text stringlengths 0 100k |
|---|
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was worth billions of dollars to corporate America, if a Dow Chemical settlement made public Friday is any indication. Dow was in the midst of appealing a $1.06 billion class-action antitrust ruling after a jury found that it had conspired with other chemical companies to fix prices for urethane, a material used in furniture and appliances. But because of Scalia’s death and the sudden unlikelihood of finding five votes on the Supreme Court to overturn the case, Dow decided to settle for $835 million, the bulk of the original award. “Growing political uncertainties due to recent events with the Supreme Court and increased likelihood for unfavorable outcomes for business involved in class-action suits have changed Dow’s risk assessment of the situation,” the company told Bloomberg News. The case reveals how corporations have used the conservative majority on the court as a safety valve to nullify unfavorable rulings. As the Alliance for Justice has documented, time and again, the Roberts Court has issued 5-4 rulings that protect big corporations from liability, limit access to justice for workers and consumers, and allow companies to evade regulations on the environment, racial and gender discrimination, and monopolistic practices. The most famous of these Court rulings, the Citizens United decision, enabled unlimited corporate spending in elections to attack regulatory structures at the legislative and executive branch. But the corporate stranglehold on the judicial branch provided a backstop, another venue to relieve big business from accountability. Scalia’s death on February 13 changed that, at least temporarily. The 4-4 split between liberals and conservatives on the Court means that, in most controversial cases, a deadlock allows the lower court ruling to stand. And in nine of the 13 federal district courts of appeals, Democrats have appointed the majority of judges, making it harder for corporations to get a favorable judgment. This is not just a theoretical matter; it comes down to dollars and cents, as the Dow Chemical case shows. The company had reason to think it could successfully appeal the $1.06 billion ruling against it, as long as Scalia was there. Scalia has been on the majority side in striking down class-action lawsuits in the past, and wrote the opinion in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, which prevented company employees from pursuing a gender pay equity suit because the 1.5 million women in the class couldn’t prove that each one of them faced exactly the same type of discrimination. In the settlement, Dow did not take responsibility for price fixing, continuing to argue that the lawsuit was “fundamentally flawed.” But without a Scalia around to bail it out, its arguments have scant effect. |
When Monique Sindler was dying in her bed in Paris in 2006, Sophie Calle, her daughter and the renowned French conceptual artist, set up a video camera and began taping. The artist, 60, has explained that her reason for the camera was that she didn’t want to be out of the room when the moment of death came. She wanted to hear her mother’s last word and see her last breath, but she had heard that the dying often wait until nobody is around to let go. “I was afraid I wouldn’t be there if she had a last thing to tell me,” she said this spring in a Skype interview from her home near Paris, where she has mounted a taxidermy giraffe head on the wall and named it after her mother. “The camera made me feel restful because I could sleep in the other room or go out and buy food. When I wasn’t there, I was still there.” While Ms. Calle’s career often involves invading the privacy of others — copying someone’s lost address book and calling people in it and then publishing their remarks in a newspaper; posing as a chambermaid to photograph the messes left by guests; and exhibiting a breakup email from a romantic partner to elicit commentary from various female experts — she had never made her mother the sole subject of one of her voyeuristic projects. “Finally,” Ms. Calle recalled her mother saying when she set up the camera, suggesting to her daughter and to anyone who came by and questioned it, that she was pleased that her turn as a subject had finally come, even if it was at the very end. |
WASHINGTON — The computer phishing attack that Google says originated in China was directed, somewhat indiscriminately, at an unknown number of White House staff officials, setting off the Federal Bureau of Investigation inquiry that began this week, according to several administration officials. It is unclear how many White House staff members — or those of other departments in the executive branch — might have been affected, according to two officials with knowledge of the investigation. But the intended victims ranged across various functions in the White House, and were not limited to those working on national security, economic policy or trade areas that would be of particular interest to the Chinese government. Administration officials said they had no evidence any confidential information was breached, or even that many people fell for the attack by providing information that would allow a breach of their Gmail accounts. White House classified systems run on dedicated lines and information on those systems, the officials said, cannot be forwarded to Gmail accounts. But investigators were trying to determine if the attackers believed that some staff members or other officials used their personal e-mail accounts for confidential government communications. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “Right now,” said one senior official, “that’s a theory, not a fact.” Google disclosed the attack this week and said that it was directed at not only American government officials, but also human right activists, journalists and South Korea’s government. Google tracked the attack to Jinan, China, which is the home to a Chinese military regional command center. |
Resume Format – Everything You Need to Know Is your resume format that important? Oh yes! Your resume format can decide how quickly – or slowly – a recruiter or potential employee can see what you bring to the table. Picture the scene: After weeks of trawling through the job listings in your industry you have found the perfect job for you. You know that you have the skills to do the job, you are a perfect fit and you know that you can ‘wow’ at interview. Sound familiar? Now all you need to do is submit a resume and a cover letter that will get you an invite for an interview. Competition for jobs is tough and a good resume can make all the difference between being invited to interview and being turned down before you even get a chance to speak to your potential employers. When faced with a pile of resumes, do you know what interviewers do? They look for any little reason to throw a resume on the ‘discard’ pile and bring their list for interview down to a manageable level. It makes sense, therefore, for you to do everything possible to make sure that your resume is in the very best shape it can be before submitting it. Luckily, although it is important to get your resume right, it is not difficult. With a little know-how and a bit of time you can make sure that your resume truly shines. The first thing to do is this: Make sure that you choose the right resume format. There are a number of different resume formats available, and each has their pros and cons. There are also many samples and templates available for each of the formats. Here, we will take you through the different options available and advise you when to use them and when to avoid using them. Note: Interchange ‘resume’ and ‘resumes’ with ‘CV ‘ and ‘CVs’ throughout this article, depending on where you are in the world. The Chronological Resume Format The chronological resume format is the most traditional form of resume. It is extremely popular with interviewers as it enables them to see where a candidate was working when they achieved certain goals. It is a flexible format that is designed to put your work history and achievements together. It works particularly well for candidates who have a solid and continuous work history with no inexplicable gaps. Some candidates with gaps in their employment history might worry that a chronological format might cause problems by highlighting periods of unemployment. So how do you avoid that problem? Like this: It is possible to work around such problems by listing your employment history by year, e.g. 2003-2004, rather than October 2003 – January 2004. This is a little less specific and can be useful to avoid highlighting gaps of up to 11 months in employment. You can also add unpaid work into the employment gaps on your resume. Many voluntary positions generate good quality transferable experience that allows you to build your skills. But you still might be wondering: “Do I have too many unexplained gaps on my resume?” If so, you should think about using the ‘functional’ resume format. Related Articles: The Functional Resume Format The functional resume format explains your work background by highlighting your key skills rather than your chronological job history. So what’s the advantage of that? This resume format is very useful for people returning to work after a career break or where there are long periods of unemployment that might be difficult to explain. It can also be useful in applications where skills that you learned early on in your employment history will be important to the new position. And the best reason for using a functional resume format? It allows you to highlight your skills that are directly applicable to the job you are applying for, based upon the job description and the person specification of the role. So if the job description emphasises customer service, make sure you place ‘customer service’ as a key skill right at the top of your ‘skills’ section on your functional resume. And any downsides to this format? Yes – there are, however, some problems with functional resumes. Some employers can be suspicious of a functional resume precisely because it is often used to mask prior employment difficulties. A functional format can also make it difficult for an interviewer to connect experience and achievements with a particular position. If you truly feel that a functional format is best for your resume you can allay any concerns by referencing every skill back to a previous employer listed under a separate ‘work history’ section. Alternatively, you might think about using one of the other formats available. The Combination Resume Format The combination resume is exactly that: A combination of a chronological and a functional resume that allows you to highlight your skills and achievements. As such, it combines the strengths of each format while eliminating the weaknesses. The format highlights the skills you have perfected during your career but supported with a chronological history of your professional experience. Best of both worlds. Related Articles: The Achievement Resume Format This resume format is a variation of the functional resume but rather than concentrate on prior experience it highlights your main professional achievements. Now: While this can be a very powerful format it is not necessarily popular with interviewers and recruiters (for the same reasons as a functional resume). Because of this, it is really only useful if you cannot make either a chronological or combination