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ⓖregglesMI , UNUSEABLE UI GREAT EFFECTS IMPORT VIDEO IMPORT VIDEO IMPORT VIDEO IMPORT VIDEO IMPORT VIDEO IMPORT VIDEO IMPORT VIDEO IMPORT VIDEO IMPORT VIDEO IMPORT VIDEO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm rating this app poorly, even after purchasing several effects packs because the developer's choice to cripple the way you use the effects is infuriating. The fact that I cannot import existing video to overlay the effect makes no sense. The slider for effect placement on higher timeline is as finely controlled as a sledge happier, the inability to allow me to re edit or preview the effect is ridiculous, and none of it makes sense. If you won't let me import it, the let me export JUST the effect itself as if over a green screen. Otherwise the effects are really spot on, you just make it impossible for me to use them in a way that actually looks good. I want my money back I'm that insulted by your implementation. In fact, I also want an apology and a commitment to make it more flexible as I've described. It's like giving me a porche to drive and a single city block to drive it on that is full of potholes and is under construction. Great vehicle, no way to really use it at all. Rude. Rude. Rude. Rude!!! Fix these things and you'll get an improved rating. |
Mohamed Yaffa, a diversity and inclusion co-ordinator in Halifax, is demanding to know whether Air Canada trains its staff on just that: diversity and inclusion. In a case currently before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, he alleges the airline subjected him to “enhanced security screening,” including “enhanced questioning,” on six different occasions from March to June 2010 because of his race, national or ethnic origin, colour and religion. Yaffa, who describes himself in tribunal documents as “a Muslim Canadian of African descent,” is the diversity and inclusion co-ordinator for Capital Health, which provides health services in the Halifax region. He did not return several requests for comment. Air Canada told the tribunal that it has not discriminated against Yaffa, but was simply following requirements having to do with American and Canadian no-fly lists in its interactions with him. A spokesman for the airline declined to comment on the case as the matter is still before the tribunal. Recently, Yaffa successfully convinced tribunal member David Thomas to order the air carrier to confirm whether it trains its front-line employees on handling complaints from customers regarding alleged security concerns, as well as whether it provides training on human rights and cultural sensitivity. Article Continued Below “According to the complainant, an organization’s position and approach to cultural sensitivity has direct implications on the attitudes and behaviour of its staff,” reads Thomas’ decision. “The complainant speaks of an atmosphere of fear of Muslims following the tragic events of September 11, 2001 and therefore the complainant believes it is important to know what the respondent has been doing to ensure its employees are culturally sensitive.” Thomas also ordered on Aug. 8 that Yaffa turn over medical documents related to the treatment of anxiety, depression and/or insomnia dating back to 2008, as well as his human resources file from 2007 to 2013. Yaffa is quoted in the decision as saying that as a result of the alleged discrimination, he has been “affected in my work and among my colleagues as I am often anxious about perceptions and stigma. I have used my vacation days from my work to pursue healing. I have taken more than average sick days at my work since this ordeal started.” It’s unclear from the decision if Yaffa’s name or something similar is actually on a no-fly list. Public Safety Canada says it does not publicly release names on the list due to security concerns. Officially known as the Passenger Protect Program, the no-fly list was instituted as part of a bilateral treaty with the United States in 2007 and has been criticized for making air travel difficult for passengers with similar names on the list. Air Canada spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick told the Star that the airline is obligated by the Canadian government to enforce Canada’s no-fly list, as well as the American no-fly list for flights to and from the U.S. “Finally, like all airlines, indeed like most companies, we also review customer names for a variety of reasons,” he said. “This could include for example such things as past misbehaviour on a flight or something like credit card fraud.” Article Continued Below Air Canada says in the tribunal documents that when a passenger’s name is a close match to a name on the U.S. or Canadian no-fly list, a prompt will appear on the agent’s screen, and the agent is then required to contact the airline’s Operation Security Centre. The OSC will then request additional information pertaining to the passenger before deciding whether a boarding pass will be issued, or whether additional screening is required. Tribunal member Thomas also ordered that Air Canada turn over complaints dating back to 2007 related to alleged discrimination having to do with the airline’s application of the no-fly list. Read more about: |
"We're a conduit," is how Delivery Hero chief executive Clive Thorpe described his business to Fairfax Media. "It's built on the consumer. While they are sitting in their pyjamas on their couch ... they go [on the app] and look and see what takeaways deliver in their area. "We will take orders and then we relay them electronically to the restaurants who join us, they cook the food and deliver it to the customers, simple as that. "The old way of doing it is you'd get a load of old takeaway menus put though your door. You're unsure if they are quality. Because of the language barriers you might not be able to get your order away. You might not be too good at maths and adding up." Orders from Delivery Hero cost exactly the same as they would when takeout is ordered from a store, with the start-up taking a cut of the restaurant's profit. Restaurant and Catering Australia chief executive John Hart believes the sector is likely to boom in the coming years on the back of existing trends towards strong growth in the high-quality takeaway food sector. "The time is right," he told Fairfax Media. "There's a significant interest in having a high-quality offering that you can have at home." Mr Hart said Delivery Hero's real killer feature was improving the efficiency of the restaurant trade by centralising the booking services of thousands of restaurants. The sector's entire booking infrastructure was disorganised, inefficient and costly, Mr Hart said, and was ripe for disruption. "If there's any sector that this thing is going to work in it's our market." Delivery Hero is the big player, with significant start-up capital behind it – although they have actually been quietly operating in Australia since 2011, building up a database of participating restaurants. But there are already several local players, and one even bigger international circling. Mr Aron is general manager at local start-up Yumtable, which launched in October last year. Yumtable have already signed up 2000 restaurants for a service that allows users to instantly reserve a table anywhere at any time. "People these days have changed the way they behave when it comes to restaurant bookings," he says. "In the past we used to book a week in advance, two weeks in advance, be quite organised that way. "You want a car now, you press for an Uber and an Uber comes. It's all becoming quite instant." Mr Aron is keen to trumpet a deal Yumtable recently signed with Uber. Users of Yumtable will now be given the option to automatically book an Uber to deliver them to their restaurant reservation exactly on time, with the app's GPS sensor and algorithms left to take care of all the logistics. But Mr Aron may end up seeing Uber as much a foe as a friend. Uber has begun rolling out a food delivery service of its own, currently available in LA and Barcelona. The taxi-disrupting company offers brunch, lunch and dinner options from a carefully curated menu of the city's coolest restaurants, all with the promise of a 10-minute delivery time. David Rohrsheim, general manager of Uber Australia, said the company had no current plans to roll the service out to Melbourne. "We have many experiments around the world ... when they are successful that means we can roll them out to other cities "We're always asking what else would you like on demand in five minutes or less." |
Kiwis coach Stephen Kearney has named five rookies in his team for Friday's Anzac rugby league test against the Kangaroos in Sydney. Manly sensation Peta Hiku will start at fullback, Warriors utility Ben Henry has been handed the hooking duties and Penrith reserve-grader Isaac John will play at standoff in the absence of injured vice-captain Kieran Foran. Two other rookies, Warriors hooker Siliva Havili and Tigers prop Martin Taupau, have been named on the four-man bench, while Melbourne Storm youngster Kenny Bromwich will be the 18th man. Despite speculation that he would play in the halves, Melbourne utility Tohu Harris, who missed last year's World Cup in England after Sonny Bill Williams' belated decision to make himself available, will be on the bench. "We've had a solid couple of days together and all the lads have really impressed me with their enthusiasm and energy," Kearney said. "Kenny's been a big part of that and I'm sure he'll get his chance in the future. "We're under no illusions about the task ahead of us. The Aussies are a world champion side and we will have to be on top of our game to match them. "But we have confidence in our talent and there's definitely a spirit in this group that augurs well for this game and beyond." The Kiwis will start as serious underdogs after Kearney was forced to field a squad without the likes of star hooker Issac Luke, Brisbane's Josh Hoffman and Foran because of injury. KIWIS: Peta Hiku, Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, Dean Whare, Gerard Beale, Jason Nightingale, Isaac John, Shaun Johnson, Jesse Bromwich, Ben Henry, Sam Moa, Simon Mannering (c), Kevin Proctor, Adam Blair. Interchange: Siliva Havili, Martin Taupau, Greg Eastwood, Tohu Harris. 18th man: Kenny Bromwich. |
Democracy is only acceptable if it can be controlled by those already in power, and the essence of this control is to ensure that the conditions benefiting the powerful are not seriously threatened. This condition has not gone away. (Photo: Maryland GovPics)ROBERT C. KOEHLER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT The wound burst open in November. History, suddenly, could no longer be avoided. Reality could no longer be avoided. American democracy is flawed, polluted, gamed by the oligarchs. It always has been. But not until the election process whelped Donald Trump did it become so unbearably obvious. Welcome to The Strip and Flip Disaster of America's Stolen Elections, by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, which was released last year and has been newly updated. What I find invaluable about the book is that, while it meticulously pries open the current election process with all its warts and flaws -- the voter suppression games those in power continue to play, the unverifiability of electronic voting machines -- it also delves deep into this country's history and illuminates the present-day relevance of the worst of it: the history we haven't yet faced. Whatever else delivered Trump to our doorstep, the most undeniable element in his "victory" was the Electoral College. It's hardly adequate to call this institution obsolete; its existence is the manifestation of racist hell. ". . . to protect their interests in a nation where they were being rapidly outnumbered, Southerners got an Electoral College that included a '3/5ths clause,'" Fitrakis and Wasserman write. "Slaves (who could not vote themselves) were counted for 3/5ths of a vote for president and in establishing congressional districts." This is American history stripped naked, its basic lie revealed. Slavery wasn't simply a regrettable sideshow. Repression and dehumanization -- the creation of an "other" -- smolder at the nation's core. Because of slavery and institutionalized racism, impoverished white people could still feel good about themselves -- and there would be no mixed-race uprisings against the status quo, which is still the case. In other words, democracy is only acceptable if it can be controlled by those already in power, and the essence of this control is to ensure that the conditions benefiting the powerful are not seriously threatened. This condition has not gone away. American democracy remains in a cage, which means "we the people" -- and our will to create a better world -- also remain in a cage. Fitrakis and Wasserman devote a considerable portion of their book to the phenomenon of slavery, which in colonial North America was "peculiar' in its cruelty. "Essentially a 'bribe' to the whites," the authors write, "American chattel slavery cast blacks into an abyss of subhuman barbarity. Legally, they (and their children) became mere objects, subhuman slaves for life. White 'owners' could sell, torture, rape and murder their black 'property' with no legal penalties." The slave codes remained unchanged when the colony transitioned to nationhood, but there was one addition. A slave was considered, for election purposes, to be three-fifths of an actual human being. This didn't mean slaves could cast three-fifths of a vote, simply that their owners, and all the free (white) residents of the state in which they resided, acquired additional political power because of their presence. This power was manifested in the Electoral College, in which slave states had disproportional representation because of the three-fifths clause. "Thus," Fitrakis and Wasserman point out, "all presidents from Washington to Lincoln either owned slaves or their vice presidents did. With additional representation, the South dominated the House of Representatives." The Civil War eliminated slavery, as the textbooks tell us, but it didn't eliminate the dark forces that created it. Indeed, the authors call slavery only the first of five "Jim Crows" that have manifested in this country to suppress African-Americans, maintain racial discord, prevent unity among the economically exploited classes, hobble democracy and protect the military-corporate status quo. Jim Crow No. 2 was the century of institutional racism and segregation that claimed ownership of America after the Electoral College awarded the presidency to Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, in repayment for which he dismantled Reconstruction and ended all legal protection of freed former slaves. Racism continued to rule -- and most African-Americans still couldn't vote. Democracy remained as tightly caged as ever. When the civil rights movement dismantled the Jim Crow legal system in the '60s, the status quo regrouped and created a police state. They called it the War on Drugs. Fitrakis and Wasserman call it the third Jim Crow, which began taking shape in the Nixon years. No one described it better thanJohn Ehrlichman, Nixon's chief domestic policy advisor, did in a 1994 quote to writer Dan Baum, which was finally published in Harper's Magazine 22 years later: "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," Ehrlichman said. "You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." The fourth Jim Crow the authors cite are the electoral interventions of the American empire -- from vote manipulation to CIA-engineered coups in countries around the globe -- to protect "national interests." Together, these four manifestations of the worst of who we are, the last two of which are still alive and kicking, create a credible context for Jim Crow No. 5, which is a potpourri of tactics to suppress and strangle the minority vote (too few machines in certain voting districts, strict ID laws, bogus elimination of names from voter rolls and much more) combined with the use of easily hackable electronic voting machines and the abandonment of verifiable paper ballots. To this I would add mainstream media contempt for anyone who questions the election results sanctified on Election Night by TV anchorpersons, no matter that they differ significantly from exit poll results. I would also add the extraordinary superficiality of presidential elections: the systematic jettisoning of populist candidates, such as Bernie Sanders, from contention, and the avoidance of real issues (e.g., the military budget) in the debate, creating a huge public-interest void in the process. But all of these extraordinary efforts to keep democracy caged make me believe that the country -- and the world -- are on the brink of profound change. Most of us want a world free of poverty and war and would vote for its creation if we could. Fitrakis and Wasserman make the following recommendations: "We need to win universal automatic voter registration; transparent voter rolls; a four-day national holiday for voting; ample locations for all citizens to conveniently cast ballots; universal hand-counted paper ballots; automatic recounts free to all candidates; abolition of the Electoral College; an end to gerrymandering; a ban on corporate money in our campaigns." This is how it starts. Let democracy out of its cage. Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound is available. Contact him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit his website at commonwonders.com. © 2017 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, INC. |
From Apple’s financial followers to the culture pages, expect few technology topics to garner as much attention in 2015 as the Apple Watch, which is set to launch “early” in the year. Why? Because it’s not just a new gadget. Several people, companies, and entire industries are counting on it to be a hit. Without hyperbole, the Apple Watch has the potential to create new billionaires and to change the way people live. Here are a few reasons—from micro to macro—the Apple Watch is shaping up to be the launch of 2015. It’s Apple CEO Tim Cook’s first big thing. Cook—previously Apple’s long-time operations chief—has been instrumental in the company’s rise to the top of the tech world, thanks to the iPhone and iPad. But those were under Steve Jobs’ stewardship. The Apple Watch is the first thing that Tim Cook’s Apple has created. On the other hand, if it’s a dud, it will raise questions about Cook’s ability to lead a product organization. It could be Apple’s next big hit. The company’s meteoric growth has slowed. The Apple Watch, if successful, could become its next growth driver. But it’s not going to happen overnight, in part because Apple is already so big. Even if the company sells 10 million watches in 2015 at an average price of $500, that’s only $5 billion in revenue—about as much as Apple generates every 10 days, on average. Note: Apple has already told investors that it won’t break out Apple Watch shipments and revenue as a separate product category. (They’ll be lumped in with with iPods and the Apple TV.) But the company could, of course, announce sales numbers as often as it wants. Quartz/Dan Frommer The Apple Watch at Paris Fashion Week in September. It’s going to be everywhere. Expect Apple’s marketing machine to turn it up to a level we haven’t seen—especially with its recent admiration for Hollywood celebrities. Imagine Apple Watches on TV, billboards, in magazines, on the red carpet at the Oscars, on runway models around the world, in movies, everywhere. This is fashion, not just a gadget. It could be the first breakout wearable device. About 6% of people recently polled by Morgan Stanley currently own a wearable device, ranging from Samsung smart watches to Nike fitness trackers. But there hasn’t been a breakout hit. Among brands not yet selling wearables, those surveyed are most interested in a device made by Apple, followed by Sony and Google. What’s at stake? Some expect the wearables market to take off faster than the smartphone or tablet markets before it. For example, Morgan Stanley predicts 70 million wearable shipments worldwide in 2015, growing to 248 million in 2017. (It also estimates that wearables address $1.6 trillion in consumer and business spending, from fashion and fitness to healthcare and insurance.) It could make you rich. The rise of wrist-top computing could create new billionaires (or, at least plenty of millionaires) as entrepreneurs figure out the Apple Watch apps that people actually want to use, and cash-rich incumbents snatch them up. Add-ons ranging from flashy watchbands to wireless earphones could become the next big accessory businesses. It could torch the watch industry. About 1.2 billion watches are produced every year—about the same number as smartphones sold. There’s the high-end industry, dominated by a few Swiss brands, which has seen recent growth thanks in large part to China’s rising taste for luxury. Then there’s the mid-tier, where brands like Casio, Seiko, and Swatch dominate. With prices ranging from $350 to several thousands of dollars, the Apple Watch, if successful, could easily disrupt both. In Morgan Stanley’s survey, the watch was the device most likely to be cannibalized by an Apple wearable purchase. The smartphone came in next, but it will be a few more years before the Apple Watch is a serious replacement threat to the iPhone. “Interestingly,” the report notes, “respondents in China are even more willing to consider Apple than those in other countries but much less willing to consider Swatch.” Look out, Geneva. It could kickstart the “Internet of Things” revolution. This is another mega-trend that has been starting to make inroads, but hasn’t yet become mainstream. It refers to things like sensors everywhere, persistent digital identity, mobile transactions, self-aware appliances, unlocking your house by waving your watch at the door, etc. Like wearables, the spending estimated to be associated with the Internet of Things is amusingly large: $7 trillion by 2020, according to one guess by IDC. The Apple Watch could be the centerpiece. It could change the way people live. One of the key use cases for wearable devices is health and fitness monitoring. And while it’s still early, multiple studies suggest wearables could get people to make improvements. In Morgan Stanley’s survey, some 62% of respondents said they made significant change or some change in their lifestyles due to their wearable devices. A separate Pew study from 2013 found that almost two-thirds of those who tracked health data said it had either helped change their approach to maintaining their health, led them to communicate more with doctors, or had affected how they treat an illness or condition. Mobile devices have had widespread impact on how people get online, stay in touch, learn, work, and get around. It’s too early to say that wrist-top computers like the Apple Watch will dramatically improve any existing trends. But it’s possible. What if it isn’t? Apple, more than any other company, has the skills to manufacture a gadget hit, from product design to marketing. But what if the Apple Watch just isn’t a success? No one would make the claim that 2014 was the year of the Samsung Gear. And in a Quartz poll of US iPhone owners, just 5% said they were very likely or extremely likely to buy an Apple Watch. The good news: Even 5% of Apple’s iPhone customer base is large—almost 4 million people in the US alone. To drive more sales, Apple could also lower prices, as it did when the iPhone first launched in 2007. There is a lot at stake here, though. If the wearables market takes off as projected, and Apple’s platform isn’t one of the leaders, it could be a real vulnerability. One more reason for Apple to push even harder this year. |
Huy Fong Foods is an American hot sauce company based in Irwindale, California.[1] Beginning in 1980 on Spring Street in Los Angeles's Chinatown, it has grown to become one of the leaders in the Asian hot sauce market, particularly in Sriracha sauce. Name [ edit ] The company is named for a Taiwanese freighter, Huey Fong, that carried the founder David Tran and 3,317 other refugees out of Vietnam in December 1978.[2] The rooster symbol comes from the fact that Tran was born in the Year of the Rooster on the Chinese zodiac.[2][3][4] Products [ edit ] The company's most popular product is its sriracha sauce. It was originally made with Serrano peppers and is now made with red Jalapeño peppers, reducing the overall pungency.[citation needed] It is currently Huy Fong Foods' best-known and best-selling item, easily recognized by its bright red color and its packaging: a clear plastic bottle with a green cap, text in five languages (Vietnamese, English, Chinese, French, and Spanish) and the rooster logo. One nickname for the product is "rooster sauce”, for the logo on the bottles.[5] In contrast to similar hot sauces made by other manufacturers, Huy Fong's sriracha sauce does not contain fish extract, making it suitable for most vegetarians, although the presence of garlic may make it unsuitable for members of Buddhism and some Hindu denominations. Huy Fong also makes sambal oelek and chili garlic sauces.[6] History [ edit ] Founder [ edit ] The sauce was developed by the company's founder, David Tran (born 1945), a Chinese-Vietnamese businessman and former Major in the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam,[2] who fled the country in 1978 and arrived in the United States (first in Boston, then in Los Angeles) in the spring of 1980 as a part of the migration of the Vietnamese boat people following the Vietnam War.[4] Huy Fong Foods is a family business, staffed by eight members of the family. David Tran's son, William Tran (born c. 1976), is the company's president; his daughter Yassie Tran-Holliday is vice-president.[2] The company has never advertised its products, relying instead on word of mouth.[7] Early industrial production [ edit ] By 1987, Huy Fong Foods had relocated to a 68,000-square-foot (6,300 m2) building in Rosemead, California that once housed toymaker Wham-O.[5] The company purchases chilis grown in Ventura, Los Angeles, and Kern Counties. Most of each year's chili mash is produced in just two months, during the autumn harvest. The sauces are produced on machinery that has been specially modified by Tran, who taught himself machining and welding skills. In 2001, the company was estimated to have sold 6,000 tons of chili products for approximately US$12 million.[citation needed] Huy Fong Foods' chili sauces were made from red jalapeño chili peppers grown in Moorpark, California by Underwood Family Farms,[8] and contain no artificial ingredients.[citation needed] The relationship with Underwood ended in 2016, and in August 2017 Huy Fong sued its former supplier, alleging breach of contract and other causes of action. The company formerly used serrano chilis but found them difficult to harvest.[citation needed] All three sauces are manufactured in Rosemead, California.[citation needed] The company has warned customers about counterfeit versions of its sauces.[9] In December 2009, Bon Appétit magazine named its Sriracha sauce Ingredient of the Year for 2010.[10] In 2010 the company produced 20 million bottles of sauce in a year.[11] As of 2012 it had grown to sales of more than US$60 million a year.[2] New factory and community relations issues [ edit ] Huy Fong Foods Headquarters, Irwindale, California In 2010, the company opened a factory in Irwindale, California. It is 23 acres, with 26,000 square feet (2,400 m2) of office space, 150,000 square feet (14,000 m2) of production space, and 480,000 square feet (45,000 m2) of warehouse.[11] The odor of chilis that emanates from the new Irwindale factory upset the community's residents and the City of Irwindale filed a lawsuit against Huy Fong Foods in October 2013, claiming that the odor was a public nuisance.[12] Initially, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge refused the city's bid to shut down the factory[13] but a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ordered the factory to essentially shut down on November 27, 2013, prohibiting all activities that could cause odors.[14] On May 29, 2014, it was announced that Irwindale had dropped the lawsuit against Huy Fong Foods.[15] Since 2014, the factory is open to visitors and has become a tourist attraction.[5][16] References [ edit ] |
Athletes need to be fitted with microchips, in a similar way that dogs are, in the fight against drug cheats in sport, according to a leading representative of international sports people. Mike Miller, the World Olympians Association chief executive, claimed that radical anti-doping methods – including implants to recognise the effects of banned substances – are needed to protect clean sport. “Some people say we shouldn’t do this to people,” Miller said. “Well, we’re a nation of dog lovers, we’re prepared to chip our dogs and it doesn’t seem to harm them, so why aren’t we prepared to chip ourselves?” IOC suspends Carlos Nuzman after gold bar corruption allegation Read more Miller claims a breakthrough in microchip technology is on the horizon and testers need to be aware of developments. His fear is that drug cheats could exploit the technology to avoid detection through self-monitoring, alerting them when their blood has returned to “normal” levels before testers arrive. Speaking to anti-doping leaders at a Westminster forum on integrity in sport, Miller said: “In order to stop doping we need to chip our athletes where the latest technology is there. Some people say it’s an invasion of privacy, well, sport is a club and people don’t have to join the club if they don’t want to, if they can’t follow the rules. “Microchips get over the issue of whether the technology can be manipulated because they have no control over the device. The problem with the current anti-doping system is that all it says is that at a precise moment in time there are no banned substances but we need a system which says you are illegal substance-free at all times and if there are changes in markers they will be detected.” The WOA supports the 48 national Olympians associations and 100,000 living Olympians, although Miller said he was not speaking on behalf of the organisation. “I’m just throwing the idea out there,” he said. “I’m gauging reaction from people but we do need to think of new ways to protect clean sport. I’m no Steve Jobs but we need to spend the money and use the latest technology.” Athletics will look at copying Indian Premier League, says Sebastian Coe Read more The idea of microchips being inserted into athletes would likely be met with mixed reaction. Some athletes are fiercely protective of their right to privacy and feel the existing Adams whereabouts system is already overly invasive. Whereabouts rules dictate that athletes must declare on an online database where they will be every day for a one-hour window between 5am and 11pm, so drug testers can turn up without warning. The athlete biological passport system has been the most crucial development in anti-doping in recent years, with blood test results analysed over a period of time for the effects rather than presence of drugs. Nicole Sapstead, the UK Anti-Doping chief executive, was wary a move to microchips would represent an invasion of athletes’ privacy. “We welcome verified developments in technology which could assist the fight against doping. However, can we ever be sure that this type of thing could never be tampered with or even accurately monitor all substances and methods on the prohibited list? “There is a balance to be struck between a right to privacy versus demonstrating that you are clean. We would actively encourage more research in whether there are technologies in development that can assist anti-doping organisations in their endeavours.” |
