The rule is: be honest among yourselves, but deceive the enemy. There are at least three ways of dealing with a situation. You can neutralize, activate, or destroy. Neutralize is to create space. Activate is to gain support. Destroy is to win. What’s more, it is essential to learn how to use all three simultaneously. Struggle on many levels begins with the activation of all the senses. We must be able to conceive of more than one mode of acting for a given situation. The response, i.e. method of struggle, should contain three elements: 1) a means of survival; 2) a method of exploiting splits in the enemy camp; 3) an underground strategy. The fundamental tendency of corporate liberalism is to identify with social change while trying to contain it. Wouldn’t it be ironic (and even a relief) if we could turn the threat of co-option into a means of survival? The fear of co-option often leads people to shun the challenge of corporate liberals. Some of the purest revolutionaries prefer not to think about using the co-opter for their own purposes. Too often the mentality of the ‘job’ obscures the potential for subversion. The existence of corporate liberalism demands that we not be sloppy in our own thinking and response. The strength of the position is that it forces us to acknowledge our own weaknesses — even before we engage in struggle against it. The worst mistake is to pretend that this enemy does not exist. Urban struggle requires a subversive strategy. Concretely, working ‘within the system’ should become for us a source of money, information, and anonymity. This is what Mao means when he says, “Move at night.” The routine of daily life is night-time for the enemy — when he cannot see us. The process of co-option should become an increasingly disquieting exercise for them. Exploiting splits within the enemy camp does not mean helping one segment defeat another. The basic aim is to maintain the splits. There are significant differences among the oppressors. These have the effect of weakening them. Under certain circumstances these splits may provide a margin of maneuverability which may be strategic for us. The main thing is not to view the enemy monolithically. Monolithic thinking condemns you to one way of acting. There is a tendency to see the most degenerate forms of reaction as the primary enemy. The corporations are consciously pandering to such ideas through films like Easy Rider which also attempts to identify with young males. The function of analysis is to break down and specify the different forces within the enemy camp. The spaces created by these splits are of crucial importance to the preparation of a long range strategy. It will be increasingly difficult to survive with the visibility that we are accustomed to. The lifestyles which declare our opposition are also the ones which make us easy targets. We must not mistake the level of appearances for new cultures. The whole point is not to make a fetish of our lifestyles. In the psychedelic atmosphere of repression, square is cool. Always keep part of your strategy underground. Just as analysis helps to differentiate the enemy so it should provide you with different levels of attack. Mao says: “Flexibility is a concrete expression of initiative.” Going underground should not mean dropping heroically out of sight. There will be few places to hide in the electronic environment of the future. The most dangerous kind of underground will be one that is like an iceberg. The roles created to replace our identities in everyday life must become the disguise of the underground. An underground strategy puts the impulse of confrontation into perspective. We must fight against the planned obsolescence of confrontations which lock us into the time-span of instant revolution. Going underground means having a long range strategy — something which plans for 2004. The iceberg strategy keeps us cool. It trains us to control our reflexes and calculate our responses. The underground strategy is also necessary to maintain autonomy. Autonomy preserves the organizational form of the collective, which is critical to the sharpening of its politics. Nothing will be achieved by submerging ourselves in a chaos of revolutionary fronts. The principle strategy of the counterfeit Left will be to smear over differences with appeals to a class unity that no longer exists. An underground strategy without a revolutionary from of organization can only emerge as a new class society. To destroy the system of oppression is not enough. We must create the organization of a free society. When the underground emerges, the collective will be that society. |
After we’ve covered the news about the official lauching about the new flagship smartphone, the Huawei Honor 6, is now we have a review about the phone. The new Huawei Honor 6 is packs with 5 inch screen, 3GB of RAM and this is the first smartphone that powered by Huawei HiSilicon Kirin 920 octa-core processor made of four A15 cores and 4 A7 cores which Huawei thinks compares to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 chipset.The Huawei Honor 6 has officially release in Beijing on June 24th, 2014. Before now, the Huawei Honor 6 has spread as a rumors, and now this phone is come to the market and ready to beat the other flagship smartphone, such as Samsung Galaxy S5. In addition, this phone is powered by Kirin 920 cota-core processor, the Huawei Honor 6 is not only greatly enhance the performance, and full support for 4G networks, it is the world’s first mobile phone to support LTE Cat6. This phone is also has good quality camera for photograph enthusiast. The Huawei Honor 6 is comes with 13 megapixel rear-facing camera and 5 megapixel front-facing camera, the main camera has f/2.0 aperture which uses Sony camera sensor. This phone is running with Huawei Emotion UI 2.3 based on Android 4.4.2 KitKat operating system. The phone is also powering up with 3,100 mAh battery capacity. Huawei Honor 6 CPU Kirin 920 Octa-core 4xA7(1.3GHz)+4xA15(1.7GHz) GPU ARM Mali T628MP4 RAM 3GB ROM 16GB, support external 64GB microSD card Screen 5 inch, 1920×1080pixel, JDI Camera Sony BSI IMAX214 13MP, F2.0 OS Emotion 2.3 base on Android 4.4.2 SIM Cards dual SIM cards Network Main SIM: TD-LTE, WCDMA, GSM, FDD-LTE Sub SIM: GSM WiFi WiFi: support 2.4G/5G, 802.11 a/b/g/n Dimesion 139.6×69.7×7.5mm Weight 130g Battery 3100mAh Price RMB1999(16GB, $327), RMB2299(32GB, $365) Design: Before the Huawei Honor 6 is officially release, there is many rumors and the leaked picture about this phone. And now we have a detail real picture of the new Huawei Honor 6 smartphone. And this phone has a lots of breakthroughs in the past to increase design elements, even can be said to be the strongest sense of Honor-series designed phone. Here is the detail picture of Huawei Honor 6 smartphone. Huawei Honor 6 has 139.6mm x 69.7mm x 7.5mm body dimension, relative slimmer than the Huawei Ascend P7, the phone is also has 7.5mm body thickness.The expense of the body thickness has brought more large since the phone is comes with 3,100mAh battery capacity. The new Huawei Honor 6 is using 5.0 inch that has 1080p screen resolution, the screen material is produce by JDI if you think the 5.0inch screen size is too big, you’re wrong because today the big screen is the new trends for most flagship smartphone, the big screen smartphone is now more acceptable by the user. The new Huawei Honor 6 is has 2.86mm ultra-narrow border, accounting for up to 75.7% of the screen, the whole body is very compact. Screen covering the third generation of Corning Glass, the ability to enhance anti-scratch, anti-fingerprint coating layer. Huawei Honor 6 is using the virtual soft button, the soft button is locate on the screen, this soft button is similar function with the ordinary regular physical soft button. From left to right are the return key, Home key, and Task button. The virtual keys are also available at any time and can be hide but the user can sliding the finger on the screen and the soft button will appear again. The top of the front design is look more conventional design, there is a light sensor, distance sensor, speaker, and front-facing camera. The Honor 6 has 5 megapixel front facing camera with a 88-degree wide-angle and self-timer camera feature. Headphone jack is located on top of the phone, while the continuation of the Honor series smartphone, this Honor 6 is also has smart remote control functionality, there is infra red port in the top of the phone, the remote control feature can be used to almost any electronic home appliance. The phone frame is made from metal materil, this material design is look more rigid and solid. There is USB port in the midle bottom of the phone, next the microphone hole. The phone is also has nice rounded corner body design, this design aspects is feel like the premium smartphone with nice design and good quality material. Left side of the phone is look clean, because there is nothing here. There is volume button and power button on the right side of the body. In the bottom of the power button, there is a hidden memory card slot and double SIM card slot, siunce the Huawei Honor 6 is comes with dual SIM card support. The back body of Huawei Honor 6 is look shiny, the camera is located on the left of top along with LED flash light, while the “honor” logo is located on the middle, the button part is speaker phone. Screen Display The Huawei Honor 6 has 5 inch screen size with 1920 × 1080p screen resolution, the screen is covered by Corning Gorilla Glass 3, this material is more strong than the previous model of the Gorilla Glass. It is worth mentioning that the Huawei Honor 6 phone has built a dedicated color temperature adjustment, the user can according to their own habits screen experience, manually adjust the color temperature of the screen in line with their own visual experience. Here is the screen comparison between Huawei Honor 6 vs OPPO Find 7 smartphone : From the comparison result, the new Huawei Honor 6 has more bright than the OPPO Fond 7. The screen is offers very nice color that the color look more vivid and clean. While for now, the screen of Huawei Honor 6 is offers excellent screen after al, as we can see on the example picture the phone screen is very good. Huawei Hisilicon Kirin 920 chipset Introduction – qualitative improvement The phone is equipped with Huawei Hisilicon Kirin 920 chipset, this is the new processor that developed by Huawei and the processor is strong enough, since the processor has powerful performance. In architecture, Kirin 920 uses four A15 and A7 core big.LITTLE architecture, while supporting HMP (Heterogeneous Multi-Processing) technology, you can dynamically control the different core collaborate, while quad-core and quad-core Cortex-A15 Cortex-A7 can work together. Kirin 920 uses nice GPU aspect since integrates the ARM Mali-T628MP4 chipset , running on 600MHz, this is more powerfull than the previous model Mali-450MP4 Kirin 910, the performance of Mali-T628MP4 has been greatly improved, support for up to 2560 x 1600 resolution display in the game Compatibility also has a large optimization. In addition, as always, in terms of powerful video decoding, support for ultra-high-definition audio codec also supports H.265, 4K ultra high-definition full HD video decoding. If Huawei Kirin 920 more advantages compared to competing products in what respect, then obviously the baseband integration is strong, integrate Huawei’s LTE Advanced communications module, integrated chip is already high, it can support both TD-LTE / LTE FDD / TD-SCDMA / WCDMA / GSM five kinds of formats, and can run at very low power consumption, and is the world’s first to support LTE Cat6 standard (high pass 805 products not yet available), the maximum downlink speed of 300Mbps . Huawei engineers spoke Huawei Kirin 920 in addition to the use of advanced big.LITTLE architecture, 28mm HPM foreign advanced technology, it is for the CPU, GPU, DDR, ISP, Display, more than 10 modules to do a detailed design and power consumption simulation, while the built-in professional audio processors Tensilica HIFI3. We need to note that the sensor is now more and more mobile devices, so many mainstream chips are integrated auxiliary processor to achieve a low-power management of various types of sensors, in Kirin920 body is no exception. Under co-processor built-in ultra low-power standby state monitoring of peripheral sensors. Meanwhile, in order to reduce the power consumption of the chip, which also implements that do not stop (auto-stop) power saving technology. Processing performance CPU / GPU compared to the previous generation did leap, 2-4 times can improve performance, but we can not ignore to improve memory performance, which also has a great influence on the processing speed of the machine. Glory 6 built- 3GB of memory to run big. Clocked at 800MHz LPDDR3, memory bandwidth by 1.8 times, while the secondary cache L2 also upgraded twice, which for the performance of the machine has been a great help. Compare competing products In terms of performance specifications, Hisilicon Kirin 920 has enough clout to challenge the rival, faced with Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung and other top chipset maker, Hisilicon Kirin 920 has a decent CPU performance, while mainstream GPU also catch levels, able to promote mainstream stage 1080p display, while the base support networks with Qualcomm also has capital one ratio. Specification Comparison Huawei 4G baseband integration is not inferior to Qualcomm, before Kirin 910T series has good support for 4G LTE networks. The Kirin 920 more able to support LTE Cat 6 standard, and has the ability to support global band. It also supports SGLTE / CSFB and VoLTE voice calls such as 4G networl. While running points may not represent actual performance, but as a reference anyway. Then take a look at the performance of Hisilicon Kirin 920 runs. CPU chip comparison As we can see in CPU-Z, Kirin 920 has eight core big.LITTLE architecture, which are the 4 core of A15 and 4 core A7, the former clocked at 1.3GHz, while the latter is 1.7GHz, relying HMP (Heterogeneous Multi-Processing) technology eight cores can work simultaneously. As contrast Kirin 910T chip, which will still be four A9 core architecture, performance is relatively weak, with GPU performance aspects behind. Kirin 920 chip Kirin 910T chip The Benchmark Test Here is the benchmark results from basic safety point of view, the Honor 6 equipped with Kirin 920 chip, sports with 3GB of memory, the strong overall performance. And the phone is get more 40,000 points, this is quite amazing. Comparing with Huawei Hisilicon K3V2 chip configuration, that only get about 26,000 points, belonging to the end of the level. Kirin 920 run points Hass K3V2 score The Huawei Honor 6 has significantly enhance the processing of CPU performance, GPU performance upgrade is worth attention. We also tested the machine using 3DMARK, BASEMARK graphics test software, which seemed at ease. As a result of ARM’s GPU chip, so the game can be guaranteed compatibility. Therefore, the hardware configuration is already in the mainstream top level performance, the Honor 6 is potential to beat Samsung, Qualcomm and other commercially flagship chipset configuration. Although the chip has just launched Huawei Hass not has compatibility problems, Hass Kirin 910 and 910T is not has compatibility issues. Huawei 6 equipped with Kirin 920 actual test, most games, especially is popular game running smoothly. And decoding audio and video playback chip has natural strengths, Hass has been tested to encondig the multimedia files including mp4, wmv, rmvb, mpg, mov, mkv, flv, avi, 3gp and many other video formats, can be successfully decoded, 720P and 1080P can smooth playback. 4G Networks: The first smartphone to support LTE Cat6 Huawei Hisilicon Kirin 920 incorporates Huawei’s LTE Advanced communications module, the world’s first to support LTE Cat6 standard, Cat6 and Cat4 LTE network protocols are different categories, such as Qualcomm 800 series is Cat4 standards. Generally supported the theoretical maximum speed Internet access while the Cat4 can reach 150Mbps, and the Cat6 support theoretical Internet speeds of up to 300Mbps, FDD scenes peak data transfer rate of up to 300Mbps, the theoretical speed 3G (21M) 14 times, 4G ( Cat4) 2 times. Fengyun SoC also supports TD-LTE/LTE FDD / TD-SCDMA / WCDMA / GSM network standard five, as well as all major global bands, enabling seamless roaming in more than 100 countries worldwide. Huawei Honro 6 has higher than any other phone which uses 3dB antenna reception, the equivalent of doubling the user signal strength, in the case of poor network coverage calls and Internet environment to ensure smooth. Huawei Honor 6 conducted a comprehensive laboratory existing network environment, the use of independent chip – RF circuit – antenna integrated solution, adjusted to the optimum overall communication performance. In the TD-LTE network, Honor 6 get the maximum downlink speeds approaching to 60Mbps, the maximum downlink speeds of around 5Mbps. We intuitively see that the actual download files, Huawei 6 is works with 4G network in China Unicom, the download speeds in excess of 6MB / s, this rate has been far beyond the speed of 3G network, we can see that sooner or later the 4G networks will replace the 3G network and 4G connectivity will become standard in the future. Dual-band WiFi + free hotspots nationwide Huawei Honor 6 has 2.4GHz/5GHz dual-band WiFi support, includes a complete 802.11a/b/g/n wireless network, which belongs to the fifth generation of Wi-Fi transmission technology (5G Wi-Fi). Advantages of dual-band Wifi devices that have a stronger and more stable Wifi wireless signal, faster transfer speeds, and allows wireless devices more energy to meet future wireless transmission of high definition and big data requirements. Another surprise is that the Honor 6 users will enjoy of free WiFi service throughout the country since we have more than 6.5 million WiFi hotspots. 10 million hours long free WiFi, no need the password for a key access, the WiFi is free. This feature means , as long as you are in the vicinity of the Honor of free hotspots, is a key to connect to the free WiFi, the user is really a very attractive feature. Guangzhou urban area, for example, in large shopping malls and crowded places, such as Grandview Plaza, Beijing Road Pedestrian Street and other places, it is easy to search for the free hotspots. Meanwhile, the functional description of “the WLAN service is based on China Mobile, China Telecom, ease of use,” so users can be assured of their safety. Just around the hot spots, Honor 6 will notify you if the free WiFi is available, just click a connect button, it will automatically connect to the network. The connection process is only takes a few seconds, while applying the WiFi icon will tell you when ww got the great strength, as well as free WiFi signals long. Life saving: High Density Battery In the present mobile phone battery technology has not yet made the leap of progress, the mobile phone manufacturers in general practice can only continue to increase battery capacity. And the Honor 6 in addition to increasing the battery capacity, but also open up the path to increase the energy density of the battery choice. Honor 6 using large capacity battery that has 3100mAh lithium polymer battery, the energy density of up to 590Wh / L, has now the highest level in the sale of cell phones. In addition, the smart system of Honor 6 hardware and software integration electric power saving technology, the use of five power-down program, 30% less power than other systems. Honor 6 system offers specialized power-saving management, performance mode, intelligent power-saving (default), super power and other scenarios, in addition to providing comprehensive power consumption testing, a key detection to tell you what the power consumption in the background, and how you can set up more power, very intimate. Another special mention of the Honor 6 is the super power-saving mode, after opening this mode, the interface will automatically switch deep tones, and retain only the basic functions such as calls and text messages, turn off the network, turn off all the remaining applications. By this extreme power saving mode, tested remaining 10% power, the Honor 6 smartphone can stand more than 24 hours. Endurance test Power consumption (3100mAh) Browse microblogging 30 minutes 4% Listen to music 30 minutes 2% 30 minutes watching video online 7% Playing 30 minutes 10% Honor 6 has a large capacity and high energy density batteries, lower power consumption in the phone’s battery life. System: continuous improvement Emotion 2.3 Honor 6 is continue to use the Emotion UI version 2.3. This is different from the recent rumors that syas tthe phone will uses Emotion UI v3.0. This version is a relatively mature version. The lock-screen is look good, while the animation is more complex but this interface is nice and very smooth for your daily activity. Pull down the slide from the top status bar, slide the bottom can be opened from the shortcut bar. The default choice of the theme “glare (magazine lock screen)”, light up the screen lock screen wallpaper will change every time, pull the bottom action bar can be suspended automatically switch, switch to the next or the collection of the current picture, and so on.Several of the most commonly used shortcut should be the flashlight, after all, quickly open the flashlight in the dark is more a sense of security. The Honor 6 themes is look good and cool. The user can download the new themes and the Huawei is also always up to date with the current issue and moments, so when we are in the middle of World Cup event, there is a lots of themes that uses keyword “2014 World Cup” theme. Also supports custom settings, you can replace wallpaper, fonts, etc. by yourself, with the common theme of all systems is not much difference. The Huawei Honor 6 is still using the Android core for the based operating system, so most user can uses this phone with more intuitrive and very user friendly interface. The status bar is divided into two parts, the left side of the main display notifications and partial information, the right is a variety of fast switching. You can slide left and right to switch between each other, relatively smoothly. It is worth mentioning that after the top left of the screen from the drop-down status bar will show a limited notification bar, pull down from the top right of the screen directly into the quick switch bar, familiar with this little trick is very easy to use. All settings are divided into common settings and set two columns, based on common settings Huawei domestic users accustomed department points out common features, of course, which is also Huawei’s “special” function. Do Not Disturb mode is very common here without tables. The phone prompts which said only after the effects of open and did not illustrate the principle. In fact, this is technically the screen resolution from 1080p (1920×1080) think down to 720p (1280×720), which can effectively reduce the CPU computational burden, not only to speed up the phone run faster, but also can effectively increase endurance, in the small screen on, 1080p down to 720p resolution after resolution, the screen will not have a significant grainy, small measured effectively. Emotion supports dual card management, the Honor 6 is comes with two SIM card slots, supports dual SIM dual standby. Also support for customize boot management, the user can change the boot animation screen without root the system. You can show or hide the softbutton below the screen, since the softbutton is appear in the screen rather than in physically under the screen. The phone is also support for DTS sound technology. The application comes with a special market, free flow area is within the area by application developers, telecommunications operators and handset manufacturer. Magnifying mirror Built-in mirror function is actually very simple, just use the front camera to see our face, but which joined Huawei in the application of some of the more handy tools, more interesting. In addition, there is also a “magnifying glass” feature, this is the capability of macro mode lens in the phone. Driving mode browser Driver Mode is the Huawei efforts for make the user safety, so you can use the phone while driving but this is not recommended. ITES 2.0 – Universal remote control center Smart Remote is the new feature that comes to Honor 6, the principle is the use of infrared transmitter to the top of the fuselage remote control device, the Honor 6 has built-in independent infrared remote control chipset, the world’s leading supplier of pre-infrared code library without downloading. You can uses this phone to remote your TV, DVD Player, Music Player, AC, and other home appliance. You can setting up the new device when you didn’t find the remote system in the database, so you have to align the infrared with other infra red port in the real remote control, the you have to press the button on the real remote control before press the button on the phone. Camera features: first pictures after joining Focus Huawei 6 is equipped with 13 megapixels rear camera, this camera is uses Sony stacked fourth-generation BSI camera with F2.0 large aperture and 5P aspherical lens, greatly enhance the amount of light, and is equipped with dual LED flash. Another independent research and development of Huawei’s Professional image processing engine fully upgraded, lead to higher quality performance and low-light shooting capabilities. The Honor 6 has 5 megapixels camera, with large viewing angle 88 degrees, more panoramic view and you can take the good quality self picture. The Honor 6 has very rich options for camera mode, such as smart scene, HDR, Burst preferred function is quite useful and easier to get good pictures under different scenarios. Here we look at the “full focus camera” function, which is to take pictures after the focus is how to achieve. Choose whole-focus function when taking picture. Flowers above, we will focus on the background behind the scheduled close naturally become blurred. If the focus will be on the back of the building, then the flowers become blurred. So full focus camera lets you take pictures of the case earlier, and then manually adjust the late, very playable and practicality. The largest indoor pictures under the feeling is quite good white balance control, room light did not appear the phenomenon of color cast. Thanks to the large aperture lens and Sony stacks, better preserved sample details, picture noise control is also satisfactory. Huawei Honor 6 is the new member from the Huawei honor series smartphone, not only is the first mobile phone equipped with Hisilicon Kirin 920, is the world’s first mobile phone to support LTE Cat6 standard. Honor 6 is the new high-end flagship smartphone that comes from Huawei company. This is phone has good quaity camera for photography enthusiast. |
Pilot Reports Seeing Drone In Sky Near JFK The pilot of an Alitalia pilot flying into New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport told controllers Monday afternoon that he had spotted "a drone aircraft" 1,500 feet high in the sky and approximately 5 miles west of the airport. ABC News, which has cockpit audio (from LiveATC.net) of the pilot's exchange with controllers, says the Federal Aviation Administration and the Joint Terror Task Force are investigating. In a statement sent to CNN, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown says the pilot reported seeing "a small, unmanned or remote-controlled aircraft while on final approach to Runway 31 Right." The news network says that "puts the aircraft somewhere over Brooklyn." Who was controlling the drone — if that is indeed what the pilot saw — isn't yet known. As NBC News points out, "drones are growing in popularity with government agencies and the public." CNN adds that: |