resume work for you and if you have a large number of big ticket, impressive achievements to shout about. Just like a functional format, an achievement format can be helpful if you are returning to work after a lengthy career break. Highlighting your achievements in previous roles can help to show that you are a high quality prospect. Once you have succeeded in getting back into employment you can revert to a more traditional format such as a combination resume. The Targeted Resume Format A targeted resume is the ultimate resume solution. You can use any of the other formats as your base but rather than use a generic resume to send to prospective employers you take the time to customise your resume to highlight how your skills and experience match the job description. This can be very labour intensive but if you are able to devote the time to this it will pay dividends as your resume will stand out and it will look as though you have really made an effort. A candidate applying for their first job out of university is likely to be sending in applications to a large number of companies. A candidate in this position will not yet be in a position to truly differentiate their resume and target their skills to each specific employer (although if you can you should). As candidates become more senior they will, inevitably, start to be more directed in their applications. As a rule of thumb the more senior the position you are applying for the more time you should spend targeting your resume to the job. What to include… Every good resume has a minimum amount of information on your background and experience. You should have a minimum number of sections to cover: Personal details including name, address, contact details (mobile number and email address). Education history and academic qualifications. Work experience (typically in reverse chronological order with your most recent position first). Any professional qualifications. Other information you may want to include: Interests and hobbies outside of work. Professional skills. What not to include… There is no need to take up valuable space adding details of referees, or even writing ‘references available upon request’. Related Articles: General Advice No matter what line of employment you are in and how secure your job you never know when an excellent job opportunity will come up. Keep your resume up to date to save yourself work down the line It makes sense, therefore, to update your resume every year with all the experience you gained or any interesting projects you were involved in so that your basic format is ready to go at a moment’s notice. That way when you see the opportunity of a lifetime you will not have to spend time dusting off the off resume you used to apply for jobs after university. You can then spend the time you have saved to target your resume to the job description. Adjust the resume length to suit your industry Most recruitment professionals will advise you to keep your resume to no more than 2 pages of A4. While this is good advice there are times where you should think about derogating from this. A law firm hiring a solicitor, for example, will want to see details of representative matters the candidate has worked on. Similarly researchers and science professionals may need to go into more detail than other job seekers. If you still want to stick to the traditional 2 pages you can list the representative detail on a separate and attached document. What’s the standard in your profession? If all of your colleagues have 5 page resumes listing their achievements in great detail the chances are that you should too. If you are in such a profession it makes sense to have a number of different resumes in various lengths (2 page, 4 page, etc.). This will allow you to choose the version most appropriate to the position you are applying for. Consider the layout of your resume to make it attractive on the eye Do not use a small typeface or crowd your paragraphs just to keep your resume to 2 pages. A good, readable resume will have plenty of ‘white space’ on the page so that it looks inviting. The problem with resumes that have text all bunched up is this: They tend to put recruiters and employers off, with such resumes being more likely to end up in the ‘reject’ pile. Related Articles: Mention your personal interests to demonstrate your personality and help build rapport It is a good idea to devote a (small) section of your resume to your personal interests. Here’s why: Many hobbies allow individuals to develop transferable skills that an employer might be interested in. And it gets better: Your interests may also be interests of the person who is going to interview you. Having an interest in common before you’ve even had chance to meet will really help break the ice and build rapport at interview. Target your interests wherever possible: Don’t make general statements such as ‘reading’ or ‘cooking’ as these look as though you have no real interests and are struggling to find ‘filler’ content on the resume. High calibre candidates would, for example, specify exactly what they like to read about or what and when they like to cook. But be warned: Make sure, however, that if you do this you only include interests that you can genuinely talk about because you do not want to be caught out if the interviewer is a fellow enthusiast. Sell yourself, but don’t exaggerate the truth to the extent that you’re lying Good candidates are always honest about their skills. There is nothing wrong with celebrating your experience and even talking it up a little but do not over-exaggerate what you can do. Qualifications and prior work experience can always be checked and if you are found to have lied, even on the smallest of things, you will lose all credibility. And guess what? You won’t get the job. Do not, therefore, boast on your resume that you can speak fluent Spanish if all you can do is order tapas. You may not ever be found out but imagine how mortifying it would be to be interviewed by a fluent speaker who decides to conduct the interview in Spanish. With all these tips in mind you are ready to write the resume that will get you through the door and ready to nail the job at interview. Good luck! |
The Backstory: Fall camp is a special time for a football team. It signals the return of old traditions, the excitement of a new season, and the opportunity to strap on the pads for yet another memorable season. In the case of Arizona State players, fall camp takes on an even greater significance as it typically means a trip up to Camp Tontozona. Throughout the years, "Camp T" has been a place where teammates become brothers, and the program becomes a family. It's also been a place where newcomers hit the radar of new coaches, and where walk-ons grow into potential contributors. That's exactly the case for Sun Devil star Darren Woodson, who came to Arizona State in 1987 as an unheralded walk-on. With a strong fall camp in 1989, Woodson went from barely having a spot on the roster to becoming an integral part of the starting lineup. Woodson's story is one of trials, triumphs, and tribulations, but it's only fitting that it culminates in success. Today, we honor one of the hardest working Sun Devils in No. 6 Darren Woodson. The Player: Darren Woodson (1987-1991) It's hard to imagine an NFL great having to walk-on to compete for a spot during his college days, but it's hard to imagine the background of Darren Woodson. The Phoenix native grew up in a single-parent family with his mother in a crime-ridden neighborhood known a Maryvale. Woodson attended the local public high school, which was not known for producing college talent. After attending Maryvale High, Woodson enrolled at Arizona State with the hopes of making the team as a walk-on. A gritty competitor with a passion for football, Woodson needed plenty of coaching and fine tuning to help prepare his game for the next level. Fortunately, the Sun Devil linebacker coach was future NFL head coach Lovie Smith, and he knew just what it took to mold Woodson into a player. Though he looked more like a defensive back, the undersized Woodson played outside linebacker at Arizona State and started opposite prolific tackler Mark Tingstad in 1989. With teams unwilling to run toward Tingstad, they tested the former walk-on and he proved more than capable as he racked up a career-high 122 tackles in his debut season. Amazingly, Woodson took home Honorable Mention All Pac-10 honors, and he wound up being a vital part of Arizona State's defense. The following season, Woodson started at outside linebacker and repeated as an Honorable Mention All Pac-10 player. By his third and final playing season, Darren Woodson had overcome the "undersized" tag and instead took on the "playmaker" tag. Woodson became one of just a handful of Sun Devils to earn All Conference honors three straight times as he took home Honorable Mention recognition yet again in 1991. From his troubled beginnings as an academically ineligible walk-on to fighting to earn a scholarship and playing time, Darren Woodson endured quite the journey. But he came out of it on top, and that's why he still stands as the greatest Sun Devil to ever wear No. 6. In the Pros: If you didn't follow Woodson's career at Arizona State, you couldn't possibly miss him in the NFL. The Dallas Cowboys drafted Woodson in the second round of the 1992 NFL Draft with the intention of shifting him to safety and the move paid off. Woodson enjoyed a prolific NFL career and became the Cowboys' all-time career leader in tackles with 1,350. Woodson played in five Pro Bowls and won three Super Bowls during his time in Dallas and was considered one of the fiercest hitters of any professional defensive back. Who Wears It Now? Chans Cox: If No. 6 didn't already have a storied legacy among local players, Cox has the ability to truly make No. 6 into something special. The Blue Ridge High School product is a true freshman this year who has the potential to make an immediate impact on the defensive side of the ball. As the most highly touted recruit of the Graham era so far, Cox has big expectations ahead of him. |