Five former Toronto police drug squad officers who were accused of beating and robbing suspects of drugs and large sums of money will go on trial Monday, accused of a conspiracy in which they allegedly falsified official police records to cover their tracks. The cast of characters See story timeline at the bottom of this page. John Schertzer: 54, detective sergeant in charge of Toronto Police Service (TPS) Team 3 Central Field Command drug squad. Charged in 2004 (conspiracy to obstruct justice, attempt to obstruct justice, perjury, theft over $5,000, assault causing bodily harm, extortion) Suspended with pay in 2004 through to November 2007 when he retired at age 50 with full pension. Steve Correia: 25 years service, suspended with pay eight years for conspiracy to obstruct justice, attempt to obstruct justice, perjury, theft over $5,000 and extortion. Ned (Nebojsa) Maodus: He was forced to resign from Toronto police in fall 2007 after being convicted of assault, threatening and pointing a firearm. He had spent years suspended with pay fighting numerous criminal charges including off-duty assaults, sexual assault, weapons and drug offences. He’s on trial for conspiracy to obstruct justice, attempt to obstruct justice, perjury, assault causing bodily harm and extortion. Joseph Miched: He retired from Toronto Police Service in October 2003 after 25 years and went into car sales in the Greater Toronto Area. The charges he faces include one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, two counts of attempt to obstruct justice and two counts of perjury. Raymond Pollard: He retired from TPS in February 2008, after 20 years. He faces four criminal charges, including one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, two counts of attempt to obstruct justice and one count of perjury. Rick (Richard) Benoit: He was charged in 2004 with conspiracy to obstruct justice, one count of extortion and one count of assault causing bodily harm. Those charges were stayed in 2008 due to delays. He has left the TPS and now leads a private security and investigative firm in Toronto, VP Protection. The charges against John Schertzer, Ned Maodus, Joe Miched, Ray Pollard and Steve Correia date back to the late 1990s and police drug busts they performed in which the Crown alleges the officers themselves committed a range of offences — from conspiracy to obstruct justice, to theft, assault, perjury and extortion. The five have all pleaded not guilty and on Monday will face a jury, after more than a decade and $14 million spent on investigations and prosecution in what is the largest case of alleged police corruption in Canadian history. Follow the trial on Twitter CBC News reporter Dave Seglins will be tweeting from the trial, follow him at @cbcdaveseglins. In addition, between 1999 and 2003, the federal Department of Justice, without any explanation, stayed some 200 criminal cases against accused drug dealers arrested by the officers. Prosecutors did so long before the officers were charged or given a chance to defend themselves against allegations of misconduct. Lengthy delays affect memories, witnesseses Six officers were originally charged in January 2004 after a Toronto Police Special Task Force led by a single RCMP chief superintendent spent three years investigating. In 2008, a trial judge stayed all charges, ruling that delays by the prosecution infringed on the officers’ rights. But in 2009, Ontario’s Court of Appeal rejected that and ruled a trial should proceed for five of the six officers, noting the complexity of the case. (Charges against Richard Benoit, though, were dismissed.) Toronto’s former mayor John Sewell, who heads the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition, said prosecutions of alleged police corruption in general can take years, likening them to organized crime trials in which defendants challenge every legal decision and ruling. "And they just go on and on and on forever," Sewell told CBC News, "because they hope, or the strategy seems to be, that they can drag things out for long enough that witnesses are going to die, that they’re going to move away, maybe to another continent, people are going to retire, everyone’s going to forget what really happened." Indeed, in the Toronto police case headed to court on Monday one witness has died, another has left the country and memories of all involved have no doubt faded. "Well it’s pretty extraordinary, to say the least," said criminology professor Simon Holdaway. Based in the United Kingdom, Holdaway studied the Toronto Police force extensively throughout the early 2000s. "One expects a public service to be able to sort out and go to trial quickly, and the police being one of, if not the, primary public service," he said. "I found it a policing system, in terms of its culture, that was kind of like 15 years behind what was happening in the U.K. It was extraordinary, really," Holdaway told CBC News, noting that unlike in Canada, in the U.K. all major police forces have dedicated anti-corruption units trained to rapidly deal with allegations of internal wrongdoing. Accused complain of ‘malicious prosecution’ The five accused have long asserted they are victims of a "witch hunt" within Toronto police and in 2003 several of them launched a $116-million lawsuit alleging "malicious prosecution" and "abuse of process" against the force, its then-chief Julian Fantino, as well as city overseers. The lawsuit remains on the books, awaiting the outcome of the criminal trial. All but one of the five men set to stand trial have retired from the force, many of them spending many years "suspended with pay" while collecting full benefits. In November 2007, former Det. Sgt. John Schertzer — who led the group of accused officers who were all members of Team 3 of the TPS Central Field Command drug squad — retired with full pension as he turned 50, with 32 years of service to the force. Steve Correia, 44, is still on the force but has been suspended while collecting full pay since he was charged criminally in January of 2004. |
Is nothing sacred? Preservationists are raising hell to protect the city’s historic churches as parishes in desirable areas close and developers snatch up the holy properties. Chelsea neighbors are fighting a proposed 11-story tower above the 150-year-old French Evangelical Church, which has struggled to pay for repairs and sold its air rights to survive. Residents say the plans are “atrocious” and want the Presbytery of New York City to try a Hail Mary. “It’s not just about the preservation of this block — it’s about all the city’s historic churches,” said Paul Groncki of the 16th Street Block Association. “They’re an important part of the fabric of our neighborhoods, and we don’t want to see them disappear. This church will disappear if it’s encased in concrete.” The New York Landmarks Conservancy surveyed 1,200 significant religious sites across the city and found that more than two dozen historically or architecturally important churches have been shuttered or destroyed in the past decade. And Brooklyn parishes are especially in danger, said Ann Friedman, who runs the conservancy’s Sacred Sites program. “We are going to see a lot of development and loss,” she said. “We can’t just sit back and wring our hands.” Brooklyn residents near the 148-year-old Church of the Redeemer are praying the Gothic Revival building — steps from the Barclays Center — won’t be razed for condos. The long-neglected parish closed in 2012, and the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island has planned to sell it ever since. Neighbors claim they have an anonymous benefactor ready to renovate it but that church bigwigs have balked. “We’re not upset if it’s not a church anymore,” said neighbor Carolynn DiFiore. “It’s about keeping the building. With all these high-rises that are going in, do we really need another luxury condo?” Meanwhile, the Archdiocese of New York plans to consolidate its 368 parishes in the largest wave of closings since 2007. Back then, 21 parishes shut down and several faced the wrecking ball. Midtown’s 144-year-old Church of the Holy Innocents — one of the oldest buildings in the Garment District — is being targeted for closure but could be saved. The church announced its proposed consolidation in a bulletin last week. An advisory committee will soon make its recommendations to Timothy Cardinal Dolan, who will reveal his final decisions in September. Other houses of worship are seeking salvation by putting their buildings on the market. The rectory of the landmarked Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew in Clinton Hill is for sale for $8.6 million, while Washington Heights’ Wadsworth Avenue Baptist Church is shopping its 88-year-old site for $7.5 million. Brooklyn’s Recovery House of Worship, a 120-year-old Baptist church on Schermerhorn Street, has been seeking a developer since 2011. Church leaders are open to demolishing the building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. The endangered churches include: Church of the Redeemer 561 Pacific St., Brooklyn This Episcopal parish is one of the most endangered buildings in the Borough of Churches. Built in 1866, the rugged Gothic Revival structure at the busy corner of Pacific Street and Fourth Avenue is overshadowed by the area’s development — including the Barclays Center, which is steps away. The English-style church is made of bluestone with sandstone trim, has mammoth stained-glass windows and sits above a subway entrance. But it’s been doomed by neglect and was never landmarked. In 2012, the building had fallen into such disrepair that the congregation left and the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island announced plans to demolish it. French Evangelical Church 124 W. 16th St., Chelsea Built around 1835, the sanctuary was occupied by the Catholic Apostolice Church until 1886, when French immigrants settled in Chelsea and the Église Évangélique Française moved in. Back then, the church hired an architect to remodel the facade in the German style of Romanesque Revival called Rundbogenstil — which employs simple and smooth facades with rounded arches over the windows. But over time, the church was painted an ugly maroon shade that “almost smothers form and detail,” according to a guide by the American Institute of Architects. This year, the Presbyterian church quietly sold its air rights to Einhorn Development Group, which plans to turn the building into an 11-story luxury condo. St. Vincent de Paul 123 W. 23rd St., Chelsea This 145-year-old church closed in 2007 as part of the Archdiocese of New York’s realignment. Home to the city’s French-speaking Catholics, the structure was erected in 1869 and designed by famed architect Henry Engelbert, who renovated Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Mott Street. In 1939, a new limestone facade with Corinthian columns was built over the original. Preservationists have tried in vain to save the building, and even former French President Nicolas Sarkozy wrote to the archdiocese on their behalf. The Landmarks Preservation Commission, however, said the replacement facade was not significant. The building has been vacant and rotting since its last service in January 2013. Our Lady of Vilnius Church 570 Broome St., Hudson Square Overlooking the entrance of the Holland Tunnel, this century-old Gothic Revival building was financed by and known as the national parish for Lithuanian immigrants. The church became a Catholic parish for Portuguese and Filipino immigrants before the archdiocese padlocked it in 2007 — citing dwindling attendance and a roof too expensive to fix. In 2011, parishioners lost a five-year court battle to save the yellow brick building when the state’s highest court ruled the archdiocese had the right to raze it. Last year, the church was listed for $13 million and snatched up by Extell Development, which is trying to flip the property for about $20 million. Church of the Holy Innocents 128 W. 37th St., Garment District This 148-year-old Midtown parish is being eyed for closure by the archdiocese. Designed by prolific architect Patrick Keely, the Gothic Revival parish is one of the oldest buildings in the Garment District but isn’t landmarked. The Catholic parish became known as the “actor’s church” after theaters and publishers flocked nearby in the 1900s. Playwright Eugene O’Neill was baptized there in 1888. Inside, there’s a mural over the altar designed by Constantino Brumidi, known for his fresco paintings inside the U.S. Capitol. Holy Innocents’ painting was restored in 2011. Some of the churches destroyed in the past decade: St. Ann’s Church, East Village (partially turned into NYU dorm) Church of Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, Kips Bay Young Israel Synagogue, Lower East Side Bay Ridge United Methodist, Brooklyn Glad Tidings Tabernacle, Midtown Astoria Presbyterian, Queens Mary Help of Christians, East Village Other endangered churches: Our Lady Queen of Angels, East Harlem Beth Hamedrash Hagadol Synagogue, a former Baptist church, Lower East Side Our Lady of Loreto, East New York, Brooklyn Church of St. Michael and St. Edward, Fort Greene, Brooklyn St. James’ Roman Catholic Church, Two Bridges, Manhattan Madison Avenue Baptist Church, parish house, Midtown East Recovery House of Worship, Boerum Hill, Brooklynn |
Share and Pin for later! 110 This post may contains affiliate links. This means if you buy something through a link in this post, I will make a small commission at no cost to you. This allows me to keep bringing you great content. *This post contains affiliate links. Spending time together is so important in relationships, but with the busyness of everyday life, finding time for a date night can get lost in the shuffle. If you are wanting to rekindle some spark in your marriage or just get some time together without the kids, here is a great list of date night ideas to try. Just a note, some of these ideas would be fun with the kiddos, but this is a date night – get a sitter and go have some adult fun! Sporty Date Night Ideas Take a walk. Ride bikes together Rent a tandem bike (major trust exercise if you are in the back!) Go hiking Rent some kayaks or stand-up paddle boards at a nearby lake Run a race together See a minor (or major) league baseball game Rent a pontoon boat with a group of friends Take a mini-road trip to a new destination near by Go to the pool (without the kids) 🙂 Take a gym class together Bowling Go to a rock gym (or take a rock climbing class) Play mini golf together try rollerblading /rollerskating Foodie Date Night Ideas Visit a farmer’s market Get dressed up and eat at a fancy restaurant Pick fruit or berries at a local “u-pick” orchard Take a cooking class Pack a picnic Get takeout from a new restaurant and have a picnic Try a “paint and sip” art class (super fun if you’ve never tried it) Have dinner at a new restaurant Around Town Date Night Ideas See an outside movie Watch the fireworks cozied up on a blanket together See a comedy show (laughing together is so good!) Go to a concert Visit a local food/art/music festival Take a pottery throwing class (Ghost, anyone?!) Visit a local tourist attraction you’ve never been to Organize a game night with other parents (always a fun time) Visit a new museum Get a couples massage Play games at a local arcade (this is a personal favorite of ours, and cheap!) Go see a play or musical Browse a flea market Visit a state park near by Visit an amusement park Go to the county fair Check out (and participate in!) a karaoke night Play trivia at a local sports bar Test drive a car you could never afford Check out the local yard sales Play with the cats and dogs at a local animal shelter Visit residents of a local nursing home Volunteer together Go to the circus At Home Date Night Ideas Play board games Do a marriage bible study together ( this is our favorite – so fun!) Rent a Redbox and make some popcorn Play cards Make a “question jar” and take turns pulling out questions and answering them Have fun spending some time together! Did you try one of these activities? How did it go?! Do you have a favorite date night activity that you think other couples would enjoy? Share it below in the comments! Suggested Posts Be sure to Pin these ideas for your next date night! |
In a bid to restore users' trust in its Windows 8 app store, Microsoft has kicked out a bunch of fake apps that had been left undisturbed in the Microsoft Store for some time. The move, announced on a company blog, followed reports last week the store was hosting numerous fake products in the store, including bogus antivirus, Chrome and Safari browsers, a fake Windows 8.1 update, and an unofficial Adobe Flash Player from a developer called 'microsoft studioz'. While not necessarily malware, some developers were charging users for apps that are otherwise free to download. Read this Goodbye Windows 8, hello Windows 8.1 Moving to a continuous development cadence will require Microsoft to make a lot of decisions that might not make everyone feel warm and fuzzy. Read More Oddly, Microsoft seems to have done little to stop fake apps appearing in its store in the first place, despite the apps exposing users to scams and the risk of malware, and ultimately threatening to undermine the users trust in its fledgling app store. According to Microsoft, the company has in fact been working on the problem, claiming it took complaints seriously earlier this year that users were having to wade through confusing or misleading titles to find authentic apps, and changed its certification policies as a result. The changes mean that apps need to meet certain criteria around naming, categories, and icons, before they can be admitted to the store. According to the new policy, developers need to clearly and accurately reflect the functionality of the app in its name, ensure apps are categorised according to their function and purpose, and use icons that are differentiated from other apps'. The new policy is also being applied to new submissions and existing app updates for apps in the Windows Phone Store, which may help address its problem there: back in May, the Windows Phone Store was caught harbouring fake Google apps , a bogus Internet Explorer, and an ersatz Kaspersky Mobile security product. The policy update has finally been coupled with actual enforcement for sellers that don't comply. Also, any victims can rest assured that they will be refunded if they've fallen for a scam. "Most of the developers behind apps that are found to violate our policies have good intentions and agree to make the necessary changes when notified. Others have been less receptive, causing us to remove more than 1,500 apps as part of this review so far (as always we will gladly refund the cost of an app that is downloaded as a result of an erroneous title or description)," said Microsoft. Read more on this story |
CTVNews.ca Staff Police in Longueuil, Que., have arrested a mother who they say “rented” her nine-year-old daughter to a man who then allegedly sexually assaulted her. Police allege Marc Clermont, 61, sexually assaulted the nine-year-old girl over three years, and that he paid the girl’s 39-year-old mother to offer her daughter to him. Clermont, who was arrested on March 10, faces eight charges including sexual assault, sexual assault of a person under the age of 16 years, obtaining sexual services for a reward, and possession of child pornography. He appeared in Longueuil court Monday. The girl’s mother, who cannot be identified to protect the identity of her daughter, was also arrested and faces charges as well. The girl is now in the custody of youth protection services. Police say Clermont “has a background” in similar offences and believe it’s possible he has other victims in the Montreal area. They are asking for the public’s help to find any other victims. Anyone with information about the suspect is urged to contact Longueuil police at 450-463-7211. |
Most of the recent headlines about indigenous Americans have had to do with a certain D.C. football team, or a surpassingly dumb Adam Sandler movie, or casinos of the kind operated by the fictional Ugaya tribe on "House of Cards." And we're not saying these issues don't matter. But beyond the slot machines, the movie sets and the football fields, there are other problems facing Native communities -- insidious, systemic, life-or-death problems; the kinds of problems it takes years and votes and marches to resolve -- that aren't getting nearly as much attention. There are 567 tribes, including 229 Alaska Native communities, currently recognized by the federal government. The Bureau of Indian Affairs -- the primary federal agency in charge of relations with indigenous communities -- is also considering extending federal status to Native Hawaiians. Each of the federally recognized tribes is a nation unto itself -- sovereign, self-determining and self-governing -- that maintains a government-to-government relationship with the United States. In addition, the rights of all indigenous peoples, including Native Hawaiians, have been affirmed in a 2007 United Nations declaration. Each indigenous nation has a distinct history, language and culture. While many face concerns that are specific to their government, state, or region, there are certain issues that affect all Native communities throughout the United States -- from Hawaii to Maine, and Alaska to Florida. Here are 13 such issues that you probably aren't hearing enough about. Credit: Associated Press Native Americans face issues of mass incarceration and policing. Thanks in large part to the Black Lives Matter movement, which has insisted that demands for justice and equality for the black community remain part of the national conversation, there is now growing momentum to address the issues of policing and mass incarceration. But while the brutalization of black Americans at the hands of police, and their maltreatment within the criminal justice system, have garnered national headlines, similar injustices against Native Americans have gone largely unreported. Earlier this month, Paul Castaway, a mentally ill Rosebud Sioux tribal citizen, was shot and killed by Denver police. His death led to protests in the Denver Native community, and has shed light on the shocking rate at which police kill Native Americans -- who account for less than 1 percent of the national population, but who make up nearly 2 percent of all police killings, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The issue of mass incarceration in Native communities is complicated by overlapping and unresolved conflicts between tribal, federal and state jurisdictions. If a crime is thought to have occurred on a Native reservation or within a Native community, it's not always clear which agency is going to be in charge of prosecution. That's determined by a complex set of factors, including the severity of the charges and the races of the victims and alleged perpetrators. The overlapping jurisdictions of federal and tribal sovereignty also mean that Indians who commit crimes on tribal lands can be punished twice for the same offense: once under federal jurisdiction and again in tribal court. Lastly, aside from cases of domestic violence, tribal courts are not allowed to try major crimes as defined under the Major Crimes Act. This means that suspects in most felony cases are prosecuted in federal courts, where sentencing tends to be more severe. In February, building off the momentum of Black Lives Matter, the Lakota Peoples’ Law Project released its "Native Lives Matter" report, which gives an overview of the inequities faced by Native Americans in the criminal justice system. The report, like the voices of Native peoples in general, has been largely ignored in the growing national conversation about policing and criminal justice reform. Native communities are often impoverished and jobless. However, the national figure distorts the prevalence of poverty on Indian reservations and in Alaska Native communities, where 22 percent of Native people live. In 2012, three of the five poorest counties in the U.S., and five of the top 10, encompassed Sioux reservations in North and South Dakota. Last year, President Barack Obama visited the Standing Rock Sioux on the border of North and South Dakota, where the poverty rate is 43.2 percent -- almost three times the national average. The unemployment rate on the Standing Rock Reservation was over 60 percent as of 2014. Credit: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images The federal government is still stripping Native people of their land. The U.S. was built on land taken from Indian nations, and indigenous peoples across the country are still living with the reality of dispossession. Right now, members of the San Carlos Apache Nation in Arizona are fighting the sale of their sacred Oak Flat site to foreign mining conglomerates. The Kanaka Maoli in Hawaii are fighting to protect their sacred mountain Mauna Kea from the construction of a 30-meter, $1.4 billion telescope. Many Hawaiians are now questioning the legality of the state's annexation, which took place after a group of business interests, most of them American, overthrew of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893. And in the heartland, the Great Sioux Nation has refused a $1.3 billion settlement as payment for the government’s illegal seizure of their sacred Black Hills in South Dakota in 1877. The faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt are etched into the Black Hills at Mount Rushmore. Exploitation of natural resources threatens Native communities. Throughout the history of North American settlement, the territorial dispossession of indigenous peoples has gone hand in hand with natural resource exploitation. In the 1800s, Indian nations in the West clashed with miners pouring into their territories in search of gold. Today, from the Bakken formation in North Dakota to the Tar Sands in northeastern Alberta, Canada, Indian nations often stand on the front lines of opposition to hydraulic fracturing and pipelines that pump oil out of indigenous communities -- violating treaty rights, threatening the environment and contributing to climate change in the process. Other groups, however, such as the Ute Tribe in Utah and the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation in North Dakota, have tried to make the most out of the economic opportunities presented by oil and natural gas extraction. For the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, the rush to cash in on oil has resulted in a mess of inadequate regulation and corruption -- including allegations of murder for hire. Violence against women and children is especially prevalent in Native communities. Native American communities -- and particularly Native women and children -- suffer from an epidemic of violence. Native women are 3.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted in their life than women of other races. Twenty-two percent of Native children suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder -- a rate of PTSD equal to that found among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Often, this violence comes from outside the community. The nonprofit Mending the Sacred Hoop, citing 1990s data from the CDC and the Department of Justice, reports that "over 80% of violence experienced by Native Americans is committed by persons not of the same race," a rate "substantially higher than for whites or blacks." However, some progress has been made. This year, despite staunch GOP opposition, tribes won the right to prosecute non-Native men who commit crimes of domestic violence or dating violence or who violate orders of protection against Native women on Indian reservations. Tribes have continued to push for control over justice systems on sovereign Indian land, in spite of resistance from state, local and federal lawmakers and law enforcement authorities. Credit: John Locher/Associated Press The education system is failing Native students. Only 51 percent of Native Americans in the class of 2010 graduated high school. Native Hawaiians fare better, but still underperform compared to their peers -- as best we can tell from the limited data, anyway. In the mid-'00s, about 70 percent of Native Hawaiians attending Hawaiian public schools graduated in four years, as compared to 78 percent of students statewide. For Native Americans, at least, these disparities are in large part the result of inadequate federal funding, to the point where some schools on Indian reservations are deteriorated and structurally dangerous. Native families live in overcrowded, poor-quality housing. Forty percent of Native Americans who live on reservations are in substandard housing. One-third of homes are overcrowded, and less than 16 percent have indoor plumbing. Housing on reservations is funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and administered and augmented by tribes, and has been historically underfunded, despite treaties and the trust responsibility of the federal government. Native patients receive inadequate health care. Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians face massive disparities in health as compared to the general population, suffering from high rates of diabetes, obesity, substance abuse and HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Although Native Americans and Alaska Natives are eligible to receive health care through Indian Health Services, nearly one in three are uninsured. Like many other federal agencies that serve Native people, IHS has historically been underfunded. Local IHS facilities often lack basic services like emergency contraception, in some cases forcing Native patients to travel hundreds of miles for treatment elsewhere. There's a dearth of capital and financial institutions in Native communities. Indian nations do not own their reservation lands. Rather, the lands are held in trust by the federal government. This prevents Native Americans who live on reservations from leveraging their assets for loans, making it difficult for them to start businesses or promote economic growth in the area. Compounding this problem, 14.5 percent of Native Americans are unbanked, and therefore lack the basic financial resources needed for economic prosperity. Credit: Andrew Burton/Getty Images Native Americans have the right to vote... but that's not always enough. Native Americans and Alaska Natives are often unable to vote because there are no polling places anywhere near them. Some communities, such as the Duck Valley Reservation in Nevada and the Goshute Reservation in Utah, are located more than 100 miles from the nearest polling place. These problems are compounded by high rates of illiteracy in some rural Native communities, such as the Yup’ik in Alaska, who primarily speak and read their native language because public education was not available in their region until the 1980s. There is an epidemic of youth suicide in Native communities. Suicide is the second most common cause of death for Native youth ages 15 to 24 -- two and a half times the national rate for that age group. In February, following a rash of suicides, the Oglala Lakota Nation in South Dakota declared a state of emergency. Credit: Saul Loeb/Getty Images Native languages are dying, and the U.S. government is doing little to help. Native languages are struggling to survive in the United States, with 130 "at risk," according to UNESCO, and another 74 "critically endangered." While some communities, such as the Native Hawaiians, the Anishinaabe and the Navajo, have had success preserving and revitalizing their languages, Native communities face obstacles from the testing and curriculum requirements of No Child Left Behind. And educators who want to teach young people about Native languages and cultures have to contend with a general lack of funding and resources. Many Native communities do not have their rights recognized by the federal government. Native Hawaiians, and members of many other Native communities throughout the U.S., have never received federal recognition of their rights as Native peoples. This deprives them of basic services, and even of the limited rights of self-governance available to other Native communities. Many tribes spend decades wading through Bureau of Indian Affairs paperwork, only to lose their petitions for recognition. Recently, however, the Obama administration announced that it would be streamlining the federal recognition process, making it easier for unrecognized Indian nations to secure their rights under the law. |