By trying to turn back the policy clock, Trump’s denying the latest scientific and economic research, not bringing it to bear. Konoplytska/iStock There are many nonsensical assumptions made in President Trump’s new executive order, but one of the least defensible is the decision to calculate the “social cost of carbon” based on science from 2003. The social cost of carbon puts a number on how much each ton of carbon dioxide emitted will cost us in the long run, thanks to its contribution to climate change. It’s calculated based on a big-picture estimation of how damaging climate change will be overall. This is obviously tough to estimate, but having even a ballpark number allows policymakers to have a rough way of comparing the potential future benefits of regulations to the small immediate savings. Currently priced at $36 a ton, the social cost of carbon is mostly used for internal calculations, but since 2008, government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Transportation have had to take it into account when making regulations. Trump’s team has had its eye on this number for a while—in late January I wrote that while the existence of the number is mandated, how it’s calculated is flexible. Leaked memos had already shown that Trump’s people were targeting it, even though it technically wasn’t supposed to be recalculated until 2020. With this new executive order, Trump has officially taken it on. His plan would return the calculation to its 2003 level—a time when regulators could get away with ignoring climate costs and the benefits to avoiding them because of how uncertain they were. It also disbands the nonpartisan group of federal scientists who make the estimate. As the executive order explains, “In order to ensure sound regulatory decision making, it is essential that agencies use estimates of costs and benefits in their regulatory analyses that are based on the best available science and economics.” It then goes on to state that several assessments made by the Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases “shall be withdrawn as no longer representative of governmental policy.” It doesn’t really give a reason for this. It then mandates that “any such estimates are consistent with the guidance contained in OMB Circular A-4 of September 17, 2003 (Regulatory Analysis), which was issued after peer review and public comment and has been widely accepted for more than a decade as embodying the best practices for conducting regulatory cost-benefit analysis.” In sum, to make a calculation based on “the best available science,” they’re reverting to 2003 data. The executive order itself doesn’t really bother to justify its decision, but here’s how a White House spokesperson explained it: “The previous administration put out its own estimates, not in a very transparent fashion, and in a fashion that we believe violates longstanding OMB policy. So, as a matter of federal policy, those estimates will no longer stand.” Trump’s reasoning that the previous numbers “weren’t transparent” is laughable—check out the backup here. And also here. If Trump wanted to increase transparency, the National Academy of Sciences recently recommended more research on each step of the calculation, which could accomplish that goal. But by taking a Bush-era approach, Trump is indicating that he wants a higher discount rate, which is a bit like a reverse interest rate. The number is used to calculate how much less money earned or lost in the future is worth to people alive today. “A high discount rate means the long term doesn’t matter. The future isn’t worth very much,” says David Doniger, director of Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate and clean air program. The circular that Trump’s executive order cites doesn’t put a price on carbon, but the discount rate it suggests using is 7 percent. (The Obama-era discount rate was 3 percent.) Of course, this is just smoke and mirrors—they just want the social cost of carbon to be as low as possible. Back in December, the head of Trump’s DOE transition team already planned to ditch the social cost of carbon, saying that “it would likely be reviewed and the latest science brought to bear,” resulting in a number that “would certainly be much lower than what the Obama administration has been using.” These justifications were tacked on later. Like many Trump policies, it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t make sense. For what it’s worth, the push to assess costs and benefits of regulations began in the Reagan era. But when it comes to the role of climate change in government decision-making, the Trump administration clearly aims to reduce it. To do that, it’s exploiting all the administrative levers it can pull and uncertainties in the social cost of carbon to try to lower its value so that it’s no longer relevant. In the speech he gave prior to signing the order on Tuesday, Trump never even used the phrase “climate change.” By trying to turn back the policy clock, Trump’s denying the latest scientific and economic research, not bringing it to bear. “In no sense does that reflect an effort to draw on an understanding of the latest science, economics, and the law,” says Michael Greenstone, a University of Chicago economist. If the number is lowered dramatically, emissions are likely to creep up via the elimination of the social cost of carbon’s current moderating effect on policies and regulations. The main effect will be on proposed policies; for example, the next time DOT or EPA officials evaluate the fuel economy standards of cars and trucks, they wouldn’t have to set such strict limits. Eventually there will be more heavily polluting vehicles on the road, less efficient appliances in the marketplace, etc. All of this puts Trump against the consensus of the nation’s top scientists and economists. Scientists recently suggested that when actually using the best available research, the social cost of carbon could be as high as $220 per ton. At least when groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund and NRDC sue, they’ll have plenty of ammunition. |
The raffish atmosphere of the CRD during this turbulent phase in the party's history, first under the directorship of James Douglas, then Chris Patten, has been well described by Matthew Parris in his memoir Chance Witness (2002). It was in no small measure thanks to Barbara Ridler's benign if somewhat military discipline that parliamentary briefings, policy papers and speeches for opposition spokesmen, not to mention the door-stopping Campaign Guides , were produced on time (and without too many typographical errors). One of her main responsibilities was to manage the secretaries, mostly girls from "good families" several notches up the social scale from the "desk officers" for whom they worked. Legend has it that they were recruited, at Barbara Ridler's insistence, under a "1,000-acre test" (possibly on the ground that no girl whose father owned anything less could possibly live on CRD wages). Once hired, the assorted Amandas and Victorias occupied the best rooms overlooking St James's Park, while their nominal bosses made do with pokier billets. Barbara Ridler was valiant in her defence of her "girls", lending a sympathetic ear to tales of broken romances and taking their part against unreasonable demands for late dictation or excessive photocopying (even at times of crisis she would always insist on turning off one of the department's two photocopiers "to give it a rest"). When one desk officer, driven to distraction by his secretary's typographical mistakes, emptied a bottle of Tippex fluid on the offender's head, Barbara Ridler stormed into his room brandishing a ruler and gave the young man a good spanking, shouting: "Do you know the damage Tippex can do to a young woman's hair?" Her morning and afternoon "rounds" of the office, with clipboard, smart suit, ramrod back and lavender grey hair, made even the most Rabelaisian of desk officers sit a little straighter in their seats. Though generally tolerant of youthful foibles (using her sense of smell she once detected a half-eaten lamb chop in a researcher's desk), during the three-day week she insisted that a shortage of light and heat should lead to no slippage in standards of hygiene, installing bars of super-strength carbolic soap in all the washrooms for the purpose. She was born Barbara Mary Dodd at Birkenhead on October 3 1915 into a Roman Catholic family. Her father, a solicitor, had fought at Gallipoli as a captain in the Signal Service of the Royal Engineers; her brother, Michael, would serve in the Army in the Second World War at Anzio and Monte Cassino. As a young girl she was keen on sailing and became a member of the Royal Mersey Yacht Club. Barbara was educated at the Convent of the Holy Child, Harrogate. In January 1942 she volunteered for service in the ATS (which became the WRAC in 1949), and was commissioned later that year. During the war, she carried out administrative and technical signal duties in mixed signal units, rising to the rank of captain. She remained in the service after the war, being promoted lieutenant-colonel and occupying senior positions in the War Office and Ministry of Defence. From 1962 to 1964 she served as adviser to GOC-in-C Far East Land Forces, responsible for all ranks of the WRAC in the region, as well as overseeing military building programmes on the island of Singapore. During her years of service Barbara Ridler had frequent contact with Princess Mary, the Princess Royal, controller commandant of the WRAC. On one occasion during a visit by the Princess to HQ, Northern Command, the Princess held out her hand to shake that of a general's young daughter who, unbeknown to Barbara Ridler, had concealed a hamster in it. Barbara Ridler joined CRD following her retirement from the Service in 1970 and remained there until 1980. Her retirement party, held at a time when the department was being moved, amid much protest, into the party's main headquarters at Central Office, Smith Square, marked the end of a happy era. The following year she was appointed OBE. Barbara Ridler loved opera and racing, and was an avid reader of newspapers and of biographies, particularly of those with whom she had worked at CRD. She continued to take an interest in the lives of her "girls" and delighted in their offspring when they came to visit. Many remained friends throughout her life. Her wartime marriage to Herbert Ridler was dissolved in 1949, and in 1960 she bought a flat in Willingdon, East Sussex, with her friend Col Rachel Green, whom she had met at staff college. They lived there for 48 years, enjoying many happy holidays together in Santa Margherita Ligure, Italy, after which they moved to sheltered accommodation in Eastbourne. Rachel Green survives her. |
We have also compiled a detailed list of Backup and Sync related existing issues. You can access the complete story here. Update 2 (September 07): For users complaining about Drive not working on macOS (High Sierra), APFS support is now available. You can either download Backup and Sync version 3.36 or give the already installed client time to auto-upgrade, something which should happen in a week. Update (August 22): Google’s employee disclosed that the next version (3.36) of Backup and Sync app supporting APFS will be out in ~3-4 weeks time (August 9) Source Original Story below Drive not working on macOS? You are not alone. As some of you might know, a recent update (High Sierra) to the macOS pushed by Apple made APFS the default file system (replacing HFS+). However, the update has broken Google Drive’s compatibility with the OS. The problem came to notice on June 7, 2017, where a user disclosed on the official Drive forum that Drive isn’t working on their macOS. Since then, several users have reported the same problem. What’s more, some of them are even saying the issue affects Google’s newly-released Backup and Sync app as well. Google has acknowledged the problem, saying AFPS support is currently missing for Drive. Here’s what exactly a company employee said on official forums: “APFS support will be added in the next version” Sadly, there was no word on exactly when the next version of the application will be released. Till then, to continue with Drive’s service, some users have suggested rolling back to macOS 10.12 Sierra as one of the workarounds. Others say: Source |
San Diego Comic-Con has always been a visual treat thanks to their glamorous set-up of the convention hall. This time, The Flash from Justice League is sure to leave fans awestruck by unveiling their LEGO life-size model. LEGO recently tweeted photos of the life-size model, giving a closer look at its details. Readers can check it out below. Earlier, Mashable also shared exclusive photos and a behind-the-scene look at the large scale model. One of the images also reveals a sketch of Ezra Miller and different poses of the actor wearing the speedster suit from Justice League. The aesthetic LEGO brick was built by 23-year-old model shop veteran Mark Roe. The life-size model was constructed with the help of Warner Bros. The studio shared 360-degree scans of Miller wearing the Flash attire. Later, Roe used a computer graphics software called Autodesk Maya to build his model and create poses of The Flash. The final version of the life-size model shown below weighs about 150 pounds including its platform and internal armature. Roe and his team were able to finish building the LEGO life-size model in a period of two and a half weeks. Fans attending the event can take a look at the brick form replica at the LEGO booth. For now, head over to Mashable to check out their set of photos as well. The LEGO life-size model of The Flash would definitely be a show stopper at SDCC 2017. Moreover, it is sure to attract a larger crowd and in turn promote the speedster as well WB’s Justice League. The brick model won’t be the only exciting thing at SDCC as Warner Bros. has also confirmed its presence with some announcements for Justice League and Aquaman. Fans are also expecting the studio to give an update on the speedster standalone film. Who do you think life-size model? Let me know in the comments below. For more updates on Justice League and other DCEU stories, follow Pursue News on Facebook and Twitter. Readers can also follow me on my social media accounts for the latest scoops. |
Holder Orders Equal Treatment For Married Same-Sex Couples Enlarge this image toggle caption Noah Berger/AP Noah Berger/AP Attorney General Eric Holder has for the first time directed Justice Department employees to give same-sex married couples "full and equal recognition, to the greatest extent under the law," a move with far-ranging consequences for how such couples are treated in federal courtrooms and proceedings. The directive specifies that such couples can decline to give testimony in U.S. cases that might incriminate a spouse, known in the law as marital privilege. The guidance says the Justice Department won't object to that even if the state where the couple lives doesn't formally recognize the marriage. It also means U.S. trustees will take the position that same-sex married couples should be able to file jointly for bankruptcy "and that domestic support obligations should include debts, such as alimony, owed to a former same-sex spouse." And in federal prisons, same-sex married inmates will have visitation privileges, escorted trips to attend a spouse's funeral and compassionate release policies if their spouse suffers severe illness. Holder is preparing to make the new policy public Saturday evening at a gala event for the Human Rights Campaign in New York. "Just like during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the stakes involved in this generation's struggle for LGBT equality couldn't be higher," Holder will say, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. "As attorney general, I will not let this department be simply a bystander during this important moment in history." The new policy follows similar moves by the Department of Homeland Security and the IRS after the U.S. Supreme Court last year invalidated a key part of the Defense of Marriage Act which had defined the institution of marriage for federal purposes as limited to heterosexual couples. Holder has previously spoken with NPR about his department's role in addressing the repercussions of the Supreme Court ruling. Update at 2 p.m. ET: Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, called the decision a "landmark" that would "change the lives of countless committed gay and lesbian couples for the better. "While the immediate effect of these policy decisions is that all married gay couples will be treated equally under the law, the long-term effects are more profound. Today, our nation moves closer toward its ideals of equality and fairness for all," Griffin says. |
Our thoughts and prayers are with those affected by today’s mass shooting in San Bernardino. While we don’t yet know the details of this act of senseless violence, we do know that each of our members who has dedicated their lives to public service will hold our families closer tonight. Many SEIU 721 members work in areas very near to the site of today’s tragic events, and often visit the Inland Regional Center. Details regarding SEIU 721 members affected by today’s events remain uncertain. Regardless, those affected today are our colleagues, and the 90,000 members of SEIU 721 stand with them this evening. SEIU 721 members are proud to serve the San Bernardino community, and we will stand with the community during this tragedy, as we do each day. While our sense of safety in the workplace has been rocked, our commitment to serving the California public is unwavering. As more information becomes available, SEIU 721 will work with leaders to ensure the safety of our members, our colleagues, and the public we serve. |
0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard The idiom, “at all costs” means that no matter what expense, dangers, or damage is involved, a task or goal will be accomplished regardless of the price. For the second time within a year, in order to keep the government running for a little over nine months, Congress is forcing the American people to pay a heavy price because like Republicans, about 50 Democrats, are doing the bidding of special interests to satisfy the greed of a band of oligarchs. It is really unclear if it is more important for many Democrats, including the President, to say they reached a compromise to show Washington is not completely dysfunctional, or to keep the government funded by giving the Koch brothers and Wall Street the means to satiate their greed and take complete control of the government. Whatever the reason, the so-called compromise appropriations bill is an affront to the American people, and revealed that many Democrats are what Howard Dean labeled “Republican-lite.” The budget itself may indeed be a compromise in that the Affordable Care Act is funded for another year, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security still exists, and food stamps were not abolished, but that is about the only good news in a horrible budget. A budget that saw well over half the $1.1 trillion going to the military, including extra money for “overseas operations” to enrich foreign economies with American military bases in peace-time. There are also ‘additional’ billions to re-fight George W. Bush’s progeny ISIS in Iraq and Syria. It is a sad state of affairs when this country’s infrastructure lags the rest of the developed world, and many developing nations, and a quarter of the nation’s children live in poverty, and yet over half-a-trillion dollars is available to enrich the military industrial complex and the oil industry under the guise of “national security.” Within the so-called compromise, Republicans and about 50 Democrats slashed the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget to neuter its ability to enforce clean air and water regulations, but apparently the ability to breathe and have safe drinking water is just the price Americans have to pay so politicians can say they compromised. Also in the compromise, the Internal Revenue Service budget was slashed in a counterintuitive attempt to prevent the agency from collecting revenue to keep the government running. To add insult to injury, Republicans inserted a “rider” that has nothing to do with funding that prohibited the IRS from investigating or regulating lobbyists and political campaign organizations posing as 501(c) social welfare charities as a gift to Karl Rove, the Koch brothers, Wall Street, and special interest groups. What makes this “appropriations bill” an affront and insult to the American people, and an abomination of epic proportions, are the riders that have nothing whatsoever to do with keeping the government running. That many Democrats voted for it is telling about their willingness to just say they compromised; including President Obama. To his credit, and it is tepid credit at best, he did say, “There are a bunch of provisions in this bill that I really do not like. Had I been able to draft my own legislation and get it passed without any Republican votes I suspect it would be slightly different. That is not the circumstance we find ourselves in. And I think what the American people very much are looking for is some practical governance and the willingness to compromise, and that’s what this really reflects. So I’m glad it passed the House and am hopeful that it will pass the Senate.” However, part of the reason it passed the House, and will pass the Senate, is the President and Wall Street’s lobbying effort. For example, what in dog’s name is a provision gutting the financial reform law’s (Dodd-Frank) restriction on derivative trading doing in a government funding bill? Did any of the 50-plus House Democrats not remember it was Wall Street’s derivative scheme that caused the financial meltdown the entire world suffered? The bill passed in the House by one vote, and if even a tenth of those 50-plus Republican-lite Democrats had a memory they would have forced Republicans to either shutdown the government or remove that Wall Street license to rape and pillage the economy. That rider, like giving Wall Street authority to cut Americans’ retirement benefits at their pleasure, will not reduce the debt and deficit, increase revenue, create one stinking job, or repair the decrepit infrastructure any more than a provision for long-haul truck drivers to drive for longer shifts with less time for rest in between will. And, what were the 50 Democrats thinking by voting for an appropriations bill with a rider that allows wealthy oligarchs to increase their campaign donations by tenfold? One wonders, seriously, how many Democrats would still have voted for the “compromise” if it included riders criminalizing liberals, Islam, birth control, minority voting, women in the workplace, secular education, or walking while Black? It is curious that President Obama is “glad the bill passed the House and hopeful it passes the Senate” when it contains provisions that are a preview of Republican attempts to “undo everything he did accomplish until his presidency vanishes from history.” Is that a price he is willing to pay just to say there is “some practical governance and the willingness to compromise?” It is true, the CRomnibus does represent “some compromise,” but on balance it is a monumental gift to special interests that have nothing whatsoever to do with funding the government. It is a compromise “at all costs” that the American people, not Republican-lite Democrats, will end up paying for. If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human: |
John Hartevelt at Stuff reports: The liquor industry has scored a win over the planned regulation of RTDs in the Government’s alcohol reform package. I think it is a win for common sense, and actually a win for reduced harm from alcohol. Justice Minister Judith Collins yesterday revealed she had dumped an earlier plan to ban the sale of ”RTDs” (ready-to-drink) with more than 6 per cent alcohol content from off-license stores. Alcohol reforms initially announced by former Justice Minister Simon Power originally included a ban on RTDs with 5 per cent alcohol or more from off-licenses. The proposed ban was effectively a form of prohibition. Research (a phone poll, two point of sale surveys and eight focus groups) Curia did for Independent Liquor left me in no doubt that the impact of trying to ban RTDs over 5% would be a significant substitution effect, with many people going from say 8% RTDs to (on average) 13% self-mixes. Note that the research Curia did for ILNZ was over a year ago, and I have no ongoing commercial relationship with them. The experience in Australia with increasing taxes on RTDs also produced empirical evidence of increased substitution to spirits, and this is one of the reasons the Law Commission did not recommend this measure. Instead, the bill will include a ”regulation-making power” for the Government to restrict the sale of RTDs in future. Until the powers are exercised, however, RTD sales will be left to work under the industry’s own code. ”The Government has decided to give the alcohol industry the opportunity to introduce its own measures to limit the harm to young people caused by RTDs,” Collins said. ”The industry has offered to put in place a voluntary code on RTDs. If the industry measures are ineffective, Government has the ability to take action through a regulation-making power in the bill. This allows restrictions on the sale of RTDs at any time in the future.” … The association promised in April to: – Limit the production and distribution of new RTDs to a maximum of two ”standard drinks” per single container. – Show clearly the number of ”standard drinks” on each container. – Ensure no RTDs have ”specific appeal to minors”. – Comply with the Code for Advertising Liquor, administered by the Advertising Standards Authority. – ”Invest and support” responsible drinking educational programmes. There are some RTDs which are, shall we say, a but anti-social. I’m not a fan of the Bigfoot RTD which was a large 6 – 8 standard drinks in one container. There is a certain incentive to finish a container, and people don’t tend to share containers as they might say individual drinks. So a self-regulatory limit of say 2 standard drinks per container has merit in my opinion. A restriction on the number of drinks per container is much more sensible than trying to ban 6% RTDs, when people would then buy 40% vodka. The reality is that some RTD drinkers do not like the 5% RTDs (they call them lolly water) and prefer the stronger ones. A limit of two standard drinks per container means they have as much alcohol as a standard double nip in a bar. There were also two other problems with the proposed prohibition on RTDs over 5%. One is that under CER, the RTDs could be made in Australia, and imported here. We would simply be exporting jobs. The third is that prohibition does not work as well as self-regulation. If you ban say 8% RTDs, then manufacturers could do inventive stuff like sell a container which has (for example) rum in one part and coke in the other, and you just mix them together to make your own RTD (just as many self-mix from spirits from mixers). I have no doubt that the proposed prohibition on RTDs over 5% would have not only failed, it would have increased overall harm from alcohol. I am glad the Government is going for something that will work, over something that sounds good, but would be harmful. |
Nordstrom Inc. JWN, +1.74% will stop selling the Ivanka Trump brand, a decision that came as a result of lackluster sales, according to a late-Thursday Bloomberg report. The retailer was also the target of the Grab Your Wallet campaign, which urges consumers to boycott goods and retailers that have business ties to the Trump family. The co-founder of the group, Shannon Coulter, has tweeted about the news, saying "You did this." Company executives addressed the controversy over the brand, according to an email obtained by Fortune in Nov. 2016, and tweeted about the issue saying that selling certain products shouldn't be "misunderstood as us taking a political position; we're not." Nordstrom shares down nearly 14% for the past year while the S&P 500 index SPX, -0.08% is up 19.3% for the same period. Have breaking news sent to your inbox. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Bulletin emails. Sign up here. |