Back in 2002, Steve Silberberg was a software programmer for an investment firm, earning a comfortable six-figure salary. But he wasn't happy. "I was frustrated with my corporate life," he says. Part of the problem was his company's investment strategy: "If they saw a profit in clear- a forest or polluting a waterway, they'd invest in it," he says. It was a jarring dissonance for the outdoorsman Silberberg. The day-to-day demands were also getting him down. "I sat at my desk every day thinking, How can I get out into the wilderness more often?" he says. "I wanted to be backpacking, maybe not all day, every day, but maybe a quarter of the year—wouldn't that be great?" Silberberg had just hit 40 and realized he was less than 15 years from the age at which his father died of an aggressive form of cancer. "My father never did the things he said he wanted to do—like travel or go on a cruise," he says. "I realized, this is something important to me. This is the time for me to do it." He started planning a new business guiding backpackers through America's most majestic natural spaces, where they could enjoy the sights and get fit at the same time. It wouldn't be as stable or lucrative as his programming work, but he was willing to take the risk. "I had no spouse or children, and that freed me up to fail," he says. Last year, Silberberg led 12 trips and survived solely on the proceeds from his Fitpacking business. "I make a quarter of what I used to, but I have an extremely high quality of life," he says. "Yesterday I went skiing, and in two days I'll guide a group through Big Bend National Park." Many of us dream of a future that's very different from our present. We'll live in Hawaii instead of Hackensack; abandon singlehood for family life; or paint murals for a living. But getting from here to there is hard, largely because some powerful psychological forces align against reinvention. It's in our nature, for example, to spend our energy primarily on today's immediate concerns, to hold a distorted perception of our future, or, even if we're future-focused, to keep chasing after what turn out to be the wrong . Too often, we give up just when we need to push harder, and persist when we actually should quit. Yet without a more clear-eyed assessment of our present and our future, and a more effective approach to setting, pursuing, and achieving goals, we can end up with a future we really don't want—in which we are sick, broke, lonely, or just plain unfulfilled. So what's a dreamer to do? "We have to modify our identities as we go through life," says Ravenna Helson, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. She directed the Mills Study, which followed some 120 women over 50 years, examining traits, social influence, and personal development and proving in the process that it's never too late to reinvent yourself. "Even at 60," Helson says, "people can resolve to make themselves more the people they would like to become. In the Mills Study, about a dozen women showed substantial positive from ages 60 to 70." But of course it's wise to get an earlier start. "You can't accomplish the difficult things in a day or even a week or, in my case, even in 12 and a half years," says Art Markman, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of Smart Change. More than a decade ago, Markman set out to learn to play the saxophone well enough to join a band. "You have to give yourself enough time to actually accomplish your goal," he says. If you don't have long-term goals, Markman warns, you run the risk of doing lots of little things every day—cleaning the house, sending emails, catching up on TV—without ever making a contribution to your future. That can leave you feeling restless and unfulfilled. "It's the big picture things that give life meaning," he says, "like or becoming an expert at something." How do you know what you should be striving for? "Project yourself deep into the future and ask: What will I regret not having done?" Markman suggests, and then work backward to avoid that end. "Use that as a way of planning your life." Before you can reinvent yourself, you have to know who you currently are. "People need to understand their strengths, their weaknesses, their passions, and their own story," says Robert Steven Kaplan, a Harvard Business School dean and the author of What You're Really Meant to Do. "Then they can look at what's going on in the world and try to match themselves up to opportunities." One challenge to self-evaluation: Most of us have a tendency towards illusory superiority—the that we are above average in our abilities, even though all of us can't possibly be. That's why it's crucial to be brutally honest as you assess yourself and the effort needed to achieve the reinvention you seek. Discuss your dreams with people who care about you and know you well, and whom you trust to be honest with you about your strengths and weaknesses. They can help you gauge your skills and pinpoint your true passions. Experts in reinvention say we need to find concordance between what really matters to us and the goals we chase. But too often our future plans are overly influenced by other people's input—the best who begs you to join her start-up or the father who desperately wants a grandkid. These external pressures can detach us from our core values. "If you don't go through a process of self-discovery, but just accept others' decisions, 10 years later you might find yourself saying, 'I don't think that's me,'" says John Mayer, a professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire and the author of Personal . Brooke Randolph of Indianapolis was a typical twentysomething single woman devoted to her in social services, but what she really wanted was to adopt a child from abroad. "It was an idea that had been in me since I was very young," she says. She needed to make some major life and lifestyle changes, though, before she could take on a dependent. "I was working like an entrepreneur and living in a one-bedroom apartment," she says. "I didn't want to have to leave my child in day care all the time." Randolph took a series of well-calculated steps to get where she wanted to be. First she reined in her hours on the job, and then she bought a home. After a few months of paying her new mortgage, she was satisfied that she could manage the expense. Only then did she begin the process—getting medical exams, putting together the $55,000 she would need for fees, and filling out paperwork for agencies both here and abroad. She hit roadblocks—her basement flooded, and some countries' gatekeepers turned down her application because of her single status—but she found a way around them. Last year, at 32, she adopted a 6-year-old boy from Samoa. Researchers from the University of Rochester found that people like Randolph, who are intrinsically motivated—working toward things they find personally fulfilling—are less depressed and more satisfied with their lives than those who are extrinsically motivated, striving primarily to impress the outside world with a big paycheck or lofty job title. Intrinsically motivated people are also more likely to achieve personal goals, according to a series of studies led by Ken Sheldon, a psychology professor at the University of Missouri. He found that people who had self-concordant goals were the most likely to make steady progress because they were more likely than others to devote sustained effort despite the obstacles and distractions. We spend a lot of time thinking about the future—as much as one hour out of every eight—and yet we do a poor job of acting to achieve the future we desire. For starters, we're overly optimistic about what's to come. Rutgers psychology professor Neil Weinstein found that college students expected to stay healthier, have longer marriages, and travel to Europe more often than any studies of population trends would predict. In another study, young women reported that they expected to be and outspoken in upcoming job interview situations. When put to the test, however, they were actually much more reserved than they predicted. "We expect that when the future shows up, our best self will show up," says Peg Streep, author of Mastering the Art of Quitting. Instead, we get our typical everyday self, struggling with the same traits— , laziness, —that consistently hold us back today. Not only do we overestimate our ability to achieve change, we underestimate the effort it requires and the toll it will take. When we think about the executive position we plan to land, we don't foresee the unrelenting . We imagine cuddling a cooing baby, but don't factor in the sleepless nights. Or we daydream about our documentary being acclaimed at Sundance without considering the toil of producing it. We all dream of victory celebrations. Few of us about practicing. To ward off these pitfalls as you launch your own reinvention, seek out people who have already achieved the dream to which you aspire, suggests Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert in his book Stumbling on . These successful achievers can share the reality with you—both good and bad. Sit down with the owners of a few seaside bed-and-breakfasts before you start scouting properties. Talk to a few Masters swimmers about the challenges and rewards before you commit to a training program. It's difficult to anticipate accurately the effect reinvention will have on our world, in part because among our other future-focusing flaws, we're generally poor at what's known as . "We're really crummy at predicting how we'll feel in the future," Streep says. It is well-documented that we assume achievements and successes will make us happier than they actually will because we adapt to life changes, even major ones, fairly quickly and then tend to revert to our usual happiness baseline. The flip side is that when terrible things happen to us, we tend not to be as devastated as we would expect: We end up landing back near our pre-setback happiness level. To make the best decisions for your future self, you need to stop imagining that person as a stranger and instead see that it's you. Hal Hershfield, an NYU professor, conducted studies showing that people who could identify more closely with their future selves made decisions that were better for them, like saving more for . To sway people toward more productive future-focused behavior, Hershfield's asked subjects to look at virtual images of their future selves. "It's an imagination aid," he says. "We think it gets people to think about their future self and step into his or her shoes." Caring more about our future selves can also help us counter the tendency to discount future rewards, which makes so many of us embrace immediate gratification instead of long-term payoffs. Picturing your future self as a mom, a world traveler, or a retiree who climbs mountains might be just what you need to opt for the salad and an hour at the gym instead of a burger and fries and five rounds of Candy Crush. Set Real Goals, Take Real Action As you're planning your reinvention, be as coldly realistic as possible. "You don't want to be overly optimistic in the deliberative phase, because you might pick the wrong goal," says Peter Gollwitzer, a professor of psychology at NYU who has researched goals. You also need to factor in the reality that , or process, goals are more realistic and achievable than performance, or outcome, goals. Decide, then, that "I'm going to learn to cook well," rather than "I'm going to become a Michelin-star chef." At age 36, Robert Ziltzer, of Scottsdale, Arizona, found himself progressively gaining weight and sought a way out. "My waist had gone up four or five inches and I'd sequentially needed to buy new pants," he says. As a weight-loss physician with a family history of heart disease who wanted to be a positive role model for patients, he was eager for reinvention and decided to try to achieve it through something that had long been on his bucket list: running a marathon. How would the busy doctor, husband, and father of two young children make the time to train? He started by avoiding an assumption that keeps many strivers from ever getting out of the starting blocks. Instead of underestimating the support he'd get from his family and their tolerance for the disruption his efforts at self-improvement might cause, he did something too few of us do: He asked them. "I said to my wife, 'I'm thinking about doing this, but I'm concerned that it will take too much time away from the family,'" Ziltzer says. "She said, 'Don't worry about us, we'll be fine. Go do it.'" Ziltzer made it just a few hundred yards before getting winded his first time on the road. "I was really discouraged," he says. But he learned to slow his pace and gradually worked up to one mile, then two, then three, and now 20. His biggest problem now, he says, is boredom during