Dogecoin is making another appearance on the racetrack! The cybercurrency and Reddit.com are teaming up once again to help another driver in need and this time it’ll be going to the Australian V8 Supercar Series. The crowdfunding effort, which is called #SuperV8Doge, is aiming to sponsor Lee Holdsworth and his Erebus AMB Mercedes E63 racer to the Townsville 500 in July. The campaign’s initial goal of $50,000 will cover the cost of the car’s artwork, clothing items and pit wall, along with a media campaign. Commercial manager of Erebus Motorsport Jeff Reibel told speedcafe.com donations have already been secured for at least minor Dogecoin branding on the Mercedes vehicle, but it may go further. “From there, there are other levels of funding that go onto the bonnet and other major inventory on the car that can be achieved [through more donations], all the way up to the majoring branding packaging. “This is an opportunity to engage a whole new fan base online. We saw what happened with Josh Wise, who is a guy that doesn’t race full-time, beating Danica Patrick in the All-Star vote. More eyeballs to our sport and more interest in our sport can only lead to better outcomes for everyone.” According to the campaign’s website,”Media coverage before, during and after the event will be similar to that experienced with the Josh Wise #98 NASCAR entry. Supercar races have more TV exposure, with televised practice, qualifying and three races over the weekend, comprising the 500km total distance. There is a smaller field and the style of racing guarantees much more airtime. Erebus is a competitive team with an excellent chance of a podium finish. “The live national TV audience in Australia is around one million, with an additional audience on cable, and a potential reach internationally of 500 million, plus internet live feeds. There are also edited highlights shows.” Last month, Dogecoin teamed up with NASCAR driver Josh Wise for the big race in Talladega and placed 20th place. While discussing the not-so-great placing, Mr. Wise noted, “There was a last lap where I had a really great run coming to the white flag and had a few guys pushing me from behind. The No. 18 car kind of cut across the front of me and I had to let off to keep from basically wrecking him and probably 15 of us others including myself, so it kind of killed our momentum and we ended up 20th. But I thought we had a really good shot at a top 10 or top 5 there up until that point.” In regard to Dogecoin sponsoring him in future races, Mr. Wise added, “We’re trying to get that sponsorship on a consistent basis, you know, and that’s really going to take our team to the next level as far as being competitive. Whether that’s with Dogecoin or Reddit communities or however we get that, that’s definitely what we’re looking for.” |
A lot of people are new to vaporizing aromatic ground material and need a few learning lessons first. Vaporizing ground materials allows you to achieve healthy benefits without the cons of smoking. In fact vaporizing ground material emits a vapor that is 95% tar and carcinogen free. Being a common technique for consuming ground material, vaporizing negates many of the irritating respiratory toxins produced when ground material is smoked while still allowing psychoactive ingredients to be consumed in the vapor. Ground material contains over 120 different terpenes that are produced by natural plants. These are the flavor molecules ranging from pine, rosemary and mint to sweet citrus, mango and lime. The possibilities are endless and vaporizing allows you to taste these delicate molecules without damaging them when you burn aromatic ground material. Often, an ordorless and visually smokeless vapor is exhaled after using our vaporizing devices. |
In one year the average Indonesian earns slightly less than $3000. So, I have decided to raise $3000 in order to purchase as many handmade textiles as I can, at a fair price directly from the makers in this region. I will then create a collection of garments in collaboration with these talented fiber artists and they will be further encouraged to continue making art using traditional techniques and motifs. In planning for travel to Bali I naively and unconsciously assumed I would be visiting pristine beauty and unaltered culture. There are rural parts of this tiny island that remain unaffected by western influence, but the more populated areas are overrun with tourists and plastic trash. The tourist industry is Bali's primary source of income and as a result traditional vocations are becoming less common. Farmers are selling their rice fields to developers and becoming taxi drivers. Craftspeople can no longer sell their work for what it is worth because the markets are packed with machine-made, mass produced knickknacks that can be sold for a fraction of the price. Fortunately there are individuals and organizations in place that are effectively counteracting this movement and during the short time I am here I am doing what I can. Searching the markets for handmade textiles was a little like stalking Bigfoot. I did find a few pieces tucked in the very backs of booths, however overshadowed by cheap impostors. I had always planned on buying fabric during this trip, but I did not plan that I would be able to support the sustainable farming practices of cotton, the responsible harvesting of dye plants, and indigenous weavers and their endangered art forms in the process and I'm excited to do so. The two most commonly reproduced traditional fabrics in this region are Ikat and Batik. Batik fabric is traditionally made from hand spun cotton that is then woven into fabric. The fabric is then hand painted or stamped with wax in a pattern in order to resist coloring during the dye process. The wax process is then repeated multiple times in order to include multiple colors in the pattern. The result is an impressive textile with a clearly handmade feel. Ikat fabrics are made by tightly wrapping hand spun cotton threads with straw in order to resist dye in a specific pattern. They are then painstakingly dyed multiple times, each time unwrapping and re-wrapping the threads to have different parts of the pattern retain separate colors. Once the dye process is complete, the threads are then intricately woven into incredible works of art. Depending on the size of the piece, and whether the weaver is also a farmer, a finished textile can take anywhere from two weeks to one year to complete. Thank you for your support! *Thank you to Threads of Life for the use of a few pics, and to Seth Brown for helping me make this video with limited technology! Also, Justin, I literally could not have posted this project without you. |
The prodigal son returns to jiu jitsu! The 2015 edition of the World Professional Jiu Jitsu Championship in Abu Dhabi marked the return of the 3 time open weight world champion, Marcus “Buchecha” Almeida to the sport, and what a return it was. Buchecha put on a show, submitting all opponents on his way to the final against his former team mate Alexander Trans, and although the win came by the way of double leg takedown (2 points), Marcus was extremely entertaining throughout the match, not caring for points, always hunting for the submission in crowd pleasing fashion. The tournament had many exciting moments, the most famous woman in jiu jitsu, Gabi Garcia, showed up in tremendous shape, incredibly slim and faster than usual, making better use of her top game to dominate her weight division once again. The World Pro Championship did not go without surprises. Joao Miyao, one of the favorites to win the competition lost in his first round against Gilson Nunes, winner of the Natal trials in Brazil. Another favorite was Keenan Cornelius, Keenan started very well, winning by two points against a very game William Dias, then submitting the always game Victor Silverio and putting 7 points on the scoreboard against Clark Gracie. He would lose a tough referee decision to Victor Estima who had a fantastic tournament. For the open weight results click here. Below are the results of the tournament: BLACK BELT ADULT: Over 95KG, male Final: Marcus Almeida (2) x Alexander Trans (0) Champion’s run: Semi Final: Ricardo Evangelista (won by Guillotine) ¼ Final: Rodrigo Pereira (won by choke from the back) BLACK BELT ADULT: Under 95KG, male Final: Felipe Pena (8) x Jackson Sousa (2) Champion’s run: Semi Final: Luiz Panza (4×2) ¼ Final: Felipe “Gargamel” (Triangle) ⅛ Final: Erberth Santos (7×2) BLACK BELT ADULT: Under 85KG, male Final: Leandro Lo (0 pts, 2 advantages) x Victor Estima (0 pts, 0 advantages) Champion’s run: Semi Final: AJ Sousa (by points) ¼ Final: Felipe “Sagat” (Toe Hold) ⅛ Final: Igor Basílio (Cross Choke) Round 1: Max Carvalho (6×0) BLACK BELT ADULT: Under 75KG, male Final: Lucas Lepri (Choke from the back) x Gabriel Rollo Champion’s run: Semi Final: Roberto Satoshi (2×0) ¼ Final: AJ Agazarm (3×0) ⅛ Final: Ilke Bulut (Choke) BLACK BELT ADULT: Under 65KG, male Final: Gianni Grippo (1 advantage) x Isaque Paiva BLACK BELT ADULT: Over 75KG, female Final: Gabi Garcia (pts 0, advantages 3) vs Vanessa Oliveira (Pts 0, advantages 0) BLACK BELT ADULT: Under 75KG, female Final: Monique Elias (Pts 0, 1 advantage – Ref. decision) x Ana Laura Cordeiro (Pts 0, 1 advantage) BLACK BELT ADULT: Under 65KG, female Final: Bia Mesquita (armbar) x Jessica Cristina BLACK BELT ADULT: Under 55KG, female Final: Mackenzie Dern (2) x Michelle Nicolini (0) |
HAIRDRESSERS, plumbers, receptionists and teachers will be among workers set to get a huge boost to their retirement nest egg. The Senate last night approved the rise in compulsory employer superannuation from 9 per cent to 12 per cent as part of the mining tax package. New figures to be released today by the Federal Government reveal the change will add as much as 25 per cent to superannuation accounts over a person's working life. The increase applies across the workforce, regardless of income. A 22-year-old hairdresser will get an extra $99,448 at retirement age, 67, with the increase taking projected superannuation from $405,015 to about $504,463. The figures show a 25-year-old receptionist will have $94,487 more super, a 35-year-old plumber is in line for a $75,000 boost to their nest egg and a 40-year-old construction worker could get as much as $70,000 more. Even a 55-year-old school teacher - 12 years from retirement - stands to receive $12,000 more. The rise to 12 per cent will be phased in between 2013 and 2019. Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten said an average 30-year-old worker would gain about $110,000 when they retired. "The golden goal of lifetime income security will become significantly easier to achieve, thanks to the mining tax," Mr Shorten told the Herald Sun. "We know the mining boom is great news for the mining industry and the country - but we want to make sure those digging up Australian minerals are sharing their profits with average Australians." The package will also deliver a superannuation tax cut of up to $500 for workers earning less than $37,000 because the Government is abolishing the 15 per cent tax on super contributions. About two-thirds are women, who are mostly mothers working part-time. Some business groups have warned forcing employers to pay higher super could threaten jobs. The Coalition opposed the superannuation changes. It will scrap the $500 tax cut for low-income earners, but keep the increased super guarantee levy if it wins power. The Financial Services Council said increasing super from to 12 per cent would increase the national savings pot by $184 billion. The council's chief executive John Brogdon said more super would take pressure off the growing demand for the age pension. |
Tambrei’s 2.5K Makeup Giveaway!! Rules: 1. You must be subscribed to my YouTube beauty channel. 2. You must follow me on at least one other social media platform (Google+, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook) 3. You must comment how you found my channel on the giveaway video. 4. You must be 18+ or have your parent’s permission to enter. 5. This giveaway is open internationally. 6. You must enter with an email that you have access to, as I will only accept correspondence from that email. 7. If you unsubscribe after the giveaway ends, you will be disqualified from future giveaways. 8. Make sure to check back often for new ways to enter! 9. Enter the giveaway from this link: Prizes: One Too Faced Vegas Nay Star Dust palette One Anastasia Beverly Hills Self Made palette One Kat Von D Mi Vida Loca lipstick set One BH Cosmetics brush set One Too Faced blush Four Colour Pop items One hair jewelry One hair shimmer One Benefit makeup bag filled with various items Comments |
For a second weekend, groups who feed the homeless are expected to defy the city of El Cajon’s ban on feeding homeless people at Wells Park. El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells said no one was arrested last weekend when groups defied the ban by offering meals to the homeless at the park. Another round of protests is expected Saturday. “We’re not looking to arrest people," Wells said. "We’re not looking to make a big deal of this. We really think this is a very small situation. If people want to escalate this and make it a big deal, I guess we’re going to have to respond in kind.” The ban was put in place in October as part of a series of emergency measures in response to an outbreak of hepatitis A in San Diego County. Wells said the ban is temporary but will last until whenever public health officials declare the outbreak is over. Churches and pantries can still offer meals to the homeless at their locations, Wells said. Charles Eichel with Food Not Bombs said the city is targeting the victims. There is no evidence connecting serving meals in Wells Park to the outbreak. “We believe this ban is a violation of basic human rights," Eichel said. "We feel people have a right to eat to exist without reprisals from the state. And that a feeding ban is a pretty inhumane response to a public health crisis.” Jessica Carpenter has been homeless for five years. She said people count on the meals. “A lot of people come to this park, knowing there is food here," Carpenter said. "Knowing they are going to feed us. Knowing we have a meal coming. Some of us wake up and they don’t know when our next meal is coming and what it is going to be.” Food Not Bombs is advertising it will be at Wells Park at 3 p.m. Saturday to distribute food. title="Groups Plan To Defy El Cajon Homeless Feeding Ban For Second Week">Your browser does not support inline frames or is currently configured not to display inline frames. Content can be viewed at actual source page: https://www.youtube.com/embed/xXBvTNGAlcY A group called Food Not Bombs is planning to set up a feeding station for homeless people living in Wells Park on Saturday. Organizers say they want to call attention to a ban on feeding the homeless passed as a response to the hepatitis A outbreak. To view PDF documents, Download Acrobat Reader. |
Continue Reading Eight months later, the pattern of bites is still discernable. She pushes up the sleeves of her snowflake pajamas to reveal dark black circles that dot her arms like paint splatters. There are more on her shins, neck and chest. Sliding her left foot out of a well-worn navy-blue slipper, she points to the scar of the bite that started it all. "I finally decided I needed to go to the doctor," says McDonald, who has since moved to a different apartment. Her doctor diagnosed her with shingles, a blistering skin rash that generally affects one side of the body, and prescribed her an antibiotic. She took the entire dose, but her bites didn't fade. So she saw another doctor, who said it was a skin infection and prescribed ointment. When that didn't work either, her doctor asked if McDonald might have bedbugs. She hadn't seen any bugs or felt any bites, so she said no. "This was the first time the word 'bedbugs' had been mentioned," she says. The second time came soon after. McDonald's sister had been hanging out at McDonald's apartment every day and began getting red bites on her body. McDonald says her sister figured they were mosquito bites, but she made a doctor's appointment to be sure. The bites weren't from mosquitoes, the doctor said. They were from bedbugs. McDonald panicked. She called the apartment manager and asked for an exterminator. But she says she was told it would be two weeks. By that time, McDonald says, "I'm looking horrible. I'm looking like an AIDS-infested, ate-up person." She couldn't eat. And she certainly couldn't sleep. She started camping out on her couch and conducting middle-of-the-night bedbug raids in her bedroom, snatching off her sheets and inspecting every inch of her mattress and box spring for insects. She didn't find anything. In late summer, an exterminator finally came to her apartment. With a high-powered flashlight, he searched her darkened bedroom for bedbugs but found nothing. "At this point, I just want to die," McDonald says. She made an appointment with a dermatologist and implored the company that managed her apartment complex to hire another exterminator for a second opinion. They did, and that exterminator found what the other hadn't: a single bedbug. "When the guy showed me the one bedbug, I immediately felt like there were a million tiny bugs all over me," McDonald says. "I cried." Despite McDonald's uncommonly severe reaction to the bites, the exterminator determined that it was a mild infestation, and the management company paid for the spraying. "We take seriously any pest-control complaints we receive," says Brenda Wright, vice president of Utah-based Apartment Management Consultants, which runs 39 properties in Colorado, including the one where McDonald lived, in an e-mail. "We investigate those complaints immediately and act quickly to remediate the issue when warranted. If it is determined that a pest-control issue is valid, we immediately contact an exterminator." But a few weeks after the exterminator sprayed, McDonald says she saw another bedbug crawling on the side of her king-sized mattress. She asked the manager to schedule another spraying; when they hesitated, she called the city's 311 Help Center. Denver's bedbug infestation is said to be one of the worst in the nation. Last summer, pest-control giant Terminix ranked the city's problem No. 6 in the country based on the volume of calls to its offices. Meanwhile, Orkin ranked Denver No. 4, behind only Chicago and the Ohio cities of Columbus and Cincinnati. By Orkin's calculation, New York City -- commonly thought of as the bastion of the modern-day bedbug -- was No. 7. Denver doesn't keep its own statistics. But the city's housing code requires apartment owners and operators to keep their premises free of insects. If a tenant thinks a landlord is being delinquent, the tenant can complain to the city's Department of Environmental Health, which will send one of its four inspectors to investigate. The potential punishments are meek -- a citation and, rarely, a fine -- but records reveal that just the threat is often enough to make landlords (and tenants who'd rather live with vermin than let an exterminator through the door) comply with the code. The complaints also provide a snapshot of the city's bedbug problem. A review of city records by Westword found 305 complaints about bedbugs in 2010. Many were from residents of apartment buildings, reporting infestations. Fewer complaints came from guests of hotels and homeless shelters. A handful of callers reported infestations in Denver gyms, stores and single-family homes. One of the complaints was McDonald's. Two days after she called, a city housing inspector came out to look. He didn't find any bedbugs, but he did make sure that the manager scheduled a follow-up spraying. "Once I called that 311, it was like clockwork," McDonald says. ****** Karl Schiemann oversees the city's housing inspectors. At 46, he's tall, with Anderson Cooper-ish gray hair and blue eyes. A former chef, Schiemann became a food inspector sixteen years ago before switching to housing in 2007. It's the city's only complaint-driven inspection division, and because of that, Schiemann likes to repeat a saying: "There's your story and there's my story, and the truth lies somewhere in the middle." The complaint process works like this: A tenant calls 311 and is connected with a department intake worker who notes the caller's vital information: name, address, phone number. Then, in a sort of choppy shorthand, the intake worker documents the complaint: "Bed bugs. Clr threw away all beds and bedding. Now couch is full of them." "Bed bugs. Management refuses to spray." "Bed bugs. Clr states manager is aware but can't do anything more to help. Clr has had to sleep in her car to avoid getting bit." Within a day or two, the complaint is assigned to one of four inspectors, who makes an appointment to visit the property and look for the telltale signs of an infestation. For bedbugs, that means blood spots on sheets, tiny black dots of fecal matter clustered on the edges of mattresses, piles of translucent skins that the bedbugs shed like snakes, white eggs the size of dust specks, and, of course, bedbugs themselves, which are brownish-red, flat, and about as big as an apple seed. Bedbugs feed solely on the blood of animals -- humans, most often -- but since they're not known to transmit disease, their biggest downside may be the ick factor. The inspector uses a one-page form to document by hand what he or she finds. A typical entry looks like this: "3/18/10: Tenant at home. Provided and discussed bed bug pamphlet. Tenant said found about 4 bed bugs and informed management and was told pest control company due this afternoon. No sign of bed bugs. Spoke with property manager. She confirmed that American Pest Control will be servicing unit today." Most bedbug complaints are "unsubstantiated," which is one of three possible outcomes. The others are founded and unfounded. Only a founded complaint will trigger a citation, and if that doesn't work, a summons to court, where a judge can impose a fine on a landlord or an ornery tenant who blocks attempts at extermination. But court appearances are rare, Schiemann says. Most cases -- even unsubstantiated ones -- are closed after the property manager assures the inspector that a spraying has been scheduled. Of the 28 complaints Westword investigated closely, seventeen were unsubstantiated. But that doesn't necessarily mean the caller didn't have bedbugs. It's because proving a bedbug infestation is harder than proving other complaints. "They're so small," Schiemann says. "This one case I had, the lady thought she was going crazy. 'Pest control is out here, says I don't have any. Management isn't going to treat my property. But I'm just covered in bites.'...When she and I finally tore her bed completely apart, we found them." But ripping apart furniture is an exception. In cases where a tenant has evidence of bedbugs, he explains, "I don't go digging too much." (Schiemann says neither he nor any of his inspectors have ever brought bedbugs home with them. But he also doesn't make a habit of rolling around on infested beds or lounging on couches.) On a recent inspection of a neat, one-story brick house located on a quiet Denver street, Schiemann showed up around the same time as the Terminix man. Both men, armed with flashlights, poked around the owner's waterbed in search of evidence. The daughter of the 71-year-old man who lives there didn't want the location of the house or her father's name used in this story, though her father allowed Westword to tag along to the inspection. "He wanted to let people know it happens to the cleanest of people," she said of her father's infestation. "He wanted to help." ****** Melinda Covington coaxes a bedbug onto her left forearm -- the underside, where it's nice and smooth, because bedbugs don't like to navigate hair. The brown bug waddles around for a few seconds before settling on a spot in the middle of her arm, about a ruler's length from her manicured fingernails. "He's feeding," she says. "Yeah, his butt will go up and he'll kind of start trying to pump and work it a little bit," adds Jason Zetwick, operations director for BedBug Blasters, a company that Melinda and her husband, Chris, started a few months ago in Westminster that eliminates bedbugs with heat treatments. "So, notice his size right now. And then here in about five minutes, he's going to double in size and turn bright, bright red." Looking closely, it's possible to see where the bedbug's straw-like mouth part is inserted into Melinda's skin. But she can't feel a thing. That's because bedbugs inject their victims with a numbing agent that dulls the pain of being feasted upon. Heat treatment is pesticide-free and doesn't require a license. The science behind it is that bedbugs can't withstand temperatures above 120 degrees. So instead of using chemicals, none of which are 100 percent effective, companies have begun offering to essentially turn bug-ridden apartments into ovens and bake the bedbugs to death. (According to John Scott, the pesticides program manager for the Colorado Department of Agriculture, 57 new residential and commercial pest-control companies have opened in the state in the past three years, bringing the total to 176. That's a 45 percent increase.) "It only takes one minute at 122 degrees for a bedbug to die," Chris Covington says. For years, the Covingtons have owned two other companies: Purple Penguin Carpet Cleaning and Rapid Restoration, which provides services that range from drying flooded homes to removing raw sewage and cleaning up meth labs. He says they decided to start BedBug Blasters after realizing that the heaters they use to dry out flooded structures were the same ones being used to kill bedbugs through heat treatment. And to make sure all the bugs are obliterated, the BedBug Blasters crew will walk their new bedbug-sniffing dog, Bugsy, through a treated apartment two days later. Bugsy is a rescued beagle puppy trained at the National Entomology Scent Detection Canine Academy in Florida; detection dogs are 98 percent accurate at finding live bedbugs, according to a 2008 study by the University of Florida. Humans are much less accurate. To train Bugsy, the Covingtons keep a passel of live bedbugs, which need to be fed regularly, in a glass container that resembles a salt shaker but with smaller holes on top. Like a K9, Bugsy is a working dog; he only gets fed by his handlers, Chris Covington and Zetwick, and only if he "finds his Bs," the command for sniffing bedbugs. To keep Bugsy sharp, the men practice with him several times a day. On a recent morning, Zetwick, a bearded 33-year-old who grew up duck hunting with Labrador retrievers, prepares for a practice "hide." He straps on a fanny pack full of kibble and puts Bugsy on a leash. "You ready to go to work?!" he croons in an excited tone that's part schoolteacher, part baby talk. "Let's find the Bs! Let's find the Bs!" Bugsy begins sniffing as Zetwick leads him counter-clockwise around one of the offices in the industrial park where BedBug Blasters is located. Bugsy soon begins scratching at a filing cabinet, signaling to Zetwick that he smells bedbugs. Zetwick opens a drawer and pulls out a vial of live ones. "Good! Goo' boy!" he squeals. Innovation isn't cheap, however. Heat treatment starts at around $700 and can run up to several thousand dollars. Treating with pesticides generally costs less, though not always. For a lower fee -- $350 for up to six units -- BedBug Blasters will certify that an apartment is clean before anyone moves in. It's protection for the landlord, Chris Covington explains. "What we're saying to them is, have us walk Bugsy through the apartment and we can certify that it's bedbug-free. Then you can wash your hands of it." At least for a while. Bedbugs are wily creatures. Around for hundreds of years, they were practically eliminated in the 1940s and '50s due to the widespread use of DDT. But they've returned with a vengeance in the 21st century. Hearty as hell, a bedbug can survive for an entire year without a blood meal. They're also quick and efficient reproducers: A female can lay up to 500 eggs in her lifetime. That's why pest-control operators often say that a bedbug infestation is defined as one pregnant female. Bedbugs are easily spread. Though they can't fly or jump, they're excellent hitchhikers. "You could sit on a public bus and get bedbugs," says Michele Evans, the owner of Anchor Pest Control Services in Denver, an extermination business started by her dad eighteen years ago that offers both heat treatment and chemical treatment. "It doesn't matter who you are," she says. "You could be poor as poor or rich as rich. It's economically blind." In the past five years, Evans says the number of bedbug infestations her company has treated has grown exponentially. "It's endless," she says. "We've found them in pieces of luggage. We've found them in drapes. We've found them behind wallpaper." She tells the story of one woman who had such a bad infestation that they found bedbug skins in a jewelry box stashed in the top of her closet. She hadn't opened the box for ten years, but the bugs somehow found their way inside. "Bedbugs are going to be here," Evans adds. "If you don't know somebody today who has them, it's guaranteed that in the next year, you will." ****** The landlord sits at a table in the back of a charming coffee shop in upscale Larimer Square. Dressed in crisp business attire, he's nervous. He will talk to Westword only on the condition of anonymity. "It's just bad PR to have your name associated with a bedbug story," he explains, and this man's name is associated with several thousand units. Bedbugs started making themselves at home in his buildings about three years ago. Since then, he's spent gobs of money trying to eradicate them, using chemicals, heat treatments and dogs. "It comes down to hand-to-hand combat with those suckers," he says. But time and again, his efforts fail because the tenants don't do their part to stop the problem, he explains. They continue to dumpster-dive and pick up secondhand furniture. They're not vigilant about washing and drying their clothes at hot temperatures, and they don't vacuum and clean their apartments as required prior to extermination. "The residents feel like victims because they have all these bedbugs," the landlord says, "but we're the ones taking care of it." The city's housing code puts the onus on both the owner and the occupant. In the section titled "Extermination," it says that occupants shall maintain their dwellings free of insects. But the question of responsibility gets trickier in a multi-unit building. In that case, the code says that the occupant is responsible for extermination if their unit is "the unit primarily infested." In a case where two or more units are infested, extermination is the responsibility of "every owner and every operator" -- not the occupant. Of the 305 bedbug complaints recorded in Denver in 2010, most of the repeat offenders -- properties with more than three complaints -- were multi-unit apartment buildings. The pattern could be chalked up to simple math: More units equals more chances for complaints. Or it could be that bedbugs spread more easily in big buildings. Attracted to the carbon dioxide humans exhale during sleep, bedbugs who have lost their food source (perhaps because someone moved out) will seek a new one next door. Viviana Aguilar manages a 660-unit apartment complex in northeast Denver. Last year, the complex was the subject of six complaints from five different residents; one woman filed two complaints, four months apart. Her second complaint was recorded as this: "Bed bugs. Threw away children's beds. Sprayed twice but still present. Tried everything on her own to get rid of them herself. Caller 6mos pregnant." Aguilar says the apartment complex bears the cost of extermination, which she estimates at about $2,000 a month. For years, she only sprayed apartments whose residents complained. But after countless sprayings and re-sprayings, she found that method wasn't working. Inevitably, there'd be one resident who didn't mind living with bedbugs or who didn't want to bother with the elaborate pre-spraying preparation. Even if they rid the rest of the building of pests, that one untreated apartment would cause another widespread infestation. "It all depends on how your neighbor lives," she says. As of January 1, the complex has imposed a mandatory extermination policy, meaning that every single unit in all 64 buildings -- no exceptions -- will be treated, Aguilar says. Residents are given notice of when their apartment will be treated and assessed a $75 fine if they don't follow preparation instructions. "We won't get rid of the problem on one treatment," she says. "But at least we're going into every single unit and making sure it's not a sanitary problem. If it is, we take care of it by making sure the resident cleans up." Don Brennan, a partner at Denver-based Pinnacle Real Estate Management, says his company took a more aggressive approach. In July, Pinnacle assumed management of a 33-unit apartment building in Capitol Hill that was the subject of five complaints last year. One of the complaints was from Paul Farris, a 59-year-old former gardener who says he was once the assistant manager of the building. The company that managed the building before Pinnacle refused to thoroughly spray for bedbugs, Farris says. "You cannot spray just one apartment...and think you're going to get rid of them. If you spray one area, they span out. If you try to do a checkerboard, they go to the places where it hasn't been sprayed." Farris figures he picked up the bugs from his neighbors. As part of his job, he was constantly in and out of