Yesterday, At SES San Francisco during the Matt Cutts keynote, Matt answered some questions about the Penguin update that has many SEOs and webmaster shaking in their boots. Update from Matt Cutts: Matt clarified and gave a lot of context to what he said at SES SF. Here is his comment: Hey Barry, I wasn't saying that people needed to overly stress out about the next Penguin update, but I'm happy to give more details. I was giving context on the fact that lots of people were asking me when the next Penguin update would happen, as if they expected Penguin updates to happen on a monthly basis and as if Penguin would only involve data refreshes. If you remember, in the early days of Panda, it took several months for us to iterate on the algorithm, and the Panda impact tended to be somewhat larger (e.g. the April 2011 update incorporated new signals like sites that users block). Later on, the Panda updates had less impact over time as we stabilized the signals/algorithm and Panda moved closer to near-monthly updates. Likewise, we're still in the early stages of Penguin where the engineers are incorporating new signals and iterating to improve the algorithm. Because of that, expect that the next few Penguin updates will take longer, incorporate additional signals, and as a result will have more noticeable impact. It's not the case that people should just expect data refreshes for Penguin quite yet. As you know, many SEOs are eagerly awaiting a Penguin update but Matt Cutts, the head of search spam at Google, said "you don’t want the next Penguin update." He warned that the Google "engineers have been working hard," on this update. He even added the next few updates will be "jarring and jolting" for webmasters and SEOs. I've never seen a warning like this before from Google. It makes it sound like the Penguin update will be felt by many many more SEOs. Our initial poll said about 65% of SEOs were hurt by Penguin - why so many more than Panda which was 40%? Well, this is aim more at SEO techniques despite what Google wants to say otherwise. Honestly, if Matt is saying this, I wouldn't blame anyone if they are a bit worried. I wasn't at the talk, many were and the feedback coming out of it is that Matt was sincere about it. Again, I was not there, so I can't be certain. In any event, make sure to brace yourself for the next Penguin update! Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld. |
Hey guys. Trolol here. PLEASE READ THE DESCRIPTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is my entry for Music Battle #4: Element of Fire!!!!! This song was first to be made for an experiment, but now its for the contest. It took me the entire month of October and halfway through November to get this finished, and it was all fueled by rage and suicidal thoughts. I've found rage and death to now be my next emotional style to evolve on, and this one I feel is the most extreme. Also, this song was made to help me relax, because everything is spiraling out of control at home. Please read the lyrics, for it also has anger and suicidal words with the rage infused style. Please comment, tell me what you like, tell me what you DON'T like, some things I could change, and always remember to follow and favorite! :) Oh and can someone please please please PLEASE make a videoscore for me? I haven't figured out what soundfont to use, and the videoscore process is confusing. UPDATE: Evangelica and Whitehawk are tagged. UPDATE: HOLY SHIZNIT! ITS #1 IN MY STATISTICS! o-O UPDATE: 1000 VIEWS=PARTY TIME 8) UPDATE: Percussionist6 is a tag. Pages 25 Duration 03:44 Measures 101 Key signature 1 sharp Parts 35 Part names Privacy Everyone can see this score License None (All rights reserved) |
related The Best Vegetarian Restaurants in Denver Osaka Ramen RiNo Jeff Osaka’s urban-underground noodle bar boasts an Asian food-friendly wine list and delectable izakaya-inspired small plates (see: kara-age), but the highlight, of course, is the ramen. You’ve got your lighter, chicken-based shio (salt) and shoyu (soy-flavored) broths; your medium-textured miso broth, made with chicken and pork; and your intense, whole-hog tonkotsu broth -- each distinguished by its own mix of toppings, from braised pork shoulder to black-garlic oil. Oh, and there’s a meatless alternative for the plant-eaters who don’t know what they’re missing in the juxtaposition of velvety pork belly and a perfectly soft egg. Udon Kaisha Lafayette This here’s the kind of workhorse Japanese joint that every neighborhood should be so lucky to have: a mom-and-pop noodle-and-sushi bar that’s very good at its best, good enough at its worst, friendly and comforting and relatively cheap always. (Although the namesake udon bowls arguably have a slight edge over the ramen.) Katsu Ramen Aurora The sibling of the always-slammed Sushi Katsu is doing a bang-up job of not only the most-common ramen styles but also hiyashi chuka, a chilled version featuring slices of omelet (tamagoyaki) and barbecued pork (chashu) in a creamy sesame-ponzu sauce you’ll wish you could drink from a glass with a little sake mixed in. And the good news? You can! Sonoda’s Sushi & Seafood Aurora As far as we know, this unassuming shopping-plaza outlet, also in Aurora, is one of the only places in town that specializes in seafood ramen -- and the only one that throws a free California roll in with its shoyu or miso bowls. (Not, like, actually into the soup, but it's entirely possible that would taste amazing.) Miyako Ra-men Spot Englewood This little strip-mall shop has a small but traditional ramen selection augmented by typical snacks like gyoza and fried oysters. Yes, you'll have to pay extra for certain toppings à la carte -- including the seasoned egg called ni-tamago -- but if you've eaten enough ramen you know that such fees aren’t really so unusual so pay up and slurp away. Uncle LoHi This hot spot, whose chef-owner (and probable Pam Anderson-sex-tape-joke hater) Tommy Lee offers two-buck "umami bombs" to supplement his already dynamite soup. On the old-school foundation of custom-made noodles and 18-hour broths, Uncle’s crew creates combos that showcase their modern sensibilities, adding arugula or kale here, lamb or Italian sausage there, depending on their mood in any given season. Spicy chicken’s their best-seller, but we’re partial to the kimchi, preceded by salt-and-pepper quail and paired with a craft beer even you may never have seen before. Linger LoHi The "hangover ramen" here is a brunch and lunch staple so don't come craving it at dinner time, But if you do show up at the right time to order up this favorite, you'll be enjoying slow-braised heritage Berkshire pork belly, eight-hour Maple Leaf duck confit, roasted organic Hazel Dell mushrooms, organic pickled ginger, and a local soft-boiled egg marinated at length in a soy-sauce mixture, all afloat in a flavorful broth made with collagen-rich bones. Get busy with the sesame-seed grinder, house-made chili oil, shichimi togarashi, and other condiments that come on the side and make this stellar ramen your own. Bones Capitol Hill Two words: cellar door. Wait, no. Lobster ramen. The first restaurateur in town to see the Momofuku train coming, Frank Bonanno opened his chic noodle bar back in 2008, when that miso-fortified, beurre blanc-slicked, edamame-studded, claw meat-topped creation became an instant smash hit. Since then, Chef John DePierro has added his own signature -- a Southwest-style bowl with green chiles, braised pork shoulder, hominy, jalapeños, and queso fresco -- to the menu while keeping seasonal tricks such as spinach-chipotle ramen up his sleeve. Domo Lincoln Park Building on two dashi-based broths, Domo Chef-owner Gaku Homma offers eight different varieties of ramen with toppings like grilled eel and sukiyaki beef, including a thicker, saucier rarity called ankake. Adding two more broths (soy milk and curry) to the mix, he also makes five types of tsukemen -- essentially deconstructed ramen, with the soup served alongside the noodles to function as a dip. Any of these can become part of a combo meal with your choice of 12 donburi (rice bowls), such as the salmon teriyaki or the shrimp with avocado. And of course it all starts with the seven side dishes sent out for parties to share, whether in the folktale woodcutter’s cabin of a dining room or out in the koi garden. Prepare to be dumbfounded by sheer abundance, is what we’re saying. Kiki’s Japanese Casual Dining University Hills Like Domo, this quaintly decorated longtimer prepares an endless assortment of Japanese comfort dishes; unlike Domo, it’s bizarrely underrated. We’ve never had a bad dish here, be it grilled mackerel or hayashi (gravied beef over rice), and the noodle bowls are no exception. Kiki’s tonkotsu in particular is like the fettuccine Alfredo of ramen, in a really good way. Ace Eat Serve Uptown Ace’s menu is basically an anthology of Asia’s greatest culinary hits from bibimbap to bao, so of course it incorporates ramen too. Three types, to be exact -- shoyu topped with pork shoulder, fish cake, and a soft cooked egg, a spicy pork with ground pork, baby corn, pickled carrots, bamboo shoots and butter, and the vegan-friendly mushroom with crispy tofu. Brazen Berkeley Given a menu that jumps from barbecued ribs to chilaquiles to elegant pastas, you might suspect that the chef has terrible adult ADHD. But a few bites go to show he’s got it all under control. That goes double for his ramen, offered at brunch and late night. Pork shoyu with a poached egg, and garnishes ranging from mixed pickles to roasted cauliflower anchor a steaming bowl that's always sure to satisfy. OAK at fourteenth Boulder Also with limited availability (lunch-only), OAK’s ramen is about what you’d expect from a place that makes even lowbrow micheladas with San Marzano tomatoes, house hot sauce, and sea salt. The shoyu-kombu broth is a three-day affair involving smoked chicken as well as roasted pork; the fresh noodles are the kitchen’s own; the garnishes are cut as precisely as gemstones; the egg on top floats like a cloud -- and the end result is pretty much reverse-snob-proof. Izakaya Den Southwest As Kyushu natives, the Kizaki brothers were practically born eating tonkotsu. So they take it seriously, employing a designated ramen chef in a kitchen otherwise known for East-West innovations like hoisin-duck crostini. Said chef executes not only their homeland’s famous contribution to the ramen world but several other types as well -- notably tantanmen, Japan’s answer to spicy Sichuan dan dan noodles, and lobster ramen with bonus dumplings. Hana Japanese Bistro Louisville If you're willing to make a trek to Louisville (and you should), you’ll find beef -- as well as two kinds of seafood ramen -- on the dinner menu at this modest yet welcoming outpost along the Northwest Corridor, where nothing from the shumai to the katsu should be half as satisfactory as it surprisingly is. Tokio Prospect Last but definitely not least, this sleek, bi-level date-night haunt ably ladles up all the classics along with a locally inspired bowl that belongs on everyone’s list of top guilty pleasures forevermore: the cremoso diablo, starring a miso broth made creamy by a blend of cheddar and jack cheeses. It sounds ridiculous, but it tastes... ridiculous. Sakana Sushi & Ramen Westminster A serene, sophisticated suburban outlier specializing in the lighter styles -- shio, shoyu, spicy miso -- complemented by cool surprises like creamy vegetable and curry ramen, the latter topped with Japanese-style fried chicken. Soko Sushi and Sake Bar Downtown At this hidden exception to the 16th Street Mall restaurant rule of high visibility and low quality, toppings like shrimp, crab, fishcake, butter, and corn reflect the kitchen’s appreciation for the diversity to be found within the big blue ramen universe. The Ramen House University Conveniently located to satisfy the ramen cravings of University of Denver students, this spot has an array of options to choose from including the pork broth-based tonkotsu ramen and a rich miso ramen with bok choy, bean sprouts, green onion, chashu, poached egg, fish cake, and seaweed. Pair your bowl of noodle-goodness with some pork gyoza and you'll be primed for whatever the holds, be it an epic study session or some good old day drinking fun. Sera's Ramen Enclave Highland In May of 2016, this family-owned restaurant began serving up food crafted to reflect owner Sera Nguyen's own experiences with food, from growing up eating at her mother's restaurant in Vietnam to the flavors she loves to share in her own kitchen at home. The result is authentic flavors served with a dash of homestyle hospitality so whether you order the spicy miso chicken, curry ramen, or oxtail ramen, you're in for an experience that will leave you craving more. Corner Ramen Cole Those who live nearby this little known neighborhood favorite would probably prefer it stayed little-known, but then you wouldn't be able to try their menu full of tasty treats like the wagyu ramen burger, bacon wrapped mochi, and, of course, ramen. They've got the traditional choices, but go ahead and treat yourself and order the spicy lobster ramen with corn, arugula, and a poached egg in a fragrant seafood broth. Menya Noodle Bar Downtown The 16th St Mall location (there's a second outpost in the Tech Center) of this noodle bar is another spot that offers a repose from the mall's otherwise nondescript collection of chain restaurants and tourist-friendly but forgettable food choices. Their tantan men with spicy pork, bean sprouts, kikurage (Japanese wood year mushroom), and scallions in a creamy pork broth is a favorite that gives you that soul warming satisfaction that's an essential part of the best ramen experiences. |
Syd LeRoy is the Chapter Organizer at the Suffolk County Chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union. Prior to joining the NYCLU in 2018, Syd developed spaces for LGBTQ youth in public housing community centers in East Harlem, and helped create the area’s first LGBTQ library and resource center. Syd was previously the executive director of Center for Inquiry (CFI) New York City where they organized a team of dedicated volunteers to create community for advocates of science and secularism. While at CFI, Syd also served as deputy director of Camp Inquiry for seven summers, where they created a space for youth to be emotionally intelligent critical thinkers. Syd has a B.A. in Studio Art from CUNY Hunter College, and earned an M.S.W. from the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College where they studied Community Organizing, Planning and Development with a focus on policy. They live in Suffolk County, where they were born and raised, with their partner Evan and all their little plant babies. |
The first quarter of 2011 has seen piracy-at-sea hit an all time high with 142 attacks worldwide and 97 of the East coast of Somalia, up from 35 a year ago, a report by the IMB Piracy Reporting Center says. As ransom-payouts increase exponentially, more sophisticated piracy syndicates are even selling shares in planned attacks to villagers in order to finance their operations, according to the head of the U.S. Navy. Piracy is a real problem. Beyond one’s romantic idea of a pirate as portrayed by Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, the onslaught of attacks, boardings, kidnappings, and even murders has added approximately in annual $2.4 billion in transportation costs as ransom payments have increased 36-fold to an average $5.4 million in five years, according to sources cited by Bloomberg. And the problem doesn’t seem to be going away. Piracy has increased exponentially, especially off the coast of Somalia. Of the 18 vessels hijacked in the first 3 months of the year, 15 were in and around the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Eden, with 299 crewmembers being taken hostage, 6 kidnapped from their ships, 7 being murdered. Seeing their profits going through the roof, pirates are becoming more sophisticated, gaining access to better financing, better guns and boats. Admiral Gary Roughead, Chief of Naval Operations, explained to Bloomberg how “piracy syndicates in villages, mainly in largely ungoverned Somalia, solicit investors who buy shares in piracy enterprises and gain a corresponding share of ransoms paid.” As ransoms grow bigger, it is not only more attractive as an investment, it also leads to a sort of wealth effect by which more people become interested, more funds are made available, and better equipment is put at the hands of brigands. (Read Somali Pirates Hijack Tanker With Almost 2 Million Barrels Of Oil Destined For US). Even though it seems like a relatively easy problem to resolve, authorities haven’t managed to clamp down on these piracy syndicates. One of the main problems with stopping pirates is prosecution. EU-NAVFOR, a task force backed by the European Union to protect ships off the coast of Somalia, notes that after detaining suspected pirates, they have no authority to prosecute them. Finding a state willing to prosecute the pirates is a hard task, forcing EU-NAVFOR to send them back to Somalia. Graham Westgarth, president of Teekay Marine Services, one of the largest oil-tanker companies, explained that “over the years, 80 percent of the pirates have been captured at some point, and 90 percent of that 80 percent have been released.” As governments procrastinate on a truly global problem, piracy will become a larger and deeper rooted problem. A quick scan of shipping publication Trade Winds on April 21 yields at least two incidents on the day, with the Hanjin boxship attacked in the Gulf of Eden, and Italian panama Perseveranza Spa Di Navigazion hijacked in the Arabian Sea, while official bodies (such as EU-NAVFOR and the IMB) show an additional event, the MV Rosalia D’Amato pirated in the Indian Ocean. Year-to-date, the IMB reports that Somali pirates held 532 hostages on 26 vessels. The situation is poised to deteriorate substantially before any serious action is considered. Watch this video of the USS Farragut taking out a Somali Pirate Mothership |
Statues installed on five buses with the support of the Seoul mayor – although use of public space to highlight this wartime atrocity has angered Japan Buses serving several routes in central Seoul have acquired a new and highly controversial passenger: a barefoot “comfort woman”, wearing a traditional hanbok dress with her hands resting on her knees. Appearing on the front seat of buses in the South Korean capital earlier this week, the statues were installed by the Dong-A Transit company as a potent reminder of an unresolved wartime atrocity whose roots lie in Japan’s 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula. The term “comfort women” is a euphemism for as many as 200,000 girls and young women, mostly from the Korean peninsula, who were coerced into working in Japanese frontline brothels before and during the second world war. “It is designed to remind South Koreans of suffering the women went through,” said Rim Jin-wook, the head of Dong-A Transit, the bus company behind the statue passengers. Seoul’s mayor has supported the scheme, which will run to the end of September, by riding on one of the buses and saying it was an “opportunity to pay tribute to the victims”. However, the use of public spaces to highlight such a controversial issue has sparked criticism in Japan, which claims that the statues contravene the spirit of a 2015 agreement that was supposed to settle the comfort women controversy “finally and irreversibly”. Facebook Twitter Pinterest A statue of a teenage girl pictured on a bus running through downtown Seoul. Photograph: Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images The agreement included an apology for the women’s ordeal, but Japan refused to accept legal responsibility, maintaining its official position that all compensation claims were settled by a bilateral peace treaty in 1965. In addition, Tokyo committed to setting up a $9mn fund to care for the dwindling number of surviving sex slaves. In return, the countries agreed to refrain from criticising each other over wartime sexual slavery at international forums. But the biggest obstacle to fully implementing the agreement is a Japanese demand that the South Korean government order the removal of comfort women statues across the country. One particularly contentious sculpture has been outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul since 2011. Former sex slaves and campaigners caused a major diplomatic spat in 2011 when they installed a bronze life-sized statue, similar to the plastic iterations that have now appeared on buses, and placed it in direct view of diplomats and embassy workers. It horrifies me just to imagine what these women went through Jennifer Lee, bus passenger It was designed by artists Kim Seo-kyung and Kim Eun-sung, who told CNN that they had created the memorial to mark the 1,000th demonstration by surviving comfort women outside the embassy, which have been taking place every Wednesday 8 January since 1992. Since then, activists have put up dozens more such statues, in South Korea and abroad. In late 2016, a statue appeared outside the Japanese consulate in the port city of Busan. Erected by a civil group and paid for by donations, it caused the local government major embarrassment after they immediately removed it, but bowed to public pressure two days later and allowed for it to be reinstalled. Such is the strength of public support for the statues that South Korea’s government now says it is powerless to prevent campaigners from erecting them. There are growing intimations that the 2015 comfort women agreement is about to unravel, especially since Moon Jae-in replaced the disgraced Park Geun-hye as South Korean president in May. Moon, a liberal former human rights lawyer, has launched a review of the 2015 deal. As Moon told Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, in a recent phone call: “The Korean public sentiment shows the people do not accept the deal.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest The ‘comfort woman’ statue in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, South Korea. Photograph: NEWS1/Reuters The most controversial “comfort woman” statue outside South Korea is one that sits in Glendale, California, erected in 2013. In April this year, the US supreme court denied a review of a controversial case seeking its removal, ending a tense three-year debate by local residents Michiko Shiota Gingery and Koichi Mera, who were hoping to “defend the honour of Japan” by having it taken down. In South Korea, with only an estimated 37 “comfort women” survivors left, local communities are now stepping up their campaigns to give more visibility to the women in cities across the country, to complement their standing within the country’s political firmament. In addition to installing statues on five of the city’s buses, there are plans to make every 14 August a national day of remembrance and to open a museum dedicated to the comfort women in 2020. Lacking Seoul? Why South Korea's thriving capital is having an identity crisis Read more The bus statues will stay in place until the end of September before going on permanent display in public spaces around the country. According to the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, nine new statues were due to be placed in locations in Seoul and other cities by the time South Korea celebrated the anniversary of its liberation from Japanese colonial rule this week, bringing the total number in South Korea to about 80. “It’s so heartbreaking to see this girl statue, partly because she looks about my age,” Jennifer Lee, a 19-year-old passenger, told AFP. “It horrifies me just to imagine what these women went through.” Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, and explore our Archive |
Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email The riddle of who brutally murdered a seven-year-old almost 24 years ago could be solved by a schoolgirl babysitter. Little Nikki Allen was discovered in a pool of blood after being knifed 37 times in the horrific attack in 1992. Now detectives have confirmed they are looking at a new line of enquiry, reports the Chronicle. Nikki’s mum, Sharon Henderson, was contacted by a woman who said she had fresh information about the murder of the seven-year-old. We understand the woman, who was just 12 at the time of the killing, had been babysitting in the block of flats where Nikki disappeared from on October 7, 1992. Sharon said: “She told me she had some information after seeing a sketch of the man police are looking for on the Crimewatch programme.” Read more: (Image: Chronicle Live) The potential witness is now understood to have come forward and spoken to police. Sharon, 49, from Sunderland, said: “I have always said that any small nugget of information could make the world of difference to this case. I have my fingers crossed that this is it. “I have waited so long for a breakthrough.” Nikki vanished 24 yeas ago after leaving her grandparents’ flat in Wear Garth, East End. The Wear Garth flats, which have since been pulled down, were home to scores of families and Sharon and her family were well known residents. Nikki’s shoes were discovered outside the derelict Exchange building a few hundred yards away the next morning. Her body was found inside the building by a neighbour helping police with the search. She had been left lying in a pool of blood after being stabbed 37 times in the chest. In the years that followed, police have had no success in their efforts to bring the killer to justice. In 1993, George Heron, 24 at the time, was acquitted of Nikki’s murder by a jury at Leeds Crown Court. Mr Justice Mitchell refused to allow certain tape recordings of Northumbria Police interviews with Mr Heron to be put before the jury. Consequently, the jury did not hear his admission on one recording that he killed Nikki. The judge ruled that the evidence was inadmissible and criticised the police for ‘oppressive questioning’ and of misrepresenting evidence, charges the force denied. (Image: Chronicle Live) Two years ago Northumbria Police arrested Sunderland man Steven Grieveson, 47, on suspicion of Nikki’s murder. He was questioned and bailed but detectives later said his bail had been cancelled and he faced no further current action. A Crimewatch reconstruction was shown on TV to mark the 21st anniversary of Nikki’s death where detectives from Northumbria Police showed unseen video footage and a sketch of a man they were trying to trace. The programme sparked a resurgence in the case, with detectives saying they were following a number of new leads. Read more: Sharon said: “The woman who contacted me said she had seen the Crimewatch programme and she could not stop thinking about how she might hold information. “I just told her to get in touch with the police straight away.” A spokesman for Northumbria Police said: “We have received information from a member of the public which police are following as a line of enquiry.” Anyone who thinks they have information that could help detectives with inquiries is asked to contact police on 101 ext 69191. |
Benedict Cumberbatch is one of a host of high-profile interviewees who will appear in a new autobiographical documentary about Stephen Hawking. Advertisement Science enthusiast Cumberbatch was nominated for a Bafta for his portrayal of the physicist in the 2004 BBC drama series Hawking, and in 2012 narrated three-part documentary series Stephen Hawking’s Grand Design. The 36-year-old Sherlock star will be joined by actor Jim Carrey, businessman Sir Richard Branson, Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin and physicist Roger Penrose in the new Channel 4 production – also entitled Hawking – which will explore the extraordinary life story of the world’s most famous physicist. The film – which will get a cinema release before being screened on TV – aims to chart Prof Hawking’s development from childhood underachiever to scientific genius and media personality, and will explain how the Brief History of Time author learned to adapt to life after being diagnosed with Motor Neurone disease. Hawking himself will be on hand to relate his story in his own words and his ex-wife Jane and sister Mary will provide insight about his private life. “It’s a story that most of us have been aware of over the years, and so one kind of forgets how extraordinary it is,” said Chanel 4’s Senior Commissioning Editor David Glover. “In this film he tells us the story of his life – making it the definitive film about Hawking. He does it in a rather understated, modest, British way – which makes it all the more moving. I think it’s a film that people will still be watching a hundred years from now.” Advertisement The film’s executive producer Ben Bowie added: “We are honoured to have had the opportunity to film and capture the most intimate details of Stephen Hawking’s life. Through Hawking’s own words, as well as those closest to him, viewers have an opportunity to get a fresh perspective on one of the greatest scientists of our time.” |