his long runs. "There's an early period of volatility when you're changing your behavior," Markman says. "It takes a lot of mental energy and planning and playing around with your schedule." That's one reason he advises going after just one major goal at a time. "If you're trying to do this on several fronts at once, you're going to end up doing a bad job at all of them," he says. Your reinvention will likely require creating new positive and constructive habits to take you out of routines you've been following for years. In the process, you'll establish new reflexes and internal reminders of what you're supposed to do in given situations. If it's Tuesday at 6 P.M., you come to know, it's time to leave for art class. So you throw your supplies in the car and go—instead of pondering reasons to stay home. The creation of new habits is a critical bulwark against inertia. "Some people just say, 'I want to get married, but I'll wait and see what happens.' That's a rather unfocused way to do it," Mayer says. "If you instead say, 'I would like to meet a new person every few weeks,' that's a plan that makes you more likely to find a partner." When you break down a reinvention plan into actions you can do every day, you'll integrate long-term goals into your present. "If you don't work on them a little bit every few days," Mayer warns, "you're probably going to lose them." As you integrate reinvention efforts into your daily to-do list, be brutally honest with yourself about how long each critical step will take. Among other things, this will lower the chance that you'll get frustrated and disappointed quickly. In a long-term project, there are some 30-minute tasks, some week-long tasks, and some steps that may require years of dedicated effort. Schedule accordingly. Intriguingly, some experts say that people with a high need for feeling achievement are actually more likely to neglect their long-term goals. Such people devote so much of themselves to the demands of today that they don't take time to work toward their dreams for tomorrow. Your colleague who is always putting out email fires, for example, is probably not progressing on a new five-year business plan. You can't manage everything in your —sometimes those emails simply must be answered—but you can control some external factors to set yourself up for success. If weight is your goal, fill your refrigerator with fresh fruit. If you're learning a new language, put the study guide on the table beside your dinner plate each night so you can shift to your homework as soon as you finish eating. Eliminating the need to cross the house and get the material out of a drawer (while passing by the TV, your cellphone, a pile of mail, or the toys your kids have left strewn about) can make a bigger difference than you might imagine. Joining a community of like-minded individuals can help, too. Ziltzer lined up a training partner for his long weekend runs, and Brooke Randolph took a job with an adoption agency. "Hanging out with others who have the same long-term goal will increase your activation and engagement with it," Markman says. "Also, those other people are great sources of knowledge and ." In rapid succession, you've purchased a keyboard, hired a teacher, bought sheet music, and learned your first song. But now you realize just how far away your first professional gig lies. This is the time to muster your . "If you are on the way and invested, you need to push yourself into the goal box," Gollwitzer says. We have only so much energy and willpower to call on each day. If we've already spent it on tough decisions at work, we're not going to have enough oomph to get ourselves to a singles evening at the museum or our night school finance class. This model of willpower, first described by Roy Baumeister and his colleagues, is known as . You need to be aware and wary of it. To stay positive and motivated, seek ways to track your accomplishments as you go. Studies have shown that if you write down a goal, you're more likely to achieve it. Researchers from McGill University and the University of Toronto asked 85 struggling students to complete an intensive written program; after four months those students were doing much better in school than a control group. Robert Ziltzer writes down his times after each long run to gauge his progress. Even if your goals are more nebulous in nature, that doesn't mean you can't self-assess: A diary in which you record each week the steps you've taken, and the distance they've taken you from your first entry, can be surprisingly effective in maintaining your vigor. Just don't get cocky and slack off. Gollwitzer and his colleagues asked 64 avowedly "green" students to make purchases in an online supermarket. Afterwards, they got a random green score for their selections. They then completed an unrelated hat-making task and were asked to clean up after themselves. Strikingly, 81 percent of those who'd gotten negative feedback on the green shopping scale carefully recycled materials from the hat project into appropriate containers, while just 18 percent who had gotten positive scores bothered to clean conscientiously. "You get a compliment, then you go for coffee," Gollwitzer says. "With long-term goals, you have to watch that you don't get complacent." And, of course, you have to expect obstacles. "Life has a habit of throwing curveballs," says Mayer. "It's a mistake to believe we have so much control. The best laid plans can go awry, and we need to be prepared for that." Relentlessly Reassess Not every man spends his life pursuing his dream of playing professional baseball. "The world is not stagnant, and you are not stagnant," Kaplan says. The dreams you have today may no longer be your goals two, three, or five years from now. Even if they are, the progress you're making toward them today may not satisfy you in the future. Take stock of your reinvention progress every year. Some people use their birthday, their summer vacation, or the start of the new year to evaluate whether they're heading in the right direction, or if they need to alter their goal. A recent French study tracking 704 older adults for six years found that those who were flexible enough to adjust their goals had higher levels of life satisfaction. The day before each annual Phoenix marathon, Ziltzer picks up his bib number and signs up for the next year's race, committing himself to continued training. After he crossed the finish line of his 10th marathon, he upped his goal to attempting an Ironman triathlon and started training for the biking and swimming legs of the . He completed his first event last May and quickly signed up for another in November. "I'm going to keep this up," he says. Others, however, stick with goals even in the face of diminished motivation. "Humans are hardwired to persist," Streep says. We don't like to quit, and we believe that there's shame in gaining a reputation as someone prone to giving up, especially if we're extrinsically motivated. It's an instinct that can help us avoid short-term but get in the way of our long-term happiness. "People may persist at goals or stay in situations or that have stopped making them happy," she says. It's easy to fall prey to the sunk-cost fallacy—that you've already put so much time, money, or effort into a goal that it would be a waste to stop pursuing it now. But the energy and money you've put in are gone forever. At the point of re-evaluation, your concern should be whether untapped resources will also be spent unproductively. We are also driven, sometimes in the wrong direction, by avoidance—that is, the fear of failure. "If the idea of making a mistake drives you totally bonkers, chances are that you are going to overpersist," Streep says. "Part of the wisdom of moving forward is to know when a goal either has become outdated in terms of your own wants and needs or can't be achieved." Sometimes, goal disengagement—quitting—is necessary and beneficial. When you can recognize who you want to be and envision a setting in which that future self will be happier than your present self has become, reinvention becomes logical and, ideally, inevitable. "I truly believe you have to close doors to find the right opportunities," says Wokie Nwabueze, 43, of South Orange, New Jersey. After just three years, she left the corporate law career she once thought would fulfill her. "I'm an , and the lack of human contact was depleting," she says. "Plus, I'd already had a taste of work I loved before law school, when I was a conflict mediator. It was hard to settle for anything less, and I never will again." Today, she is thrilled with her job as an interpersonal communication coach. Celebrate Success When we successfully reinvent ourselves, we feel pride, accomplishment, and a sense of satisfaction. Randolph will never forget the joy she experienced the first time her son Will fell asleep on her lap. She appreciates such little moments of motherhood every day. "Last night he gave me a hug and said, 'I'm sorry you had a sad day at work, Mommy,'" she says with a catch in her voice. Steve Silberberg, the programmer-turned-Fitpacking-entrepreneur, experiences euphoria on every trip when his group reaches the top of Elizabeth Pass in Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks or Emory Peak in Big Bend. It's a feeling he never experienced as a programmer, and it makes all of his reinvention struggles—the lower pay, the cyclical nature of travel bookings, the isolation of self-employment—worthwhile. "I am old enough to be cynical, but I think this is going to continue to grow," he says. "I see good things for the future." Is Your Reinvention Realistic? Before you can reshape your future, you need to be brutally honest about your present. How much will you need to change to achieve the reinvention you desire? Do you have it in you? Consider these crucial questions from the experts before you move ahead: Does your goal match your values? You may have fallen in love with the idea of building your own house, but are you truly a do-it-yourselfer? If your goal doesn't match your values, you'll have less motivation to work toward it, and will feel less fulfilled even if you achieve it. Does it conflict with other priorities in your life? Committing yourself to reaching the corner office may bring prestige, but it could also take time away from relationships and hobbies. Consider the sacrifices you'll have to make, and know what you're willing to set aside before starting out. Will you be able to pursue it long-term, and for the right reasons? When you know who you are, you can recognize what you need to overcome to keep your personality from blocking your dreams. For example, if you can't stand failure, you might persist even when you should stop. If you have an approach mentality, you're more open to the vagaries of risk. Can you gain satisfaction from each step? If the actions you take get you into a state of flow, or the focused absorption in a task otherwise known as being "in the zone," you'll derive satisfaction from your efforts even if you never fully attain your objective. Are you sure you want it? Force yourself to envision your future, keeping in mind our tendency to revert to a baseline level of happiness even after success: Will the suburban mansion really be better than your city rental once you factor in the daily commute, the weekly lawn-mowing, and the monthly mortgage? Talk it out with those who know you best and can imagine your future self nearly as well as you can. Is achieving it within your control? If you can take specific, practical actions to reach your goal, you're in good shape. If it will require winning a contest, or overcoming challenges like or geography, think twice. |