apartments, fixing leaky faucets and squeaky doors. The infestation was bad, he says. One of the residents, an older military veteran who was often hospitalized for diabetes, had a futon that was crawling with bugs. Farris describes a pouch on the underside of the futon, which was for storing the futon's detachable wooden feet. "You open up that pouch and there were so many bedbugs that started coming out, it was like an invasion force hitting the beach in Normandy," he says. In June, several residents called the city to complain. A city inspector determined that the complaints were founded and ordered the landlord to take care of it. "There is a bed bug infestation within this dwelling structure," the inspector wrote in a letter. "Live bed bugs were observed in units 108 and 109. Unit 104 is self-treating, 308 complained of bites, and 310 tenant provided numerous dead bed bugs in a pill bottle." That month, the building owners fired the old management company and hired Pinnacle, which spent $5,745 on extermination over a six-month period. But not without some heartache: Residents who refused to comply with mandatory spraying were evicted. "Most people don't want to live in an environment where it's dirty and there are bedbugs," Brennan says. "The people who do usually aren't your best tenants. We had to go through the process of moving people out who didn't want to deal with the problem." Now, Brennan says, the building has "a large percentage of new tenants." As for Pinnacle's policy regarding bedbug disclosure, he says, "If someone asked if the building had bedbugs, we would tell them. We'd also tell them, 'Here's what we've done to resolve the problem in the building.'" But total honesty can be bad for business. As the clandestine landlord in the coffee shop more delicately pointed out, nobody wants to live in a place that they know was once crawling with armies of bloodsucking bugs. ****** Nobody except, perhaps, Bob Hancock, Denver's own bedbug researcher. A 46-year-old biology professor at Metropolitan State College, Hancock describes himself on the jacket of his self-made documentary, "Mosquito Man: The Bedbugs of London," as a "filmmaker, entomologist and dynamo." Bald, fit and friendly, he rattles off facts about bedbugs with the excitement of a scientist and the patience of a teacher. Bedbugs aren't nocturnal, he'll tell you. They just don't like light. Fascinated with bloodsucking insects since he was a child growing up in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, he eventually went to graduate school to study entomology. There he had a professor who was obsessed with bedbugs. One day, Hancock walked into his professor's office to find him with his pant leg rolled up and a colony of bedbugs Velcroed to his thigh, feeding. Today, Hancock has a similar setup. Instead of a Velcro pouch, he has a glass jar with a piece of filter paper inside it. Crawling on top, under and all around it are close to a thousand bedbugs, the ancestors of which Hancock salvaged from an infestation in an Ohio nursing home in the 1990s. "If everybody was to feed right now, I'd have a thousand little needles stuck into my arm in this little patch," Hancock says. He's holding the jar upside down on his forearm, and the bedbugs are clambering to suck Hancock's blood through a screen on top. They haven't eaten since Thanksgiving. Hancock hasn't tried to measure Denver's bedbug infestation, a monumental undertaking. He doesn't fully trust the rankings by Terminix and Orkin, but he does say that he considers the problem here "significant." His proof? In his eighteen years as a professor in Kentucky, he only ever heard of two groups of students experiencing problems with bedbugs: a student studying abroad in London and some collegiate swimmers who picked them up from a hotel in Florida during spring break. College students are at higher risk, he explains, because they're transient and tend to live in multi-unit apartment buildings decorated with hand-me-down furniture. In his two and a half years at Metro, however, Hancock has heard dozens of stories from both students and colleagues alike. "I've had at least eight students who have personally brought me bedbugs," Hancock says. While his evidence may be anecdotal, it's hard not to trust his expertise. This is a man who ventured to London, a city with a rich bedbug history, in search of an infested hotel room in which to spend the night, and then kept the cameras rolling as bedbugs crept across the white sheets and lined up to feed on the underside of his arm like a row of nursing puppies. Along the way, he filmed up-close footage of bedbugs mating -- "Oh, my! Look at that! Right there! He's got her!" -- and of bedbugs pooping. "Sometimes they poo on each other! Look at that guy! He has a beautiful black beret of poo!" "It's almost like Indiana Jones meets Jeff Corwin," says Metro biology professor Sheryl Zajdowicz of Hancock's bedbug documentary. In the hour-long film, and in his previous self-produced documentary about mosquitoes, "Swamp Angels," he refers to himself as Mosquito Man. (He even has a catchy theme song, composed by his jazz-singer wife.) Zajdowicz, who specializes in molecular biology, and Hancock are teaming up to conduct a years-long experiment that will hopefully provide the Mile High City with some insight into its bedbug scourge. Using DNA sequencing, the scientists hope to determine where Denver's bedbugs are coming from. "Bedbugs move with people," Hancock explains. "We want to compare their genetics to see, is there a trend? Are we receiving them from one particular location?" Zajdowicz says. With help from students, Zajdowicz will compare the DNA of Denver bedbugs to the DNA of bedbugs from different locations around the country. "He likes to grow them and feed them," Zajdowicz says of Hancock, whom she calls "Bedbug Bob." "I like to smush them up and isolate their DNA." So far, the pair have collected bedbugs from ten sites around Denver. Zajdowicz hopes that in the end, they'll analyze hundreds. The results could help determine which treatment techniques are most effective here. Recent studies have shown that bedbugs are quickly evolving to withstand pesticides. New York bedbugs, for instance, are reportedly more than 250 times more resistant to certain chemicals than bedbugs in Florida, according to a study done at the University of Massachusetts. "If we can identify where they're coming from, we can understand how to treat them," Zajdowicz says. "Is it necessary to do heat treatment, which is expensive? If you have resistant ones, the pesticides may not be working." But for now, Hancock isn't thinking about killing bedbugs. He's thinking about keeping them alive. After twenty minutes of holding his screen-topped jar against his forearm, he pulls it away to reveal a dark red circle imprinted on his skin where the rim used to be. Inside it are hundreds of tiny red prick marks, evidence of the bedbugs' first square meal in more than two months. The bedbugs, bloated with blood, are scurrying around the jar like a colony of ants on a mission. Despite the bright fluorescent light that illuminates Hancock's small office, they're active, awake and looking to party. "They're amazing insects," Hancock coos. "They cause a lot of problems for a lot of people -- and I don't want them in my bed, necessarily -- but I think they're awesome." Unfortunately for the bedbug, he may be the only one. |
Six weeks into its freshman run, the CW’s midseason drama series Riverdale has received an early Season 2 renewal for 2017-18. While Riverdale‘s Live+Same Day ratings have been just OK (average of 1.16 million viewers, 0.4 in adults 18-49 on Thursday night), the Archie Comics drama has excelled in delayed and digital viewing, particularly in the young demos. It has been growing 78% in adults 18-34 and 85% in women 18-34 in Live+7 day ratings over L+SD and quickly becoming one of the CW’s most streamed shows on the network’s digital platforms, alongside mainstays like The Flash, The Vampire Diaries and Jane the Virgin. The early renewal decision also reflects the CW brass’ faith in the creative strength of Riverdale, which launched to strong reviews, and is another vote of confidence to the CW’s MVP producer Greg Berlanti, who is behind the series. Riverdale is the first freshman CW show this season to get a renewal. The network’s new fall entries, No Tomorrow and Frequency, are considered a very long shot unless either gets major traction with reruns on Netflix. Riverdale joins seven returning CW series that also received early renewals: Arrow (Season 6), The Flash (Season 4), DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (Season 3) and Supergirl (Season 3) — all produced by Berlanti — as well as veteran Supernatural and praised comedies Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (Season 3) and Jane the Virgin (Season 4). Based on the characters from Archie Comics, Riverdale is from Warner Bros. Television and CBS Television Studios, in association with Berlanti Productions, with executive producers Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Berlanti, Sarah Schechter and Jon Goldwater. Related2017 The CW Pilots |
There’s a place, tucked in the shadows of ethereal skyscrapers that represent Qatar’s immense wealth, where the smell of excrement is strong and men crouch around fetid latrines and drink salt water. When it’s time to sleep, the men squeeze into 13-by-13 rooms, each separated from the next with a one-inch wood panel. When it’s time to rise, they trudge into 105-degree heat so strong it can kill even healthy 25-year-olds. When it’s time to cook, they use stoves clogged with grease and grime. And when it’s time to relieve themselves? There’s a hole. The men have traveled far to get to this point — from Nepal, from India, from Bangladesh. Many of them paid thousands of dollars to a recruitment agency that promised a better life. Others have spent years away from their family. All came for the same purpose: To build facilities for the 2022 World Cup that will be hosted by Qatar, the richest country in the world by per capita income. Migrant laborers at a construction site in Doha, Qatar, in 2013. The 2022 World Cup host is under fire over claims of poor working conditions. (Karim Jaafar/AFP/Getty Images) The men die, say critics. They’ve died by the hundreds — and soon, they many die by the thousands. That was the conclusion of a report released last month by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) Since the World Cup was awarded to Qatar in 2010, it said, more than 1,200 men have died in preparations. It projected that if things don’t improve dramatically by 2022, more than 4,000 could die. Qatar has denied those figures, as well as the charges made by other investigations. “No one has died on World Cup projects,” the country’s organizing committee said. “The International Trade Union Confederation report is littered with factual errors and attempts to discredit the positive work we are undertaking.” The agency, however, does more than discredit the country. It has delivered a full-blown indictment. Qatar is a country without a conscience,” declares the report, which hasn’t spurred substantive reform in Qatar, according to the Daily Record. “Fundamental rights and freedoms do not exist for workers in Qatar whether for poor migrant workers or highly paid professional expatriates.” The men building the World Cup stadium definitely fall into the former category. And today, it appears they have no way out. They’re trapped in Qatar by a system called “kafala,” which governs migrant workers in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and a number of smaller Middle East states. It works like this: Workers are dependent upon their employers for sponsorship, and in return, employers have nearly complete control over them. They dictate whether a migrant employee lives in Qatar, or leaves the country, or changes jobs. Employers sometimes confiscate workers’ passports, all but imprisoning them. According to Migrant Rights, there are as many as 600,000 migrant workers “in conditions of forced labor” in the Middle East. Nearly 15,000 complaints of “unpaid wages and benefits” have emerged in Kuwait alone. But while the custom is relatively common across the Middle East, the Qatar World Cup is one of the first times kafala has come under international scrutiny during preparation for the globe’s most-publicized sporting event. By comparison, only seven workers were killed in the lead-up to Brazil’s World Cup, to be held this June. Two workers were killed before South Africa’s 2010 games. And before the Beijing Olympics, 10 workers died. What has gone so wrong in Qatar? It began with the migrant dream. After the nation of 2 million people — which consistently posts a per capita income of more than $100,000 — was awarded the World Cup in a controversial selection, recruiting agencies got to work. The average fee they charged was $1,000. For it, the agencies promised “high wages and good-working conditions in the Gulf,” the ITUC report says. “Of course, these promises [were] rarely realized. Workers often borrow large sums of money at high rates of interest to pay the recruitment fee. The outstanding debt is what forces workers to remain in abusive situations.” “We are trapped in a nightmare,” one World Cup worker told the Daily Record last week. “We are treated like animals, not human beings.” Heart attacks from working in temperatures that can easily top 105 degrees account for many of the deaths as well as “diseases from squalid living conditions,” the ITUC report states. Despite international condemnation, Qatar hasn’t moved to abolish kafala or protected the migrant workers in conditions that critics claim kill dozens each month. “After two full years of negotiations, Qatar has not demonstrated any serious intention to fix this and therefore we are now calling to FIFA to rerun the vote,” ITUC general secretary Sharan Burrow said. “If nothing changes,” Burrow added, “the World Cup will be a human tragedy.” |
Three strangers saved her and her friend’s life — and two of them died in doing so. On Friday, 16-year-old Destinee Mangum and her 17-year-old Muslim friend, who was wearing a hijab, were on a Portland, Oregon, light-rail train when a man — now identified as 35-year-old Jeremy Joseph Christian — yelled what police described as “hate speech toward a variety of ethnicities and religions.” Mangum and her friend moved away from the man, fearing for their lives. Strangers intervened, telling the man he couldn’t disrespect the girls like that. What started as an argument suddenly turned violent, however, as Christian allegedly began stabbing people. Ricky John Best, a 53-year-old military veteran, and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, a 23-year-old who graduated from Reed College last year, died as a result of their wounds. Micah Fletcher, 21, is being treated at a hospital after he was seriously injured, according to CNN. In an interview with local news station Fox 12, Mangum’s mother, Dyjuana Hudson, thanked the people who protected her daughter. “I want to say thank you so much,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine what you’re going through right now as far as losing someone.” Christian, meanwhile, was caught after several people chased after him and called 911, directing police to him. He’s charged with two counts of aggravated murder and one count of attempted murder. It’s unclear if Christian will be charged with a hate crime, but he has a history of racist actions. Police said he went on a racist tirade on a train the day before the attack, but nothing was done about that incident. On his Facebook page, he appeared to support Nazis and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, according to CBS News. The attack is particularly awful as it comes during the beginning of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. More broadly, it’s just the latest act in what seems like a wave of hate crimes following President Donald Trump’s election in November. Trump condemned the Portland attack on Twitter, but his racist, Islamophobic, and anti-immigrant rhetoric on the campaign trail has been widely criticized as a reason for a potential uptick in such bigoted acts. Earlier in May, Sean Urbanski, who’s white, stabbed and killed Richard Collins, who’s black, at the University of Maryland. And before that, there were reports of mosques being burned, violent attacks against Indians, and a drive-by shooting at the Tulsa, Oklahoma, headquarters for the LGBTQ organization Oklahomans for Equality. Not all of these attacks have been verified as acts motivated by bigotry or directly linked to Trump, but they’re certainly a cause for alarm. So is America experiencing a rise in hateful attacks? The unsettling truth is we just don’t know — in large part because the US does such a bad job tracking hate crimes nationally that it’s hard to find any good statistics to compare the current figures to. But the numbers we do have suggest that certain groups, particularly Muslims, have faced more hate in the past several years. Is there a rise in hate crimes in America? We don’t really know. The latest report from the FBI found that there was a 7 percent rise in reported hate crimes in 2015, driven in large part by a 67 percent rise in reported hate crimes against Muslims. That certainly seems to suggest that there has been an increase. But the FBI data isn’t very good. For one, the FBI relies on voluntary reports from police departments. So police departments might not report their data on hate crimes — which “manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, gender and gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity” — to the FBI. (A 2016 Associated Press investigation found this is common.) Worse, police departments themselves may not track hate crimes at all, or victims may not report the crimes to the police, leaving departments in the dark. “You cannot tell if hate crimes are going up year over year from the FBI reports,” Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the civil rights group Southern Poverty Law Center, previously told me. “It is not possible.” Consider one statistic: Over the past two decades, the FBI reported between 6,000 and 10,000 hate crime incidents each year in the US. But when the US Bureau of Justice Statistics surveyed a large segment of the population between 2007 and 2011 to try to gauge what the real number of hate crimes is, it concluded that there are nearly 260,000 annually. This means that the FBI is potentially undercounting hate crimes by a magnitude of more than 40 times. “If there are 10,000 hate crimes a year, that’s a lot, but perhaps it’s not a major social problem in a country of 320 million people,” Potok said. “If on the other hand there are a quarter million or even 300,000 hate crimes a year, it begins to look different. It begins to look like maybe we need to take this seriously as a society and put serious resources toward it.” The Bureau of Justice Statistics also found that only 35 percent of hate crimes are ultimately reported to the police, meaning that cops are unaware of roughly two-thirds of hate crimes in their communities. There are some problems with the BJS data. For one, it relies solely on victims’ reports of offenses against them, so the reports aren’t fully verified. It also only counts nonfatal hate crimes, since victims of fatalities obviously can’t report a crime. So it’s likely overestimating some hate crimes and underestimating others. But the BJS also doesn’t do its hate crime report every year — leaving it solely to the FBI to find out and report what’s happening on an annual basis. Potok said it’s probably possible to draw some inferences from within the FBI data. For example, since the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes rose by so much in proportion to all hate crimes, there probably is something going on there. But it’s hard to say what the exact depth of the problem is without more accurate figures. This, obviously, presents a big hurdle to preventing hate crimes. The first thing you need to know to fix a problem is what, exactly, the problem is. We don’t even know for sure, at least on a yearly basis, how many hate crimes there are in America. But we also don’t know where the attacks are happening or who’s targeted. At the very least, it seems like getting the Bureau of Justice Statistics to conduct its report on hate crimes annually, much like it does for crime overall, would be a good start. But it also seems like this is something police departments should take more seriously, in terms of both seeking out and preventing potential hate crimes in their communities and reporting what they find to the FBI. Prosecuting hate crimes is fairly difficult Even when a victim does report a hate crime, it can be fairly difficult for police and prosecutors to prove the charges. The first big question is whether your state actually has a hate crime law. The federal government has a hate crime law that bans crimes based on race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability, but some places don’t have such laws at the state level. That presents a major challenge: While the federal government will take on some of these cases, it doesn’t have the resources to enforce its law against all hate crimes nationwide — so a gap in state laws means some hate crimes will go unpunished. If a state does have a hate crime law or federal law enforcement gets involved in a case, the important thing here is that someone must commit an actual crime to be charged with a hate crime. That crime can then be elevated to a hate crime if there’s enough evidence to suggest that the motive for the act was hate. But if no crime was committed in the course of someone doing something hateful, it’s a hateful act, but not a hate crime. “It could be an act of trespassing or vandalism. It could be a violent crime, like rape or murder,” Jack Levin, an expert on hate crimes at Northeastern University, previously told me. “But when the motive involves targeting someone because of a difference, then it becomes a hate crime.” An example: A man walks into a lesbian bar and attacks one of the women there. This attack would be considered assault and battery, maybe even attempted murder, under the law. But would it be a hate crime? For a prosecutor and police officers, there would be several factors to consider before going after the perpetrator on hate crime charges: Did the attacker yell anti-gay or sexist slurs, or otherwise say anything explicitly anti-gay or sexist? Does the attacker have a history, perhaps on social media or in other writings, of homophobia or sexism? Did the attacker purposely target a lesbian bar, or was the location irrelevant to his actions? Investigators would piece all of this together, building up evidence to decide if there’s enough to meet standards of proof for a hate crime charge and conviction. There’s no hard rule here, and whether something is deemed a hate crime can vary from officer to officer, prosecutor to prosecutor, judge to judge, or jury to jury. But generally, once there’s a certain threshold of evidence that the attack was motivated by hate, an otherwise run-of-the-mill crime can become a hate crime. Now, if a man walked by a lesbian bar and simply yelled anti-gay slurs but didn’t attack anyone, that wouldn’t qualify as a hate crime. His speech, as reprehensible as it may be, would be protected by the Constitution. Until he commits an actual crime, his act can’t be additionally prosecuted as a hate crime. The idea, essentially, is to take extraordinary steps against crimes that can go much further than harming individual victims. “If someone assaults me because they want my money, it’s going to affect me, it’s going to affect my wife, it’s going to affect my family,” Toni Bisconti, a University of Akron professor who studies hate crimes, previously told me. “But if someone assaults me because they know I’m gay, then all of a sudden it’s going to affect people that don’t even know me. They have no idea who I am. I’m just the conduit to gay people [in that situation].” The focus on motives in these cases can get into some legally and philosophically murky territory: Does focusing so much on what’s in a criminal’s mind allow the government to regulate a person’s free speech and expression? Bisconti acknowledged that such a concern has some merit. Although she said she probably comes down in support of hate crime laws, she acknowledged, “I’m not sure it’s right to legislate someone’s brain.” Jeannine Bell, a scholar on hate crimes at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law, took a different view, arguing that it’s not really about a person’s speech or ideas but the person’s actions. “It’s not just that you dislike people of my background. You’re entirely free to dislike people of my background. It’s not that you tell me that you don’t like me. Again, entirely free to do that,” Bell said. “It’s that you selected me for some sort of criminal action because of my background.” Whatever one’s view on this debate, the central focus of hate crimes — what elevates them above other crimes — is the criminal’s motive. Hate crime laws send a countermessage to bigotry But do hate crime laws actually deter hateful acts? Every hate crime expert I spoke to agreed that hate crime laws probably don’t deter any crimes. And they said there’s no good research settling this question one way or the other. “I don’t think that perpetrators think about whether they’re going to commit a hate crime, look to see whether there’s a law that can be punished, and then don’t commit the hate crime when they learn it could be punished,” Bell said. “That doesn’t make sense to me.” But to my surprise, experts said it doesn’t matter if hate crime laws actually deter crime. For one, hate crime laws do more than just enhance criminal penalties for committing otherwise typical criminal acts. They often devote funds to police departments — so they can, for example, set up an LGBTQ liaison who works closely with the community to ensure people feel safe. They also label these acts as a very specific kind of vile crime, encouraging law enforcement to take the issue more seriously. “By making it a hate crime, you call attention to it in the minds of police [and] in the minds of prosecutors,” Bell said. She said, for instance, that most hate crimes are low-level — the kinds of crimes that police and prosecutors may not pay attention to. But once these low-level acts are defined as hate crimes, then they get attention. Bisconti agreed: “Hate crime legislation allowed groups that don’t feel safe with police officers to come forward, and for police officers to understand that this really is a group that’s targeted.” More broadly, hate crime laws also send societal signals against hate. Hate crimes are, experts said, message crimes against certain groups of people. Hate crime laws act as a countermessage to that bigotry. “Hate crime laws have important symbolic meaning,” Levin said. “Hate crimes are message crimes — that is, they send a message not only to the primary victim but to every member of this group.” He added, “That’s the kind of message that has to be counteracted. And I think hate crime laws do that. They send a message to two groups: They send it to the perpetrator, informing him that our community will not tolerate his intolerance. And then at the same time, they send a message to potential victims that they are welcome in our community.” To the extent that hate crime laws increase prison sentences, some of the experts I spoke to didn’t see much of the value in the enhanced penalties. Levin, for one, cited the empirical evidence against expanding prison sentences. The research suggests that severity of punishment doesn’t do much to prevent crime. As the National Institute of Justice concluded in 2016, “Research shows clearly that the chance of being caught is a vastly more effective deterrent than even draconian punishment. … Research has found evidence that prison can exacerbate, not reduce, recidivism. Prisons themselves may be schools for learning to commit crimes.” In other words, more certainty of punishment can deter crime, while more severity — through longer prison sentences — can actually make crime worse. Generally, though, experts said that hate crimes serve a purpose even if they don’t do much to actually deter crime — by giving marginalized communities resources to fight back and sending a message to criminals that bigotry isn’t accepted. Following the Portland attack and Trump’s election, some communities are finding those protections, however limited, more necessary. |
Imagine if there were a type of birth control that could be activated by a button. A German carpenter invented a device that sounds like it came straight from science fiction—male contraception that allows a man to turn his sperm flow off and on with just a flick of a switch. Clemens Bimek first came up with the idea of a spermatic duct valve around 20 years ago while watching a documentary about contraception. According to German magazine Spiegel (via The Telegraph), Bimek filed a patent in 2000, then built the first prototype of the Bimek SLV in 2006. “Many of the doctors I consulted didn’t take me seriously. But there were some who encouraged me to go on tinkering and helped me with their expertise,” he said. During a half-hour operation, tiny valves are implanted in the vas deferens and controlled by a switch that is easily accessed by hand through the scrotum skin. The Bimek SLV website describes the switch as being “as small as a gummy bear.” When the valve is closed, sperm cells are prevented from being released during ejaculation, leaving the seminal fluid sterile. The result is similar to a vasectomy, except the patient can allow the sperm to flow at any time whereas vasectomies sometimes cannot be reversed. Some doctors have questioned the safety of the device. “My assessment is that implanting the valve could cause scarring where it meets the vas deferens,” Wolfgang Bühmann, spokesman for the Professional Association of German Urologists, said. He is concerned that potential scarring may prevent sperm from flowing even if the valve is switched open, and that the valve may become clogged if it is switched closed for too long. So far, the only person who has tried the device is Bimek himself. Under local anesthetic, he was able to guide the surgeon during his own operation, which proved to be successful. The valve is set to be implanted in 25 men during trials starting this year. Advertisement Contact the author at marie.lodi@jezebel.com. |
Sentry: "We spotted an Arab female about a hundred meters below our emplacement, near the light armored vehicle gate." Headquarters: "Observation post ! Do you see IT?" Observation Post: "Affirmative, IT'S a young girl. She's now running east." HQ: "What is her position?" OP: "She's currently north of the authorized zone." Sentry: "Very appropriate location." ( Sound of gunfire) OP: "She's now behind an embankment, 250 meters from the barracks, She keeps running east. The hits are right on her." HQ: "Are you talking about the girl...a girl under ten?" OP: "Approximately a ten-year old girl." HQ: "Roger." OP to HQ: "Receiving, over." OP: "She's behind the embankment, dying of fear, the hits are right on her, a centimeter from her." Sentry: "Our troops are storming toward her now. They are around seventy meters from her." HQ: "I understand that the company commander and his squad are out?" Sentry: "Affirmative, with a few more soldiers." OP: "Receive. Looks like one of the positions dropped her." HQ: "What? Did you see the hit? Is she down?" OP: "She's down. Right now she isn't moving. Me and another soldier are going in." ( To the squad) "Forward to confirm the kill!" Company Commander to (HQ): "We fired and killed her. She has...is wearing pants...jeans and a vest, shirt. Also, she had a kaffiyeh on her head. I also confirm the kill. Over." HQ: "Roger." CC: (on general communications band) "Any motion, anyone who moves in the zone, even if it's a three-year old, should be killed. Over." ***The Palestinian school girl in the forbidden zone was hit by 17 bullets. -Rafah, ("In the Zone", Harpers Magazine, May 2005 Image: - Unknown Artist, "Hounds Chasing A Hare," Life Magazine, 1900). |
The Apple Siri servers for the iPhone 4S have gone down, meaning that at the time of writing he/she is refusing to give any answers. The apologetic assistant is unable to do anything at present, including checking appointments, searching the web or making alarms. A Twitter search reveals that the Siri network is down in swathes of Europe, as well as South Korea. Apple, obviously preparing for the worst, has imbued Siri with several different apologies ranging from “There’s something wrong” to “I can’t take any requests right now.” This isn’t the first time Apple’s voice assistant has gone down; outages have been reported every now and again over the past few months, with no explanation as to why. There’s no word from Apple as to how long this Siri outage will last or what’s causing the problem, but we’ll keep you posted on Twitter, @electricpig |