Not that we're speaking from experience, but everyone's done something stupid when they've had a few too many to drink. We're talking about driving drunk while dressed as a zombie kind of dumb. Here's a less dangerous example -- getting stuck between two buildings . Rhode Island college student Courtney Malloy recently went on a drunken escapade and thought it'd be a great idea to attempt to run through an eight-inch wide alleyway. Surprisingly, the girl got stuck mid-run. What's even more intriguing is that Malloy was also wedged two feet off the ground. While this could be a great lesson in staying smart when it comes to drinking and partying, the 22-year-old claims she learned "nothing" from this experience. I guess we would've learned nothing either, except that maybe it's not a good idea to try and run through eight-inch wide alleys. |
On Tuesday morning, Google unveiled Street View Egypt in Google Maps, the latest step in the tech giant's quest to image and map the seven wonders of the world. This new collection includes 360-degree views of the Great Pyramids of Giza , the necropolis of Saqqara , the Citadel of Qaitbay , the Cairo Citadel , the Hanging Church and the ancient city of Abu Mena . A Street View operations team member wearing a Trekker in Saqqara, Egypt. Google Google Street View began in 2007 and has since covered more than 7.2 million unique miles across more than 59 countries, gathering tens of millions of images that cover iconic landmarks and monuments, including the Taj Mahal , Angkor Wat , the Galapagos Islands , Everest Base Camp , the Grand Canyon and the Colosseum . Images are collected using 75-megapixel 360-degree panoramic cameras mounted on Street View Cars, or in the case of Street View Egypt and other hard-to-reach locations, "Trekkers" — backpack-like mounts worn by team members as they walk, hike and climb through a given location. "W e have two kinds of collections," Google Maps Street View program manager Amita Khattri tells TIME. "We do countries that we have already collected imagery for — we sometimes go ahead and refresh the imagery — and then there are newer countries where we outreach and start on the new image collection." The Street View team faced exceptional challenges over the 10 days they spent using the Trekker in Egypt, carrying the heavy rigs through the desert during the height of summer where the heat tested the limits of both the cameras and the team members carrying them. "It was a unique experience for us as well, because the equipment really got tested in the heat," Khattri says. The captured scenes collected by the Trekkers were then stitched together into panoramas so that the result is seamless. This process, which also includes blurring of faces and license plates, can take anywhere from a month to several months, depending on the area being captured and the conditions under which the images were made. |
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Cedric Tartaud, Montevrain mayor's office: "If it's a young tiger, maybe approximately 70kg… maybe it's afraid" - photo courtesy Julie Berdeaux Police, fire officials and a specially-trained hunting dog are searching for a big cat - believed to be a tiger - seen in a town outside Paris. A woman alerted officials after spotting the animal in a supermarket car park in Montevrain, east of the French capital. Officers armed with tranquiliser guns have been combing countryside outside the town, helped by a helicopter. Residents of Montevrain and two other towns have been told to stay indoors. As darkness fell, the Montevrain council said on its Facebook page that the search had been called off for the night but local schools would be secured by 08:00 on Friday. During the day, children were kept in schools and collected by their parents by car. It was unclear where the animal came from, though there is a big cat park near Montevrain. The owner of the lntermarche supermarket in Montevrain said his wife had spotted the animal at about 08:30 (07:30 GMT). Image copyright AP Image caption Police with tranquiliser guns have been searching a wood in Montevrain Image copyright AP Image caption The police have called in animal experts to try to track down the big cat Image copyright AFP Image caption Armed police are on the streets of Montevrain as the search continues "She didn't get out of the car and called me to say 'I think I saw a lynx'," he was quoted as saying. The woman took a photograph that appears to show a large cat. The helicopter was equipped with a thermal detector to try to spot the animal in the undergrowth. A wolf catcher with a specially trained dog was also part of the search team, authorities in Montevrain and Seine-et-Marne said. Le Parisien newspaper said several local residents had sighted the animal. Specialists said the animal's tracks were those of a young tiger. An official from the mayor's office said they had been able to trace the animal to the woodland by following its prints. The Montevrain mayor's office dismissed the idea that the tiger could have escaped from a circus that was in the town until Saturday, Le Parisien reported. EuroDisney, which operates nearby Disneyland Paris, said it kept no tigers. |
The other reader reviews give a good idea of what's in this Terrific book, but require further comment. One reviewer says Bernie declares his socialist approach to politics but doesn't tell readers what socialism means. While it's true there's no 'one-liner' definition, the whole book lays out what it means to be a socialist & what socialists do & stand for, & even how they can (maybe) get elected in the USA! I've never read a more clearly presented, generously thoughtful book of ANY political persuasion that tells as much about what (truly) democratic politicians should be doing, how they can get elected & then stay in office to get it done, how to communicate with constituents & generally make a positive difference in their country. Anyone who wants to get elected & work for All the People can learn how--& where--to try from this 1 book. Beyond that, I've never read another book that makes so clear what politics should be all about, or how to recognize what a true representative of a large group of people should be doing, as well as how to make it possible even in 'America'. If you read only 1 book on politics in your lifetime, this is the one; read with an open but critical mind & it will uplift you. |
An Indonesian court sentenced the minority Christian governor of Jakarta to two years in prison on Tuesday for blaspheming the Qur'an, a jarring ruling that undermines the reputation of the world's largest Muslim nation, known for practising a moderate form of Islam. In announcing its decision, the five-judge panel said Gov. Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama was "convincingly proven guilty of blasphemy" and ordered his arrest. He was taken to Cipinang Prison in east Jakarta. Photos quickly appeared online of Ahok — who still commands immense popularity in the capital of Jakarta — being warmly greeted by prison staff. Ahok said he would appeal, but it was unclear if he would be released once that process is underway. The judge has become a representative of God. — Hardliner Syamsu Hilal At the court, supporters of the governor wept and hugged each other amid shouts of jubilation from members of conservative Islamic groups. The accusation of blasphemy engulfed Ahok in September after a video surfaced of him telling voters they were being deceived if they believed a specific verse in the Qur'an prohibited Muslims from voting for a non-Muslim leader. A supporter weeps near the court following Ahok's conviction of blasphemy in Jakarta. (Darren Whiteside/Reuters) Massive street protests in the past six months against Ahok and Tuesday's verdict are among the signs of an increasing religious conservatism in Indonesia. In Western capitals, the country has traditionally been seen as a bulwark of tolerance and pluralism in the Islamic world. Vigilante groups frequently attempt to prevent Indonesia's religious minorities from practising their faiths, and the country's gay community has faced a surge in persecution in the past two years. This … is character assassination of a good governor. — Ahok supporter Adrian Sianturi The blasphemy case was a decisive factor in Ahok's defeat to a Muslim candidate in last month's election for Jakarta governor. Hardline Islamic groups opposed to having a non-Muslim leader for the city capitalized on the trial to draw hundreds of thousands to anti-Ahok protests in Jakarta that shook the centrist government of President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo. "Hardliners will feel emboldened by the ruling, given that the trial represents a wider tussle between pluralism and Islamism in Indonesia," said Hugo Brennan, an analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, a political risk assessment firm in Singapore. Court hands Christian governor two-year sentence for blasphemy 0:55 Outside the court, Syamsu Hilal, a member of a hardline Muslim group who reported Ahok to police last year, said justice had been upheld. "Here we have witnessed that the judge has become a representative of God," he said. The sentence was also welcomed by the youth arm of Muhammadiyah, Indonesia's second-largest mainstream Muslim organization. But Ahok supporter Adrian Sianturi said the trial was a victory for intolerance and corruption. "This decision is the character assassination of a good governor, a clean politician who is rare in this country," he said. The two-year prison sentence was a surprise outcome after prosecutors had recommended two years of probation. The maximum sentence for blasphemy in Indonesia is five years in prison. Hardline Muslims react after hearing the verdict. The blasphemy case was a decisive factor in Ahok's defeat to a Muslim candidate in last month's election. (Beawiharta/Reuters) The lead judge, Dwiarso Budi Santiarto, said the trial was a purely criminal one and that the court disagreed that there were political aspects to the case. He said Ahok's comments during the election campaign had degraded and insulted Islam. "As part of a religious society, the defendant should be careful to not use words with negative connotations regarding the symbols of religions including the religion of the defendant himself." Wayan Sudirta, a lawyer for Ahok, said there was "so much pressure" for Ahok to be imprisoned. "We can understand but we cannot accept the verdict. Therefore we will appeal," he said. Ahok rose from deputy governor in 2014 after Jokowi vacated the capital's governorship following his victory in Indonesia's presidential election that year. He was popular with Jakarta's middle class for efforts to stamp out corruption and make the teeming city more livable. But others were alienated by Ahok's outspokenness and the demolition of slums that were home to Jakarta's poorest residents. |
The way I learn things, I can read about something a number of times, and intellectually understand it, but it won’t really sink in until I have a real reason to try it out myself. Toy examples don’t do it for me, I have to have an actual problem in hand before the solution becomes part of my repertoire. Recently I finally had a use for metaclasses. I wanted to create an in-memory list of items that I could reference by key. It was a micro-database of languages: class Language ( object ): # The class attribute of all languages, mapped by id. _db = {} def __init__ ( self , ** kwargs ): for k , v in kwargs . iteritems (): setattr ( self , k , v ) self . _db [ self . id ] = self @classmethod def get ( cls , key ): return cls . _db . get ( key ) Language ( id = 'en' , name = _ ( 'English' ), native = u 'English' , ) Language ( id = 'fr' , name = _ ( 'French' ), native = u 'Fran \u00E7 ais' , ) Language ( id = 'nl' , name = _ ( 'Dutch' ), native = u 'Nederlands' , ) # Some time later: lang = Language . get ( langcode ) lang . native # blah blah This worked well, it gave me a simple schema-less set of constant items that I could look up by id. And the class attribute _db is used implicitly in the constructor, so I get a clean declarative syntax for building my list of languages. But then I wanted another another set, for countries, so I made a MiniDbItem class to derive both Language and Country from: class MiniDbItem ( object ): def __init__ ( self , ** kwargs ): for k , v in kwargs . iteritems (): setattr ( self , k , v ) self . _db [ self . id ] = self @classmethod def get ( cls , key ): return cls . _db . get ( key ) class Language ( MiniDbItem ): _db = {} Language ( id = 'en' , ... ) Lanugage ( id = 'fr' , ... ) class Country ( MiniDbItem ): _db = {} Country ( id = 'US' , ... ) Country ( id = 'FR' , ... ) This works, but the unfortunate part is that each derived class has to define it’s own _db class attribute to keep the Languages separate from the Countries. Each derived class is obligated to do that little bit of redundant work, or the MiniDbItem base class isn’t used properly. The way to avoid that is to use a metaclass. The metaclass provides an __init__ method. In a class, __init__ is called when new class instances are created, but in a metaclass, __init__ is called when new classes are created. class MetaMiniDbItem ( type ): """ A metaclass to give every class derived from MiniDbItem a _db attribute. """ def __init__ ( cls , name , bases , dict ): super ( MetaMiniDbItem , cls ) . __init__ ( name , bases , dict ) # Each class has its own _db, a dict of its items cls . _db = {} class MiniDbItem ( object ): __metaclass__ = MetaMiniDbItem def __init__ ( self , ** kwargs ): for k , v in kwargs . iteritems (): setattr ( self , k , v ) self . _db [ self . id ] = self @classmethod def get ( cls , key ): return cls . _db . get ( key ) class Language ( MiniDbItem ): pass Language ( id = 'en' , ... ) Lanugage ( id = 'fr' , ... ) class Country ( MiniDbItem ): pass Country ( id = 'US' , ... ) Country ( id = 'FR' , ... ) Now MetaMiniDbItem.__init__ is invoked twice: once when class Language is defined, and again when class Country is defined. The class being constructed is passed in as the cls parameter. We use super to invoke the regular class creation machinery, then simply set the _db attribute on the class like we want. Of course, metaclasses can be used to do many more things than simply setting a class attribute, but this example was the first time in my work that metaclasses seemed like a natural solution to a problem rather than an advanced-magic Stupid Python Trick. |
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans: Tonight I want to begin by congratulating the men and women of the 112th Congress, as well as your new Speaker, John Boehner. And as we mark this occasion, we are also mindful of the empty chair in this Chamber, and pray for the health of our colleague – and our friend – Gabby Giffords. It’s no secret that those of us here tonight have had our differences over the last two years. The debates have been contentious; we have fought fiercely for our beliefs. And that’s a good thing. That’s what a robust democracy demands. That’s what helps set us apart as a nation. But there’s a reason the tragedy in Tucson gave us pause. Amid all the noise and passions and rancor of our public debate, Tucson reminded us that no matter who we are or where we come from, each of us is a part of something greater – something more consequential than party or political preference. We are part of the American family. We believe that in a country where every race and faith and point of view can be found, we are still bound together as one people; that we share common hopes and a common creed; that the dreams of a little girl in Tucson are not so different than those of our own children, and that they all deserve the chance to be fulfilled. That, too, is what sets us apart as a nation. Now, by itself, this simple recognition won’t usher in a new era of cooperation. What comes of this moment is up to us. What comes of this moment will be determined not by whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work together tomorrow. I believe we can. I believe we must. That’s what the people who sent us here expect of us. With .... ...their votes, they’ve determined that governing will now be a shared responsibility between parties. New laws will only pass with support from Democrats and Republicans. We will move forward together, or not at all – for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics.At stake right now is not who wins the next election – after all, we just had an election. At stake is whether new jobs and industries take root in this country, or somewhere else. It’s whether the hard work and industry of our people is rewarded. It’s whether we sustain the leadership that has made America not just a place on a map, but a light to the world.We are poised for progress. Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.But we have never measured progress by these yardsticks alone. We measure progress by the success of our people. By the jobs they can find and the quality of life those jobs offer. By the prospects of a small business owner who dreams of turning a good idea into a thriving enterprise. By the opportunities for a better life that we pass on to our children.That’s the project the American people want us to work on. Together. We did that in December. Thanks to the tax cuts we passed, Americans’ paychecks are a little bigger today. Every business can write off the full cost of the new investments they make this year. These steps, taken by Democrats and Republicans, will grow the economy and add to the more than one million private sector jobs created last year.But we have more work to do. The steps we’ve taken over the last two years may have broken the back of this recession – but to win the future, we’ll need to take on challenges that have been decades in the making.Many people watching tonight can probably remember a time when finding a good job meant showing up at a nearby factory or a business downtown. You didn’t always need a degree, and your competition was pretty much limited to your neighbors. If you worked hard, chances are you’d have a job for life, with a decent paycheck, good benefits, and the occasional promotion. Maybe you’d even have the pride of seeing your kids work at the same company.That world has changed. And for many, the change has been painful. I’ve seen it in the shuttered windows of once booming factories, and the vacant storefronts of once busy Main Streets. I’ve heard it in the frustrations of Americans who’ve seen their paychecks dwindle or their jobs disappear – proud men and women who feel like the rules have been changed in the middle of the game.They’re right. The rules have changed. In a single generation, revolutions in technology have transformed the way we live, work and do business. Steel mills that once needed 1,000 workers can now do the same work with 100. Today, just about any company can set up shop, hire workers, and sell their products wherever there’s an internet connection.Meanwhile, nations like China and India realized that with some changes of their own, they could compete in this new world. And so they started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science. They’re investing in research and new technologies. Just recently, China became home to the world’s largest private solar research facility, and the world’s fastest computer.So yes, the world has changed. The competition for jobs is real. But this shouldn’t discourage us. It should challenge us. Remember – for all the hits we’ve taken these last few years, for all the naysayers predicting our decline, America still has the largest, most prosperous economy in the world. No workers are more productive than ours. No country has more successful companies, or grants more patents to inventors and entrepreneurs. We are home to the world’s best colleges and universities, where more students come to study than any other place on Earth. What’s more, we are the first nation to be founded for the sake of an idea – the idea that each of us deserves the chance to shape our own destiny. That is why centuries of pioneers and immigrants have risked everything to come here. It’s why our students don’t just memorize equations, but answer questions like “What do you think of that idea? What would you change about the world? What do you want to be when you grow up?” The future is ours to win. But to get there, we can’t just stand still. As Robert Kennedy told us, “The future is not a gift. It is an achievement.” Sustaining the American Dream has never been about standing pat. It has required each generation to sacrifice, and struggle, and meet the demands of a new age. Now it’s our turn. We know what it takes to compete for the jobs and industries of our time. We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world. We have to make America the best place on Earth to do business. We need to take responsibility for our deficit, and reform our government. That’s how our people will prosper. That’s how we’ll win the future. And tonight, I’d like to talk about how we get there. The first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation. None of us can predict with certainty what the next big industry will be, or where the new jobs will come from. Thirty years ago, we couldn’t know that something called the Internet would lead to an economic revolution. What we can do – what America does better than anyone – is spark the creativity and imagination of our people. We are the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices; the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers; of Google and Facebook. In America, innovation doesn’t just change our lives. It’s how we make a living. Our free enterprise system is what drives innovation. But because it’s not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research, throughout history our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and inventors with the support that they need. That’s what planted the seeds for the Internet. That’s what helped make possible things like computer chips and GPS. Just think of all the good jobs – from manufacturing to retail – that have come from those breakthroughs. Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik¸ we had no idea how we’d beat them to the moon. The science wasn’t there yet. NASA didn’t even exist. But after investing in better research and education, we didn’t just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs. This is our generation’s Sputnik moment. Two years ago, I said that we needed to reach a level of research and development we haven’t seen since the height of the Space Race. In a few weeks, I will be sending a budget to Congress that helps us meet that goal. We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology – an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people. Already, we are seeing the promise of renewable energy. Robert and Gary Allen are.... .....brothers who run a small Michigan roofing company. After September 11th, they volunteered their best roofers to help repair the Pentagon. But half of their factory went unused, and the recession hit them hard. Today, with the help of a government loan, that empty space is being used to manufacture solar shingles that are being sold all across the country. In Robert’s words, “We reinvented ourselves.” That’s what Americans have done for over two hundred years: reinvented ourselves. And to spur on more success stories like the Allen Brothers, we’ve begun to reinvent our energy policy. We’re not just handing out money. We’re issuing a challenge. We’re telling America’s scientists and engineers that if they assemble teams of the best minds in their fields, and focus on the hardest problems in clean energy, we’ll fund the Apollo Projects of our time. At the California Institute of Technology, they’re developing a way to turn sunlight and water into fuel for our cars. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, they’re using supercomputers to get a lot more power out of our nuclear facilities. With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. We need to get behind this innovation. And to help pay for it, I’m asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re doing just fine on their own. So instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, let’s invest in tomorrow’s. Now, clean energy breakthroughs will only translate into clean energy jobs if businesses know there will be a market for what they’re selling. So tonight, I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: by 2035, 80% of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources. Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal, and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all – and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen. Maintaining our leadership in research and technology is crucial to America’s success. But if we want to win the future – if we want innovation to produce jobs in America and not overseas – then we also have to win the race to educate our kids. Think about it. Over the next ten years, nearly half of all new jobs will require education that goes beyond a high school degree. And yet, as many as a quarter of our students aren’t even finishing high school. The quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations. America has fallen to 9th in the proportion of young people with a college degree. And so the question is whether all of us – as citizens, and as parents – are willing to do what’s necessary to give every child a chance to succeed. That responsibility begins not in our classrooms, but in our homes and communities. It’s family that first instills the love of learning in a child. Only parents can make sure the TV is turned off and homework gets done. We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair; that success is not a function of fame or PR, but of hard work and discipline. Our schools share this responsibility. When a child walks into a classroom, it should be a place of high expectations and high performance. But too many schools don’t meet this test. That’s why instead of just pouring money into a system that’s not working, we launched a competition called Race to the Top. To all fifty states, we said, “If you show us the most innovative plans to improve teacher quality and student achievement, we’ll show you the money.” Race to the Top is the most meaningful reform of our public schools in a generation. For less than one percent of what we spend on education each year, it has led over 40 states to raise their standards for teaching and learning. These standards were developed, not by Washington, but by Republican and Democratic governors throughout the country. And Race to the Top should be the approach we follow this year as we replace No Child Left Behind with a law that is more flexible and focused on what’s best for our kids. You see, we know what’s possible for our children when reform isn’t just a top-down mandate, but the work of local teachers and principals; school boards and communities. Take a school like Bruce Randolph in Denver. Three years ago, it was rated one of the worst schools in Colorado; located on turf between two rival gangs. But last May, 97% of the seniors received their diploma. Most will be the first in their family to go to college. And after the first year of the school’s transformation, the principal who made it possible wiped away tears when a student said “Thank you, Mrs. Waters, for showing… that we are smart and we can make it.” Let’s also remember that after parents, the biggest impact on a child’s success comes from the man or woman at the front of the classroom. In South Korea, teachers are known as “nation builders.” Here in America, it’s time we treated the people who educate our children with the same level of respect. We want to reward good teachers and stop making excuses for bad ones. And over the next ten years, with so many Baby Boomers retiring from our classrooms, we want to prepare 100,000 new teachers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math. In fact, to every young person listening tonight who’s contemplating their career choice: If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation; if you want to make a difference in the life of a child – become a teacher. Your country needs you. Of course, the education race doesn’t end with a high school diploma. To compete, higher education must be within reach of every American. That’s why we’ve ended the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies that went to banks, and used the savings to make college affordable for millions of students. And this year, I ask Congress to go further, and make permanent our tuition tax credit – worth $10,000 for four years of college. Because people need to be able to train for new jobs and careers in today’s fast-changing economy, we are also revitalizing America’s community colleges. Last month, I saw the promise of these schools at Forsyth Tech in North Carolina. Many of the students there used to work in the surrounding factories that have since left town. One mother of two, a woman named Kathy Proctor, had worked in the furniture industry since she was 18 years old. And she told me she’s earning her degree in biotechnology now, at 55 years old, not just because the furniture jobs are gone, but because she wants to inspire her children to pursue their dreams too. As Kathy said, “I hope it tells them to never give up.” If we take these steps – if we raise expectations for every child, and give them the best possible chance at an education, from the day they’re born until the last job they take – we will reach the goal I set two years ago: by the end of the decade, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. One last point about education. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of students excelling in our schools who are not American citizens. Some are the children of undocumented workers, who had nothing to do with the actions of their parents. They grew up as Americans and pledge allegiance to our flag, and yet live every day with the threat of deportation. Others come here from abroad to study in our colleges and universities. But as soon as they obtain advanced degrees, we send them back home to compete against us. It makes no sense. Now, I strongly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration. I am prepared to work with Republicans and Democrats to protect our borders, enforce our laws and address the millions of undocumented workers who are now living in the shadows. I know that debate will be difficult and take time. But tonight, let’s agree to make that effort. And let’s stop expelling talented, responsible young people who can staff our research labs, start new businesses, and further enrich this nation. The third step in winning the future is rebuilding America. To attract new businesses to our shores, we need the fastest, most reliable ways to move people, goods, and information – from high-speed rail to high-speed internet. Our infrastructure used to be the best – but our lead has slipped. South Korean homes now have greater internet access than we do. Countries in Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do. China is building faster trains and newer airports. Meanwhile, when our own engineers graded our nation’s infrastructure, they gave us a “D.” We have to do better. America is the nation that built the transcontinental railroad, brought electricity to rural communities, and constructed the interstate highway system. The jobs created by these projects didn’t just come from laying down tracks or pavement. They came from businesses that opened near a town’s new train station or the new off-ramp. Over the last two years, we have begun rebuilding for the 21st century, a project that has meant thousands of good jobs for the hard-hit construction industry. Tonight, I’m proposing that we redouble these efforts. We will put more Americans to work repairing crumbling roads and bridges. We will make sure this is fully paid for, attract private investment, and pick projects based on what’s best for the economy, not politicians. Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80% of Americans access to high-speed rail, which could allow you go places in half the time it takes to travel by car. For some trips, it will be faster than flying – without the pat-down. As we speak, routes in California and the Midwest are already underway. Within the next five years, we will make it possible for business to deploy the next generation of high-speed wireless coverage to 98% of all Americans. This isn’t just about a faster internet and fewer dropped calls. It’s about connecting every part of America to the digital age. It’s about a rural community in Iowa or Alabama where farmers and small business owners will be able to sell their products all over the world. It’s about a firefighter who can download the design of a burning building onto a handheld device; a student who can take classes with a digital textbook; or a patient who can have face-to-face video chats with her doctor. All these investments – in innovation, education, and infrastructure – will make America a better place to do business and create jobs. But to help our companies compete, we also have to knock down barriers that stand in the way of their success. Over the years, a parade of lobbyists has rigged the tax code to benefit particular companies and industries. Those with accountants or lawyers to work the system can end up paying no taxes at all. But all the rest are hit with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and it has to change. So tonight, I’m asking Democrats and Republicans to simplify the system. Get rid of the loopholes. Level the playing field. And use the savings to lower the corporate tax rate for the first time in 25 years – without adding to our deficit. To help businesses sell more products abroad, we set a goal of doubling our exports by 2014 – because the more we export, the more jobs we create at home. Already, our exports are up. Recently, we signed agreements with India and China that will support more than 250,000 jobs in the United States. And last month, we finalized a trade agreement with South Korea that will support at least 70,000 American jobs. This agreement has unprecedented support from business and labor; Democrats and Republicans, and I ask this Congress to pass it as soon as possible. Before I took office, I made it clear that we would enforce our trade agreements, and that I would only sign deals that keep faith with American workers, and promote American jobs. That’s what we did with Korea, and that’s what I intend to do as we pursue agreements with Panama and Colombia, and continue our Asia Pacific and global trade talks. To reduce barriers to growth and investment, I’ve ordered a review of government regulations. When we find rules that put an unnecessary burden on businesses, we will fix them. But I will not hesitate to create or enforce commonsense safeguards to protect the American people. That’s what we’ve done in this country for more than a century. It’s why our food is safe to eat, our water is safe to drink, and our air is safe to breathe. It’s why we have speed limits and child labor laws. It’s why last year, we put in place consumer protections against hidden fees and penalties by credit card companies, and new rules to prevent another financial crisis. And it’s why we passed reform that finally prevents the health insurance industry from exploiting patients. Now, I’ve heard rumors that a few of you have some concerns about the new health care law. So let me be the first to say that anything can be improved. If you have ideas about how to improve this law by making care better or more affordable, I am eager to work with you. We can start right now by correcting a flaw in the legislation that has placed an unnecessary bookkeeping burden on small businesses. What I’m not willing to do is go back to the days when insurance companies could deny someone coverage because of a pre-existing condition. I’m not willing to tell James Howard, a brain cancer patient from Texas, that his treatment might not be covered. I’m not willing to tell Jim Houser, a small business owner from Oregon, that he has to go back to paying $5,000 more to cover his employees. As we speak, this law is making prescription drugs cheaper for seniors and giving uninsured students a chance to stay on their parents’ coverage. So instead of re-fighting the battles of the last two years, let’s fix what needs fixing and move forward. Now, the final step – a critical step – in winning the future is to make sure we aren’t buried under a mountain of debt. We are living with a legacy of deficit-spending that began almost a decade ago. And in the wake of the financial crisis, some of that was necessary to keep credit flowing, save jobs, and put money in people’s pockets. But now that the worst of the recession is over, we have to confront the fact that our government spends more than it takes in. That is not sustainable. Every day, families sacrifice to live within their means. They deserve a government that does the same. So tonight, I am proposing that starting this year, we freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years. This would reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, and will bring discretionary spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president. This freeze will require painful cuts. Already, we have frozen the salaries of hardworking federal employees for the next two years. I’ve proposed cuts to things I care deeply about, like community action programs. The Secretary of Defense has also agreed to cut tens of billions of dollars in spending that he and his generals believe our military can do without. I recognize that some in this Chamber have already proposed deeper cuts, and I’m willing to eliminate whatever we can honestly afford to do without. But let’s make sure that we’re not doing it on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens. And let’s make sure what we’re cutting is really excess weight. Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you’ll feel the impact. Now, most of the cuts and savings I’ve proposed only address annual domestic spending, which represents a little more than 12% of our budget. To make further progress, we have to stop pretending that cutting this kind of spending alone will be enough. It won’t. The bipartisan Fiscal Commission I created last year made this crystal clear. I don’t agree with all their proposals, but they made important progress. And their conclusion is that the only way to tackle our deficit is to cut excessive spending wherever we find it – in domestic spending, defense spending, health care spending, and spending through tax breaks and loopholes. This means further reducing health care costs, including programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which are the single biggest contributor to our long-term deficit. Health insurance reform will slow these rising costs, which is part of why nonpartisan economists have said that repealing the health care law would add a quarter of a trillion dollars to our deficit. Still, I’m willing to look at other ideas to bring down costs, including one that Republicans suggested last year: medical malpractice reform to rein in frivolous lawsuits. To put us on solid ground, we should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations. And we must do it without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without subjecting Americans’ guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market. And if we truly care about our deficit, we simply cannot afford a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. Before we take money away from our schools, or scholarships away from our students, we should ask millionaires to give up their tax break. It’s not a matter of punishing their success. It’s about promoting America’s success. In fact, the best thing we could do on taxes for all Americans is to simplify the individual tax code. This will be a tough job, but members of both parties have expressed interest in doing this, and I am prepared to join them. So now is the time to act. Now is the time for both sides and both houses of Congress – Democrats and Republicans – to forge a principled compromise that gets the job done. If we make the hard choices now to rein in our deficits, we can make the investments we need to win the future. Let me take this one step further. We shouldn’t just give our people a government that’s more affordable. We should give them a government that’s more competent and efficient. We cannot win the future with a government of the past. We live and do business in the information age, but the last major reorganization of the government happened in the age of black and white TV. There are twelve different agencies that deal with exports. There are at least five different entities that deal with housing policy. Then there’s my favorite example: the Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they’re in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them in when they’re in saltwater. And I hear it gets even more complicated once they’re smoked. Now, we have made great strides over the last two years in using technology and getting rid of waste. Veterans can now download their electronic medical records with a click of the mouse. We’re selling acres of federal office space that hasn’t been used in years, and we will cut through red tape to get rid of more. But we need to think bigger. In the coming months, my administration will develop a proposal to merge, consolidate, and reorganize the federal government in a way that best serves the goal of a more competitive America. I will submit that proposal to Congress for a vote – and we will push to get it passed. In the coming year, we will also work to rebuild people’s faith in the institution of government. Because you deserve to know exactly how and where your tax dollars are being spent, you will be able to go to a website and get that information for the very first time in history. Because you deserve to know when your elected officials are meeting with lobbyists, I ask Congress to do what the White House has already done: put that information online. And because the American people deserve to know that special interests aren’t larding up legislation with pet projects, both parties in Congress should know this: if a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it. A 21st century government that’s open and competent. A government that lives within its means. An economy that’s driven by new skills and ideas. Our success in this new and changing world will require reform, responsibility, and innovation. It will also require us to approach that world with a new level of engagement in our foreign affairs. Just as jobs and businesses can now race across borders, so can new threats and new challenges. No single wall separates East and West; no one rival superpower is aligned against us. And so we must defeat determined enemies wherever they are, and build coalitions that cut across lines of region and race and religion. America’s moral example must always shine for all who yearn for freedom, justice, and dignity. And because we have begun this work, tonight we can say that American leadership has been renewed and America’s standing has been restored. Look to Iraq, where nearly 100,000 of our brave men and women have left with their heads held high; where American combat patrols have ended; violence has come down; and a new government has been formed. This year, our civilians will forge a lasting partnership with the Iraqi people, while we finish the job of bringing our troops out of Iraq. America’s commitment has been kept; the Iraq War is coming to an end. Of course, as we speak, al Qaeda and their affiliates continue to plan attacks against us. Thanks to our intelligence and law enforcement professionals, we are disrupting plots and securing our cities and skies. And as extremists try to inspire acts of violence within our borders, we are responding with the strength of our communities, with respect for the rule of law, and with the conviction that American Muslims are a part of our American family. We have also taken the fight to al Qaeda and their allies abroad. In Afghanistan, our troops have taken Taliban strongholds and trained Afghan Security Forces. Our purpose is clear – by preventing the Taliban from reestablishing a stranglehold over the Afghan people, we will deny al Qaeda the safe-haven that served as a launching pad for 9/11. Thanks to our heroic troops and civilians, fewer Afghans are under the control of the insurgency. There will be tough fighting ahead, and the Afghan government will need to deliver better governance. But we are strengthening the capacity of the Afghan people and building an enduring partnership with them. This year, we will work with nearly 50 countries to begin a transition to an Afghan lead. And this July, we will begin to bring our troops home. In Pakistan, al Qaeda’s leadership is under more pressure than at any point since 2001. Their leaders and operatives are being removed from the battlefield. Their safe-havens are shrinking. And we have sent a message from the Afghan border to the Arabian Peninsula to all parts of the globe: we will not relent, we will not waver, and we will defeat you. American leadership can also be seen in the effort to secure the worst weapons of war. Because Republicans and Democrats approved the New START Treaty, far fewer nuclear weapons and launchers will be deployed. Because we rallied the world, nuclear materials are being locked down on every continent so they never fall into the hands of terrorists. Because of a diplomatic effort to insist that Iran meet its obligations, the Iranian government now faces tougher and tighter sanctions than ever before. And on the Korean peninsula, we stand with our ally South Korea, and insist that North Korea keeps its commitment to abandon nuclear weapons. This is just a part of how we are shaping a world that favors peace and prosperity. With our European allies, we revitalized NATO, and increased our cooperation on everything from counter-terrorism to missile defense. We have reset our relationship with Russia, strengthened Asian alliances, and built new partnerships with nations like India. This March, I will travel to Brazil, Chile, and El Salvador to forge new alliances for progress in the Americas. Around the globe, we are standing with those who take responsibility – helping farmers grow more food; supporting doctors who care for the sick; and combating the corruption that can rot a society and rob people of opportunity. Recent events have shown us that what sets us apart must not just be our power – it must be the purpose behind it. In South Sudan – with our assistance – the people were finally able to vote for independence after years of war. Thousands lined up before dawn. People danced in the streets. One man who lost four of his brothers at war summed up the scene around him: “This was a battlefield for most of my life. Now we want to be free.” We saw that same desire to be free in Tunisia, where the will of the people proved more powerful than the writ of a dictator. And tonight, let us be clear: the United States of America stands with the people of Tunisia, and supports the democratic aspirations of all people. We must never forget that the things we’ve struggled for, and fought for, live in the hearts of people everywhere. And we must always remember that the Americans who have borne the greatest burden in this struggle are the men and women who serve our country. Tonight, let us speak with one voice in reaffirming that our nation is united in support of our troops and their families. Let us serve them as well as they have served us – by giving them the equipment they need; by providing them with the care and benefits they have earned; and by enlisting our veterans in the great task of building our own nation. Our troops come from every corner of this country – they are black, white, Latino, Asian and Native American. They are Christian and Hindu, Jewish and Muslim. And, yes, we know that some of them are gay. Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love. And with that change, I call on all of our college campuses to open their doors to our military recruiters and the ROTC. It is time to leave behind the divisive battles of the past. It is time to move forward as one nation. We should have no illusions about the work ahead of us. Reforming our schools; changing the way we use energy; reducing our deficit – none of this is easy. All of it will take time. And it will be harder because we will argue about everything. The cost. The details. The letter of every law. Of course, some countries don’t have this problem. If the central government wants a railroad, they get a railroad – no matter how many homes are bulldozed. If they don’t want a bad story in the newspaper, it doesn’t get written. And yet, as contentious and frustrating and messy as our democracy can sometimes be, I know there isn’t a person here who would trade places with any other nation on Earth. We may have differences in policy, but we all believe in the rights enshrined in our Constitution. We may have different opinions, but we believe in the same promise that says this is a place where you can make it if you try. We may have different backgrounds, but we believe in the same dream that says this is a country where anything’s possible. No matter who you are. No matter where you come from. That dream is why I can stand here before you tonight. That dream is why a working class kid from Scranton can stand behind me. That dream is why someone who began by sweeping the floors of his father’s Cincinnati bar can preside as Speaker of the House in the greatest nation on Earth. That dream – that American Dream – is what drove the Allen Brothers to reinvent their roofing company for a new era. It’s what drove those students at Forsyth Tech to learn a new skill and work towards the future. And that dream is the story of a small business owner named Brandon Fisher. Brandon started a company in Berlin, Pennsylvania that specializes in a new kind of drilling technology. One day last summer, he saw the news that halfway across the world, 33 men were trapped in a Chilean mine, and no one knew how to save them. But Brandon thought his company could help. And so he designed a rescue that would come to be known as Plan B. His employees worked around the clock to manufacture the necessary drilling equipment. And Brandon left for Chile. Along with others, he began drilling a 2,000 foot hole into the ground, working three or four days at a time with no sleep. Thirty-seven days later, Plan B succeeded, and the miners were rescued. But because he didn’t want all of the attention, Brandon wasn’t there when the miners emerged. He had already gone home, back to work on his next project. Later, one of his employees said of the rescue, “We proved that Center Rock is a little company, but we do big things.” We do big things. From the earliest days of our founding, America has been the story of ordinary people who dare to dream. That’s how we win the future. We are a nation that says, “I might not have a lot of money, but I have this great idea for a new company. I might not come from a family of college graduates, but I will be the first to get my degree. I might not know those people in trouble, but I think I can help them, and I need to try. I’m not sure how we’ll reach that better place beyond the horizon, but I know we’ll get there. I know we will.” We do big things. The idea of America endures. Our destiny remains our choice. And tonight, more than two centuries later, it is because of our people that our future is hopeful, our journey goes forward, and the state of our union is strong. Thank you, God Bless You, and may God Bless the United States of America. #### Related Items: State of the Union Addresses: So much talk, so little results Official Republican reply by Rep. Paul Ryan Rep. Michele Bachmann reply for the Tea Party President Obama's 2010 State of the Union Address Obama's anticipated State of the Union, as edited for the new civility Photo: Jim Lo Scalzo / EPA; NASA (Sputnik 1); Pete Souza / White House (President Obama's view as he entered the House for his 2010 State of the Union); Jim Young / Reuters. |
Socialism and capitalism seem like natural antagonists, but their rivalry is Oedipal. To many, the relationship appears straightforward. Capitalism, they would argue, created the modern industrial working class, which supplied the socialist movement with its staunchest recruits. This story, variations of which reach back to Karl Marx, has been repeated so often that it seems intuitive. But it gets the lines of paternity backward. Capitalism did not create socialism; socialists invented capitalism. Ad Policy Jacobin A Magazine of Culture and Polemic. jacobinmag.com Cubed A Secret History of the Workplace. By Nikil Saval. Buy this book Utopia or Bust A Guide to the Present Crisis. By Benjamin Kunkel. Buy this book Capital in the Twenty-First Century By Thomas Piketty. Translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer. Buy this book The origins of capitalism could be dated to when someone first traded for profit, though most historians prefer a shorter time line. Even so, scholars tend to agree that something usefully described as capitalism had materialized in parts of the world by 1800, at the latest. But the idea of capitalism took longer to emerge. The word wasn’t coined until the middle of the nineteenth century, and it didn’t enter general usage until decades later. By that point, socialists had been a familiar force in politics for almost a century. Yet socialism’s founders—figures like Henri de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier—did not intend to overthrow capitalism. Their aspirations were, if anything, grander. They planned to launch a new religion grounded in principles revealed by another recent discovery: social science. Each half of the formulation—the social and the scientific—mattered equally. For most of the nineteenth century, socialism’s chief opponent was individualism, not capitalism. According to socialism’s pioneering theorists, society was more than a collection of individuals. It was an organism, and it had a distinctive logic of its own—a singular object that could be understood, and controlled, by a singular science. Socialists claimed to have mastered this science, which entitled them to act in society’s name. One of their first tasks would be to replace Christianity, liberating humanity from antiquated prejudices that had undermined revolution in France and could jeopardize future rebellions in Europe. Socialism, though, was only the latest attempt to grapple with a deeper problem. With the lonely exception of ancient Greece some 2,000 years prior, democracy had been a marginal concept in political debate throughout history. But it returned to life at the close of the eighteenth century, no time more prominently than when Maximilien de Robespierre announced that “the essence” of revolutionary France’s democratic experiment was “equality”—a leveling spirit that could, in theory, be extended to every sphere of collective life. One year later, Robespierre was dead, and equality’s proselytizers were in retreat, but they would advance again. Egalitarian impulses took many forms, and some of the most fervent acolytes believed they had altered the original model enough to justify a new title for their utopia: socialism. The details of this evolution were complex, but they were captured in the career of a single pamphlet, scribbled by the radical journalist Sylvain Maréchal in the last days of the French Revolution and tucked away in his papers for decades. After finally seeing daylight in 1828, the work became one of the key texts in socialism’s founding. It was named, appropriately, Manifesto of the Equals. * * * Though a descendant of rabbis, Marx never fancied himself the leader of a religion. But the prospect of a social science yoked to a political movement that promised a revolution of the oppressed? That warranted a manifesto of its own. Marx wanted to craft a vision of socialism that responded not just to the French Revolution, but also to what historians would later call the Industrial Revolution. It took time for capitalism to become the center of his critique. The Communist Manifesto doesn’t use the word at all, instead reserving its ire for “bourgeois society.” Capital assumed greater importance for Marx as he read deeper in political economy, but he preferred to speak of a “capitalist mode of production,” his label for a system in which labor power was sold like any other commodity and production for markets at a profit had become the rule. Eventually, though, capitalism would assume the place in Marxist thought that society had occupied for the early socialists. The scientific aspirations of the earlier varieties of socialism carried over, but the object of inquiry had shifted. By Marx’s death in 1883, the word had become popular enough that Wilhelm Liebknecht could eulogize Marx as the originator of the social science that “kills capitalism.” From the beginning, the idea of capitalism was a weapon. Marxists used it to bludgeon