7 years ago Philadelphia (CNN) - Ahead of Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary, presidential hopeful Ron Paul painted his long-shot campaign as a new American revolution at a rain-soaked event outside Independence Hall. “In our early history, we had a major undertaking overthrowing an empire,” Paul said. “And in some ways that is what we are doing now.” - Follow the Ticker on Twitter: @PoliticalTicker Paul’s supporters call his campaign the “Ron Paul Revolution,” and they turned out in a steady, hard rain outside the hall where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were debated and adopted. They stood with umbrellas drawn and ponchos on, even as the sound of rain smacking on the tents in the park made it difficult for people to hear the candidate. “It is obvious that we need to change our foreign policy because of the cost,” Paul said. “Our foreign policy is a schizophrenic foreign policy – it is on again off again." Though the Texas congressman finds himself behind former Gov. Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, according to the CNN delegate count, he consistently raises large sums of money. In the first quarter of 2012, the Paul campaign said they raised nearly $10.4 million, with nearly $2.6 million coming in March alone. At the end of the speech, Paul handicapped the presidential race. “When you run, you run to win. I have won elections 12 times, and that puts a stamp of approval and what we are doing,” Paul said. “We do know that the continuation of the spirit of liberty will persist no matter what, and that is what really counts.” Before Paul took the stage, supporters listened to performances by Indianapolis musician Jordan Page and a speech on foreign policy by Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA unit that tracked al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. When Scheuer joked about a recent comments by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, about President Barack Obama being “stupid,” the crowd - which had been relatively quiet during the speech - roared at the comment. “Senator Grassley’s term stupid is exactly the correct adjective to apply to people of both parities, the media and the academy,” Scheuer said. Following his swing through Pennsylvania, the campaign turns their focus to Paul’s home state of Texas for events in El Paso, Austin and Houston. The Texas primary is on May 29. Also see: Hatch will face primary election for Senate seat Adelson family gives more to pro-Gingrich super PAC Santorum campaign nearly $2 million in debt Romney and McCain call for party unity |
It’s getting harder to find a bar where everybody knows your name. The neighborhood bar is disappearing, according to research released Thursday from Nielsen, which revealed that over the past decade roughly one in six neighborhood bars has shuttered. And while about 334 new bars are opening every month, that’s far fewer than the 609 that are closing at the same time. “Last calls are happening across the country,” Nielsen reveals. “While consumers may love their well-worn, unglamorous neighborhood bars, they are going to have to start putting their money where their mouths are to keep them alive in today’s economy.” And closures have accelerated recently. While an average of three neighborhood bars a day closed during the past decade, in 2014, an average of six did. “The day when a serious barfly won’t have a stool to sit on is (scarily) approaching,” a blogger on TableHopper.com writes. While you may not be able to pony up to a (sometimes slightly sticky) bar down the street anymore, you will have somewhere (typically more upscale and with better food) to sit: In the past year alone, more than 6,100 restaurants have opened, many of them fast-casual restaurants (think the likes of Chipotle CMG, +0.48% , Smashburger and others that serve alcohol, the Nielsen study said. Also see: Will Starbucks become your new neighborhood tavern? “One trend contributing to the decline of the neighborhood bar may be America’s seemingly insatiable appetite for establishments that also serve food in addition to alcoholic beverages,” Nielsen reveals. “In the past year, 6,185 new restaurants opened across the country. In addition, the rise of new casual dining options serving alcohol—such as fast “casual” food restaurants, brewpubs, as well as in-store dining and drinking options in grocery stores—are also likely contributing to the decline.” Still, for those who frequent the beloved neighborhood watering hole, this trend is a sad one. When Milady’s, a decades-old bar in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City closed its doors last year, so many patrons packed into the bar to say goodbye that getting a drink could take 10 minutes. But the owner knew it was time for it to go: “I serve burgers. A beer is five bucks,” the owner, Frank Genovese, told the New York Times at the time. “I can no longer sustain that formula. It doesn’t work anymore.” Get a daily roundup of the top reads in personal finance delivered to your inbox. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Personal Finance Daily newsletter. Sign up here. |
You are here: Home China will have 240 million people aged 60 or above by the year of 2020, according to a senior health official. Liu Qian, deputy head of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, was addressing the InterAcademy Partnership for Health 2016 Conference, held on Tuesday and Wednesday in Beijing. By 2020, senior citizens will make up 17 percent of the population, the official said. Liu noted the severe situation with regard to chronic disease, with more than 260 million chronically ill patients in the country. These illnesses are to blame for over 86 percent of deaths in China. Liu said the per capita annual spending on health was estimated at around 472 U.S. dollars in 2015. Liu also promised to improve the medical insurance system and basic public health services, and to encourage development of traditional Chinese medicine and research. |
Efforts to breathe new life into an aging Manhattan office building that is the flagship property of the family of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law has gained a green light after a partial owner of the building indicated a willingness to sell. Steven Roth, chairman and chief executive of Vornado Realty Trust, said in a letter to its shareholders that there had been “much press” recently about 666 Fifth Avenue, a 60-year-old building that Vornado owns with the Kushner family. “This is an ongoing, complex, dynamic, and unpredictable situation,” Roth said in the letter dated April 4. Vornado has a joint venture in the building with Kushner Cos., a real estate company whose chief executive until recently was Jared Kushner, an adviser to Trump who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka. Jared sold his interests to a family trust in January. Vornado declined to elaborate on Roth’s letter, first reported by the New York Post late on Friday. |
Editor’s Note: In Chuck Thompson’s book, “Better Off Without ’Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession,” he examined the idea that the South really was different from the rest of the country, with lagging social indicators and more conservative values. Much of that is tied to its historical self-image as a “country within a country,” and fueled by the “Lost Cause” idea after its loss in the Civil War. Still, for many Southerners, the Confederacy is a source of pride, even if they don’t quite twig to the racist undergirding of the that idea. In this excerpt from his book, Thompson argues that not only is it impossible to support the idea of the Confederacy without supporting the idea of armed insurrection and the enslavement of an entire people, but it will be impossible for the United States to truly reconcile the two sides until Southerners come to grips with what their belief implies. Unlike the growing recognition of the genocide against Native Americans and the full-on admission of guilt in the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the third great racial shame of America has yet to be fully faced up to. Maybe Dylann Roof’s racist-fueled massacre in Charleston, S.C., last week will finally force that reckoning. Civil War markers and various other monuments to white supremacists litter the South. Excepting Stone Mountain, Georgia, the most pompously defiant of these is located 75 miles northwest of Columbia in Abbeville, South Carolina. Walking past the granite obelisk dedicated to Confederate soldiery in Abbeville’s historic town square, the casual visitor would likely not notice anything special. The gray monument looks like any of countless similar statuary in the centers of cities and towns throughout the South. Take the trouble to read the carved inscriptions, however, and along with the usual odes to the bravery and valor of the Confederacy’s battle dead, you’ll find this blatantly treasonous declaration: “The world shall yet decide, in truth’s clear far-off light, that the soldiers who wore the gray and died with Lee were right.” Unbelievable. Imagine statues of SS soldiers inscribed with quotes from Mein Kampf in every little town in Germany. The Civil War is the only conflict in history after which the losers were allowed to write the history. I read the astonishing assertion for a second time, noting that the monument was erected not in the emotional aftermath of war in 1865, but in 1906 and then, in a ceremony replacing the original with a new one in 1996. Two nicely dressed women in their sixties wander by and nod hello. “The world shall yet decide in truth’s clear far off light, that the soldiers who wore the gray and died with Lee were right.” Not that the soldiers were patriotic. Or courageous. Or true to some ill-begotten sense of duty. They were right. The only possible interpretation of this statement is that the cause for which the South fought—dissolution of the United States in order that the South might preserve slavery and, thus, the economic underpinnings and political clout of its privileged business class—was a morally righteous mission. And, by the way, if you don’t already know that slavery was the fundamental issue over which the South ripped the nation asunder, spend an hour with a slim volume by native southerner Charles B. Dew called Apostles of Disunion. Reviewing in 103 pages the major speeches and documents used by southern commissioners to argue the case for secession, Dew presents all the proof a sixth-grader would need to conclude that to southern whites states’ rights were a lot less important than the rights of southern states’ whites. Go ahead, read that again. It makes sense. It wasn’t until several months after my discovery of the Abbeville monument that I came to fully appreciate how completely its inscription distills the straightjacket of southern political orthodoxy that binds progress in the “country within a country.” Walking down Louisiana Avenue just north of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.