Image caption There has been intense speculation about Mario Monti's possible role in elections Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti says he is not siding for now with any party in upcoming elections, but remains available to head a future government. Mr Monti said he was ready to lead any coalition committed to his reforms. The caretaker prime minister said he was unable to accept an offer from former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to lead a centrist coalition. Elections are to be held in February. Mr Monti resigned after Mr Berlusconi's party withdrew its support. Mr Monti was nominated as technocratic prime minister in November 2011, after Mr Berlusconi's centre-right coalition government fell amidst a financial and economic crisis. Speaking at a news conference in Rome, Mr Monti urged Italian parties not to destroy what he said was his government's achievement in saving Italy from that crisis. "That financial emergency has been overcome," he said. "Italians can once again hold their heads high as citizens of Europe." Keeping options open Asked repeatedly if he was going to run in the 24-25 February election, Mr Monti said he cared more about policies than about the personalities involved in the election. "I'm not siding with anyone - I'd like parties and social forces to side with ideas," he said. But he added: "To the forces that show convinced and credible adherence to the Monti agenda, I would be ready to give my advice, my encouragement and if necessary leadership," he said. "I would also be ready to assume one day, if required by circumstances, the responsibilities that would be entrusted to me by the parliament." The BBC's David Willey says Mr Monti, whose possible role in February's election has been the subject of intense speculation in Italy, is playing his cards close to his chest - whilst keeping his options open. Mr Monti, 69, is an economist and former EU commissioner who first served as a minister under Mr Berlusconi in 1994. His government has been praised for its initial reforms and for calming financial markets, though much of its reform agenda has been watered down or blocked. On Sunday, he appealed to parties to push through further reforms of Italy's labour market and its institutions. He also criticised Mr Berlusconi for recently attacking the technocratic government, despite having previously praised it. "I struggle to follow his line of thought," Mr Monti said. Mr Berlusconi, 76, has been mired in a series of sexual and financial scandals. He made conflicting statements about whether he would remain in politics before launching into his sixth general election campaign. Current polls suggest the centre-left Democratic Party led by Pier Luigi Bersani would win the most votes in a general election. |
The Idea in Brief In the hypercompetition for breakthrough solutions, managers worry too much about characteristics and personality—“Am I smart enough? Do I have the right temperament?”—and not enough about process. A commitment to the systematic search for imaginative and useful ideas is what successful entrepreneurs share—not some special genius or trait. What’s more, entrepreneurship can occur in a business of any size or age because, at heart, it has to do with a certain kind of activity: innovation, the disciplined effort to improve a business’s potential. Most innovations result from a conscious, purposeful search for opportunities—within the company and the industry as well as the larger social and intellectual environment. A successful innovation may come from pulling together different strands of knowledge, recognizing an underlying theme in public perception, or extracting new insights from failure. The key is to know where to look. The Idea in Practice Successful entrepreneurs don’t wait for innovative ideas to strike like a lightning bolt. They go out looking for innovation opportunities in seven key areas: 1. Unexpected occurrences. These often include failures. Few people know, for instance, that the failure of the Edsel led Ford to realize that the auto market was now segmented by lifestyle instead of by income group. Ford’s response was the Mustang, and an auto legend was born. 2. Incongruities. By the 1960s, cataract removal had become high-tech, except for cutting a ligament, an “old-fashioned” step that was uncomfortable for eye surgeons. Alcon Laboratories responded by modifying an enzyme that dissolved the ligament. Surgeons immediately accepted the new product, giving Alcon a monopoly. 3. Process needs. Two process innovations developed around 1890 created “the media” as we know it today: linotype made it possible to produce newspapers quickly, and advertising made it possible to distribute news practically free of charge. 4. Industry and market changes. The brokerage firm Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette achieved fabulous success because its founders recognized that the emerging market for institutional investors would one day predominate in the industry. 5. Demographic changes. Why are the Japanese ahead in robotics? Around 1970, everyone knew that there was both a baby bust and an education explosion, such that the number of blue-collar manufacturing workers would decline. Everyone knew—but only the Japanese took action. 6. Changes in perception. Such changes don’t alter the facts, but can dramatically change their meaning. Americans’ health has never been better—yet we’re obsessed with preventing disease and staying fit. Innovators who understand our perception of health have launched magazines, introduced health foods, and started exercise classes. 7. New knowledge. Knowledge-based innovations require long lead times and the convergence of different kinds of knowledge. The computer required knowledge that was available by 1918, but the first operational digital computer did not appear until 1946. Purposeful innovation begins with looking, asking, and listening. Talent and expert knowledge help, but don’t be deluded by all the stories about flashes of insight. The key task is to work out analytically what the innovation has to be in order to satisfy a particular opportunity. How much of innovation is inspiration, and how much is hard work? If it’s mainly the former, then management’s role is limited: Hire the right people, and get out of their way. If it’s largely the latter, management must play a more vigorous role: Establish the right roles and processes, set clear goals and relevant measures, and review progress at every step. Peter Drucker, with the masterly subtlety that is his trademark, comes down somewhere in the middle. Yes, he writes in this article, innovation is real work, and it can and should be managed like any other corporate function. But that doesn’t mean it’s the same as other business activities. Indeed, innovation is the work of knowing rather than doing. Drucker argues that most innovative business ideas come from methodically analyzing seven areas of opportunity, some of which lie within particular companies or industries and some of which lie in broader social or demographic trends. Astute managers will ensure that their organizations maintain a clear focus on all seven. But analysis will take you only so far. Once you’ve identified an attractive opportunity, you still need a leap of imagination to arrive at the right response—call it “functional inspiration.” Despite much discussion these days of the “entrepreneurial personality,” few of the entrepreneurs with whom I have worked during the past 30 years had such personalities. But I have known many people—salespeople, surgeons, journalists, scholars, even musicians—who did have them without being the least bit entrepreneurial. What all the successful entrepreneurs I have met have in common is not a certain kind of personality but a commitment to the systematic practice of innovation. Innovation is the specific function of entrepreneurship, whether in an existing business, a public service institution, or a new venture started by a lone individual in the family kitchen. It is the means by which the entrepreneur either creates new wealth-producing resources or endows existing resources with enhanced potential for creating wealth. Today, much confusion exists about the proper definition of entrepreneurship. Some observers use the term to refer to all small businesses; others, to all new businesses. In practice, however, a great many well-established businesses engage in highly successful entrepreneurship. The term, then, refers not to an enterprise’s size or age but to a certain kind of activity. At the heart of that activity is innovation: the effort to create purposeful, focused change in an enterprise’s economic or social potential. Sources of Innovation There are, of course, innovations that spring from a flash of genius. Most innovations, however, especially the successful ones, result from a conscious, purposeful search for innovation opportunities, which are found only in a few situations. Four such areas of opportunity exist within a company or industry: unexpected occurrences, incongruities, process needs, and industry and market changes. Three additional sources of opportunity exist outside a company in its social and intellectual environment: demographic changes, changes in perception, and new knowledge. True, these sources overlap, different as they may be in the nature of their risk, difficulty, and complexity, and the potential for innovation may well lie in more than one area at a time. But together, they account for the great majority of all innovation opportunities. 1. Unexpected Occurrences Consider, first, the easiest and simplest source of innovation opportunity: the unexpected. In the early 1930s, IBM developed the first modern accounting machine, which was designed for banks. But banks in 1933 did not buy new equipment. What saved the company—according to a story that Thomas Watson, Sr., the company’s founder and long-term CEO, often told—was its exploitation of an unexpected success: The New York Public Library wanted to buy a machine. Unlike the banks, libraries in those early New Deal days had money, and Watson sold more than a hundred of his otherwise unsalable machines to libraries. Fifteen years later, when everyone believed that computers were designed for advanced scientific work, business unexpectedly showed an interest in a machine that could do payroll. Univac, which had the most advanced machine, spurned business applications. But IBM immediately realized it faced a possible unexpected success, redesigned what was basically Univac’s machine for such mundane applications as payroll, and within five years became a leader in the computer industry, a position it has maintained to this day. The unexpected failure may be an equally important source of innovation opportunities. Everyone knows about the Ford Edsel as the biggest new-car failure in automotive history. What very few people seem to know, however, is that the Edsel’s failure was the foundation for much of the company’s later success. Ford planned the Edsel, the most carefully designed car to that point in American automotive history, to give the company a full product line with which to compete with General Motors. When it bombed, despite all the planning, market research, and design that had gone into it, Ford realized that something was happening in the automobile market that ran counter to the basic assumptions on which GM and everyone else had been designing and marketing cars. No longer was the market segmented primarily by income groups; the new principle of segmentation was what we now call “lifestyles.” Ford’s response was the Mustang, a car that gave the company a distinct personality and reestablished it as an industry leader. Unexpected successes and failures are such productive sources of innovation opportunities because most businesses dismiss them, disregard them, and even resent them. The German scientist who around 1905 synthesized novocaine, the first nonaddictive narcotic, had intended it to be used in major surgical procedures like amputation. Surgeons, however, preferred total anesthesia for such procedures; they still do. Instead, novocaine found a ready appeal among dentists. Its inventor spent the remaining years of his life traveling from dental school to dental school making speeches that forbade dentists from “misusing” his noble invention in applications for which he had not intended it. This is a caricature, to be sure, but it illustrates the attitude managers often take to the unexpected: “It should not have happened.” Corporate reporting systems further ingrain this reaction, for they draw attention away from unanticipated possibilities. The typical monthly or quarterly report has on its first page a list of problems—that is, the areas where results fall short of expectations. Such information is needed, of course, to help prevent deterioration of performance. But it also suppresses the recognition of new opportunities. The first acknowledgment of a possible opportunity usually applies to an area in which a company does better than budgeted. Thus genuinely entrepreneurial businesses have two “first pages”—a problem page and an opportunity page—and managers spend equal time on both. 2. Incongruities Alcon Laboratories was one of the success stories of the 1960s because Bill Conner, the company’s cofounder, exploited an incongruity in medical technology. The cataract operation is the world’s third or fourth most common surgical procedure. During the past 300 years, doctors systematized it to the point that the only “old-fashioned” step left was the cutting of a ligament. Eye surgeons had learned to cut the ligament with complete success, but it was so different a procedure from the rest of the operation, and so incompatible with it, that they often dreaded it. It was incongruous. Doctors had known for 50 years about an enzyme that could dissolve the ligament without cutting. All Conner did was to add a preservative to this enzyme that gave it a few months’ shelf life. Eye surgeons immediately accepted the new compound, and Alcon found itself with a worldwide monopoly. Fifteen years later, Nestlé bought the company for a fancy price. Such an incongruity within the logic or rhythm of a process is only one possibility out of which innovation opportunities may arise. Another source is incongruity between economic realities. For instance, whenever an industry has a steadily growing market but falling profit margins—as, say, in the steel industries of developed countries between 1950 and 1970—an incongruity exists. The innovative response: minimills. An incongruity between expectations and results can also open up possibilities for innovation. For 50 years after the turn of the century, shipbuilders and shipping companies worked hard both to make ships faster and to lower their fuel consumption. Even so, the more successful they were in boosting speed and trimming their fuel needs, the worse the economics of ocean freighters became. By 1950 or so, the ocean freighter was dying, if not already dead. All that was wrong, however, was an incongruity between the industry’s assumptions and its realities. The real costs did not come from doing work (that is, being at sea) but from not doing work (that is, sitting idle in port). Once managers understood where costs truly lay, the innovations were obvious: the roll-on and roll-off ship and the container ship. These solutions, which involved old technology, simply applied to the ocean freighter what railroads and truckers had been using for 30 years. A shift in viewpoint, not in technology, totally changed the economics of ocean shipping and turned it into one of the major growth industries of the last 20 to 30 years. 3. Process Needs Anyone who has ever driven in Japan knows that the country has no modern highway system. Its roads still follow the paths laid down for—or by—oxcarts in the tenth century. What makes the system work for automobiles and trucks is an adaptation of the reflector used on American highways since the early 1930s. The reflector lets each car see which other cars are approaching from any one of a half-dozen directions. This minor invention, which enables traffic to move smoothly and with a minimum of accidents, exploited a process need. What we now call the media had its origin in two innovations developed around 1890 in response to process needs. One was Ottmar Mergenthaler’s Linotype, which made it possible to produce newspapers quickly and in large volume. The other was a social innovation, modern advertising, invented by the first true newspaper publishers, Adolph Ochs of the New York Times, Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World, and William Randolph Hearst. Advertising made it possible for them to distribute news practically free of charge, with the profit coming from marketing. 4. Industry and Market Changes Managers may believe that industry structures are ordained by the good Lord, but these structures can—and often do—change overnight. Such change creates tremendous opportunity for innovation. One of American business’s great success stories in recent decades is the brokerage firm of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, recently acquired by the Equitable Life Assurance Society. DL&J was founded in 1960 by three young men, all graduates of the Harvard Business School, who realized that the structure of the financial industry was changing as institutional investors became dominant. These young men had practically no capital and no connections. Still, within a few years, their firm had become a leader in the move to negotiated commissions and one of Wall Street’s stellar performers. It was the first to be incorporated and go public. In a similar fashion, changes in industry structure have created massive innovation opportunities for American health care providers. During the past ten or 15 years, independent surgical and psychiatric clinics, emergency centers, and HMOs have opened throughout the country. Comparable opportunities in telecommunications followed industry upheavals—in transmission (with the emergence of MCI and Sprint in long-distance service) and in equipment (with the emergence of such companies as Rolm in the manufacturing of private branch exchanges). When an industry grows quickly—the critical figure seems to be in the neighborhood of 40% growth in ten years or less—its structure changes. Established companies, concentrating on defending what they already have, tend not to counterattack when a newcomer challenges them. Indeed, when market or industry structures change, traditional industry leaders again and again neglect the fastest growing market segments. New opportunities rarely fit the way the industry has always approached the market, defined it, or organized to serve it. Innovators therefore have a good chance of being left alone for a long time. 5. Demographic Changes Of the outside sources of innovation opportunities, demographics are the most reliable. Demographic events have known lead times; for instance, every person who will be in the American labor force by the year 2000 has already been born. Yet because policy makers often neglect demographics, those who watch them and exploit them can reap great rewards. The Japanese are ahead in robotics because they paid attention to demographics. Everyone in the developed countries around 1970 or so knew that there was both a baby bust and an education explosion going on; about half or more of the young people were staying in school beyond high school. Consequently, the number of people available for traditional blue-collar work in manufacturing was bound to decrease and become inadequate by 1990. Everyone knew this, but only the Japanese acted on it, and they now have a ten-year lead in robotics. Much the same is true of Club Mediterranee’s success in the travel and resort business. By 1970, thoughtful observers could have seen the emergence of large numbers of affluent and educated young adults in Europe and the United States. Not comfortable with the kind of vacations their working-class parents had enjoyed—the summer weeks at Brighton or Atlantic City—these young people were ideal customers for a new and exotic version of the “hangout” of their teen years. Managers have known for a long time that demographics matter, but they have always believed that population statistics change slowly. In this century, however, they don’t. Indeed, the innovation opportunities made possible by changes in the numbers of people—and in their age distribution, education, occupations, and geographic location—are among the most rewarding and least risky of entrepreneurial pursuits. 6. Changes in Perception “The glass is half full” and “The glass is half empty” are descriptions of the same phenomenon but have vastly different meanings. Changing a manager’s perception of a glass from half full to half empty opens up big innovation opportunities. All factual evidence indicates, for instance, that in the last 20 years, Americans’ health has improved with unprecedented speed—whether measured by mortality rates for the newborn, survival rates for the very old, the incidence of cancers (other than lung cancer), cancer cure rates, or other factors. Even so, collective hypochondria grips the nation. Never before has there been so much concern with or fear about health. Suddenly, everything seems to cause cancer or degenerative heart disease or premature loss of memory. The glass is clearly half empty. Rather than rejoicing in great improvements in health, Americans seem to be emphasizing how far away they still are from immortality. This view of things has created many opportunities for innovations: markets for new health care magazines, for exercise classes and jogging equipment, and for all kinds of health foods. The fastest growing new U.S. business in 1983 was a company that makes indoor exercise equipment. A change in perception does not alter facts. It changes their meaning, though—and very quickly. It took less than two years for the computer to change from being perceived as a threat and as something only big businesses would use to something one buys for doing income tax. Economics do not necessarily dictate such a change; in fact, they may be irrelevant. What determines whether people see a glass as half full or half empty is mood rather than fact, and a change in mood often defies quantification. But it is not exotic. It is concrete. It can be defined. It can be tested. And it can be exploited for innovation opportunity. 7. New Knowledge Among history-making innovations, those that are based on new knowledge—whether scientific, technical, or social—rank high. They are the super-stars of entrepreneurship; they get the publicity and the money. They are what people usually mean when they talk of innovation, although not all innovations based on knowledge are important. Knowledge-based innovations differ from all others in the time they take, in their casualty rates, and in their predictability, as well as in the challenges they pose to entrepreneurs. Like most superstars, they can be temperamental, capricious, and hard to direct. They have, for instance, the longest lead time of all innovations. There is a protracted span between the emergence of new knowledge and its distillation into usable technology. Then there is another long period before this new technology appears in the marketplace in products, processes, o r services. Overall, the lead time involved is something like 50 years, a figure that has not shortened appreciably throughout history. Knowledge-based innovations can be temperamental, capricious, and hard to direct. To become effective, innovation of this sort usually demands not one kind of knowledge but many. Consider one of the most potent knowledge-based innovations: modern banking. The theory of the entrepreneurial bank—that is, of the purposeful use of capital to generate economic development—was formulated by the Comte de Saint-Simon during the era of Napoleon. Despite Saint-Simon’s extraordinary prominence, it was not until 30 years after his death in 1825 that two of his disciples, t he brothers Jacob and Isaac Pereire, established the first entrepreneurial bank, the Credit Mobilier, and ushered in what we now call finance capitalism. The Pereires, however, did not know modern commercial banking, which developed at about the same time across the channel in England. The Credit Mobilier failed ignominiously. A few years later, two young men—one an American, J.P. Morgan, and one a German, Georg Siemens—put together the French theory of entrepreneurial banking and the English theory of commercial banking to create the first successful modern banks: J.P. Morgan & Company in New York, and the Deutsche Bank in Berlin. Ten years later, a young Japanese, Shibusawa Eiichi, adapted Siemens’s concept to his country and thereby laid the foundation of Japan’s modern economy. This is how knowledge-based innovation always works. The computer, to cite another example, required no fewer than six separate strands of knowledge: binary arithmetic; Charles Babbage’s conception of a calculating machine, in the first half of the nineteenth century; the punch card, invented by Herman Hollerith for the U.S. census of 1890; the audion tube, an electronic switch invented in 1906; symbolic logic, which was developed between 1910 and 1913 by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead; and concepts of programming and feedback that came out of abortive attempts during World War I to develop effective antiaircraft guns. Although all the necessary knowledge was available by 1918, the first operational digital computer did not appear until 1946. Long lead times and the need for convergence among different kinds of knowledge explain the peculiar rhythm of knowledge-based innovation, its attractions, and its dangers. During a long gestation period, there is a lot of talk and little action. Then, when all the elements suddenly converge, there is tremendous excitement and activity and an enormous amount of speculation. Between 1880 and 1890, for example, almost 1,000 electric-apparatus companies were founded in developed countries. Then, as always, there was a crash and a shakeout. By 1914, only 25 were still alive. In the early 1920s, 300 to 500 automobile companies existed in the United States; by 1960, only four of them remained. It may be difficult, but knowledge-based innovation can be managed. Success requires careful analysis of the various kinds of knowledge needed to make an innovation possible. Both J.P. Morgan and Georg Siemens did this when they established their banking ventures. The Wright brothers did this when they developed the first operational airplane. Careful analysis of the needs—and, above all, the capabilities—of the intended user is also essential. It may seem paradoxical, but knowledge-based innovation is more market dependent than any other kind of innovation. De Havilland, a British company, designed and built the first passenger jet, but it did not analyze what the market needed and therefore did not identify two key factors. One was configuration—that is, the right size with the right payload for the routes on which a jet would give an airline the greatest advantage. The other was equally mundane: How could the airlines finance the purchase of such an expensive plane? Because de Havilland failed to do an adequate user analysis, two American companies, Boeing and Douglas, took over the commercial jet-aircraft industry. Principles of Innovation Purposeful, systematic innovation begins with the analysis of the sources of new opportunities. Depending on the context, sources will have different importance at different times. Demographics, for instance, may be of little concern to innovators of fundamental industrial processes like steelmaking, although the Linotype machine became successful primarily because there were not enough skilled typesetters available to satisfy a mass market. By the same token, new knowledge may be of little relevance to someone innovating a social instrument to satisfy a need that changing demographics or tax laws have created. But whatever the situation, innovators must analyze all opportunity sources. Because innovation is both conceptual and perceptual, would-be innovators must also go out and look, ask, and listen. Successful innovators use both the right and left sides of their brains. They work out analytically what the innovation has to be to satisfy an opportunity. Then they go out and look at potential users to study their expectations, their values, and their needs. To be effective, an innovation has to be simple, and it has to be focused. It should do only one thing; otherwise it confuses people. Indeed, the greatest praise an innovation can receive is for people to say, “This is obvious! Why didn’t I think of it? It’s so simple!” Even the innovation that creates new users and new markets should be directed toward a specific, clear, and carefully designed application. Effective innovations start small. They are not grandiose. It may be to enable a moving vehicle to draw electric power while it runs along rails, the innovation that made possible the electric streetcar. Or it may be the elementary idea of putting the same number of matches into a matchbox (it used to be 50). This simple notion made possible the automatic filling of matchboxes and gave the Swedes a world monopoly on matches for half a century. By contrast, grandiose ideas for things that will “revolutionize an industry” are unlikely to work. In fact, no one can foretell whether a given innovation will end up a big business or a modest achievement. But even if the results are modest, the successful innovation aims from the beginning to become the standard setter, to determine the direction of a new technology or a new industry, to create the business that is—and remains—ahead of the pack. If an innovation does not aim at leadership from the beginning, it is unlikely to be innovative enough. Above all, innovation is work rather than genius. It requires knowledge. It often requires ingenuity. And it requires focus. There are clearly people who are more talented innovators than others, but their talents lie in well-defined areas. Indeed, innovators rarely work in more than one area. For all his systematic innovative accomplishments, Thomas Edison worked only in the electrical field. An innovator in financial areas, Citibank for example, is not likely to embark on innovations in health care. Innovation requires knowledge, ingenuity, and, above all else, focus. In innovation, as in any other endeavor, there is talent, there is ingenuity, and there is knowledge. But when all is said and done, what innovation requires is hard, focused, purposeful work. If diligence, persistence, and commitment are lacking, talent, ingenuity, and knowledge are of no avail. There is, of course, far more to entrepreneurship than systematic innovation—distinct entrepreneurial strategies, for example, and the principles of entrepreneurial management, which are needed equally in the established enterprise, the public service organization, and the new venture. But the very foundation of entrepreneurship is the practice of systematic innovation. |