their adversaries on the left, whom they could dismiss as utopian dreamers blind to the realities of life under capital’s rule. As Marx’s son-in-law Paul Lafargue would declare, communists were “men of science, who do not invent societies but who will rescue them from capitalism.” But the Marxist interpretation of capitalism was also the product of a particular way of thinking. “Totality” and “dialectics” were the key words of its philosophy, and its politics concentrated on revolution. Together, they promised a complete overhaul of society. Focusing on capitalism helped guide attacks on a bourgeois status quo that might otherwise have seemed impervious to change. Visions of the cohesive socialism to come nurtured the belief that there was a fixed and antithetical entity in the present to oppose. All that socialists needed to seal their victory was a revolution, which capitalism’s contradictions would deliver to them. Marxists were not the only ones convinced that revolution was imminent. A remarkable series of transformations—the corporation’s rise, an unprecedented growth in productive capacity, the knitting together of what a few people had started referring to as a world economy—were redefining social life and what it meant to be a socialist. Restraining monopolies, bolstering labor movements, nationalizing land, instituting progressive taxation, establishing a welfare state—these were no longer the province of a radical fringe. By the end of the nineteenth century, laissez-faire’s obituary had been written so often that William Harcourt, former chancellor of the Exchequer and one of Great Britain’s most influential politicians, could proclaim that “we are all socialists now.” Harcourt’s socialism was not Marx’s; it was, for example, intended to foil a revolution, not to foment one. At a time when a profusion of competing socialisms vied with each other for prominence, many bore little resemblance to what Marx had sketched (though, with the master dead, what Marx would have preferred also became grounds for dispute). Yet Marx’s successors had at least won an intellectual victory. Talk of a more equitable society had become ubiquitous and, along the way, “capitalism” slipped into the vocabulary, too. Many, especially on the right, balked at the term. They claimed that “capitalism” was too precise, or not precise enough, or that it put an exaggerated emphasis on the role of capitalists in a system that was larger than any one group, no matter how powerful. Others accepted the word but gave it new meaning. By 1918, one German estimate tallied more than 100 ways of defining capitalism. Even then, it was still a rarity compared with the 1930s, when the Great Depression shoved capitalism—frequently assumed to have entered its final days—into the spotlight. By the twentieth century, capitalism often seemed less the name for a specific mode of production than a more general way of describing a modern world perpetually overturning itself. With society gripped by changes that were routinely characterized as unparalleled in history, capitalism appeared about as faithful a designation for the new order as any. Yet Marxists never relinquished their proprietary claim to the label. As one of Marx’s translators observed in 1898, “It was the Marxists who forced the discussion of the question, and it is they who are most active in keeping it up.” The German economist Werner Sombart reiterated the point a few years later when he noted, “The concept of capitalism and even more clearly the term itself may be traced primarily to the writings of socialist theoreticians. It has in fact remained one of the key concepts of socialism down to the present time.” Doubts about capitalism’s analytic utility, however, were not confined to the right. As the historian Howard Brick has demonstrated, throughout much of the twentieth century a substantial contingent of thinkers on the left believed that capitalism was either in the process of giving way to a more advanced mode of economic organization, or that the conversion to a postcapitalist order had already taken place. This perspective enjoyed its greatest prominence in the aftermath of World War II, a period viewed today as the golden age of capitalism but that at the time was also portrayed as the dawning of postcapitalism. States endowed with new powers by wartime victories seemed like they might be on the verge of uncovering a course beyond capitalism and socialism, where the good of society would supersede the exigencies of economics. Marxists flirted with speculations along these lines, too, before the onset of the Cold War hardened previously fluid divisions. Academics continued the debate in the 1960s when proponents of convergence theory argued that both sides of the Iron Curtain had moved toward a common model where bureaucratic efficiency trumped clashing ideologies. With the riddle of prosperity solved, many on the left assumed that the time had come to address loftier questions: eliminating poverty, expanding civil rights, protecting the environment, and more existential concerns like nurturing individuality in a bureaucratized society. No wonder radicals in the 1960s could insist that “capitalism” wasn’t large enough to capture their critique. Paul Potter, former president of Students for a Democratic Society, complained that the word summoned images of an old left mired in archaic battles from the Great Depression. For Potter, “the system” was larger than capitalism, and “rejection of the old terminology” was “part of the new hope for radical change.” In the 1970s, visions of a society beyond capitalism or socialism melted away, along with the robust growth rates that had made them plausible. Economic questions returned with a ferocity that made the prophets of postcapitalism appear deluded about the impediments they faced, and the once-imposing schema detailed by social theorists like Talcott Parsons came to seem flabby when contrasted with the remorseless clarity offered by an ascendant economics profession and its corps of mathematicians. Capitalism, now stripped of its explicitly socialist connotations, became a staple in the rhetoric of both left and right. By the end of the decade, it was easier to deny the existence of society—as Margaret Thatcher famously would—than to challenge capitalism’s pre-eminence as a category of analysis. Socialists might have enjoyed watching the triumph of an idea they had concocted if they had not been busy combating growing dissent within their ranks. These difficulties seemed manageable in the 1970s, when Western governments had many fires of their own to put out. Ten years later, capitalists had regained their footing, while the socialist project continued to decay. Francis Fukuyama’s advertisement for history’s denouement was still on the horizon, but the habits of thinking that would undergird his thesis had already sunk deep roots. Marxism was built upon faith in revolution, but in the West revolution seemed more implausible than ever, and in Eastern Europe the continent’s only widespread revolution had Marxism in its sights. The collapse of communist governments that began in 1989 revealed that history had readied one last twist of the knife: nothing did more to entrench the acceptance of capitalism than the demise of the movement that had invented the concept. * * * Until recently, that was how the story ended. Not that opposition to capitalism ceased after the fall of the German Democratic Republic and the USSR. There were still governments nominally committed to communism, and non-Marxist left-wing parties continued to win elections. In the United States, the campaign against globalization captured national attention in 1999, when activists clashed with police in Seattle during a meeting of the World Trade Organization. But for large swaths of the left and the right, these seemed like shallow eddies running against the overpowering tide of what was increasingly referred to as “global capitalism.” Marxists had painted an intimidating picture of the enemy: a totalizing system governed by the iron discipline of free markets, assimilating whatever it could, destroying the rest. When capitalism’s overthrow was excised from their master narrative, the only counsel that Marxists could offer was stoic resistance against despair, and the hope that the contradictions of capital would eventually yield the long-anticipated catastrophe. In the words of Perry Anderson, elder statesman of Anglo-American Marxism, the left required “uncompromising realism” that would never “lend credence to illusions that the system is moving in a steadily progressive direction.” That meant, above all, maintaining an unwavering focus on capitalism. “Only in the evolution of this order,” he maintained, “could lie the secrets of another one.” The disasters of 2008 were not quite what Marxists had hoped capitalism’s internal logic would supply—the particular form the financial crisis assumed took almost everyone by surprise—but they were close enough. In the scramble for explanations that ensued, the handful of Marxists who had been writing thoughtfully about economics for decades (David Harvey, Robert Brenner and Giovanni Arrighi in particular) gained credibility for having at least declared that a crisis had been brewing. True, they had been issuing these predictions for some time, and many Marxists had been announcing capitalism’s imminent demise for even longer. Yet when contrasted with the pre-crisis consensus of experts who were supposed to know what they were talking about—economists, politicians and other important people in suits—stubborn pessimism seemed like a bracing corrective. A small but serious Marxist renaissance followed. Capitalism was in question again, and the shock of the emergency had jolted its previously moribund antagonist back to life, if not as a political movement, then at least as an intellectual one. The icons of Marxism’s resurgence had more than their fair share of gray whiskers, but in the United States the most enthusiastic followers sprang from the ranks of the young and bookish. Thus was born one of the most curious features of the contemporary intellectual scene: millennial Marxism. Even among those who remained skeptical about Marxism, or just apathetic (surely the majority), 2008 assumed the status that 1989 had for their elders. Although the financial crisis and its aftermath did not have the same global ramifications as communism’s crack-up, they had a far greater impact in the United States—one whose damage fell disproportionately on the young. The disintegration of the Soviet bloc affected other people far away; the Great Recession happened here. Children of the Clinton years who could recall their parents rhapsodizing about tech booms and a new economy entered the weakest job market since the 1930s, and they did it encumbered with unprecedentedly high levels of student debt. This was an audience primed for lectures on the contradictions of capitalism. There were other, less obvious sparks to Marxism’s rekindling. Among twentysomethings, the Soviet Union was a distant memory, if it was remembered at all, freeing socialists from the burden of explaining the drab realities of life under communism. Many had just left college, carrying with them fresh memories of an academic world that doubles as Marxism’s heartiest stronghold. Some of the intellectually inclined among them had grown weary of the squabbles about postmodernism and the end of history that had been grinding on for most of their lives. Marxism, which fell into neither of those camps, seemed novel by comparison. Those less disposed toward meditating on the world-historical welcomed the chance to re-emphasize work and labor, topics that had earlier seemed passé. Unions had once been pillars of the New Deal order, making them inviting targets for baby boomers looking to rebel. A half-century of retreat turned them into underdogs in need of allies, and made it easier to see labor not as the province of middle-aged white men attending AFL-CIO meetings but as an issue of universal significance. The commitment was lighter, but easier to share, maybe with a post on Facebook. Shifts in American politics also provoked a leftward turn. Barack Obama owed his election to support from under-30s, but the visions of his youthful supporters—something like a second Camelot, but with more Beyoncé—were inchoate. Once Timothy Geithner, Rahm Emanuel and Hillary Clinton proved disappointing substitutes, new outlets appeared for the expectations that Obama had aroused. The political itinerary of the archetypal millennial might have started with volunteering for Obama’s 2008 campaign and joining one of the enormous crowds that thronged his swing-state rallies in the run-up to the election; then, jumping ahead two years, attending Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear,” a satirical rendition of “Hope and Change” pitched to much the same demographic; and, finally, in the autumn of 2011, a trip to Zuccotti Park or some other scruffy redoubt of Occupy Wall Street. The anarchist core of Occupy had not joined the groundswell for Obama, but what the diehards wanted was always less important than what Occupy came to represent for the vastly larger numbers who were attracted to the movement but never set foot in one of its outposts. Discussions of economic inequality had been in retreat for decades until, suddenly, “We are the 99 percent!” became the most popular rallying cry since “Yes we can.” That a few thousand people scattered across the country could become the receptacle of hopes placed three years earlier in a newly elected president of the United States was astounding. It was also, perhaps inevitably, ephemeral. * * * Inequality receded from the media’s attention once the protesters were evicted from Zuccotti Park. Unaccustomed recognition had energized activists, and tactics associated with Occupy spread far beyond the encampments, but these were only pieces of a grander transformation that had briefly seemed within reach. Yet the protests have had an enduring, and surprising, legacy. The crowds that gathered in Zuccotti Park were not marching to advance the careers of young, ambitious, radical writers, but there were more than a few who fit that description in their number. Cloaked in the moral authority of Occupy and connected by networks stitched together during those hectic days in 2011, a contingent of young journalists speaking through venues both new and old, all of them based in New York City—Jacobin, n+1, Dissent and occasionally this magazine, among others—have begun to make careers as Marxist intellectuals. Since 2008, mainstream journals ranging from Time to Foreign Affairs had been speculating that Marx might have his vengeance (the latter with an article from Fukuyama publicizing the latest revelation bestowed on him after consultation with History’s oracles). Now, it seemed, Marx’s heirs had arrived, and they were naturals with social media. There’s a hefty dose of irony here, because Marxists were some of Occupy’s greatest early skeptics. But the savvier among them quickly spotted an opportunity and fashioned themselves as spokespeople for the movement. Not the movement as it was, but as they thought it should be: an expression of working-class resentment against capitalism and the ruling class. The positions were radical, but the language was more comprehensible to mainstream observers than most of what was spilling out of Zuccotti. This new cohort of Marxists has thrived on the peculiarities of the contemporary media ecology. Despite the skepticism of their less technologically besotted elders, they have made the web into an effective mechanism for disseminating their ideas. Thanks to the Internet, little magazines can conjure up a global audience if they know how to get enough clicks. It’s a technology suited to subjects that appeal to passionately devoted followers spread across wide distances, whether it is Marxism or national politics (hence, Politico) or sports (Grantland) or videos of adorable cats (pretty much everything else on the nonporn Internet). And it’s perfect for aspiring institution-builders looking to create their own forums rather than climb to the top of an existing organization; all the better if there’s a radical ideology to distinguish the new crowd from their more senior (and, implicitly, stodgy/troglodyte/dying) counterparts. After such a long exile from public debate, even conventional Marxist tropes seem original, and daring, to those without a background in Marxism, which happens to include the overwhelming majority of American journalists. Combine all this with some fondness for navel gazing and with the fortunes of geography—politics aside, New York writers are New York writers, and they like to talk about each other—and the pieces are in place for the articles declaring the rebirth of Marxism that have become a minor genre in the last year. Like a puffer fish temporarily ballooning to vastly larger sizes, the Marxist revival can seem more imposing than it is. For a certain type of reader, however, it’s easy to forget the illusion when there are so many withering tweets to skim. More important, though, are the contours of the understanding of capitalism that have been set in place for decades. Those born in the West since the 1970s are the first generation ever to grow up with capitalism as the natural center of economic debate. The question has been how best to fix what ails capitalism, not whether to ditch it altogether. This fact worked in the status quo’s favor before 2008. Reformist impulses survived, but with curtailed horizons. Even the most admirable pieces of technocratic fiddling, from bolstering the Earned Income Tax Credit to streamlining government, while laudable on their own merits, were hardly visionary. After the financial crisis, however, it seemed like capitalists had flunked a test they had themselves designed. Marxism might have failed as a political project, but the conditions were set for its recovery as critique, both because of where it diverged from the consensus and what it affirmed. It was easy to swap one kind of economism for another. Like a photographic negative, the Marxist critique took what was light in the capitalist worldview and made it dark. The outlines of the picture were the same, but the shadings reversed. The resulting image was arresting—definitely worth putting on Instagram. * * * What are the ideas behind this intellectual reawakening? To some extent, it’s too soon to tell. Stimulating critical engagements can run in the same journal alongside paint-by-numbers Marxism. One early Jacobin editorial announced in 2011 that it had become “clear to all that Obama, and the Democrats generally, have made themselves the instruments of an energized and revanchist ruling class which has seized a moment of economic dislocation and working class disarray to roll back the meager but long-hated social protections of the New Deal and Great Society”—a claim that was, in fact, clear to almost nobody anywhere. But just a few pages over, the Australian economist Mike Beggs dismissed most of Marxist economics as a futile attempt to breathe life into a “Zombie Marx.” The latest issue of Jacobin carries an even more striking departure from Marxist orthodoxy in the form of an editorial defending “cyborg socialism.” Written by Alyssa Battistoni, a graduate student in political science at Yale who has established herself as the most exciting voice in a crowded field, the piece (along with a companion essay) offers the beginnings of a socialism that faces up to the challenges posed by ecological crisis and distances the journal from what Battistoni calls “sweeping critiques of the ‘it’s capitalism, stupid’ variety.” Her perspective can be reconciled, after enough contortions, with the more traditionally Marxist articles that form the bulk of what the magazine publishes, in print and online. But there’s no reason it needs to be, and it’s just as easy to imagine her work spinning onto altogether different paths. More internally consistent are the books that have begun to arrive. Cubed, from Nikil Saval, an editor at n+1 and a labor activist in his early 30s, is so far the most formidable of the lot. Saval labels it a “social history” of the office, but that’s a bit of false advertising. At least for scholars, the description suggests detailed statistical research, based on deep immersion in the archives, about those otherwise forgotten to history. Saval’s primary sources, by contrast, are often cultural; novelists, architects, filmmakers, designers and theorists of the office receive as much attention as the workers themselves. Cubed, however, is less concerned with people than with a promise they were made: that those who spent their careers hunched over desks wrangling paper would have a more dignified laboring life than the traditional working class—that the office, in short, was not just a white-collar factory. Time and again, Saval shows employers breaking that promise. Ultimately, he offers a beautifully rendered exploration of a very old question: Why is there no socialism in the United States? According to Saval, part of the answer turns on the allure of a white-collar lifestyle that trapped its victims in isolated workspaces and stymied union organizing. Cubed is targeted at a mainstream audience, and Saval underplays the radicalism of his thesis, but it’s there for those who know where to look, who can recognize a reference to “homogenous, empty time” as a wink at Walter Benjamin, even though it doesn’t come inside quotation marks. Like a substantial portion of the writings by millennial Marxists, Cubed breaks little new intellectual ground. In Saval’s hands, the office becomes a site for illustrating shifts in capitalism that many others have already demonstrated, not for writing a history that revises this larger picture. Although sections of the book shine—especially when it discusses gender in the workplace—they never cohere into anything greater. The influence of C. Wright Mills’s 1951 classic White Collar is pervasive, but not always for the better. Even the dichotomy between factory and office, so fundamental to Saval’s analysis, seems more a product of Mills’s time than of ours, when both forms of employment are giving way to a rapidly growing service sector. Saval writes that “the United States is a nation of clerks,” but it will soon be almost as fair to say we are a nation of nurses. After all the caveats have been registered, however, the elegance of his prose and the intensity of his (just barely concealed) moral commitment linger. For a more full-throated celebration of Marxism, there’s Utopia or Bust, the latest work from Benjamin Kunkel, one of Saval’s senior colleagues at n+1. Kunkel describes himself in the book’s introduction as “a guy with a literary background,” but that undersells the product. Indecision, Kunkel’s first and only novel, is modest but charming and deceptively thoughtful. A kind of socialist coming-of-age story, it charts the growing awareness of Dwight Wilmerding, its ignorant but enthusiastic narrator. As Kunkel notes in Utopia or Bust, Dwight’s “naiveté was meant…to allow him to look at the world—which could only be that of neoliberal globalization—with relatively fresh eyes.” That might seem like a retrospective justification, but it’s an apt summary of a book that ends with Dwight’s only semi-ironic conversion to “democratic socialism.” Since the release of Indecision in 2005, Kunkel has spent much of his time examining neoliberal globalization for himself. While other novelists have turned their attention to radical politics—last year alone, that included Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland and Jonathan Lethem’s Dissident Gardens—Kunkel has gone further, now styling himself (again, only semi-ironically) a “Marxist public intellectual” and “autodidactic political economist.” Utopia or Bust collects previously published records of this transformation, mostly essays from the London Review of Books examining contemporary Marxism’s canonical figures. The result, in Kunkel’s words, is a brief study of “global capitalism and its theorists.” Playful and unfailingly lucid, even when the theorists in question are neither, the book is one of the most enjoyable pieces of Marxist criticism in many years—imagine a more politically oriented Zadie Smith who can’t wait to explain Fredric Jameson’s interpretation of postmodernism. Kunkel has more than solidified his unofficial role as the smart older brother to all the sad young literary Marxists populating the Internet. Precisely because of its clarity, however, Utopia or Bust reveals some of the more peculiar aspects of a group that can seem more inclined to recite Marx than to rethink Marxism, or move beyond it. The book is a prelude to a larger work that Kunkel promises will integrate Marxism and ecology, but evidence of that project is largely absent here. Though capable of skewering his subjects, Kunkel goes soft when he turns to the Marxist political economists, generally confining his analysis to exposition and immanent critique. Then there is the constant affirmation of defeat required by a fixation on what Kunkel calls a “near unchallenged global capitalism.” Power disparities are real, and so too are the injustices perpetrated by those who command the enormous resources available to the world’s economic elite. But Marxists have a weakness for taking capitalists at their word, which distorts their appraisal of the messy way that actually existing capitalism functions. Depictions of a totalizing capitalism were useful to fin-de-siècle socialists trying to convince potential recruits that revolution was looming, and they have been a handy cudgel ever since, even for capitalists eager to declare victory over socialism after 1989. But that’s a polemical virtue, not an analytical one. As Joseph Schumpeter observed many years ago, “the capitalist order not only rests on props made of extra-capitalist material but also derives its energy from extra-capitalist patterns of behavior.” The best Marxist writing recognizes this implicitly, but the insight gets mangled when the theorizing begins. Exceptions to the rule of capital have always been essential: household labor conducted without wages, slavery up through the nineteenth century, and investments gushing in from China today, to name just a few. And that doesn’t include supposedly atavistic holdouts from a pre-capitalist order that have not just endured but thrived in the last century, including conservative variants of Islam that underwrite Middle Eastern governments responsible for mainlining oil into the global economy. Capitalism has never wielded anything like unchecked domination over the globe. If it came close, the system would crack apart in about as much time as it takes to finish this sentence. * * * Searching for conceptual breakthroughs in the journals of the newest left, however, misunderstands their project. They aim not just to transform the world of ideas but also to advance a political agenda, a point that’s made especially clear in Jacobin. Here, politics does not mean an endless conversation open to ambiguity, uncertainty and difference. No, politics is a war—specifically, a class war—and the only hope an embattled left has is to organize. The inspiration derives from a mash-up of the greatest hits of European Marxism and the history of the American right from Barry Goldwater to Ted Cruz. Allies will be taken, even sought out, wherever they can be found. But the purpose is to teach (and preach), not to learn. While the tactics are clear, questions both proximate and distant remain unanswered. Where, for instance, are the troops supposed to come from? Occupy provided cover on this front through 2012. But as the prospects of its return have dwindled, seemingly to nothing, so has the plausibility of a dramatic reordering of politics. That leaves Marxists with the prospective coalition members that beleaguered American socialists have courted for decades: a labor movement that, occasional bright spots aside, seems trapped in perpetual decline; bureaucrats struggling to protect themselves from government cutbacks; and anyone else that can be drawn in from among the marginalized and dispossessed and forced, at last, into class consciousness. On whether that coalition would push for revolution—a crucial issue in the history of socialism—the next left has so far been ambivalent. The preferred formulation is “revolutionary reformism,” the idea being that appropriate reforms today can lead to more drastic changes tomorrow. This