—the majority African American city whose right to voting representation in the U.S. Senate has consistently been blocked in Congress by southern politicians—I stumbled upon the National Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II. With a centerpiece sculpture depicting two cranes tangled in barbed wire, the monument stands as historic witness both to the valor of Japanese American soldiers who served in World War II, as well as the victimization of the thousands of innocent Americans of Japanese ancestry who were forced into wartime internment camps at home. Attached to the monument, a bronze plaque bears the straightforward, powerful inscription: “Here we admit a wrong. Here we affirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law.” So striking. So honest. So liberating. Acknowledge a mistake, learn from it, and move on to create a better world. How different this difficult but uncomplicated monument in the nation’s capital from the one in Abbeville, and the thousands of other chunks of granite and poured concrete defiance that blight the South with a destructive architecture designed to keep ancient hatred alive. One might scour the world for a pair of monuments that represent more succinctly the ideologies of two nations moving in such completely opposite directions. Yet in these monuments, separated by only a long day’s drive, the observer can stand before the physical testament of one nation’s willingness to assume what Robert Penn Warren called “the awful responsibility of Time,” and another’s determination to forever hide from that responsibility; to cower before the future so that it might careen ever backward into a fetish of loss and disaster, dragging all those unfortunate bodies caught within its orbit into the same gluttonous consumption of perpetual failure, forever working to, as Randy Newman sang, keep the niggers down, be they black, white, brown, or yellow. The southern “traditions” of inflexibility and sabotage have for too long hobbled American political progress. It’s time to unburden the future of a political race whose most powerful views, emotions, and ideas lurk forever behind them. |
Neo-liberalism’s false choice The politico-financial system which has led to the present crisis has wreaked havoc on the lives of millions. People have lost their homes, students are beholden to enormous amounts of debt, rating agencies downgrade our bonds, and unemployment remains stubbornly high –just to name a few of our ailments. But perhaps the greatest violence perpetrated by this unsustainable system is presenting itself as the only solution to the problem it was responsible for in the first place. Under the pressure of financial markets and supranational institutions, sovereign nations were forced firstly to bail-out a system on the brink of collapse and secondly forced swallow austerity measures devised with the aim of easing the markets’ fears of sovereign debt insolvency. The complex “packages” the European Central Bank is concocting to save debt-ridden countries in the Euro-zone are aimed not at reforming an unsustainable system but at keeping the show going on just as it has. We are still working within the “business as usual” paradigm, accepting harsh measures with no strings attached. This occurs because of the false choice presented to us by our political and economic institutions, namely that there is no alternative to the neo-liberal hegemony: we must therefore choose between saving an inherently unsustainable system on the one hand, and an Armageddon of financial meltdown, chaos and anarchy on the other. Such a false choice is nurtured by a well-rehearsed narrative: since the spectacular collapse of the Soviet Union, we are told, capitalism has remained the “last game in town”. Increasingly, more and more nations have followed Huntington’s fabled “third wave of democratization” and embraced the American model of the liberal capitalist democracy[1]. The triumph engendered by this progressive trend has led some to proclaim its universalization and to declare the end of history, for no better system could possibly be devised by human intellect[2]. The lesson is clear: there is simply no alternative to this political and financial system. The Logics of Occupying In the light of this situation, the American and British Occupy movements along with the European Indignados merely appear as a knee-jerk reaction to the crisis. They are portrayed as having no demands, no propositions and as a ramshackle puzzle of heterogeneous identities unable to formulate a common statement of intent. It seems essentially an anti-capitalist mobilization simply venting out its “rage against the machine”, no different from the 90s no-global movements of Seattle and Genova. However this time it’s different. Naomi Klein has pointed out one important characteristic of this new phenomenon. While past protests against neo-liberalism have targeted periodic meetings such as WTO and G8 conventions, this time the Occupy movements are here to stay indefinitely. This means that the protest against the system is not transitory but sustained[3]. There is therefore a particular logic behind the act of indefinite occupation: it is a symbolic re-appropriation of democratic space in which to exercise our rights as democratic citizens. Reclaiming that space therefore openly challenges the false choice presented to us by neo-liberalism. Occupy: a space for difference and social plurality The Occupy and Indignados movements are indeed a collage of heterogeneous identities. Pacifist, feminist, gay, environmental, and all sorts of other movements have pitched their tents together in hundreds of cities worldwide. This is often seen by the media and political pundits as an inherent weakness, as it contributes to the inability of producing common statements and proposals. Yet, this is no weakness. Contrarily, it is a conscious expression of difference and has at its heart a precise message, namely that there is something fundamentally wrong with our democratic institutions: political representation has ceased to reflect the multiplicity of identities and demands found in society. Our political delegates are distant, unaccountable, over-privileged and in many cases corrupted by the power of organized crime and/or of campaign contributions and donations from the private sector. The act of occupation by this multitude (I am referring to Hardt and Negri’s multitude) of social movements and private citizens expresses the discontent caused by years of government by unresponsive, dysfunctional and far-removed legislative assemblies. Occupying the public square means reclaiming a space in which diversity may be publicly expressed: a space which is not provided by our liberal-democratic constitutional orders and our representative system. The occupied public square reflects social plurality: it shows us that society is intrinsically different and plural on ethnic, political, cultural, economic and spiritual levels and that these differences have a sacrosanct right to be expressed and represented. Occupying the square provides a platform of democratic representation for difference which has been systematically excluded and silenced by the neo-liberal hegemony. Occupy: a space for transparency Occupying a square is also an act of openness. Inclusion and participation are the main attributes of the public assemblies of these movements. Every action, decision, thought or idea is formulated collectively and openly in the square[4]. The fact that the decision-making process is exercised in a public location and on public property is a symbolic assertion of the need for transparency in our political and economic institutions. In this way, not only is the occupied square a democratic space in which diversity is adequately represented, it is also a space in which power asymmetries (gender, cultural, economic, etc.) are laid bare and may be denounced precisely because of its inherently open and transparent character. This is in stark contrast with the obscure, distant and unaccountable ways our governing bodies are run. It is the reclaiming of a transparent space which is not provided to us under the neo-liberal hegemony. Occupy: as space for an alternative Above all however, occupying the square intends to reclaim a space in which an alternative to the status quo may be constructed. This is by far the most radical and successful achievement of the movement. Its success lies not in the presentation of a fully defined new paradigm which will serve as an alternative to the neo-liberal status quo, but the demonstration that there is the need for a space in which alternative ideas may be expressed, deliberated, contested and experimented. How can any alternative to, or reform of, the present system ever emerge if we lack the space in which to express them? Through the reclaiming of public squares the Occupy and Indignados movements have shown us that our political orders are lacking the democratic institutions and the democratic instruments through which new ideas may be proposed. They have shown us that our western democracies are in desperate need of institutions which foster participation, transparency and inclusion so that new ideas may emerge and change this system which grotesquely feeds on its own inherent contradictions. In this light, the over-rehearsed slogan “another world is possible” does not present itself as a naïve hippie’s dream of a tree-hugging utopia, but as an active challenge to the idea that neo-liberalism is “the last game in town” and that no alternative may even exist. None of these nascent movements will propose a new economic or political system to replace this one. But they will invite us all to participate in an open, transparent and inclusive public space so that we may collectively debate, converse and construct it together through democratic deliberation and political participation. Conclusions Ultimately, the very fact that such a movement is actually in the squares occupying indefinitely is presently the only check on the un-democratic excesses of this unsustainable system. There is no political effort on behalf of any elected government in the world (except Iceland probably) that is willing to reject the false choice of neo-liberalism – which increasingly looks more like an ultimatum. Bailouts, austerity measures and these so-called un-elected “technical governments” are giving up the hard-earned democratic rights that define us as democratic citizens: they are giving in to the neo-liberal ultimatum. In this context, the Occupy and Indignados movements are the only mobilizations standing up to this blatant assault on popular sovereignty and human dignity. They are the only movements which have rejected this false choice and reclaimed a public space in which people may be truly represented, where an effort for transparency reigns, and in which to collectively construct an alternative through democratic confrontation. And this fact alone, for me, has won half of the battle already. |