When the Federal Reserve launched an unprecedented series of interventions in the financial system in 2008, it often moved so quickly that the usual practices for preventing conflicts of interest couldn’t keep up, according to a new report. An audit of the Fed’s emergency lending programs by the Government Accountability Office, ordered by the financial reform law passed last year and released Thursday, reports generally sound financial management by the central bank as it undertook programs that deployed trillions of dollars to backstop a faltering financial system. But it brings to light difficult issues that arose when the Fed undertook actions that its rules never envisioned. For instance, William C. Dudley, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York who was a senior official there in 2008, owned stock of American International Group before the Fed bailed out the giant insurance firm. The GAO report did not mention him by name, but Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who spearheaded the audit, identified Dudley as the unnamed official described in the report. Lawyers at the New York Fed allowed Dudley to continue owning the shares while working on issues relating to the bailout. They concluded that for him to sell the shares immediately after the central bank bailed out the firm would be more ethically problematic than simply holding onto them and selling at a later date. Dudley “held shares in these companies as part of his personal portfolio that predated his service at the New York Fed,” a spokesman for the central bank said. “A waiver was granted allowing him to hold these shares based in part on the judgement that had he sold these shares immediately after the interventions it would have the appearance of a conflict.” The GAO report did not condemn the Fed’s actions, it simply illuminated them. Dudley has subsequently sold all the shares on dates agreed to with the bank’s ethics officers, the spokesman said. The GAO also recommended that the Fed make clearer and more rigorous its policies for hiring independent contractors to manage investment programs. During the crisis, the New York Fed hired outside firms to manage many of its special lending programs, such as one designed to backstop the market for short-term corporate loans, without holding a normal bidding process for the contracts. The report also found that lines of authority between the Fed’s Board of Governors in Washington and the 12 regional Fed banks around the country were sometimes muddled during the crisis. For example, it was not always clear where authority resided on questions of what collateral would be adequate for an emergency loan. The report was the latest to detail aspects of the Fed’s actions during the financial crisis that were shrouded in mystery at the time. Another provision in last year’s Dodd-Frank Wall Street regulatory overhaul, also instigated by Sanders, required the disclosure of what individual banks and other entities received loans from the Fed. “As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world,” Sanders said in a statement. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.” The Fed’s general counsel, Scott Alvarez, said in a letter responding to the GAO’s audit that officials will “strongly consider” the recommendations. For more news about economic policymakers, visit Post Business. |
Today The Hollywood Reporter published a fantastic interview with Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall which talked the industry, particularly managing franchises like Jurassic Park and Star Wars. It’s a fantastic, candid piece that explores the creative processes of these amazingly talented individuals which I recommend reading in full, however below are some choice excerpts that pertain to the Jurassic franchise. On Steven Spielberg’s involvement with Jurassic World, and hiring Colin Trevorrow: SPIELBERG I was very involved in breaking the story, working on the script with [director Colin Trevorrow] and [writer Derek Connolly]. I was not on the set, but I watched dailies every day. If I felt something about the dailies, I would send a note to Colin directly. But Colin was doing a great job; you could tell by the rushes. I didn’t even find Colin, Frank did. KATHLEEN KENNEDY Well … I … SPIELBERG Oh — Kathy. Sorry. Anyway, Kathy told Frank, and Frank told me. KENNEDY I saw [Trevorrow’s debut movie] Safety Not Guaranteed when I was looking for who was going to direct [Star Wars:] Episode 7. Then when Frank and Steven were looking for a director, and I had already decided on J.J. [Abrams], I said, “Hey, I know this is going to be off the wall and you’re not going to immediately think this young director could do this movie, but I’ve come to the realization he is the real deal, and he could handle it.” FRANK MARSHALL Then I cold-called him. I looked at his movie and thought he definitely knew what he was doing. SPIELBERG I looked at his movie and thought it was really good, but I wasn’t convinced until the last scene ’cause that film could have gone two ways. When this [character] who I thought was certifiably insane actually invented something that could travel through time, that crystallized the choice that it had to be Colin to do Jurassic World. On who’s ‘in charge’ of Jurassic now: So when you have Jurassic World, I assume you feel pretty possessive? SPIELBERG No, I don’t. I honestly don’t feel possessive at all. I think Colin feels possessive now — and he should. I passed the torch to Colin. You really feel that way? SPIELBERG I absolutely do. He’s the guy who has to feel possessive. KENNEDY Don’t you feel that? I mean, I think it’s all about the joy that comes from the ability to keep it going and keep audiences entertained. MARSHALL It’s what you did with Star Wars now. On hiring Jurassic World 2 director Juan Antonio Bayona: MARSHALL We spent a lot of time with Colin. We’re doing that on [the next] Jurassic, too, with Juan Antonio [Bayona]. Kathy and I have spent a lot of time with Juan Antonio over the years. We had talked about him doing Jurassic World, but he has a long process for production. SPIELBERG We had been very impressed with his Naomi Watts movie about the tsunami [The Impossible]. You’ve got to pick the right directors, and that’s what Kathy has done so brilliantly on the Star Wars series. Rian Johnson and Colin are the two best directors who could be doing Episode 8 and 9. And that’s the whole key. I think Harry Potter had a huge infusion of a second life when Alfonso Cuaron did No. 3. He changed the paradigm of Harry Potter and gave it another six years just based on the art he brought to the third movie. It sounds like the Jurassic franchise is in great hands! It’s fascinating to learn that JA Bayona was in talks to direct Jurassic World before Colin Trevorrow was chosen. If you haven’t already, be sure to give the full article a read, which goes into more detail and talks Star Wars as well. As always, sound off in the comments below and stay tuned for the latest news! Source: The Hollywood Reporter |
On Monday, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced massive cuts to the size of the armed services, slashing the army to its pre-World War II size. In 2011, the army had some 566,000 soldiers; Hagel wants it cut to somewhere between 440,000 and 450,000 troops by 2019. If Congress does not add additional funding, Hagel threatens to slash that number to 420,000 by 2019. Such cuts to defense spending do not bode well for the security of the United States. Historically, defense spending cuts have preceded increased international turmoil as America’s global enemies sense a failure of will. A senior Pentagon official leak to The New York Times betrayed precisely that failure of will: “You have to always keep your institution prepared, but you can’t carry a large land-war Defense Department when there is no large land war.” And the Times added that the proposal is designed to defeat “any adversary,” but prevent the military from engaging in any “protracted foreign occupation.” So, how big are the current cuts? Historically speaking, they’re incredibly large. In 2011, the defense budget represented 4.7% of total gross domestic product; this year’s percentage will be 2.7%. In real dollars, US defense spending is set to plummet from $705.6 in 2011 billion to $496 billion. That represents a budget cut of approximately 30%. The Pre-World War II Cuts. While FDR increased government spending in virtually every other area of American life, FDR slashed defense spending from the beginning of his administration, from $752 million in 1932 to $531 million in 1934. He even cut veterans’ benefits 40%. By the time of World War II, America was thoroughly unprepared to make war, with an army sized just smaller than that of Portugal, ranking 16th on the planet. That unwillingness to fund defense led both Hitler and the Japanese to believe they could make war on the United States with impunity. The Post-World War II Cuts. After World War II, during which the United States spent 43.6% of its annual GDP on defense in 1943 and 1944, spending declined dramatically – all the way down to 14.3% of the annual GDP in 1949. The era of peace and prosperity seemed that it would last forever; Harry Truman justified defense cuts by citing the end of World War II. But then the Korean War broke out, thanks in large part to the large-scale military cuts, which encouraged the Soviets and Chinese Communists toward aggression on the Korean peninsula. Truman then increased the defense budget from $9.1 billion in 1948 to $52.8 billion, a nearly six-fold increase. Again, that could have been prevented had the United States been less eager to take a machete to defense budgeting. The Vietnam Cuts. As the United States consolidated its victory in Vietnam, Democrats in Congress, angry at the re-election of President Richard Nixon, decided to defund the military. Where defense spending had represented an average of 19.6% of GDP during the period 1967 through 1972, the budget really began falling after 1968 and the election of Richard Nixon. The result: American helicopters lifting off from our embassy in Saigon as the country fell into Communist hands. The Soviets would invade Afghanistan just a few years later, encouraged by America’s obvious distaste for foreign war. Only the arrival of Ronald Reagan and his huge increases in military expenditures would change the shape of the Cold War. The Post-Soviet Defense Cuts. In 1988, the United States government spent $557.5 billion (in inflation-adjusted 2011 dollars) on national defense. That statistic slowly declined under George H.W. Bush, to $489.2 billion in 1992 – but then it collapsed under Bill Clinton, who slashed the military budget to $378.5 billion. That cut of 32% is slightly larger than the cut proposed here, but it also took place over the course of 11 years rather than the three. The defense cuts provided a temporary economic boost, given that defense spending was siphoned into other areas of the government, decreasing overall government spending. But it also paved the way for the rise of al Qaeda – a disastrous malfeasance that led to 9/11, and the tremendous military buildup under George W. Bush, under whom military spending rose from $397.3 billion in 2000 to $701.1 billion in 2009. If the United States had maintained its spending under Ronald Reagan, it is possible that the attacks of 9/11 – presaged by Islamic terror attacks on multiple American targets beginning with the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 – would have been stopped. Had that occurred, the United States would have never needed to nearly double its spending on defense. Even if the attacks had not been prevented, the United States would have been significantly better prepared for the counterinsurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan than they were during the military build-up period at the beginning of the Bush administration. Overall, major defense cuts come with a serious price: the price of emboldened enemies. Unfortunately, the cuts contemplated by Chuck Hagel and company have already borne fruit in an emboldened China in the South China Sea, a resurgent Vladimir Putin-led Russia, an aggressively Islamist Middle East. The problem with military cuts is not merely that they decrease American capacity to make war, though they surely do. The problem is that purposeful and large-scale military decreases send a message to the rest of the world that America is in retreat. Sadly, under the Obama administration, that signal is both clear and correctly interpreted. Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org. Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro. |
Fans of The CW’s Riverdale have gotten used to Cole Sprouse’s depiction of Archie’s best friend Jughead as a cool and collected hipster, but in the pages of Archie Comics, he’s mostly reputed for his insatiable hunger. Jughead typically craves burgers, but in Archie Comics’ new horror one-shot Jughead: The Hunger, he’s moved on to a rarer delicacy: human flesh. That’s right, Jughead is a werewolf now. Just as Riverdale has immersed the iconic Archie characters in a Twin Peaks-style murder mystery, so Archie Comics often experiments with different genres (Archie vs. Predator, anyone?). Written by Frank Tieri and illustrated by Michael Walsh, Jughead: The Horror finds the titular character turned into a werewolf and on the prowl against fellow Riverdale residents like Mrs. Grundy and Dilton. “What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Jughead? The fact that the guy’s always so damned hungry all the time, right? In Jugehad: The Hunger, we ask why that is, and we reveal the answer is quite a bit more sinister than the guy just really liking Pop’s cheeseburgers a whole lot,” Tieri tells EW. “It turns out our version of good ol’ Jug has a lot more in common with his dog Hot Dog than anybody ever realized. Well, other than the fact Hot Dog isn’t whacking and eating half of Riverdale, of course.” Jughead: The Hunger hits stores March 29. Check out an exclusive preview below. Archie Comics Archie Comics Archie Comics Archie Comics Archie Comics Archie Comics Archie Comics |
LONDON (Reuters) - Regulators should create a framework of rules to help to make virtual currencies such as bitcoin more attractive to ordinary consumers, a lawyer from the Bitcoin Foundation said on Tuesday. Bitcoin made headlines earlier this year when Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy after saying it might have lost some 750,000 bitcoins in hacking attack. Patrick Murck, general counsel at the Bitcoin Foundation, said cooperation was needed between authorities to create rules that would support those using the digital currency responsibly. “There’s an opportunity to work together to stop people saying it’s scary and risky,” he said. “The challenge is just to get a framework out there that makes sense for people,” said Murck, speaking at an event on the state of digital economy. Launched in 2009, bitcoin offers a way for people to conduct transactions over the Internet. Supporters say the anonymity that bitcoin offers lowers the risk of fraud, while critics say that same anonymity and lack of central oversight make it easier to commit crimes. The Bitcoin Foundation aims to standardise the currency, protect it from theft or counterfeiting and provide education. Some companies involved in bitcoin, including investment firms and those providing services for the currency’s users, have also called for regulation to ensure their customers feel more comfortable about virtual money. A number of regulators, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, have warned investors about the risks of scams related to virtual currencies. Murck said there were a handful of well-funded companies working towards making bitcoin more attractive and safer for ordinary consumers by trying to insure bitcoin holdings and to reduce the currency’s volatility. Bitcoin themed stickers stand attached to glass doors during the Inside Bitcoins: The Future of Virtual Currency Conference in New York April 8, 2014. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson Those companies have learned from the collapse of Mt. Gox and have more knowledge about how the industry works that was not available before, he said. Bitcoin could be ready for the mass market by the end of the year, Murck added. “I feel much more confident today than I did 12 months ago. The wind is definitely blowing at our backs.” The banking industry also has a role to play in opening the bitcoin market up, Murck said, by providing finance to companies involved in bitcoin or integrating bitcoin services into its own products. |
A stream of consciousness in which Sam Delorme gives a few thoughts about the ongoings of the Counter-Strike scene: 1. Valde! It was announced to FetiSh that Valde was benched from Heroic, and that the qualifiers for Cologne were to be played with cadiaN. Later on, Valde tweeted out a couple vague tweets about being “excited for what the future holds”, and that he wouldn’t be playing for Heroic anymore. 2. In a timely Talk to Thorin, Valde was brutally honest about changing teams. The ‘No Nonsense’ approach was good to see. He said that of course, he’d say yes. Good. But that leaves us speculating as to where he’s going. 3. An option is Astralis, but that hardly makes sense, as they’re coming into the major as a Top 3 team. My inner voice whispers to me how good Valde would look in the place of Kjaerbye, but that’s obviously way too risky a move for Astralis. Obviously. Yeah. Totally ridiculous…...but I still want to see it happen one day. 4. The more realistic option is North, and that’s worrying. To me, the obvious replacement is aizy: he’s the one who’s struggling the most. I was talking to dust and stuchiu on Twitter about this, and there’s a couple things to note. First, Valde is an aggressive player, and he can fit into multiple roles given to him. He could replace k0nfig as lurker, or go into the entry-fragging role in the place of aizy. 5. The thought of this move displeases me because I don’t think adding more firepower is the answer for North. Aizy himself is better than he shows here, which goes to show that there’s something wrong with the way the players are used, not the players themselves. 6. The hard thing for North is that they have tons of skill, but no superstar. It’s problematic because you don’t want to remove any of their star players, but you will need to if you want to make the team compete with the likes of SK. Valde could become that superstar, but I don’t think it’ll happen if he takes over for Aizy’s duties. And if he does take the space of a superstar, what happens to Cajunb or Magisk? 7. If aizy truly ends up getting kicked, you have to wonder where he goes. Heroic is a possibility, but not the only one. Would be good to see him in a star role again, under snappi. We’ve almost forgotten how great aizy was in 2015. I can also see him going to a Dignitas type team, who could use a lot more firepower. In either case, it will be a big step down for aizy in terms of team caliber, wherever he ends up going. Hopefully, he can fight his way back to the top, after spending two years depreciating his value as a player in FaZe and now North. 8. Anyways, that’s a lot of talk about a hypothetical scenario. The UMP got nerfed. I would add an exclamation point to denote excitement, but this is nonsense. I am a fan for marginal nerfs, but this marginal nerf fails to address the issues with the UMP. Here’s a list: run speed, armor penetration, kill reward, cost… and it goes on. You know what’s not on that list? Damage at distance. And that’s what got nerfed. 9. That’s rather frustrating, and it is a very marginal change, but at least it’s an admission that the UMP is too strong. Hopefully, though not likely, Valve will realize that this wasn’t enough of a change. Perhaps then they will address the biggest issues. 10. I’m a fan of a tiered economy, and I don’t think that there should be a common situation where pros use an SMG that costs 1200$ to rush through a smoke over a 2700$ rifle. Strange, I know. 11. To be clear, I love the idea that specific weapons have a very narrow use. Cobblestone, Mag-7 at long snax style. Or sawed-off at drop, the JW special. These are great. They are also incredibly specific in their purpose and effectiveness. They also have clear drawbacks. Sure, the sawed-off is great at drop, but just you wait until you need to run all the way into B to plant. With the UMP, not only is the strength of rushing into smokes not narrow at all, it is also incredibly effective at mid-range, making it an incredibly versatile weapon. So many problems, so few addressed. 12. In other news, Mousesports made a deal with Doctor Pepper. Great to see another large company join the esports ranks. Always wondered how those come about. I’m curious as to exactly how Mouse got that sponsorship over bigger teams though. Might be due to crafty business by ownership. Might also be that sick colour scheme synergy. Form over function any day. 13. There’s this creeping sentiment that SK has all but become the world’s best team. I disagree. It’s not that they can’t be -- they’re the most skilled team in the world. Rather, I don’t think they’ve honed their game to perfection. They aren’t quite as crisp as they were in their prime. Now, they can win through brute force, but there’s a reason that style so rarely breeds consistency. SK have their hardships, and while they can use their skill as a crutch for now, what made the old SK so consistent was that the system was the foundation, not the fragging. 14. For example, look at their game on Cobblestone versus North at IEM Sydney. On CT, coldzera, who plays drop, often got killed or gave ground without much in return. Now, coldzera was poor on Cobble this tournament, but he’s been excellent in the past, so I wouldn’t bet on continued weakness. What’s much more worrying, however, is the team’s response -- or lack thereof. In one instance, felps was boosted up at Tree, and got shot down by an incoming terrorist through drop. He just didn’t know it was coming. That speaks to a failure in communication either by coldzera not calling it, or more likely, felps failing to respond to information quickly. 15. I have a sneaking suspicion the latter of these is more precise. I also think it extends onto all of felps’ game. Quite often, felps will just randomly die. Not picking a bad fight. Just shift running or walking somewhere and getting shot down. It’s as if he doesn’t compute the possibility of someone waiting for him. It’s a strange problem, and it’s the very opposite of coldzera, who’s famous for considering every angle a threat. 16. It might be that felps, playing Tier 2 teams, didn’t face many players that could capitalize off his aggression. Unfortunately for him, he’ll have to learn the hard way. It may turn out to be his hamartia. Image credit: Valve, Intel Extreme Masters, SK Gaming |
JSR #376 Java TM Platform Module System Public Review Reconsideration Ballot Ballot duration: 2017-06-13 to: 2017-06-26 These are the final results of the Public Review Reconsideration Ballot for JSR #376. The EC has approved this ballot. Votes EC ARM Limited Azul Systems, Inc. Credit Suisse Eclipse Foundation, Inc Fujitsu Limited Gemalto M2M GmbH Goldman Sachs & Co. Grimstad, Ivar Hazelcast Hewlett Packard Enterprise IBM Intel Corp. JetBrains s.r.o. Keil, Werner London Java Community MicroDoc NXP Semiconductors Oracle Red Hat SAP SE Software AG SouJava Tomitribe Twitter, Inc. V2COM Icon Legend Yes No Abstain Not voted View Vote Log EC On 2017-06-25 Fujitsu Limited voted Yes with no comment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-26 SAP SE voted Yes with the following comment: SAP is pleased to see the considerable efforts spent by the expert group since the last vote for both, reaching consensus on the open technical questions as well as communicating the current state of the discussions to the community. We think that the JPMS is on a good way now and hope that the current modus operandi will be maintained not only until the final release of JSR 376 with Java 9 but also for the envisioned updates and refinements of the JPMS in upcoming releases of Java. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-14 Oracle voted Yes with no comment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-26 Keil, Werner voted Yes with the following comment: Glad to see, most key concerns were resolved or are promised to be resolved as soon as possible. I think that modularity will be beneficial to many parts of the Java ecosystem both smaller devices and larger systems like Java EE. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-19 Eclipse Foundation, Inc voted Yes with the following comment: The Eclipse community believes that sufficient progress has been made on the JPMS and Java language specifications to warrant approval. Thanks to all of those who made this possible. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-23 Credit Suisse voted Yes with no comment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-26 Tomitribe voted Yes with the following comment: As stated in our first vote and blog, we saw great value in the 30-day clock getting the EC and EG on the same page with a clear result. The spec lead has done an outstanding job of handling the flood of feedback that resulted and should be congratulated. We believe several of the decisions made, such as permitting illegal access by default but with clear warnings will lead to a smoother transition that still creates pressure for movement into modularity. Though some may have viewed the original vote as negative, it should be seen as a success of the JCP process and a sign of strength for Java overall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-23 JetBrains s.r.o. voted Yes with no comment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-23 ARM Limited voted Yes with no comment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-13 IBM voted Yes with the following comment: IBM supports the revised JPMS specification moving to Proposed Final Draft, with credit due to Oracle as the specification leader and those in the JSR 376 Expert Group who dedicated their time to reaching this milestone. As described in our public statement, which can be read at https://ibm.co/2r6Od8a, IBM values the new compatibility and migration enhancements for enterprise applications added to the specification, and the disposition of outstanding issues as agreed amongst the Expert Group. We see this release of JPMS as the strong foundation for a new Java SE platform architecture, and expect to build upon this with feedback and experience from our customers and the community. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-16 Gemalto M2M GmbH voted Yes with no comment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-19 V2COM voted Yes with no comment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-23 Red Hat voted Abstain with the following comment: Red Hat is voting Abstain at this time because although we think there has been positive progress within the EG to reach consensus since the last vote, we believe that there are a number of items within the current proposal which will impact wider community adoption that could have been addressed within the 30 day extension period for this release. However, we do not want to delay the Java 9 release and are happy with the more aggressive schedule proposed by the Specification Lead and EG for subsequent versions of Java because getting real world feedback on the modularity system will be key to understanding whether and where further changes need to occur. We hope that the Project Lead and EG will continue to be as open to input from the wider Java community as they have been in the last 30 days and look forward to the evolution of Java being driven by data from users and communities beyond OpenJDK. We would also like to take the opportunity to thank the EG, the Oracle Specification Lead and others who assisted in the numerous meetings which have taken place in the last 30 days. This increased collaboration and positive approaches to discussing and resolving issues has been welcomed by ourselves and the wider Java community. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-19 Goldman Sachs & Co. voted Yes with no comment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-19 NXP Semiconductors voted Yes with no comment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-19 Software AG voted Yes with no comment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-26 Twitter, Inc. voted Yes with the following comment: First, we would like to thank the JSR 376 Expert Group (EG) members for all their hard work during the past 1.5 months to improve the JPMS specification. We have been encouraged by the progress that has been made. We are glad that several ambiguities have been clarified (#RestrictedKeywords, #CompilationWithConcealedPackages, and #ResolutionAtCompileTime) and a few important changes have been made (#ModuleNameInManifest and Relax Strong Encapsulation) in the revised JSR 376 specification. We are also happy that there is now greater consensus among the JSR 376 EG members that the current JPMS specification is ready for release as part of JDK 9. We are disappointed that the community will not immediately see the benefits that they are expecting JPMS to provide (#AvoidConcealedPackageConflicts, in particular). But we understand that the most requested features will require a lot more discussion and due-diligence than is allowed in the JDK 9 timeframe. We hope that the first version of JPMS will provide a good basis for such features to be worked on and introduced in future JDK releases. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-26 SouJava voted Yes with the following comment: SouJava is very happy to see that the trust we deposited on the EG and Spec Lead on the first vote was not misplaced. The work that was done this past 30-40 days was an effective effort to solve the raised issues. We felt heard during this drill, and had all our issues addressed, either immediately, or on the roadmap. As a lesson for future JSRs: the Java Language is a fundamental piece of the Java ecosystem. JSRs that touch the Java Language Specification, should be very careful that proposed changes be reflected in the early drafts. Creating confusion around such a fundamental part of Java is very detrimental to the whole Java ecosystem. We are glad that those issues have been resolved now. All in all, the work done by the Spec Lead and the EG these past weeks, together with all the feedback received, was a proof of the how strong the Java community is and how the JCP process is important and functional. Congratulations to all that made this possible. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-13 Intel Corp. voted Yes with no comment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-14 MicroDoc voted Yes with no comment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-14 London Java Community voted Yes with the following comment: The LJC votes yes and echos IBM's thanks to Oracle (as the specification leader) and those in the JSR 376 Expert Group who dedicated their time to reworking and clarifying areas of the specification that we were concerned about. The LJCs concerns (https://londonjavacommunity.wordpress.com/2017/05/09/explanation-of-our-no-vote-on-jsr-376-java-platform-module-system/) over interoperability with the Java ecosystems defacto build tool / module repository (Apache Maven) have been addressed as have the concerns over the ability for independent implementations of the compiler to be built (noticeably ejc). The disposition of outstanding issues as agreed amongst the Expert Group was handled really well and it was heartening to see the evident collaboration as described in the detailed minutes of the EG's meetings in the past month. We see this release of JPMS as the strong foundation for a new Java SE platform architecture, and expect to build upon this with feedback and experience from Java User Group members. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-14 Azul Systems, Inc. voted Yes with no comment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-14 Grimstad, Ivar voted Yes with the following comment: I am glad to see that the issues resulting in the no vote are now being addressed. Thanks to the EG and spec lead for taking the concerns seriously and for the effort put into the specification! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-20 Hazelcast voted Yes with the following comment: Hazelcast voted yes as we think positive progress has been achieved over the last weeks. Even though there are still some issues open we have the feeling that those issues are minor and can be addressed in a later release of the JPMS. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 2017-06-22 Hewlett Packard Enterprise voted Yes with no comment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