tactically savvy move positions young Marxists as peddlers of gateway drugs to radicalism, the type of revolutionaries who might be recurring panelists on MSNBC. It also leads to mushiness when the discussion turns abstract, encouraging a reliance on vague exhortations to be “both patient and visionary, pragmatic and utopian” (in the words of Jacobin’s founder, Bhaskar Sunkara) that sound borrowed from a commencement address. In good Marxist tradition, the millennials are best when they’re on the attack. Here, too, they’ve been shrewd, picking as one of their chief targets a group that more than anything resembles slightly older versions of themselves: technocratic liberals like Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias, former enfant terrible representatives of the blogger left in the latter days of the Bush administration who have since posted and reposted their way to mainstream respectability. En route, they have ditched their openly liberal politics and youthful provocations—in 2008, Klein could still tweet of Tim Russert: “fuck him with a spiky acid-tipped dick”—to refashion themselves as masters of data and translators of politically relevant scholarship for popular audiences. Left-wing politics are faintly present, but they’re of the “reality has a well-known liberal bias” kind. And they’ve become fainter still in the young technocrats’ latest effort, a website named Vox headed by Klein and Yglesias and advertised as “the world’s first hybrid news site/encyclopedia.” Their differences with the Marxists are obvious, but there’s a kinship in the shared aspirations to push beyond punditry’s traditional conventions. One hopes to frame debate through data, the other to engage more directly with politics—perhaps, eventually, with a socialist party of their own. More than ambition, however, links these two. They have each picked up halves of a project that reaches back centuries: to know society, and to remake it. Both groups appear supremely confident, one in its information, the other in its ideology. But cracks have begun to emerge beneath the glossy surfaces. In the wake of the financial crisis, it was easy to predict the closing of a historical parenthesis that would usher in a new politics, heralded either by Obama or Occupy. With those options exhausted, the most astute in both camps are occupying themselves with an unfamiliar challenge: figuring out what to do after the crisis is over. * * * The answer might involve confronting an issue older than the feud between socialism and capitalism. Economic inequality, after fading from attention post-Occupy, has in recent months roared back to prominence. Obama’s announcement in December that income inequality constitutes “the defining challenge of our time” is perhaps the most memorable line of his second term. Pope Francis has pronounced inequality “the root of social ills” and called for a campaign against its “structural causes.” Even the hosts of the annual World Economic Forum at Davos singled out inequality as one of today’s most pressing “global risks.” It has also become something of a cottage industry among Washington’s liberal wonks thanks to Democratic power broker John Podesta, who launched a research center devoted to the subject last fall. Good timing, then, for the French economist Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a newly translated book that stands a fair chance of becoming the most influential work of economics yet published in our young century. It is the most important study of inequality in over fifty years, synthesizing conclusions that Piketty and a team of other researchers have reached over more than a decade of investigation. It is also the kind of sweeping theoretical inquiry that Marxists sometimes pretend is their exclusive preserve. Not coincidentally, Piketty adopts the same label for his project that Marxists often claim for themselves. Dismissing the pretensions of “economic science,” he writes, “I much prefer the expression ‘political economy.’” Piketty’s name has long been familiar to economists, who know him as one of the world’s leading experts on inequality. He owes his reputation not to mathematical dexterity, the typical entry to prestige within the dismal science, but to his prodigious skills as a researcher. Before Piketty, economists had typically relied on household surveys to map inequality. But his sources—chiefly, tax and estate records—have a distinct advantage over the standard practice: they illuminate shifts among the wealthiest that household surveys obscure. Piketty discovered a way of tracking the fortunes of the 1 percent years before Occupy introduced the phrase. Not coincidentally, charts produced by Piketty and his longtime collaborator Emmanuel Saez became ubiquitous in Occupy’s heyday. From the outset of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty situates himself in a dialogue with Marx. Even the title gestures at this ambition, with its nod to an earlier Capital, presumably for the nineteenth century. But he adds another name to the conversation. Simon Kuznets was arguably the greatest empirical economist the discipline has ever seen, and he is Piketty’s most significant predecessor in the study of economic inequality. Capital in the Twenty-First Century shuttles between Marx and Kuznets, trying to match the former’s monumental scale and the latter’s meticulous empirics. Sometimes he stumbles, but the audacity of the effort, and his many successes, command admiration. Piketty’s goal is nothing less than to revive the ideal of an integrated social science that treats other disciplines not as rivals to be colonized (as is often the case when economists go peeking across departmental fences) but as colleagues in a shared project. Hopes of unifying the social sciences were prevalent in the first half of the twentieth century, but they have an especially lengthy genealogy in France. In the nineteenth century, self-described “social economists,” like the first socialists, claimed to speak on behalf of society as a whole and issued repeated calls for a cohesive social science. At the time, economic training prepared future leaders to deal with the challenges of policy-making, not to master recondite theories. Most economists were educated either in classics or law and had little grasp of mathematics. That resistance to mathematicization endured well into the twentieth century. As Piketty notes, the legacy of this tradition has carried into the present. In France, he observes, somewhat hyperbolically, “economists are not highly respected in the academic and intellectual world or by political and financial elites,” and therefore “must set aside their contempt for other disciplines and their absurd claim to greater scientific legitimacy.” Tapping into a resonant vocabulary, he recently told an interviewer, “I regard myself as a social scientist as much as an economist.” If the methodological aspiration sounds reminiscent of earlier generations of postcapitalist thinkers, so do the politics. Though not a Marxist, Piketty is firmly of the left. A supporter of France’s Socialist Party, he has said that he “dream[s] of a rational and peaceful overcoming of capitalism.” * * * Chest-pounding about methodology and decrees on capitalism would be of little interest if they were not joined to substantive intellectual discoveries. Piketty’s contributions on this front come in three interlocking clusters: historical, theoretical and political. Relying chiefly on data from Britain, the United States and France, he casts his gaze over what the French historian Fernand Braudel, cited by Piketty as one of his inspirations, termed the longue durée. Much of Capital in the Twenty-First Century is, essentially, a history of the modern world viewed through the relationship between two factors: economic growth, with all its promises, and the return on capital, a reward that goes to the small fraction of the population that has mastered what Tina Fey’s character in 30 Rock referred to as “that thing that rich people do where they turn money into more money.” The rich perfected that art a long time ago. According to Piketty, the average return on capital, after adjusting for inflation, has hovered around 5 percent throughout history, with a slight decline after World War II. Whatever problems capitalists will face in the future, he suggests, a crisis generated by falling profits is not likely to be among them. Economic growth, by contrast, has a far more abbreviated chronology. According to the most reliable estimates—sketchy, but better than nothing—for most of human history, economic growth was on the order of 0.1 percent a year, provided there were no famines, plagues or natural disasters. This gloomy record began to change for part of the world during the Industrial Revolution. Judged by later standards, “revolution” might seem too generous a phrase for growth rates in per capita output that ran to under 1.5 percent in both Western Europe and the United States; but compared with the entire earlier history of human existence, those rates were astonishing. More impressive developments were in store. The twentieth century, Piketty writes, was the moment when “economic growth became a tangible, unmistakable reality for everyone.” In the United States, which had benefited earlier from high growth rates, per capita output ticked up to just under 2 percent between 1950 and 1970. In the same period, growth in Europe doubled that; Asian countries averaged just a step behind Europe; and many African nations reached numbers closer to—but ahead of—the United States. Piketty is less concerned with this global story, however, than with a concurrent development in Europe. In the nineteenth century, growth had done nothing to reduce income inequality. This was the world Marx diagnosed in Capital, and in crucial respects, Piketty thinks he got it right. Not that the entire apparatus of Marxist political economy holds, if it ever did. On the key issue of the tendency for wealth to accumulate in fewer hands, though, Piketty believes Marx arrived at a profound insight. But not a timeless one. Wages for workers had begun to rise around the time Capital was published, a significant but not fatal complication to Marx’s analysis. The real challenge came with World War I. Piketty uses a simple formula to illuminate the dynamics at work. Inequality tends to rise, he argues, when the average rate of return on capital exceeds the economy’s growth rate (or, as he puts it, when r > g). That ratio worked in capital’s favor throughout the nineteenth century, and at the dawn of the twentieth, there was little reason to believe it would change without a revolution by the proletariat. Then 1914 inaugurated three decades of catastrophe. The wealth of Europe’s elite was one of the era’s casualties: outright destruction, high inflation, confiscatory taxation, and governments that began catering to labor’s demands all combined to obliterate vast swaths of capital. By 1950, economic inequality had plummeted, not because of the welfare state’s rational evolution, but through some of history’s greatest tragedies. What amounted to the collective suicide of capitalist Europe coincided with astounding growth rates produced by recovery from the war. With capital reeling and growth rocketing ahead, the conditions were set for unprecedented egalitarian advances, including the birth of a property-owning middle class, all because of an extraordinary inversion: for the first time, g > r. * * * Seen from Piketty’s vantage point, thousands of feet above the rubble, the fragility of this moment becomes clear. Economic growth was a recent invention, major reductions to income inequality more recent still. Yet the aftermath of World War II was filled with prophets forecasting this union into eternity. Kuznets offered the most sophisticated expression of this cheerful projection. Extrapolating from the history of the United States between 1913 and 1948, he concluded that economic growth automatically reduced income inequality. This was the moment when, as Piketty observes with both regret and nostalgia, “the illusion that capitalism had been overcome” secured widespread acceptance. Time soon deflated this optimism. Although the growth of global GDP has accelerated—billions of people across Asia are now catching up to their rivals, a position analogous to Europe after World War II—the best available evidence suggests that these levels are impossible to sustain at the technological frontier. Europe’s per capita growth dropped to just below 2 percent from 1980 to 2012; the United States’ was even slower, coming in at 1.3 percent. Meanwhile, the link between rising GDP and falling inequality was severed, with the largest gains from diminished growth flowing to the richest of the rich—not even to the 1 percent, but to the one-tenth of 1 percent and higher. Although the contours of Piketty’s history confirm what economic historians already know, his anatomizing of the 1 percent’s fortunes over centuries is a revelation. When joined to his magisterial command of the source material and his gift for synthesis, they disclose a history not of steady economic expansion but of stops and starts, with room for sudden departures from seemingly unbreakable patterns. In turn, he links this history to economic theory, demonstrating that there is no inherent drive in markets toward income equality. It’s quite the opposite, in fact, given the tendency for the returns on capital to outpace growth. Unfortunately for us, he concludes, “the inequality r > g has clearly been true throughout most of human history, right up to the eve of World War I, and it will probably be true again in the twenty-first century.” Like any major work of scholarship, Capital in the Twenty-First Century will be subjected to numerous critiques. Many lines of attack are already obvious. Specialists will challenge individual interpretations and note that there are not nearly as much data as investigators would like, especially before the twentieth century. Piketty does the best with what is available, but the best simply might not be enough to verify his claims, and even his sympathizers might cringe at the readiness with which he uses a largely European—to be more precise, largely French—history to ground proclamations about the universal dynamics of capitalism. The mechanics of how Europe and the United States achieved such notable egalitarian successes require far more scrutiny than they receive here, where the causal story can veer into a martial determinism portraying inequality’s decline as a natural byproduct of war. He has a weakness for grand decrees pitting democracy against capitalism that, while rhetorically effective, muddy the analysis. Ideal types of both can be constructed and contrasted, but these histories are so entangled that any serious inquiry would soon confront insuperable obstacles. Piketty knows this—“economic and political changes are inextricably intertwined,” he writes, “and must be studied together”—but the critical perspective turns goopy when the rhapsodies to democracy commence. Then there is the question of style. Piketty’s writing is straightforward, but the book is mammoth, often repetitive, and padded with forays into cultural criticism that are not nearly as edifying as he thinks. Discussions of Balzac and Jane Austen are mildly helpful as demonstrations of the attitudes toward capital in the nineteenth century, but they offer rapidly diminishing returns and do little to substantiate Piketty’s strange contention that novelists have lost interest in the details of money, a claim plausible only to someone who has never heard of Tom Wolfe or Martin Amis. Other references—Mad Men, Django Unchained, Damages and, repeatedly, Titanic—add even less. Though perhaps they address other concerns: judging from a footnote, Piketty still harbors a grudge about the plotlines in Desperate Housewives. * * * Despite the lengthy historical surveys, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, as its title implies, is as much about the future as it is about the past. Per capita growth for developed economies, Piketty believes, has settled at approximately its maximum sustainable rate, around 1 percent annually. That was enough to make people in the nineteenth century feel they were caught in perpetual revolution, but judged by the best of the twentieth century, or China and India today, it seems positively anemic. With growth reduced, escalating income inequality is all but inevitable without aggressive policy intervention. Piketty’s demand for a global progressive tax on capital has garnered the most attention, usually from commentators eager to dismiss it as utopian. But the global tax is more of a rhetorical gambit than a substantive proposal. It is designed to make Piketty’s real aspiration—the same tax, but confined to the European Union—seem more attainable. When the alternative requires obtaining planetary consent, making one continent sign on to a policy becomes a reasonable reach. Countries as large as the United States, he believes, could go it alone with considerable success. Progressive taxation of capital is one part of a larger project that Piketty calls building “a social state for the twenty-first century.” This economist is no revolutionary: the major arguments over the structure of government, he believes, have already been settled. The twentieth century bequeathed a vision of government responsible for the education, health and pensions of its citizens, and those obligations will be upheld in the twenty-first. For Piketty, the most urgent task is not raising the general welfare but clawing back the advances of the 1 percent. Much needs to be done, he writes, “to regain control over a financial capitalism that has run amok.” A good first step would involve hiking tax rates for the wealthy to “confiscatory” levels—about 80 percent for those earning over half a million dollars a year, according to Piketty’s admittedly rough estimates. Boosting taxation on the rich would not only enlarge the state’s coffers; it would help restore sanity to a culture of executive compensation deranged by low marginal rates. The aim is not so much to tax millionaires but to push rates high enough to deter people from pursuing a millionaire’s salary in the first place, a goal he asserts, with ample evidence, that can be achieved without damaging long-term growth. There are, however, limits to what Piketty thinks democracy can achieve. Political economy, after all, has two halves. Politics constitute a sphere of choice in which people come together and decide their fates. But there are certain laws that not even the unanimous will of the people can repeal, and that’s when the economists arrive. According to Piketty, the tendency for inequality to rise when the return on capital exceeds growth is one of those laws. Though democracies can manage the challenges this poses, the fundamental condition will persist. The disease is chronic; the question is whether it will prove fatal. Piketty offers little ground for optimism. The only forces capable of substantially reversing the march toward inequality that he uncovers are war and economic depression—even then, war seems like a surer tonic—and he could have been grimmer. Capital in the Twenty-First Century is permeated with an idealistic vocabulary taken from the eighteenth century. Claims to France’s revolutionary legacy wind through the book, starting with the introduction, which opens with a quotation from the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. Yet democracy has shown another face in its subsequent career. Democratic ideals have inspired countless egalitarian movements, but liberal democracy has triumphed across so much of the world because of its success as counterrevolutionary reform: no other political system has done a better job defanging social resentment and fostering acceptance of vast inequalities. The ability to dismiss elected officials when they prove disappointing might seem like a feeble vestige of what democracy promised, especially after tabulating the paltry fraction of the population that bothers to engage in the process, but it has proved remarkably effective at the baser task of protecting the powerful. * * * A skeptical technocrat would caution that our data set is too small to justify despair. There are few examples of successful efforts to rewind inequality at the national level, but just a century ago there were even fewer, violent or otherwise. The contemporary political scene, with its bulky welfare states and army of experts, is more novel than foreshortened historical memories allow. In this setting, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, though dubious as a work of democratic theory, might achieve more in the world of democratic practice. But if that occurs, it will owe much to Piketty’s affinities with two startling predecessors. More than fifty years have passed since the appearance of Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s A Monetary History of the United States, but it remains the most influential work of economics in the last century not written by John Maynard Keynes. Like Piketty, Friedman and Schwartz grounded their theorizing on a command of vast stores of data. It was a ruthlessly academic text, yet it entranced a rising generation of economists, including the young Ben Bernanke, who credited it with inspiring his specialization in monetary theory. When stagflation seemed to undermine the pillars of Keynesian economics in the 1970s, desperate policy-makers clutched at policies legitimized by Friedman and Schwartz (the former, as it happens, a protégé of Simon Kuznets). Political debate can swerve in unexpected directions, and though it helps to have the powerful on your side, the opposition of weighty interests is not always decisive. Economists were at the vanguard of the turn against the postwar order decades ago, predictably enough, because no other social science wields comparable influence over governance. Piketty’s career shows that at least some economists are ready to help repair the damage their colleagues have inflicted. They might be helped along the way by a reinvigorated radical, even Marxist, left. But it would be over Piketty’s objections. Early on, he locates himself firmly in a generation defined by communism’s breakdown. “I was vaccinated for life against the conventional but lazy rhetoric of anticapitalism,” he writes, “some of which simply ignored the historic failure of Communism and much of which turned its back on the intellectual means necessary to push beyond it.” Though he is a more generous reader of Marx, Piketty falls into the same harsh tone whenever he turns to Marx’s successors. The hostility matches the temper among French intellectuals after their widespread turn against Marxism in the 1970s, but it is troubling to watch him snarling at prospective allies when the scale of the challenge facing advocates of equality is so daunting. It also runs against a more ecumenical disposition evinced in the book’s concluding paragraphs, in which he announces that the “bipolar confrontations of the period 1917–1989 are now clearly behind us” and declares that the time has come to abandon intellectual terrain shaped by Cold War conflicts. Piketty’s rhetoric isn’t new. Variations of his theme date back at least to 1917, and paler imitations of it were ubiquitous in the “third way” manifestos of the 1990s. But it resonates in a different way today. Though it was easy to treat 1989 as the culmination of liberal capitalism’s majestic ascent, 2008 is harder to interpret, especially when so many of the predictions issued at the zenith of the financial crisis have failed to materialize: no second coming of the New Deal, no breakdown of the European Union, no fundamental recasting of geopolitics. After all this time, 2008 still seems like a violent rending of history’s fabric. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to weave a tapestry out of so many shreds. That is probably for the best. The notion that history could have an end was always a delusion, an excuse to dress up passing preferences as dictates of a higher authority barely short of the divine. Determining history’s conclusion requires mastery of its entire arc, and that is a knowledge nobody can claim. What looks permanent can vanish in an instant, while the seemingly archaic can revive just as swiftly. Calling a stop to the game wards off the more troubling proposition that history has its jaws fastened around us, and isn’t ready to let go. The future will always surprise; that is our burden, and our privilege. Reflexive grasping at the language of the past, vividly displayed in the Marxist resurgence, brings a sense of order to what would seem like chaos. But a more promising alternative might be on the way. Marxism is one kind of socialism, but history suggests a much richer set of possibilities, along with some grounds for hope. So does a work like Capital in the Twenty-First Century—a sign that another lost tradition, the postcapitalist visions in abeyance since the 1970s, could be poised for a return; or, even better, that we might put aside old pieties and chart our own path. |
Akmal, brother of Kamran Akmal, was reportedly seen at a dance party in Hyderabad. ARY correspondent reported that Akmal was suspected to have misbehaved with some women during a dance party. On the other hand, some media reports suggest that the cricketer was found at an ‘objectionable place’ instead of the dance bar. The board, however, did not specify the details. The PCB said the act of Akmal had brought disrepute to the country and the board. The latest violation of PCB’s code of conduct has cost Akmal his place in the T20 squad for England series in Dubai. The PCB has sought reply from the player within two weeks. Umar Akmal had also previously been found violating the PCB code. The cricketer was embroiled in a controversy when he was apprehended on February 1, 2014 after police charged him for violating a traffic signal in Lahore’s Firdous market area and later brawled with a traffic warden. Akmal was detained the same day and released a day later on a bail order issued by a local court against a surety bond of Rs100,000. However, he denied the charges, claiming he had been assaulted by the traffic warden first. Following is the T20 squad announced by the PCB for three-match England series. Shahid Afridi (C), Sarfraz Ahmed, Ahmed Shehzad, Sohaib Maqsood,Wahab Riaz, Shoaib Malik, RaffatUllah Mehmand, Imad Wasim, Aamir Yamin, Imran Khan Jr., Sohail Tanvir, Mohammad Rizwan, Mohammad Irfan, Anwar Ali, Mohammad Hafeez, Iftikhar Ahmed. Comments comments |
Oil washing is a painting technique used to shade fine details of miniatures, such as the thruster details of an X-wing. An oil wash is created by thinning oil paints with a thinner, such as turpenoid. It “seeks” the crevices of the miniature to bring out fine details. I’ve heard this technique was originally developed by historic wargamers to shade tanks, but it works just as well on small scale X-wing miniatures. Before washing the model apply a coat or two of gloss varnish. The varnish protects the original paint. Without a coat of varnish the wash seeps into the paint and permanently discolors it. The varnish allows the wash to be wiped off to reveal the original color. A clean brush soaked in thinner works well for this purpose. Don’t use your best brush for this. A gloss coat also helps the wash to flow into the detail areas. The glossier the varnish the more it flows. Satin or gloss varnish is recommended. Matte varnish may inhibit the wash from flowing. Oil paint drys slowly. This is the advantage of oil paints over acrylics for this purpose. After the model is shaded, even hours later, the excess can be wiped off leaving the original color largely intact. Acrylics dry quickly and leave a dirty surface. If you mess up acrylics must be removed immediately. Oil washes are more forgiving. How to apply an oil wash Paint the model to your satisfaction. After the model is sealed its hard to go back and fix the original paint. Apply gloss or satin varnish. This protects the model and creates a smooth surface to allow the wash to flow into crevices. Take a small amount of oil paint, black is suggested, and dilute it with turpenoid. Apply the wash to the model as heavily as you like. Wipe off excess wash with a clean brush dipped in thinner or your finger. Apply a final coat of matte varnish (or whatever your preference is) to seal the oil paint. For a complete tutorial watch Buypainted’s video How to make and use oil wash? Enjoy painting your X-wings! |