Students and administrators at Northern Kentucky University recently participated in a hand-holding demonstration to protest "Welcome White Week" fliers that were posted around campus. According to The Northerner, the controversial and unauthorized fliers were posted in response to “Welcome Black Week,” a series of events that took place from August 29–September 2 with the purpose of introducing freshmen to groups and programs that center on the Black Lives Matter movement on campus. “The ignorance that stands on NKU’s campus is no longer acceptable. It’s starting to become deliberate.” [RELATED: KU library pushes BLM propaganda on students] The mock flier mentioned several events, such as "White Lives Matter vs. Black Lives Matter," a "Pizza Party for Tolerance" and "L.G.B.T.Q.R.S.T.U.V. and You," all of which are apparent attempts to satirize the “Welcome Black Week” events. Students, faculty members, and even university president Geoffrey Mearns all gathered Tuesday to protest the flier, which they described as a direct affront to black students on campus. [RELATED: Saying ‘all lives matter’ lands student gov exec in hot water] “The ignorance that stands on NKU’s campus is no longer acceptable. It’s starting to become deliberate. Just like this person who deliberately copied our flyer,” complained James Johnson, a student organizer for the demonstration. “We worked hard for Welcome Black Week in response to the lack of representation in the universal programs within Welcome Week,” he added. “It’s like a cause and effect. So the reason they did this was because we had Welcome Black Week.” Several African American students who were in attendance also shared their own experiences of alienation at NKU, such as being the only black student in a classroom, having trouble finding study partners for chemistry, and having a general feeling of being left out. [RELATED: Black Student Association tweets ‘blue lives don’t matter’] “You know what the answer is to this right? You know how you defeat ignorance is through knowledge,” Mearns told the assembly reassuringly. “You defeat despair and cynicism with faith and hope. You defeat darkness with light and overall you defeat hate with love. I’m thankful for the spirit of the conversation, and the way you’ve responded because you exemplify those traits and that’s why we know we’ll win… I’m glad to be with you.” As documented by Northerner editor-in-chief Abby Anstead on Twitter, the protesters also formed a circle at one point and held hands, chanting “We will not be guided by fear or defeat...We will avoid the pitfalls...And we will beat the odds that are against us.” Mearns told the student activists that NKU is currently investigating the source of the fliers, but did not specify whether any disciplinary actions are being considered. Follow Campus Reform on Twitter: @CampusReform |
McNichol is the UK's Wasserman Shultz: Corbyn supporters will be able to vote in Labour leadership race The parallels between the Bernie Sanders insurgency and the vicious UK Labour Party fight over its left-leaning, incredibly popular leader Jeremy Corbyn keep on coming: now there's a Labour analogue to Debbie Wasserman Shultz, the corrupt, hawkish, disgraced former chair of the DNC, who was forced to resign after the DNC email leak revealed her extensive dirty-tricks campaign against Bernie Sanders. In mid-July, the Labour party pulled a dirty trick of its own: during a meeting to determine the rules of an upcoming leadership ballot, the party establishment waited until the end of the session, after Corbyn and his supporters had left the room, and then introduced a motion that was not on the agenda to change the party rules and disenfranchise 200,000 party members, all presumed Corbyn supporters. On Monday, a High Court judge ruled that the motion was illegal, because the Corbyn-supporting members had formed a contract with the Party when they joined that gave them the right to vote in leadership races. Changing the rules after the fact breached that contract. The ruling virtually guarantees Corbyn's re-relection as party leader, because the new Corbyn-supporting members vastly outnumber the rest of the party. But Labour's establishment is not done: Iain McNichol, Labour's general secretary, has vowed to use the party's money -- a substantial portion of which came from the Corbyn block -- to appeal the decision and fight to take away the voting rights of most party members. McNichol's actions are eerily familiar to those of us who watched in dismay as Wasserman Shultz used the DNC's mighty resources to openly (and covertly, as it turns out) block Sanders. One key difference, though: the Labour Party's National Executive Committee held its own elections this week, and all six open seats went to Corbyn supporters, which is bad news for McNichol and the neoliberal wing of the Labour Party. The Telegraph quotes anonymous Labour sources as saying that if the appeal goes against McNichol, he will be forced to resign, as Wasserman Shultz was. Meanwhile, Wasserman Shultz is now in charge of Hillary Clinton's election campaign, having failed up. Manuel Cortes, leader of the TSSA rail union, described the appeal against the High Court ruling as "catastrophic". "Here we have paid officials going into court to stop Labour Party members exercising their democratic rights. Clearly a full meeting of the NEC should have been called before taking such a terrible decision. "We have lost confidence in our full time officials to operate clearly in the interests of ordinary party members who can ill afford to fund expensive legal actions in the High Court." Edward Leir, one of the five members, said the court's ruling was a "victory for equality and inclusion". "This judgement is a vindication that the political process should be fair, democratic and inclusive; that political parties, like any other organisation, must uphold its rules fairly to those who support them," he said. "More widely, this is a victory for equality and inclusion. Political parties must keep their promises, just as we all reasonably expect anyone else to in other aspects of our lives." Jeremy Corbyn's allies plot to oust Labour's General Secretary after accusing party's ruling body of trying to rig leadership election [Steven Swinford and Laura Hughes/The Telegraph] (Image: @iainmcnicol/US Congress) (via Naked Capitalism) |
Allah is the Most Great, the Supremely Great. Brother Mohamed Abutaleb starts this episode with the following question: “Is Allah a big deal in your life?” Allah’s name Al-Azeem is a big help if you have forgotten the place of Allah in your life. How many times over the years have we said in Salat “Subhan Rabia Al-Azeem?” Glory be to my Lord the Most Great? But think how many of us have internalized the meaning of this Divine Name? Do you know who Al-Azeem is? The Qur’an mentions this name of Allah in many verses, among them at the end of the verse of the Throne “Ayat Al-Kursi” where Allah says: “His Kursi extends over the heavens and the earth, and their preservation tires Him not. And He is the Most High, the Most Great.” (2:255) The word “Azeem” in the Arabic language comes from the meanings of greatness or supremeness or magnificence. Allah (SWT) is great in His names, His attributes, His actions, His commands, in His dominion and in His power: His greatness cannot be restricted in one domain over another. He is Azeem in His Self, which is intrinsically great, meaning Allah (SWT) is great because He is Allah. He is the Most Great, and His greatness cannot be encompassed by our minds, it cannot be quantified. Imagine how small you are compared to all human beings, compared to this earth, which itself is a small part of the solar system, which is a small part of the Milky Way, which is a small galaxy among hundreds of billions of galaxies. If this is all part of the dominion of Allah, then imagine the greatness of Allah Himself. If you hold on to that thought for a minute, then imagine that Allah is greater than that thought and anything you may conceive. There are also many other meanings of how the creatures of Allah magnify Him, and this is another meaning of Al-Azeem: the One who is magnified and the One who is glorified. Don’t miss this excellent 12 minute video to understand more Allah’s name Al-Azeem. |
Newt: McCain is "sad" for attacking Rand Paul McCain criticized Paul and Ted Cruz Thursday, saying "it's always the wacko birds" who get all the attention The sniping over Rand Paul continues, as Newt Gingrich called John McCain "sad" for criticizing Paul's almost-13-hour filibuster in opposition to John Brennan's nomination to head the CIA. “What I find sad about Sen. McCain’s recent comments both to Ted Cruz, when Ted Cruz was frankly raising legitimate questions [about Benghazi] and with Rand Paul, is, you know, when I first knew John McCain in the House — he was a maverick. In the Senate, for years, he was a maverick,” Gingrich said on Fox News on Thursday. Advertisement: He added: "But I think frankly it doesn’t hurt Ted Cruz and it doesn’t hurt Rand Paul — it hurts John McCain. The country is moving on, we’re in a new era, people know that these are legitimate questions.” McCain had criticized Paul's filibuster, quoting from an earlier Wall Street Journal Op-Ed and calling the Kentucky Republican's filibuster a "stunt" to "fire up impressionable libertarian kids in their college dorms." McCain also called some of Paul's claims "simply false."' Later on, McCain said Paul, along with other conservatives like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, are possibly "harmful if there is a belief among the American people that those people are reflective of the views of the majority of Republicans. They're not." "They were elected, nobody believes that there was a corrupt election, anything else," McCain added, according to the Huffington Post. "But I also think that when, you know, it's always the wacko birds on right and left that get the media megaphone." |
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Announces the LEGO Harry Potter Collection for PlayStation 4 Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and TT Games today announced the LEGO Harry Potter Collection, bringing LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 and LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 to the PlayStation 4 computer entertainment system for the first time with both top-selling videogames remastered on one disc. Launching on 21st October 2016 in Europe, this compilation unites the creative prowess of LEGO and the expansive world of Harry Potter, with an exciting journey full of spell-casting, potion-making, puzzle-solving, lessons, dueling and much more for players young and old to enjoy. Gamers can experience the entire LEGO Harry Potter adventure featuring content from seven books and eight films, with enhanced graphics, environments, lighting and visual effects, along with two downloadable content (DLC) packs. Sure to delight fans of J.K. Rowling’s ever-expanding Wizarding World, the LEGO Harry Potter Collection serves as a perfect gift for those eagerly anticipating the upcoming film, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. • LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 is based on the first four books and films — Harry Potter and the Philosophers stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire — allowing fans to experience Harry's first four years at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in full LEGO form. • LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 transports players through the final three books and final four films — Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — to experience Harry’s last years at Hogwarts and his battle against Lord Voldemort in the ultimate fight between good and evil. • Character Pack DLC included on disc featuring 10 characters — Godric Gryffindor, Harry (Yule Ball), Helga Hufflepuff, Lockhart (Straightjacket), Luna (Lion Head), Peeves, Hermione (Pink Dress), Ron Weasley (Ghoul), Rowena Ravenclaw and Salazar Slytherin. • Spell Pack DLC included on disc featuring 5 spells—Cantis, Densaugeo, Ducklifors, Melofors and Tentaclifors. • Available on 21st October, 2016 in Europe for a suggested retail price of £39.99. |