About ARE YOU TIRED OF LOSING YOUR DARTS AT NIGHT? Help us fund Light-Noodles: Fire-Bolt Darts, so you can play at night and "Never lose your noodles!" Light-Noodles don't just glow... THEY LIGHT UP WHEN FIRED! Once recovered, simply squeeze the tip and they're reset for another round! BLINKS WHEN LAUNCHED!!! LIGHT-NOODLES LOOK LIKE LASER-BOLTS WHEN THEY'RE SHOT and add fantastic effects to night time Nerf wars & games like Humans vs Zombies! You'll need an HTML5 capable browser to see this content. Play Replay with sound Play with sound 00:00 00:00 You can even activate Light-Noodles before firing them to create cool and impressive looking blaster effects! You'll need an HTML5 capable browser to see this content. Play Replay with sound Play with sound 00:00 00:00 These long range 9.5 cm darts contain light-weight electronics and blinking LED's, ensuring long flight, great battery life (~400 hours) and most importantly player safety! Light-Noodle Darts will fit into all existing and future Nerf MEGA-sized blasters. We've built and tested dozens of prototypes using off-the-shelf components, and now need your help to manufacture our final product! A successful Kickstarter will help us finish our printed circuit designs, produce multi-unit injection molds, contract with manufacturers, hire assemblers & packagers, purchase toy insurance, gain safety certifications, pay lawyers (to protect our patents from zombies), and help us buy lots of "Raman Noodles", a food that's been extremely helpful in keeping us alive and solvent while we create our products. So PLEASE Don't Delay and Help Fund Us TODAY! We're hungry! BUT WAIT...THAT'S NOT ALL!!! Help us reach our stretch goals and we'll include NFC (Near Field Communication) and an Open Source Developers App that will make LIGHT-NOODLE'S even more AWESOME!!! We've developed a Dart Triggered NFC Mobile App that share's in-game activity among players! So far we've demonstrated a web-based strike counter and are working on adding programmable NFC Trading Cards for pre-game setup. Cards will allow players to strategically alter their in-game abilities by adding features like: Med-kits, Heads-up Displays, Extra Health, Damage Multipliers, Drone Strikes and even GPS tracking using Google Maps! The final App will be Open Source allowing developers the means to create & share new dart combat games using Light-Noodles products! Help us stretch and well be able to offer hook & loop tips so our NFC Light-Noodle dart will stick to things like stuffed toys, clothing, friends, parents and most important...siblings!!! Early Prototype NFC Dart You'll need an HTML5 capable browser to see this content. Play Replay with sound Play with sound 00:00 00:00 Near Field Communication (NFC) devices have real world uses in weather forecasting, environmental monitoring, GPS tracking, payment systems and telecommunications! By helping us fund our initial darts, we'll be able to add "EDUCATIONAL TOY's" to that list with potentially world changing benefits!!! Light-Noodles Logo T-Shirt Light-Noodles Long Sleeve Logo Shirt All Pre-App Stretch Goals will include links to FREE Existing NFC Apps like NXP's TagWriter, allowing you and your friends to experiment with sending encrypted messages, Emails, GPS locations, and even launch many applications using Light-Noodle darts and your NFC ready mobile devices! We've successfully prototyped and tested the following dart designs: LIGHT-NOODLE MEGA-style Electronic Light-up Darts LIGHT-NOODLE MEGA-style Enhanced Glow Darts LIGHT-NOODLE MEGA-style Light-up NFC Velcro Darts LIGHT-NOODLE MEGA-style NFC Message Darts LIGHT-NOODLE micro-style NFC Message Darts Prototypes of various colors and styles! Under Development: 7.2cm Darts and 3.9cm Discs Stretch goal funds will help us complete development of our NFC Mobile Apps, Trading Card System, Google Cardboard VR, Dart Counting Vest, and help us expand our toy line to someday include an array of remote sensors, electronics and essential product developer kits to make Light-Noodle Darts one of the Greatest Toys Ever!!! SO PLEASE FUND US!!! |
Happy Star Wars day from the Star Wars Battlecry team! Posted by SharkYbg on May 4th, 2015 Hello Star Wars: Battlecry fans and Happy Star Wars day! It’s been exactly one year from our announcement that we are moving to the epic Unreal Engine 4. A lot has changed since you first started witnessing our progress and watching everything slowly take shape. Because it’s May the 4th as you already know, we think that this is a great moment to celebrate and reward your great support over the years with something special. We’ve put a lot of work on this and hopefully you will like it. It’s time for our first gameplay video showing what we’ve been up to in Unreal Engine 4. Keep in mind that this is in a heavy WIP stage and a lot of things are missing. Everything you see is subject to change. So take this more as a proof-of-concept, the rest will be filled, polished and tweaked as we continue to make progress. Now a few screenshots taken during our gameplay and the video itself. |
By Justin Simoni I’m just going to start out by saying it: I hate birthday challenges. Although, each year I get myself ramped up to try to do another one, they usually blow up in my face. My greatest-worst birthday challenge was the Arizona Trail Race: 750 miles of bikepacking across Arizona on singletrack from the Mexican to the Utah border. It includes a mandatory portage down through and back up the Grand Canyon on foot – bike carried on your back! Now that’s an birthday adventure! And it started one year right on my birthday. The heavens gave me a sign, I must go! I made it around 8 hours on day #1 (of a estimated 9), before ending up in a shallow wash, crumpled in the fetal position, extremely dehydrated, not being able to keep food or water down. Happy birthday to me! The next day, I extracted myself from the trail, and limped to the side of the highway where I received medical attention in the form of fluids delivered via IV from a passing Border Patrol officer who saw – and stopped my attempt to hitch hike back to civilization. I hightailed it back to the Colorado Front Range that same day, still dazed from my desert nightmare experience. Another year older, a little more wiser, I guess! But every April as my birthday draws near, my mind is piqued again on the idea of, The Birthday Challenge, no doubt encouraged by the changing of seasons flirting with my emotions that summer will be here soon, and well: how did all that Winter training go for you, Justin? Care to test those legs out? I was stymied on what to do for my 36th birthday: Ride 360 miles in a day? Climb 36 sport pitches in Boulder Canyon? Drink 36 beers? Late April is also when the Mount Everest expeditions start ramping up, as it takes weeks for teams to lay seige on the mountain. It’s not really my scene, but it’s impossible to be fanatic about hill walking in all its shapes and forms and not stay at least halfway up to date with all the drama that goes down on Everest, joyful or tragic. I pondered about all the teams and their goals, while looking out of my backyard to Green Mountain, which keeps a silent sentinel over the city of Boulder, CO. I couldn’t but be reminded of Gerry Roach, Colorado mountain guide book author extraordinaire, and his answer to what his favorite mountain was. To him, it was that same Green Mountain I was myself gazing upon. Pressed as to give a reason why, Roach stated, “I can train for Everest on Green Mountain. I can walk from my house to Green Mountain. it’s free; I can’t afford Everest.” I sympathized closely to Roach’s answer and I thought, why not bring the scale of Everest to Green Mountain itself? I can, in a sense, try to Everest Green Mountain! “Everesting”, is a nitch pasttime, within the nitch of ultra endurance cycling. The rules are simple: pick a route and ride it out-and-back until your total elevation gained is that of Mount Everest: 29,029 feet. There’s nothing to stop me from doing the same on Green, but on foot (bikes on Green aren’t allowed). Making a rough calculation, it would take me 13 laps to complete this hastily thought up birthday challenge, as each lap would gain me ~2,300 feet. I’ll give myself… 36 hours to complete those 13 laps. No idea if this was reasonable, or realistic – too many details to double check and if I think too much I’ll psyche myself out, so: let’s go! I wrote an email to the local running group mailing list, outlining my intentions, and asking for them to join along if they’d like in whatever capcity they wanted, and went to sleep. I then woke up around 4:00am, quickly changed, threw a ton of food, some clothes, a few bottles of water, as well as some miscellaneous accoutrements into my Fastpack, and pedaled the few miles from my house, to the Gregory TH. This trailhead for Green Mountain is a lot quieter than Chautauqua, and would be my base camp of sorts as I lay seige to my stand-in Everest. My base camp wasn’t fancy – really, just my bike locked up and my Fastpack secured to my bike. I also brought a large piece of cardboard and sharpies along, so that I could keep a running tally of my TH and summit splits, as well as elevation gained. If anyone wanted to tag along on a lap with me, they’d have a good sense of where I was, and could wait, or run up to find me. I was anticipating a few partners, as there is a cadre of trail runners who also find an almost cult like attraction to Green Mountain – it’s definetely not just Gerry Roach and I. And misery loves company, right? I assembled the kit I’d use for all my laps – my Ultimate Direction Groove running belt system and inside it a Body Bottle, a bit of nutrition, my phone, and my GPS. Lacing up my La Sportiva Akasha’s, and grabbing my trekking poles, I was off. Lap #1 started as the sun began to rise. Birds fluttered around their nests located in the pockets of the flatiron formations. The day felt cool and calm, and my first lap was done mostly alone. I savoried the calmness and the solitude. I knew the trails would soon become busy. This is a popular area, and the weather was perfect! By lap #2 and #3, I was joined by the pre-work rush of runners getting in their training runs. Kyle Richardson and friend were coming directly from scrambling the First Flatiron to do a quick tag of Green Mountain, right after I managed my first, and only fall of the day passing him on my downhill. It was nice to be seeing some familiar faces, some of whom knew what I was up to, and gave me support in the form of handshakes, high-fives, or just a quick shout-out of encouragement. I was happy for them to join in the celebration of the activity that we call trail running and also happy I could transform what’s usually a solitary time that I use for inner reflection into a shared happening. I was also relieved that my first real helper of the day, my housemate Troy, who works as a trail builder for the city, made good on his promise to deliver a huge jug of water direct to my bike, before he clocked in at work. With gallons of clean, clear water available, tons of food in my Fastpack, and extra of everything else, I could focus on putting in the laps, without running out of the basic needs of my day. My next few laps went by with, I have to say: joy! When you give yourself space to just do something as simple like running up and down your local hill without needing to stress about all those other details of your life, nothing else does matter, and you can just focus on the simple act of pure free movement. This birthday challenge was turning into a true celebration. Hey, I’m having a good time! I think my personal record of laps on Green were around four, so after ticking that many laps on this day, it was going to be slightly unknown territory for me; I worried a little of what I would expect and how my body and mind would react. Would I get bored? It’s the same 2.1 miles of trail, and I would pass by the same landmarks twice per lap: once up; once down. To my surprise, the exact opposite happened. I became excited to pass all those tiny little landmarks I already knew by heart. It could be a certain rock or tree – it didn’t matter, I just enjoyed being engulfed within everything. I felt as diminutive as one should feel when on the face of a mountain, and I relished in the simple act of running up and running down. Jeff Valliere, one of Green Mountain’s disciples, joined me for a lap around lunch time. Jeff is a great running partner, and I find that my pace is always just a little bit quicker, yet my perceived exurtion is raised a minimum. His ability to chat breathlessly is unmatched when it comes to running and cycling. We pass Anton Krupicka running up as we were running down and exchange pleasantries; Anton is happy to find his running legs are good to go this spring day, and he has a big smile on his face! Jeff says goodbye and I work on my 5th and 6th laps. I feel good, and my lap times are holding steady. I’m happy I’m playing it conservative at around 2 hours/lap, counting all the breaks at the trail head and summit to take pictures and to refuel on nutrition and water. It’s a bit warm, but not bad and I take a tiny little break, soaking my feet into the rushing Gregory Creek, putting on sunscreen, taking off my shirt to feel the slight breeze, and relishing in this beautiful Spring day. Kevin Smith was next to join me for half a lap, and gave me a little more info on the nascence of the term, “Everesting” and why it’s more a cycling thing than a trail running thing: Think, “because it’s there” George Mallory, the before-his-time Everest climber who perished very close to the summit with his partner “Sandy” Irvine in 1924. His grandson, also named George, got the itch to climb Everest as well – the apple must not fall far from the tree. Living in Austrailia where there’s not a whole lot of high mountains, he cycled himself into shape by doing laps up his local hill. Ever the over-trainer, he reckoned that doing enough laps up and down to equal Everest’s elevation would be at least good enough to climb the real deal. Must have worked, as this George Mallory summited and returned safely in 1995. And so an compulsive legendary pasttime was inventented! Kevin passed the torch to Eli, who is in damn good shape, as I was starting to feel some of the effects of my long day. Eli has a quiet sensibility to him, and he dealt with my beginnings of what may be called, “whining” with good humor. Eli has completed the PCT before and is off now on his second tour of it as I write, so he knows what long days on your feet are all about. It was my pleasure to have such a varied cast of partners to have along, as I usually do my running alone. We passed through one of the local group runs, and received a bunch of hoops and hollers from that crew – much obliged! Eli also breaks up his runs into little areas and segments he has names for, and we shared with each other our personal names for the things we pass through: “I call this part simply, ‘The Trees’, even though there’s trees everywhere else!” “We’re coming up to, ‘…Saddle Rock?’ – I never know if this formation is really Saddle Rock, thus the inflection!” Once finished with our lap, Eli asked if I needed anything: Food? Water? “Man,” I answered, “I could definitely go for a pizza – anything with veggies on it!” Eli dashed off in a flash to perhaps return sometime in the future, I hoped, with the perfect pizza present. Night was coming along, and I began the start of a very long, late shift. Lap #7 was done while the sun was setting – the summit being my halfway point! I sang to myself my favorite Def Leopard song, Livin’ On A Prayer, descending back to the trailhead – as one is aught to do when one thinks their alone, then promptly shared my running and off-key singing online. “WhoaaaOhohhooo! We’re half way thayyyereer!” Lap #8 was done completely in the dark. I flicked on my head torch, and put my shirt back on. Trotting down to the trailhead whilenfollowing my headtorch’s bouncing brilliant ball of light. I noticed figures coming out of the shadows. Amassed in the parking lot was a small group of people: all my housemates had driven down to see how I was doing, and presented me with a strawberry birthday pie! My favorite! And there was Eli, again, with a slice of pizza! Happy birthday was sung and I may have shed a tear or two at the show of support from my friends and house family. I greedily ate the pizza slice and asked Eli how much I owed him. “Pay ‘er forward”, was Eli’s response – not a stranger to trail magic. I’ll somehow find where one of his PCT mail pickup locations are, and see if I can’t leave a little surprise for him in the near future. Housemate Ari lent me some Tailwind – I may have forgotten anything about electrolytes and their replenishment on this day and night… oops. She may have well saved me a horrible overnight, not unlike my nightmare in Arizona. In short time, everyone said their goodbyes – I had to keep moving anyways. It was around 10:30pm and I knew I wouldn’t see anyone for a long while, now. Well maybe a mountain lion. Or two. These last laps before my final lap are somewhat of a blur – I can’t even remember if I *really* did them or not, but my GPS and my splits recorded on sharpie on my piece of cardboard do agree, so I must have been out there picking ’em up and putting ’em down. If there is transcendence through running, I experienced looking through that keyhole if only for a moment. I never found the need to stop to take a quick nap; never felt too mentally fatigued. Sure, the legs were getting heavy, but I’ve felt this same soreness before after 10 miles, and I was coming now damn close to 50. I allowed myself to be consumed by the darkness and just be in the present moment, alone on my favorite hill. The sun began to rise as I finished my 12th lap. I couldn’t believe it, but I only had one more lap I needed to accomplish. But, the morning brought with it a rude message that betrayed the past 24 hours. Whatever transcendence I felt in the moonlight, it was fleeting (it always is) and everything began to crash very heavily down on me. So very quickly, I knew I had just one more lap in me before I was toast, and this was the one lap that really was going to test me. This lap was the real challenge – the final pitch to the summit to the Everest out my back door. My splits, up to this point, where incredible consistent, hovering around 2 hours/lap. But this was not going to be one of those laps. I weighed heaivly on my trekking poles and made it up the first set of steep rock stairs up the Amphitheatre Trail, stopping often to just sit down. Large flatiron formations loomed above me, like I imagined the seracs of the Khumbu Icefall do. But, I kept plodding along, up above the Saddle Rock Trail. The floods of 2013 hit this part of the trail system so hard, they had to erect a ladder to get up and over a newly formed gulch that tore through the mountain. It would be my Hillary Step. I had climbed up and down this ladder twenty-four times already, but this last time, I just stared at the ladder for a long while before mustering up the courage and motivation to climb up its rungs, without thinking I’d peel off to Oblivion. Once cresting this ladder and navigating the scrambly bits rocks, I found the first flat area I could see to justsit down, which transformed into a lay down for just a few minutes. It was too cold to stay for too long, but it helped me get going again. I had no doubt I’d finish up, but I knew it wasn’t going to be all that kind. Nothing worth doing is ever that easy. I had to keep moving, or I’d just stop dead in my tracks. I made it to the Greenman Trail junction, knowing every single rock that was in my path. I could barely see, but I could almost *feel* my way through the trails. Each turn, each switchback I now knew my heart, and it was my heart that kept on beating. With that rhythm I continued stepping forward and ascending. This was my South Summit – not fully there, but the taste of the peak was in my mouth, and it engulfed me with its fever. To the top! By the very last switchbacks, I could at least form a crooked smile. It was just a matter of time before I reached the summit block, and I could sit awhile and enjoy the sunshine, as the morning runners congregated at the top to do much the same. I ran into Jacob – or I guess he ran into me, as I was going much the slower pace: right foot, left foot, stop to catch my breath. I imagined I was 29,000 feet up without bottled oxygen, instead of 8,000 feet down, with the twinkling of Boulder’s lights slowly being outshined by the rising sun just below. Jacob is a Product Manager for Ultimate Direction, and like all the UD folks, he gets stoked to see the products he helps design and market used for such foolhearty endeavours, even if its right outside all our homes. With that stoke, I was able to pick up my pace just a little bit to get my poor body to the summit and relish in the sunlight. In short time, summit block was attained! I could see around me for miles and miles – everything beautifully covered in a blanket of snow. Was that Tibet over yonder, or just Nederland? Lohtse to the north, or Longs Peak? Jacob had to dash down and I said my goodbyes to him, then I said my hellos to some more regular members of the Cult of Green Mountain. I stayed awhile to chat with a gentleman I met on my last running of the Dirty 30, and just after a few minutes, it was time for me to go down, too. Summits are always fleeting. Going down wasn’t easy, but it was sure easier than going up! With a bit of bother from my lower legs who were by now protesting LOULDY that they would rather not try to stabilize what sure seemed like a steep descent pitch, I made it back to my bike, and found all sorts of baked goods waiting for me from fellow trail runners who answered my call for goodies. I layed down for a good 30 winks on a nearby rock in the parking lot, then collected my gear, and rode slowly home, half asleep at this point. I felt the entire weight of a landmass like Everest lifted from my tired shoulders. I could take a nap for the rest of the day, and drink the adult beverage left by my bike by an unknown party that night. In 26 hours and 48 minutes – far under the 36 hour time limit I gave myself, I was able to make thirteen laps of Green Mountain, amassing 31,762 feet of elevation gain in 55.9 miles. That’s the longest time on foot I’ve ever done by around 10 miles and absolutely my PR for most elevation gained in one go. I couldn’t have possible have done another lap with the 9 hours I had left! To give perspective on the elevation, The Hard Rock 100 course amassed just a little more elevation gain, in a little less than twice the distance. Let’s say the trails on Green Mountain are a bit on the steeper side of things! I want to thank everyone who came out for a lap, left me baked goodies and adult beverages, cheered me on, took photos, or followed along at home with updates given by all of the above. A wonderful trail running community makes living in such a town like Boulder that much more special! I may never myself travel to a Himalyan peak such as Everest (but if I do, you damn well know it’ll be by riding a bike to it!), but my own personal wonder of such great heights has increased stratospherically. Splits: April 18th: Trailhead Summit 5:29 6:31 7:06 8:09 8:47 9:50 10:21 11:22 12:08 13:16 14:12 15:22 16:20 17:23 18:07 19:15 20:04 21:15 22:10 23:27 April 19th: 0:23 1:42 2:25 3:42 4:49 7:07 8:14 |
Each day, millions of music fans come to Genius to read lyrics and learn about their favorite artists—our Top Songs Chart reflects what the world is listening to all day, every day. In 2016, Genius song pages were viewed over one billion times. In 2017, we’re crunching numbers and compiling the Month In Lyrics on the first of every month. The data is broken down into the following categories each month: Top Artists, Top Songs, Top Lyrics, and Top Albums. Go deeper into the data below: Top Artists XXXTentacion topped the Genius charts once again, earning more than three million pageviews in August. Not far behind him was Logic, whose “1-800-273-8255” continues to perform well months after its release. Artists like Lil Uzi Vert, Sam Smith, and Taylor Swift benefitted from new releases, too, and K-Pop boy band BTS also managed to sneak into the Top 20. Top Songs Logic managed to finally displace Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito (Remix)” as the most popular song on Genius this month, likely thanks to his high-profile VMA performance and the subsequent explosion in popularity of his anti-suicide anthem. Sam Smith, Post Malone, and ZAYN made big debuts this month with their respective singles, while XXXTentacion managed to earn three entries on the chart, the most of any artist. Holdovers like Lil Uzi Vert’s “XO Tour Llif3” and Kendrick Lamar’s “HUMBLE.” continue to perform well, too. Top Lyrics XXXTentacion’s “Jocelyn Flores,” an ode to a friend that committed suicide, takes the top spot on Genius this month. Close behind it is a line from Logic’s “1-800-273-8255,” followed by the chorus of Post Malone’s new single “rockstar.” Taylor Swift also grabbed two spots on this month’s charts, while Dua Lipa edged into the Top 10 with a line from her breakout hit “New Rules.” Despacito (Remix) and Daddy Yankee finally fell out of the top spot after several months, but their hit “Despacito (Remix)” remains on the charts. Top Albums XXXTentacion tops the Albums chart once again this month with 17, managing a much higher average pageview count than he earned back in August (224,575 average pageviews vs. 144,469 last month). Most of this month’s chart is made up of holdovers from August, although Daniel Caesar’s Freudian, BTS‘ Love Yourself 承 ‘Her’, and Demi Lovato’s Tell Me You Love Me all managed to crack the Top 20. Dua Lipa also moved up a few slots from last month. |
For the past 50 years, a United Nations Security Council resolution has helped to sustain Israel's occupation of Palestine, analysts say. Ghada Karmi, a British-Palestinian author and lecturer at Exeter University's Institute of Arab and Islamic studies, says the central issue is that Israelis "never intended" to comply with UNSC Resolution 242, adopted on November 22, 1967. "From the steady colonisation of the Palestinian area, you can see that there has been no attempt on the part of Israel to comply with any part of the resolution," she said. Resolution 242 Following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, a resolution called on Israel to give up the territories it occupied in exchange for a lasting peace with its neighbours. Israel defeated the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria, resulting in the Palestinian "Naksa", or setback, in June 1967. In that year, Israel expelled some 430,000 Palestinians from their homes. The Naksa was perceived as an extension of the 1948 Nakba, or catastrophe, which accompanied the founding of the state of Israel. In a matter of six days, Israel seized the remainder of historic Palestine, including the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, as well as the Syrian Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. Later that year, Israel annexed East Jerusalem as well. {articleGUID} Apart from the Sinai Peninsula, all the other territories remain occupied to this day. Under the sponsorship of the British ambassador to the UN at the time, Resolution 242 aimed to implement a "just and lasting peace in the Middle East" region. The resolution's preamble explicitly prohibited the continuation of Israeli control over territory that was acquired by force during the war, citing "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security". The resolution called on Israel to withdraw its forces from territories it had occupied in the Six-Day War, and urged all parties to acknowledge each other's territorial sovereignty. (i) Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force UN Security Council Resolution 242, Article 1 However, the resolution was used by Israel to continue its occupation of the territories, as it also called for "achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem" while falling short of addressing the Palestinian people's right to statehood, analysts note. As a result, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which at the time was perceived by the international community and by the UN as the representative of the Palestinian people, refused to acknowledge the resolution until two decades later. The resolution was later used as the basis for Arab-Israeli peace negotiations and the notion of creating a two-state solution along the internationally recognised 1967 borders. But in the US-based Journal of Palestine Studies, lawyer and Georgetown University professor Noura Erekat wrote that Israel has used Resolution 242 to justify the seizure of Palestinian land. "When Israel declared its establishment in May 1948, it denied that Arab Palestinians had a similar right to statehood as the Jews because the Arab countries had rejected the Partition Plan," Erekat wrote, referencing UN Resolution 181. The final language of Resolution 242 did not correct the failure to realise Palestinian self-determination, referring merely to the "refugee problem", she added. "Following the 1967 war, Israel argued that given the sovereign void in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip the territories were neither occupied nor not occupied," Erekat said, noting that Israel used this argument "to steadily grab Palestinian land without absorbing the Palestinians on the land". {articleGUID} Though Resolution 242 qualifies "occupied territories" as those areas occupied or acquired during the war, analysts say Israel used the "vagueness" of the language to its benefit. "[Israel and its allies] are saying there isn't anything specific - there aren't any specific territories mentioned - which means, 'We can have this or that,'" Karmi said. "This whole vagueness argument is artificial, to throw dust in the eye. The problem with the resolution is that it has never been implemented. That is one of the most serious things about it." Sustaining the occupation Mouin Rabbani, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Palestine Studies, said the political context of the time was the underlying force behind the resolution's lack of execution. "Israel's victory in 1967 was largely seen as an American victory as much as an Israeli victory," Rabbani told Al Jazeera. "This was in the height of the cold war." The United States' UN representative at the time played a significant role in trying to steer the resolution in Israel's favour, he said. {articleGUID} "It [Israel] had absolutely no intention of leaving, and it never came under sufficient political or military pressure whereby the costs of remaining in the occupied territories became higher than benefits of doing so," he said. The importance of Resolution 242 actually came much later, after political developments formed the basis of an international consensus for a two-state-solution - a notion that began to emerge among the Palestinian leadership in the 1970s, Rabbani said. "Today, we always talk about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict - that didn't really exist at the time," he said. "It was the Arab/Israeli conflict and the question of Palestine." Palestinian dispossession The fact that Palestinian statehood was not awarded much significance in the resolution is not the outcome of deliberate sidelining; rather, it is due to the political lens in which Palestine was seen at the time. Despite the fact that Resolution 242 paved the way for negotiations, it is now "completely irrelevant", Karmi said. "The basic issue to resolve this conflict is return. This is the basic issue - these people [the Palestinians] are dispossessed," she said. But even with a series of brokered peace talks, there has been no real progress towards implementing a two-state solution, with discussions at a stalemate amid the expansion of Jewish settlements. The soaring settlement project, which is in direct contravention of international law, has brought around 600,000 Israelis into dozens of Jewish settlements throughout the occupied West Bank. Israeli authorities expropriate Palestinian land and carry out home demolitions on a regular basis, most commonly to expand existing settlements, or occasionally to build new ones. Checkpoints and Israel's separation wall have further hindered Palestinians' freedom of movement. "Israel is totally in control of the Palestinian territories - not just the West Bank, but also Gaza," Karmi said. The Gaza Strip, home to about two million people, has been under siege for more than a decade. In 2007, after the election victory of Hamas and the group's assumption of control over the territory, Israel imposed a strict land, aerial and naval blockade. "The fact of total Israeli control of 100 percent of Palestine is precisely and fundamentally why you can't have a two-state solution," Karmi said. |