The short answer is: it's safe if you use them safely :) The snarky answer: tell me what you mean by traits, and maybe I'll give you a better answer :) In all seriousness, the term "trait" is not well-defined. Many Java developers are most familiar with traits as they are expressed in Scala, but Scala is far from the first language to have traits, either in name or in effect. For example, in Scala, traits are stateful (can have var variables); in Fortress they are pure behavior. Java's interfaces with default methods are stateless; does this mean they are not traits? (Hint: that was a trick question.) Again, in Scala, traits are composed through linearization; if class A extends traits X and Y , then the order in which X and Y are mixed in determines how conflicts between X and Y are resolved. In Java, this linearization mechanism is not present (it was rejected, in part, because it was too "un-Java-like".) The proximate reason for adding default methods to interfaces was to support interface evolution, but we were well aware that we were going beyond that. Whether you consider that to be "interface evolution++" or "traits--" is a matter of personal interpretation. So, to answer your question about safety ... so long as you stick to what the mechanism actually supports, rather than trying to wishfully stretch it to something it does not support, you should be fine. A key design goal was that, from the perspective of the client of an interface, default methods should be indistinguishable from "regular" interface methods. The default-ness of a method, therefore, is only interesting to the designer and implementor of the interface. Here are some use cases that are well within the design goals: Interface evolution. Here, we are adding a new method to an existing interface, which has a sensible default implementation in terms of existing methods on that interface. An example would be adding the forEach method to Collection , where the default implementation is written in terms of the iterator() method. "Optional" methods. Here, the designer of an interface is saying "Implementors need not implement this method if they are willing to live with the limitations in functionality that entails". For example, Iterator.remove was given a default which throws UnsupportedOperationException ; since the vast majority of implementations of Iterator have this behavior anyway, the default makes this method essentially optional. (If the behavior from AbstractCollection were expressed as defaults on Collection , we might do the same for the mutative methods.) Convenience methods. These are methods that are strictly for convenience, again generally implemented in terms of non-default methods on the class. The logger() method in your first example is a reasonable illustration of this. Combinators. These are compositional methods that instantiate new instances of the interface based on the current instance. For example, the methods Predicate.and() or Comparator.thenComparing() are examples of combinators. |
For the second time in his life, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) has lost millions to fraud. Grayson was recently named in federal court papers in the case against William Dean Chapman, a Virginia man who was sentenced Friday to 12 years in prison. Chapman pleaded guilty in May to a scheme that cheated Grayson and about 120 other people out of more than $35 million, The Associated Press reported on Monday. Grayson — who has been named one of the 50 richest members of Congress — personally lost $18 million to Chapman, according to the AP. Believe it or not, it’s the second time this kind of thing has happened to Grayson — in 2009, he won a $34 million judgment in a lawsuit against a company whose business plan was similar to Chapman’s. Chapman’s scheme involved clients handing over stocks as collateral for loans from his company, Alexander Capital Markets. If the stocks did well, customers were supposed to repay Chapman with interest and would then get the stocks back at their increased value. But court papers say Chapman sold the stocks and had no way to repay clients if their stocks did well. The court papers do not suggest Grayson was anything but a victim in the scheme, according to the AP. His stocks performed “astronomically well” after he turned them over the Chapman, the AP reported, and lawyers for Chapman argued they did so well they undid Chapman’s scheme. “If they had not sold the collateral, it all would have worked,” Grayson told the AP. Grayson was named in two court documents, despite procedures to protect victims’ privacy. “I think that’s unfortunate,” Grayson said. “They should have been more careful, should have used my initials throughout rather than using my name.” |
Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersSenate Dems seek to turn tables on GOP in climate change fight Bernie Sanders Town Hall finishes third in cable news race, draws 1.4 million viewers Woman to undecided Biden: 'Just say yes' to 2020 bid MORE (I-Vt.) is firing back at businessman Donald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE after the GOP front-runner suggested Sanders wants to increase tax rates to 90 percent. "It appears that Donald Trump, a pathological liar, simply cannot control himself. He lies, lies and lies again," Sanders, who is running for the Democratic nomination, said in a statement Wednesday. "Today, he repeated his lie that I want to raise taxes to 90 percent. Totally untrue." ADVERTISEMENT Sanders's comments come after Trump told supporters at a South Carolina campaign stop that "this guy wants to raise your taxes to 90 percent" and called the Vermont senator a "total disaster." It's not the first time Trump has made the comment about Sanders. PolitiFact previously fact checked Trump's remarks in October, rating it as "pants on fire," or false. The two presidential hopefuls have been trading rhetorical barbs while also suggesting they could be able to poach each others supporters. Sanders's canvassers are being instructed to sell their candidate to Trump backers, according to a copy of a campaign script obtained by MSNBC. Sanders had made increasing taxes on wealthy Americans and large corporations central to both his presidential campaign and his time in the Senate, but he's repeatedly denied Trump's accusations. He added on Wednesday that "billionaires like Trump should pay their fair share of taxes." "It is grossly unfair that there are millionaires in this country who take advantage of all kinds of loopholes and end up paying an effective tax rate lower than a middle-class worker," he said. |
We had a hunch that an un-mocked network call was taking 3 seconds to time out. I patched this call throughout the test code base. It turns out this did not have a significant effect on the runtime of our tests, but it's good to mock out network calls anyway, even if they fail fast. I ran a profiler on the code. Well that's not true, I just timed various parts of the code to see how long they took, using some code like this: import datetime start = datetime.datetime.now() some_expensive_call() total = (datetime.datetime.now() - start).total_seconds() print "some_expensive_call took {} seconds".format(total) It took about ten minutes to zero in on the fixture loader, which was doing something like this: def load_fixture(fixture): model = find_fixture_in_db(fixture['id']) if not model: create_model(**fixture) else: update_model(model, fixture) The call to find_fixture_in_db was doing a "full table scan" of our SQLite database, and taking about half of the run-time of the integration tests. Moreover in our case it was completely unnecessary, as we were deleting and re-inserting everything with every test run. I added a flag to the fixture loader to skip the database lookup if we were doing all inserts. This sped up observed test time by about 35%. |
There was a time, early in the war on terror, when agencies like the FBI could have told Congressional investigators to go to hell, without paying much of a price. Not any more. Earlier today, a House appropriators voted to pull $11 million to expand a controversial FBI data-mining project, after the Bureau repeatedly stiff-armed Congressmen and their gumshoes in the Government Accountability Office. “By refusing to answer even the most basic questions about this program, the Department of Justice has given us little choice. In fact, we’re only doing what they told us to do,” said Congressman Brad Miller in a statement. “The Department of Justice... said that if Congress didn’t like what they were doing, we could pull their funding. Well, that’s what we’ve done... Until an agency can provide reasonable explanations, and assurances that our citizens’ privacy won’t be violated, it would be irresponsible to give the Department of Justice this large increase in funds. ” The project, known as the National Security Analysis Center (NSAC), is supposed to bring together "hundreds of millions of electronic records created or collected by the FBI and other government agencies," ABC News notes. The idea is to use that "vast ocean of data to 'predict' who might be a potential terrorist, in the absence of intelligence linking the man or woman to any radical or extremist group." But security and tech experts have long questioned whether this kind of predictive data-mining is really feasible. And the FBI has a rich history of royally screwing up big technology projects. So Reps. Miller, James Sensenbrenner, and John Tierney asked the Government Accountability Office to check in on NSAC. "It took repeated attempts by GAO even to obtain an initial meeting with Justice Department officials on the issue," Miller wrote in a letter to House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey. When they did meet... Justice Department officials bluntly told GAO that they would provide no information and GAO had no right to see any records... regarding the purpose and scope of NSAC and what data they planned to obtain. The Justice Department said the requested information dealt with intelligence data and a 'national security system' which... was 'exempt' from GAO's jurisdiction. In a later meeting, the letter adds, the FBI changed its tune. The G-Men claimed they had "no written plans" that "would provide any meaningful details," because the center was not yet "operational." Nevertheless, Justice Department budget documents asked for millions of dollars to "continue the development of initial operating capabilities of the NSAC." The new center is "being built on the backbone of an FBI task force whose original mission" was to investigate "aliens suspected of having ties to terrorist organizations," Miller's office noted. *But the mission of NSAC has expanded far beyond that limited purpose and scope and the Justice Department claims that with this new data mining center’s access to billions of personnel records the “universe of subjects will expand exponentially.” The potential for abuse and the possibility that innocent American citizens will become wrongfully ensnared within the FBI’s growing web of potential suspects is a grave concern. * And vague claims about national security don't automatically wash away concerns about creepily-invasive government projects any more. [Illo: Slate] |
Porsche today set out to calm volatile trading in Volkswagen shares by making up to 5% of VW stock available to desperate short-sellers. A day after VW shares rose as high as €1,005 each, making the German cars group the world's most valuable company, Porsche said its move "may result in an increase in the liquidity of the Volkswagen ordinary shares". The effect was immediate, with VW shares falling almost €350 or 37% to €596 in early trading compared with yesterday's closing price of €945. VW is now valued at €178bn compared with a high of €296bn (£240bn). Porsche, under attack for its multibillion gains from using obscure derivative instruments, has denied allegations of market manipulation or insider trading. Its Sunday night announcement it controlled 74.1% of VW stock sent hedge funds, which had bet on a collapse in VW shares in line with the global auto industry's downturn, into despair. It reduced the amount of VW shares in free float down to 5.7%. Several leading funds are estimated to have lost up to €5bn when their short-selling turned toxic, with the total losses calculated at anything between €20bn and €30bn. The turbulence on the Frankfurt stock exchange in the last two days, which has seen frantic traders dump other leading stocks in the Dax-30, has forced Deutsche Boerse to reduce VW's weighting in the index closer to 10% from next Monday. It rose yesterday to 27%, dragging the entire bourse into disrepute. |
Islamabad: Pakistan on Monday reacted sharply to India's assertion that terrorists from across the border were responsible for the recent deadly attacks in Kashmir and that Islamabad's support to Mumbai terror attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed was nothing short of "mainstreaming of terrorism". Foreign Office Spokesperson Tasnim Aslam said, "We have taken a serious note of the remarks made by the spokesperson of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA)." "Pakistan firmly rejects the baseless allegations about 'mainstreaming of terrorism'. Pakistan has been in the forefront of combating terrorism and is also its biggest victim," she said in a statement. Lashing out strongly, India on Friday had said Pakistan's support to UN-designated terrorist and Mumbai terror attacks mastermind Saeed and his proscribed Jamaat-ud-Dawah was "nothing short of mainstreaming of terrorism." Also, the Kashmir Valley on Friday was rocked by four terror attacks by militants from across the border who stormed an Army camp in Uri leaving 11 security personnel, including a Lt Colonel, dead and killed two civilians in Tral. Srinagar and Shopian were the other two places where the militants struck. Terming the attacks as most unfortunate, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the militants came from across the border and fired at the jawans and security men at a camp. Aslam dismissed India's assertion that militants came from across the border, saying, "We also reject the equally baseless allegations and efforts to malign Pakistan by implicating it in the recent attacks" in Kashmir. She said, "on the contrary, if any evidence of mainstreaming of terrorism in India was needed, one only had to look at the perpetrators of Samjhauta Express terrorist attack and its masterminds." The Foreign Office Spoekesperson said Pakistan takes its obligations under the UN Security Council mandate very seriously. "India has to understand that the people of Jammu and Kashmir would accept nothing short of their right to self-determination, promised to them by the United Nations Security Council and accepted by India and the International community," Aslam said. PTI Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button. |
April 17, 2014 ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- The University of Michigan Athletic Department and IMG College, the university's multimedia rights partner, announced today (Thursday, April 17) that college and NFL Hall of Fame player and broadcaster Dan Dierdorf will be joining Jim Brandstatter in the radio booth for Wolverines football broadcasts on the Michigan IMG Radio Network beginning this fall. Brandstatter, who has served as the team's color commentator on the flagship radio broadcast for the past 34 years, will handle play-by-play duties, and Dierdorf will provide color commentary for the flagship broadcast of Michigan football, heard on WWJ-AM (950) in Detroit. "Jim and Dan are hall of fame broadcasters and great Michigan men," said Brady Hoke, the J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Head Football Coach. "They will provide a unique perspective to the broadcasting booth that I'm sure our fans will enjoy on football Saturdays, and you can guarantee they will have a keen analysis of Michigan Football on each broadcast." "I'm so excited to be able to come back to my alma mater and contribute in this manner," said Dierdorf. "This is the only broadcasting job that I would have considered after retiring from network television. It's a chance to return to the city where Bump (Elliott) gave me an opportunity to play for the greatest program in the world and Bo (Schembechler) made me a man. "I was always jealous of Jim calling games at Michigan and often said that one of my goals was to come back and call a couple of series with him," added Dierdorf. "To work with one of my best friends, someone that I've known my entire adult life, is really special, and I'm looking forward to getting in the booth with Jim this fall." "I'm really excited about the challenge of moving to play-by-play," said Brandstatter. "I have huge shoes to fill, but I have learned so much from the great ones I've worked with and I can't wait to get started. And, it's Michigan Football ... .it doesn't get any better than that! "Dan knows the game inside and out and is an outstanding broadcaster," added Brandstatter. "First and foremost, he loves Michigan Football, but he's also a good friend, a teammate, an NFL Hall of Famer, and we have fun when we're together. I just hope the listeners have as good a time as we expect to have broadcasting Michigan victories this fall." "We are more than excited to have two great Michigan men who are great broadcasters teaming up to paint the picture for the fans listening each week to the Michigan IMG sports network," said Chris Ferris, VP of broadcasting for IMG College. Brandstatter and Dierdorf were teammates at Michigan during the 1969 and 1970 seasons, with Brandstatter being Dierdorf's backup for those two seasons at the strong tackle position. Brandstatter joined Dierdorf (2001) as a member of the state of Michigan Sports Hall of Fame this winter (2014). Following are biographical sketches on Dierdorf and Brandstatter: Dan Dierdorf Dan Dierdorf joins the Michigan football radio broadcast after spending the past three decades in the television booth calling NFL games for ABC and CBS. He was a member of ABC's Monday Night Football crew from 1987-99 before moving to CBS until his retirement from television following this past NFL season. Dierdorf got his first taste of radio during the final years of his playing career with the St. Louis Cardinals. He was on an afternoon talk show at KMOX Radio in St. Louis. After retiring as a player, Dierdorf joined the broadcast booth as the color announcer on Cardinals and Missouri Tigers game in 1984 before joining CBS for his first stint with the network (1985-86). Regarded as one of the finest offensive tackles to ever play the game, Dierdorf was a consensus All-American for the Wolverines in 1970 and earned All-Big Ten accolades in 1969 and 1970. He helped lead the Wolverines to a 25-6 record during his three years as a starter and was a member of Bo Schembechler's 1969 team that won the Big Ten championship. Dierdorf was enshrined into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2000. Dierdorf was a second-round pick by the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1971 NFL Draft. He played his entire 13-year career with the Cardinals (1971-83) and anchored a line that led the NFL in fewest sacks allowed three straight seasons. Dierdorf was a six-time Pro Bowl selection and was named NFL All-Pro five times. He was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in his hometown of Canton, Ohio, in 1996. In 2008, Dierdorf was the recipient of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Rozelle Award for his work in radio and television. Dierdorf and his wife, Debbie, have four children. Jim Brandstatter Jim Brandstatter is in his 35th season affiliated with the University of Michigan football radio broadcast. He takes over the play-by-play duties after working as the team's color commentator on the flagship radio broadcast for the past 34 years. Brandstatter also serves as the host of the Michigan football coach's television show, a role that he has held since 1980. Brandstatter first covered U-M on the radio during the 1979 season and has brought Michigan football into the homes of Wolverine fans ever since. He has garnered the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Sports Broadcaster of the Year Award twice (2004 and 2008). Outside of game day broadcasts, Brandstatter served as co-host on Michigan Replay with former coaches Bo Schembechler, Gary Moeller, Lloyd Carr and Rich Rodriguez and continues these duties on Inside Michigan Football with Brady Hoke. In the professional ranks, Brandstatter joined the Detroit Lions radio broadcast in 1987, where he currently contributes as a color analyst. Brandstatter, a 1972 University of Michigan graduate, was a three-year letterman at offensive tackle for the Wolverines (1969-71). During his time at U-M, he was named to the 1971 All-Big Ten second team and helped Michigan capture two Big Ten championships and two Rose Bowl berths. Brandstatter and his wife, Robbie Timmons, reside in Commerce Township. Timmons was a news anchor for WXYZ-TV in Detroit. About IMG College IMG College is the nation's leading collegiate multimedia, marketing and licensing/brand management company, representing more than 200 of the nation's top collegiate properties, including the NCAA and its 89 championships, NCAA Football, leading conferences and many of the most prestigious colleges and universities in the country. Headquartered in Winston Salem, N.C., IMG College connects brands with the largest and most demographically attractive fan base in sports through partnership opportunities in multimedia rights, sponsorship sales, licensing, marketing, ticketing, seating, fundraising, premium events and hospitality, stadium and arena development, and consulting. IMG College produces nearly 35,000 hours of radio programming on the largest sports network in the country, manages nearly 5,000 hours of local television programming, is the leading publisher of college sports publications and is the largest manager of university athletic websites. IMG College is a division of IMG Worldwide, a global sports, fashion and media business. For more information, please visit www.imgcollege.com Michigan Media Contact: David Ablauf IMG College: Andrew Giangola |
Posted by Darren Urban on July 31, 2015 – 3:01 pm One interesting thing that came out of the interview session today was from wide receiver Michael Floyd, who took part in Carson Palmer’s workouts in southern California in July. Floyd said he thinks Palmer’s arm “is a lot stronger.” That’s interesting. You’d think that would bode well for his reconstructed knee that Palmer is able to get the base and torque to throw the ball harder than before. Palmer, who is scheduled to speak to the media tomorrow, is full-go for camp, coach Bruce Arians said. More importantly, Arians said Palmer’s workload in the preseason games isn’t expected to be much different than any other preseason — meaning there will be no limitations because of his knee. Of course, Palmer won’t play a ton of preseason snaps — Arians said he knows what Palmer can do in a game — but he would have had that attitude even if Palmer hadn’t gotten hurt. Tags: Carson Palmer Posted in Blog |
Coming Soon Go! Go! Cory Carson Join kid car Cory Carson on his adventures around the winding roads of childhood in Bumperton Hills! Based on the hit toy line Go! Go! Smart Wheels. 15 August Veteran Bollywood actress Madhuri Dixit turns producer for this lighthearted snapshot of life in the chawls of Mumbai. Huck Huck uses his special gifts to do good deeds, but when his secret is revealed, he winds up on a life-changing adventure. Based on Mark Millar's comics. Huge In France Famous comedian Gad Elmaleh moves to LA to reconnect with his son and must learn to live without the celebrity perks he's accustomed to in France. Losers In a "winning is everything" society, how do we handle failure? This series profiles athletes who have turned the agony of defeat into human triumph. Virgin River After seeing an ad for a midwife, a recently divorced big-city nurse moves to the redwood forests of California, where she meets an intriguing man. Flinch Faced with various frightening and uncomfortable events, contestants in this game show had better not flinch -- or they'll suffer painful consequences. River's Edge High schooler Haruna befriends loner Yamada, then is drawn into the tangled relationship between him, a model and the girl who loves him unreasonably. |
Provided A new study tests the idea that traditional societies see aging in a more positive light than modern societies, a presumption supported by anecdotes and personal narratives but lacking systematic cross-cultural research. In a study designed to measure aging perceptions, published last month in the Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Science, the researchers found that Tsimané Amazonian forager-farmers viewed old people as having better memories than young people, while people in Poland and the United States viewed the young as having better memories. In other variables, the researchers found more consensus across the different groups. For example, all three societies perceived older people as being more respected and generally wiser about life issues than younger people. “There have been anecdotal reports and theoretical reasoning that people in traditional societies look at aging more favorably,” said Corinna Löckenhoff, associate professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology and associate professor of gerontology in medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. However, this is the first study of aging perceptions to gather quantitative data and to use the same questions across modern and traditional societies, Löckenhoff said. Löckenhoff is co-author of the paper with Piotr Sorokowski, Tomasz Frackowiak and Agnieszka Sorokowska, all at the University of Wroclaw, Poland. While the Polish group did all the fieldwork and collected data, Löckenhoff provided the theoretical underpinnings and study-design considerations. In the study, the researchers showed participants a photo of a young person and a photo of the same person that had been digitally altered to make him or her look older. Participants were then asked a series of questions to assess their attitudes toward aging. These questions tested such perceptions of aging as respect received (whose opinion is more respected?); wisdom; life satisfaction (who is more satisfied with their life?); memory (who is more forgetful?); and new learning. In response, participants were asked to point at the older or younger face. They found that across the different societies there was consensus that older people are more respected and perceived as wiser than younger people, and that in general, participants perceived aging as more detrimental to women than men, Löckenhoff said. But Tsimane’ participants differed from their industrial counterparts in perceptions of memory. While the participants from industrialized nations held negative beliefs of aging and memory, the Tsimane’ people felt the elderly had better memories. “There are reasons to think that traditional societies would have more positive beliefs about aging and memory,” Löckenhoff said. Modern societies no longer rely on oral traditions where older people serve as repositories of culture and knowledge, she said, whereas traditional societies still value experience-based knowledge. The findings are important for traditional societies to ensure their attitudes toward older adults do not suffer as they increasingly modernize, Löckenhoff said. And for modern societies, the findings shed light on how culture and context can have an influence on the way that aging is seen and that in turn can affect how people age, she said. For example, there is evidence that stereotypes about aging affect older people. This phenomenon is known as stereotype threat, where negative stereotypes about certain groups – such as the notion that the elderly have poor memories – can affect performance. “Older people could be doing better if they were not pulled down by stereotype threat,” Löckenhoff noted. Next steps in this research will be to test if older people’s memories are actually working better in the Tsimané culture and if other traditional societies show similar patterns, she added. The study was funded by the Polish National Science Centre and the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. |
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