Fundamental Concepts - Government is Theft [WeirdDave] Like most of you, I've watched with horror as our American society, culture and population gets dumbed down every year. Whether it's the inevitable result of the comfortable lives we live, said comfort made possible by the conservative principles that you and I wish to preserve, or the result of a Gramscian Long March Through the Institutions set in motion by the bastards from the Frankfurt School* isn't what I want to discuss in this essay. No, the topic of this essay is one of the fundamental realities of government that is absolutely foreign to 90% of the people out there, one that was taken as a given by the founding fathers. I sympathize with those of you in the let it burn camp, really I do, but the (usually) unspoken assumption of LIB is that we can rebuild after the burning an America based upon first principles. We might be able to do it (I have my doubts, can anyone give me a historical example of the total collapse of a society and culture that was followed by anything other than a totalitarian regime? Anyone? Bueller?), IF.....IF (and it's the biggest if in the world), we were dealing with a population that understood and believed in certain fundamental concepts that in previous generations were ingrained in the population, we might have a chance. They're not ingrained anymore. Do they even teach civics in school these days? There are a number of these concepts to discuss, I might make this a series, but the one that I want to focus on today is simple: Government is theft. It is often said in the liberal media that we conservatives hate and mistrust government (broadly true), and that we want no government at all (False, that would be the anarchists, a group that should be furthest right on the political spectrum but oddly, these days, seem to be mostly leftists**). What we want is a government that is limited to a narrowly defined role. Why do we want that? Many will ask this question. Government exists to make our lives better. Stupid haters! We want that because we realize that in order for government to function, it MUST take money from the populous to fund it's endeavors. We're perfectly willing to acquiesce to that reality, as long as what government is doing is strictly limited by law. Defense? Definitely. Police and courts? Yes. Taxes? Grudgingly. Regulate trade? Absolutely. And so on. As long as these functions of government are strictly defined and regulated, we're on board, but the basic principle is one of theft. The government takes (at the point of a gun. We're willing to accept this, but it is still done by force) some of our property in order to function. Where it all goes pear shaped is when government seeks to do things outside it's enumerated powers. Why? Why, that's the subject of this essay. As I said, government is theft. We are willing to allow them to take a small part of what we earn to fund the functions that we agree are necessary. When government goes outside those boundaries, however, it will continue to take and take and take, more and more and more, becoming a parasite vastly larger than it's host. It HAS to, just as you or I have to MAKE more money if we want to buy a new car, government has to TAKE more money if it wants to do more things. Think of it this way. Suppose you owned an apple cart. You sell apples on the street to support your family. Every day, the beat cop stops by and eats an apple. You don't exactly like this, but you're ok with it because the cops keeps robbers away with his presence. Soon, however, he brings everyone from the precinct down to enjoy your apples too. You hold your tongue because with all the cops around eating apples, no robber would dream of accosting you, and enough of the neighborhood folks buy apples that you can still support your family. You made the tacit agreement with the cop to give him apples in return for protection. Even with all the cops eating apples, that agreement is still being kept. Now suppose the cops start handing apples out to every passerby. Now nobody buys your apples and you go out of business. Until that happens, however, who objects? The cops? No, they are enjoying your apples. The passerbys? Ditto. No, only you object, and nobody except you and your now starving family even cares. Now extrapolate that across 330 million people and you begin to get the idea, and that's how government grows. It takes your apples and gives them to everyone, and while you don't like that, you're busy eating the pears it took from the cart across the street. Everybody becomes a passerby, benefiting from theft from others. Obviously, it cant last forever, soon there is nothing left to take, and everybody goes out of business. It's a Faustian bargain. All of this used to be generally understood. It's not anymore, and until and unless the majority of the population realize that we're all Faust, selling our souls for a few crumbs of bread (knowledge in Faust's case), we're irrevocably damned, like Faust. It's only by realizing this fundamental nature of government, and accepting it, that we can control it. If we forget this, then government becomes Santa Claus, supplying never ending gifts without cost. This will continue until it doesn't. What happens then? Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. -George Washington *Have I talked about Gramsci and the Farnkfort School? It seems I must have, it's a subject I'll go off on at a moment's notice (ask my wife), but I can't remember if I have or not. **The true political spectrum is another good topic. This garbage that fascists are right wing drives me nuts. |
Just as the university landlords reached for the nuclear option, all over London those who have been paying attention are beginning to realise that the rent strikes at University College London (UCL) and Goldsmiths have already triumphed spectacularly. The strikes have hit a bullseye – the soft underbelly of the big-business university – and their butterfly effect is about to smash the post-2010 higher education funding model. What’s more, we can teach others how to do it, and it may arm the radical left with the most powerful arsenal of civil disobedience tactics available in modern Britain. On 2 June, Duncan Palmer – head of accommodation at UCL management – fired a desperately rambling letter at everybody withholding rent in student accommodation. In a last-ditch attempt to break the rent strike that is now entering its fourth month, UCL’s management claim rent strikers will be “forwarded to our debt collection agency.” Originally, conservative estimates by campaigners reckoned that 6-700 students are on strike. But Palmer’s letter also states that out of 5000 residents in UCL halls, only around 4000 have paid this terms’ rent. In other words, as many as 1000 people – 20% – are currently on strike, according to the landlords’ statistics. If this is true, then collectively students are withholding well over a £1m. And there isn’t much the university management can do about it. Since the start of the dispute rent strikers at UCL have maintained it is unfair that the university charges unaffordable rents when 40% of the charge is spent on long-term investment rather than running costs and maintenance. Their solution is to refuse to pay the excess rent. Yes, they initially agreed to a contact. But it turned out the contract was fundamentally exploitative and dishonest, and there is no other option to make rents affordable to those who simply cannot afford it. The key to getting away with it is doing it on a large enough scale. Crucially, despite their posturing, UCL’s managers know they are powerless to regain any withheld rent without making further concessions to the strikers’ demands or losing vast chunks of their profits. The idea of ‘debt collection’ – a few staggeringly under-resourced, random middle managers in an office trying to harass renters over the phone – is laughable. To seek a county court ruling against hundreds of their own students (who they are meant to care for and educate), in order to physically take their money or assets, would cost more than what strikers currently owe. Not to mention the cataclysmic blow such drawn-out actions would bring down on UCL’s slick PR-image. Other sanctions, such as refusing graduation, are illegal. Checkmate. This matters to the movement for free education, social housing and social justice because it shows just how vulnerable large institutions in the modern world really are to planned mass disobedience. The UCL estates department, like most other large modern corporations, has huge turnovers but operates on narrow margins. Small disruptions have unpredictably large knock-on effects. Losing £1m would look bad on anybody’s balance sheet. For UCL – whose plan to maximise returns to raise capital for future expansion relies on squeezing every last penny out of every last student and academic – it’s utterly unsustainable. Next year, if managers don’t agree to fair settlement with the UCL Cut the Rent campaign, there will be more strikes and management will lose more money. A financial model dependent on blind compliance has been ridiculed. Because of targeted collective dissent, UCL’s management have no option but to rethink, or keep failing to meet their surplus targets. The rent strike has effectively already won and it shows how other similar actions can win too. At UCL the situation in halls is not unique, and UCL is not a unique case of exploitation in Cameron’s Britain. Locally, the very same managers who are exploiting students for a rent surplus have also frozen pay for lecturers and imposed harsh restrictions on academics’ departmental endowment funds – a policy that will soon be challenged in an open confrontation and show of strength by the Universities and Colleges Union and the professorial academic board. Meanwhile, nationwide, renters are having the life drained out of them as landlords snatch an increasing share of tenants’ income. These struggles – for fair access to education, for democracy and fair pay for university staff, and for the right to social housing and a living rent – will benefit from spreading the method of coordinated noncompliance practised by student strikers. It will build a movement with real bargaining power. Since the UCL Cut the Rent campaign began it has scored small victories along the way. The university management paid out hundreds of thousands in compensation, and reduced the cost of accommodation for 5000 students. All that took was a group of rebels with a cause, a photocopier, £1k and a serious strategy to gain power – imagine what we could to with more support from the outside! Now, the unthinkable has become common sense: if we can’t afford to fund a surplus, don’t pay; do it in large numbers to take the fear of violence out of the equation, and the institutions built on credit and endless growth for the sake of growth will panic. We want to help distribute what we have learnt while demonstrating this – if it catches on we will all win. Victory to the rent strike! On 18 June UCL Cut the Rent will be holding a manifestation at UCL’s open day. Photo: Sarah Benamar/UCL Cut the Rent – If you want to support media for a different politics, you can donate or subscribe to Novara Media at support.novaramedia.com. |
Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. After Michael Eisenga, a wealthy GOP donor and Wisconsin business owner, failed to convince several courts to lower his child support payments, he came up with an inventive plan B—he recruited a Republican state legislator to rewrite Wisconsin law in his favor. A set of documents unearthed Saturday by the Wisconsin State Journal shows Eisenga and his lawyer, William Smiley, supplying detailed instructions to Republican state Rep. Joel Kleefisch on how to word legislation capping child support payments from the wealthy. Kleefisch began work on the legislation last fall, weeks after an appeals court rejected Eisenga’s attempts to lower his child support payments. For example, in a September 13 letter, a drafting lawyer with Wisconsin’s legislative services bureau complained to a Kleefisch aide, “It’s hard to fashion a general principle that will apply to only one situation.” According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Eisenga’s current child support payments for the three children he has with his ex-wife are set at $216,000 a year. (Per the couple’s prenuptial agreement, the divorce settlement left his $30 million in assets untouched.) Current law instructs judges to calculate child support as a percentage of income, with no cap and the option to include assets. Under Kleefisch’s bill, which making its way through the Wisconsin statehouse, payments would top out at $150,000 annually, and judges would be prohibited from taking assets into account when determining child support. The bill also includes language that would allow Eisenga to restart court proceedings over his child support payments, as it requires courts to slash such payments if they are 10 percent higher than they would be under the new cap. In 2010, Eisenga donated $10,000 to Kleefisch and his wife, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, according to the Journal Sentinel. Eisenga also donated $15,000 to Republican Gov. Scott Walker. The drafting documents, available on the Wisconsin legislature’s website, leave little not doubt that the bill was written to Eisenga’s specifications. According to the documents, on September 5, Eisenga’s lawyer briefed him on changes he was suggesting to a draft of Kleefisch’s bill. “We focused only on the portion that would require the court to modify your child support order based solely on the passage of the bill,” Smiley wrote. Eisenga then forwarded that letter to Kleefisch and one of his aides, saying, “Please have the drafter make these SPECIFIC changes to the bill.” The next day, Kleefisch’s aide forwarded the letter to the legislative lawyer drafting the bill. A hearing for the bill is scheduled Wednesday before the Assembly Family Law Committee. Eisenga and Smiley declined to speak to local news outlets about their emails with Kleefisch. On Saturday, Kleefisch told the Journal, “I do a gamut of legislation with the help and assistance of many, many constituents, and whether they gave a contribution or not has not made a difference.” |
CLOSE Corey Feldman: He was a child star and now he's touring with his band, Corey Feldman and the Angels. Video by Jennifer Sangalang, FLORIDA TODAY Wochit Corey Feldman, best known for "The Goonies," "Stand By Me," "License to Drive" and "The Lost Boys," is now a singer. His band is Corey Feldman and the Angels. (Photo: PHOTO COURTESY OF MAGGIE ST. THOMAS) Speeding was the initial reason for pulling over actor and musician Corey Feldman's bus in Mangham Saturday evening. Police Chief Perry Fleming told The News-Star that Feldman, 46, was driving under suspension. After Feldman was transported to the police department, the arresting officer noticed the scent of marijuana and searched the recreation vehicle. Feldman was charged with misdemeanor possession of marijuana, driving under suspension and speeding, Fleming said. Because the charges were misdemeanors, Feldman was able to pay a fine of $640 instead of posting bond. Feldman's security guard, Emanuel I. Speal III, 42, was also able to pay a fine of $590 on charges of possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. Four other members of Feldman's group were booked into the Richland Parish Jail on other drug charges, Fleming said. All were able to post bond and secure release overnight. Courtney Anne Mitchell, 28, Woodland Hills, California was booked on charges of a possession of a controlled dangerous substance, Xanax. Mitchell and Feldman married in 2016. Marisa Testa, 20, Farmingdale, California, was booked on charges of possession of marijuana and possession of a schedule IV substance, Xanax. Darci Carpenter, 28, Woodland Hills, California, was booked on charges of possession of a schedule III controlled dangerous substance and possession of marijuana. David H. Altman, 47, was booked on charges of possession of a schedule IV controlled dangerous substance. In a series of Twitter posts, Feldman said he was not arrested or put in jail but received a misdemeanor charge because of a member of his crew had medical marijuana with a legal California prescription. Feldman said he did not have drugs on his person but was charged because it was his bus. He said no illegal or street drugs were found on the bus, and the group was told all charges could be dropped with proof of proper prescriptions. He said the medicines were legal but did not have their particular bottles. In the tweets, Feldman classified the arrests as a "a bit of a good ol' shakedown" and said that, after the fines were paid in cash, officers asked for pictures and autographs and then contacted the local newspaper for interviews. The News-Star contacted both the Richland Parish Sheriff's Office and the Mangham Police Department Saturday night about the charges. It is unclear which local newspaper Feldman referred to in his tweets. Feldman also said he found the timing of the arrest ironic and that his band would be traveling to Houston to perform their next show. Full copies of his tweets are embedded below. Feldman, who is best known for roles in 1980s classics “Stand By Me,” “Gremlins” and “The Goonies," was scheduled to appear Saturday night at Live Oaks Bar and Ballroom in Monroe as part of his Heavenly US Angelic Tour. Per a post on the Live Oaks Facebook page at 10:14 p.m., Feldman's performance was cancelled, but he was still able to appear at the bar and hang out. Feldman performed at the Varsity Theatre in Baton Rouge on Friday. Follow Ashley Mott Reporter on Facebook for the latest news and updates or on Twitter @ashleymaymott. HI #EVERYBODY & HAPPY 22ND! 4 THE RECORD, I WAS NOT ARRESTED OR PUT IN JAIL. I RECEIVED A MISDEMEANOR IN LOUISIANA, DUE 2 A MEMBER OF MY — Corey Feldman (@Corey_Feldman) October 22, 2017 CREW HAVING MEDICAL MARIJUANA, WITH A LEGAL CA PRESCRIPTION, I HAD NOTHING ON ME, BUT WAS CHARGED BECAUSE ITS MY BUS. ALSO 5 OTHERS WERE — Corey Feldman (@Corey_Feldman) October 22, 2017 CHARGED DUE 2 HAVING LEGAL MEDICINES WITHOUT THEIR PARTICULAR BOTTLES. NO ILLEGAL OR STREET DRUGS WERE FOUND ON THE BUS AT ALL! WHICH IS Y — Corey Feldman (@Corey_Feldman) October 22, 2017 NOBODY SPENT THE NIGHT IN JAIL. HOWEVER WE WERE PROMISED THAT THESE CHARGES COULD ALL B DROPPED WITH PROOF OF PROPER SCRIPTS! IT WAS A BIT — Corey Feldman (@Corey_Feldman) October 22, 2017 OF A GOOD OL SHAKEDOWN! AFTER WE PAID THEM IN CASH, THEY ASKED 4 PICS & AUTOGRAPHS, & THEN CALLED THE LOCAL PAPER 2 DO INTERVIEWS! — Corey Feldman (@Corey_Feldman) October 22, 2017 I DO FIND THE TIMING OF ALL THIS IRONIC! BUT HAVE NO FEAR, WE R HEADED 2 HOUSTON, & WE WILL PERFORM THE BENEFIT CONCERT 2NITE 2 HELP RAISE $ — Corey Feldman (@Corey_Feldman) October 22, 2017 Read or Share this story: http://www.thenewsstar.com/story/news/crime/2017/10/21/corey-feldman-faces-pot-charge-richland-parish/788238001/ |
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Google would be among the large firms required to disclose tax information under the rules Plans to force the largest companies to disclose more about their tax affairs will be unveiled by the European Union on Tuesday. The rules will affect multinational firms with more than €750m in sales. They will have to detail how much tax they pay in which EU countries as well as any activities carried out in specific tax havens. The plans come amid heightened scrutiny of the use of tax havens following the Panama Papers revelations. Transparency Lord Hill, the EU's financial services commissioner, said: "This is a carefully thought through but ambitious proposal for more transparency on tax. "While our proposal on [country-by-country reporting] is not of course focused principally on the response to the Panama Papers, there is an important connection between our continuing work on tax transparency and tax havens that we are building into the proposal." Country-by-country reporting rules already apply to banks, mining and forestry companies, according to an EU spokesperson. Under the new proposals, that would be expanded to cover companies accounting for about 90% of corporate revenues in the EU, they added. The BBC understands that companies will need to disclose information such as total net turnover, profit before tax, income tax due, amount of tax actually paid and accumulated earnings. The changes come after G20 leaders agreed to follow an OECD action plan to tackle corporate tax minimisation. Analysis: Theo Leggett, BBC business reporter This proposal is bound to be controversial. The Commission's plan would oblige companies to report what they earn and how much tax they pay in EU countries. But it would also force them to reveal details of their tax affairs in "third countries which do not respect international tax good governance standards". In other words, secretive tax havens. This sounds perfectly sensible. Companies which use artificial structures to avoid or minimise tax, or to shelter their gains in tax havens, would find their arrangements exposed to the full glare of public scrutiny. The old legalistic argument that they pay all the tax that they owe might not be enough to deflect bad publicity. But how do you decide which regions' tax laws aren't up to scratch? Last year, the Commission published a blacklist of 30 'non-cooperative jurisdictions'. The move was condemned by the head of the OECD, who described the criteria it used as unfair and subjective. |
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, marking the third anniversary of his election, urged the U.S. Catholic Church on Saturday to overcome its divisions and seek “purification” and the truth following its sexual abuse scandal. Pope Benedict XVI celebrates Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York on April 19, 2008. REUTERS/Mel Evans/Pool Benedict began the penultimate day of his first U.S. papal visit with a solemn Mass in New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Gothic church completed in 1879 with the pennies of immigrants and known as the center of American Catholicism. The pope rode down New York’s usually bustling Fifth Avenue, a section of which was eerily deserted and sealed off by security agents, in a black limousine and emerged wearing a fur-fringed white cape. He was welcomed on the steps of the great cathedral by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who earlier in an address inside the church joked about being Jewish. “Pope Benedict could not have picked a better time to come to New York — a beautiful spring weekend, the 200th anniversary of the archdiocese of New York, and on top of that it’s Passover,” Bloomberg said. The Mass reflected New York’s ethnic mix, with prayers in Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, German and Akan, a group of languages from West Africa still used there and by the descendants of escaped slaves from South America. For the fifth consecutive day, the pope spoke out about the sexual abuse scandal that rocked the U.S. Church and has cost it some $2 billion in settlement payments with victims. In his sermon, he said he was spiritually close to the U.S. Church as it deals with the aftermath of the scandal and cleanses and renews itself. “I join you in praying that this will be a time of purification for each and every particular Church and religious community, a time for healing. I also encourage you to cooperate with your bishops who continue to work effectively to resolve this issue,” he said. MOVE FORWARD, SEEK THE TRUTH The pope, who lamented “division between different groups, different generations, different members of the same religious family,” asked God to grant the U.S. Church “a renewed sense of unity and purpose” so that it could “move forward in hope, in love for the truth and for one another.” Benedict, 81, while in Washington on the first leg of the U.S. visit on Thursday, met victims of sexual abuse by priests. On his way to the United States, he said that “it is more important to have good priests than to have many priests.” Welcoming the pope into the cathedral, the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Edward Egan, referred to the sexual abuse crisis: “You know our weaknesses and our strengths ... you know our victories and defeats,” he said. Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi denied reports that Cardinal William Levada, who succeeded the pope as chief doctrinal official, had said the Church might alter the statute of limitations on abuse cases. He said no changes were planned. Lombardi said the pope “feels that the atmosphere is very friendly for him, the reception is very good and that people understand his message and feel they are understood by him.” The pope is trying to rally the spirits of a Church that has seen a drop in priestly vocations and the closing of inner city schools and consolidation of parishes. The number of Catholic priests in the United States has fallen from more than 58,000 in 1965 to just under 41,500 last year, according to the Center for Applied Research into the Apostolate at Georgetown University. While the number of U.S. Catholics rose from 45.6 million in 1965 to 64.4 million in 2007, the number of graduate-level seminarians fell from 8,325 to 3,274. Slideshow (16 Images) On Saturday night the pope traveled to the New York suburb of Yonkers, where, remembering his own youth under the yoke of the “monster” of Nazism, he urged young Americans to avoid the snares of drugs and materialism and seek the truth about life. On Sunday the pope is to visit New York’s Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center towers destroyed on September 11, 2001, and celebrate Mass at Yankee Stadium. (Additional reporting by Claudia Parsons, Michelle Nichols, and Tom Heneghan; editing by Vicki Allen, Philip Barbara and Eric Walsh) |
# About MTGJSON # Our Mission MTGJSON is an open‐source project that catalogues all Magic cards in a portable format. A dedicated group of fans maintains and supplies data for a variety of projects and sites in the community. # The Team Zach - Lead Developer & Maintainer Zach is a 22‐year old hippo fanatic who loves playing with big data and giving back to the community in unique ways. He has worked on MTGJSON since 2016, and has led the design and development of version 4. His work can also be seen heavily in the open‐source Cockatrice game client. All inquires about MTGJSON can be sent to [email protected] Martin - Web Developer Martin is an avid strategy gamer and Magic player since late 1994. When he’s not looking at Javascript or playing commander, he’s likely spending time on a host of smaller projects, including the custom card creator MTG.Design. Eric - Documentation Developer Eric is a conceptualizer that loves open-source software and cervidae. When he's not delving into any code he can find, he enjoys watching 'B'-rated horror movies, camping, and hiking. Others have devoted their time and effort in to this project. If you have suggestions for improvements, bug reports, or would just like to help address existing issues, we are always looking for help. You can contribute to the project through the main MTGJSON repo or the MTGJSON website repo . If you would like to help in other ways please consider donating to the project via PayPal . # Who We Serve |
1. Figure skating was initially part of the Summer Olympics. Before the advent of the Winter Olympics in 1924, men’s, women’s and pairs figure skating events were part of the programs for the 1908 and 1920 Summer Olympics. Ice hockey also made its Olympic debut at the 1920 Summer Games. 2. Olympic champions last received solid gold medals in 1912. Olympic runners-up can take some consolation in the fact that there isn’t much difference between their silver medals and the gold medals awarded to winners. Medals made with pure gold were last awarded in 1912, and winners today receive medals that are 93 percent silver and 6 percent copper, with just 6 grams of gold. (Champions in the first modern Olympics in 1896 received silver, not gold, medals. The traditional awarding of gold, silver and bronze medals to the top three finishers began in 1904.) ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website 3. The Summer Games used to span months, starting in the spring and ending in the fall. Think the 17 days scheduled for the 2012 Summer Games is too long? It’s nothing compared to the first Summer Olympics staged in London in 1908, which spanned 188 days, or more than half of the year. Although the formal opening ceremonies were not until July 13, the 1908 Games opened on April 27 with the racquets competition and ended October 31 with the field hockey final. The 1900 Paris Games spanned more than five months, and the 1904 St. Louis Games and the 1920 Antwerp Games also lasted nearly as long. 4. The first Olympian to fail a drug test was busted for drinking beer. Olympic drug testing debuted in 1968, and Swedish pentathlete Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall was first to test positive for a banned substance. His drug? Two beers he said he downed to “calm his nerves” before the pistol shoot. The disqualified Liljenwall and his teammates were forced to return their bronze medals. (Fellow pentathlete Hans-Jurgen Todt could have used something to calm down as well. The West German attacked his horse after it balked three times at jumping obstacles.) ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website 5. The 1936 basketball final was a literal quagmire. When basketball officially debuted at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, games were played on outdoor tennis courts made of clay and sand. During the gold medal game between the United States and Canada, a second-half deluge turned the court into a muddy mess that would have stymied even the Dream Team. With dribbling in the mire an impossible task, the waterlogged Americans spent most of the half simply playing catch with the slippery ball to protect their lead. Final score: United States 19, Canada 8. 6. For nearly 40 years, artists also competed for gold medals. French Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founding father of the modern Olympic Games, sought to incorporate art and culture into the Olympic movement. So beginning with the 1912 Stockholm Games, gold, silver and bronze medals were awarded in painting, sculpture, architecture, literature and music. Works entered in the juried competitions were required to be original pieces inspired by sports. In perhaps a not-so-strange coincidence, Coubertin himself won the first gold medal for literature. Following the 1948 London Games, artists were deemed to be professionals who violated the amateur ideals of the Olympics, and the present-day Cultural Olympiad replaced the medal competitions. 7. A gymnast with a wooden leg won six medals, including three gold, in the 1904 Olympics. If South African runner Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee nicknamed the “Blade Runner,” wins the 400 meters this year, he won’t be the first man with prosthetic legs to capture Olympic gold. In the 1904 St. Louis Games, hometown boy George Eyser, who lost his left leg as a youth after it was run over by a train, won gold in the parallel bar, long horse and rope climbing events. He also won silver in the side horse and all-around competitions and bronze on the horizontal bar. 8. America’s first female Olympic champion had no idea she was even competing in the Summer Games. While studying art under Edgar Degas and Auguste Rodin in Paris in 1900, 22-year-old American Margaret Abbott saw an advertisement for a golf tournament and decided to enter. After shooting a 47 on the nine-hole course, she won the tourney and took home a porcelain bowl. Unbeknownst to Abbott, the tournament she had entered was part of the poorly organized Paris Games, and she had just become the first American woman to win an Olympic event. 9. The equestrian events at the 1956 Melbourne Games were held on the other side of the world. While most of the athletes traveled down under for the 1956 Summer Games, the horses and riders in the equestrian events did not. Due to Australia’s strict quarantine rules, the equestrian competitions were moved to Stockholm, Sweden—nearly 9,700 miles away—and held five months before the rest of the XVI Olympiad. 10. When the Americans refused to dip their flag to King Edward VII in 1908, it started a tradition. Upset that the U.S. flag was missing from those fluttering above the Olympic stadium during the opening ceremonies of the 1908 London Games, American flag bearer Ralph Rose refused to follow protocol and dip the Stars and Stripes as he passed the royal box. Although the story that Rose or fellow shot putter Martin Sheridan said, “This flag dips for no earthly king” is likely apocryphal, the snub set off a royal row. “From the very first day,” Coubertin wrote in his memoirs, “King Edward had taken exception to the American athletes because of their behavior and their barbaric shouts that resounded through the stadium.” American flag bearers dipped their banners to national leaders on several occasions after 1908, but it hasn’t happened since 1932—not even for U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the 1984 Los Angeles Games. |
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