Police moved in to disperse fans after trouble flared Benfica's title celebrations in Lisbon on Sunday evening were marred by clashes between supporters and police. A goalless draw at Vitoria Guimaraes earlier in the day had earned Benfica consecutive Primeira Liga titles for the first time in 31 years. The match was held up for two minutes as flares were thrown on to the pitch. And the Benfica players, arriving back in central Lisbon in the early hours of Monday morning, were greeted by jubilant crowds in Marques de Pombal Square, although the celebrations turned sour as violence broke out. Portuguese newspaper Abola said police used force after a number of fans began throwing objects. Benfica title celebrations in pictures Bottles and stones appeared to be thrown towards toward anti-riot police officers Police in full riot gear were deployed Benfica's players and staff took to a stage to celebrate in front of their fans Benfica head coach Jorge Jesus (left) and club president Luis Filipe Vieira were present Thousands of fans attended the celebration Portuguese newspaper Abola said order was quickly restored by the authorities |
As the media stirred outside Washington Capitals the locker room for over 10 minutes, the team leaders came up to head coach Barry Trotz and told him they would handle the postgame talk in the locker room. The team had just lost 6-2 in front of their home fans — or at least the small number that were left when the final horn sounded — to go down 2-0 in their second round series against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Nicklas Backstrom, the quiet Swede whose quiet demeanor hides his world-class skill, spoke to the team. Backstrom came to the team almost 10 years ago after being a fourth overall pick, eventually rising to be one of the team’s biggest locker room presences and an alternate captain. The rest of the team then opened up. “None of your business,” defenseman Matt Niskanen shot back when asked what message was. That question was later followed up by one on the team’s mood. Again, Niskanen was displeased with the line of inquiry. “None of your business,” he grumbled again. While all the players made available to the reporters declined to provide significant details of the meeting, TJ Oshie said it was helpful. “I don’t think specifics are important to get out into the media,” TJ Oshie said. “What was said, I think, was the correct message of how we want to go forward.” Justin Williams, who was brought in by the Capitals for his experience and acumen in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, agreed, arguing Washington was not finished yet. “A lot of guys said some good stuff in here after the game,” Williams told reporters. “I’ve been down 3-0, I’ve been down 2-0 a couple times. You just gotta win one at a time. It’s an overused cliché but it’s exactly right come playoff time. We’re right there, just not quite there.” Other players were more dour. Alex Ovechkin, the team captain, spoke for just 40 seconds before ending the scrum and leaving the room after two questions. “The series goes to four games,” Ovechkin said. “Of course it’s tough.” Braden Holtby, who was pulled by Trotz after the second period after allowing three goals on 14 shots, was similarly curt. “It wasn’t as we planned,” he said. “It’s just, I don’t know.” Holtby, normally a wall during the playoffs, has been subpar in the 2017 postseason, posting a 4-4 record, 2.62 goals-against average, and a staggering .911 save percentage. “[I]t’s never where you want to be,” Holtby said. “But the playoffs are made of big moments. That third goal – that’s a big moment. That’s where your goalie needs to come up with a save and I just didn’t.” When asked whether he had been told whether he was told whether he would start Game Three, Holtby paused, shrugging and shaking his head. “I’ll be ready,” he said. “I mean, that’s — I expect to start every game until I’m told otherwise.” Trotz said it was too early to say whether Holtby will start Game Three, which would be a huge blow to the “backbone” of the team, as the coach put it. When asked how Holtby will handle the situation, Niskanen replied: “He’s an adult.” The Capitals will now lick their wounds during an off day Sunday before heading to Pittsburgh as they attempt to claw their way back in the series. “We have a lot of respect for that team,” Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan said. Full Coverage of Caps vs Penguins Advertisements Share this story: Facebook Twitter Reddit Tumblr Pinterest |
One of the most interesting parts of working toward being a career novelist is watching how many of your peers stay in the game. My first real brush with the death of the dream was after I attended Clarion in 2001. By the end of the workshop, we already had several folks who’d come into it with the expectation that they were ready to be career novelists, but who decided that no, actually, this slog wasn’t for them at all. You might think that meant Clarion was a waste of time for them, but let’s put it this way: imagine how valuable it’d be to realize you didn’t really want to pursue a career, hobby, or passion that hogged all your time and headspace. Imagine having the freedom to put that energy somewhere else. For those folks, just knowing that writing novels for a living wasn’t at all what they thought they wanted was just as valuable as having the workshop experience validate their initial choice. We’re raised on romantic writer myths. We learn this gig is all about toiling alone in a cabin in the woods, drinking and smoking too much, battling depression and insomnia and squeezing words onto the page like blood from a stone. It’s a solitary, transformative act. I see media perpetuate this myth quite a lot – there are obsessions over the writing ‘‘process’’ and writing ‘‘quirks,’’ trying to get every author to dish on how drinking a bottle of aloe juice while doing jumping jacks on top of a car is the only way they can kickstart their creativity in the morning. Throughout my teens, I endured writing workshop after writing workshop where people talked about their passion for writing. It was a compulsion, a need, something they could not stop. That was all very well and good, I thought, but people are driven to compulsively drink alcohol, too. I was more interested in learning how to get better at writing than defending the passionate, unknowable mysticism of how the sausage got made. What I’ve found over the years is that there are various checkpoints along the writing path that lead to a writer dropping out of the game – low sales, bad business experiences, health and personal issues, financial issues – but most of all, what leads people to quit is general burnout. It’s burnout on the whole thing: the rigorous deadlines, the disillusionment with publishing, the failed expectations, bad reviews, and constant criticism and self-doubt. Sometime during the extensive rewriting of my fourth published novel, writing fiction ceased to be fun for me. Not just ‘‘not always fun,’’ but really, 24/7 not fun. It had become pure, unadulterated grind. I’m used to writing for a living – I’m in marketing and advertising, writing all the spam e-mail that clutters up your inbox and the junk mail you toss into the trash. I had no expectation that I’d be in love with writing those all the time. I expected to be burned out on writing marketing copy all the time. But not fiction. Because… romance? The fantasy I sell with spam e-mail – easy money, an escape from 9-5 living, attractiveness to your preferred type of human (in four easy payments!), and insurance against impending apocalyptic disasters – isn’t something I have to be romantically passionate about to do well. I also came at it with the expectation that it wasn’t something I did all by myself in some mystical way. I worked with a team of folks – creative director, designer, production manager, account manager, marketing managers, product managers – to make great work. It wasn’t just me chugging back cocktails at midnight in the office like an episode of Mad Men, coming up with something brilliant. It was a process. It was work. And when the work got too suffocating, there were always my colleagues to commiserate with. Strangely enough, it wasn’t until I transitioned from being a hobbyist writer to a book-a-year writer that I realized the different expectations I had for my fiction writing, compared to my marketing writing, were actually toxic to my career. I expected that writing fiction would always be fun – it was my passion, the one thing I’d always done. When it wasn’t fun anymore, I’d just stop, right? The ‘‘I’ll write when it’s fun’’ mantra is why my first published book took four or five years to write. Enter deadlines, and you kind of have to throw that foolish idea out the window. Deadlines required that I come up with words even when they weren’t there (especially when they weren’t there), even when it wasn’t fun. So my second book took just 16 months, and the third 14 months. I rewrote my fourth from scratch in nine months, and I’ll have written my fifth in 11 months, if all goes as expected. It’s hard to have a joyful, fun-making experience 100% of the time when you’re working at that pace and holding down a day job. I enjoy the writing I do for my day job, too, but I’ve learned to recognize over the years that there are two types of writing there: big, fun, challenging campaigns where I get to solve clients’ problems, and boring, nonsense, paint-by-numbers crap that pays the bills. I’ve learned to expect it. I take the joy when I can. Yet when I started to lose my joy in fiction this year, I wondered if there was something wrong with me. I feared burnout. I wondered, just as those folks must have at Clarion, if this was really the right thing to be doing in my spare time. What I had to come to grips with is that writing novels wasn’t a magical merry-go-round of nonstop fun. More often than not, just like any other job, it was a mix of joy and grind, incompetence and compassion. What set me up for the burnout was the mythology we’ve created about the transcendent power of the written word, about writing for ‘‘passion’’ and about how loving what you do somehow means it’s no longer ‘‘work.’’ The most dangerous lie we tell ourselves is that writing novels shouldn’t feel like a job. It encourages younger and newer writers to work for little or no pay. It convinces those with a book or two under their belt that there’s something wrong with them when the writing is no longer fun all the time. Worst of all, when we hit bumps along the road, we’re convinced we’re the only ones to feel this type of burnout, and that there’s something wrong with us because of it. One of the most powerful things I ever did for my career, and my continued sanity, was to get to know other writers facing the same challenges. Social networks like Twitter and Facebook, supplemented with the occasional convention, have connected me with incredible people willing to share their own fraught publishing journeys. What stunned me more than anything else is how each of us thought our experiences were entirely unique, when it turned out we shared many of the same fears and frustrations. What will keep me writing far longer than I expected is not, necessarily, my passion, my talent, or the romantic story of how stringing together words will help me transcend the mortal plane. No, the deeper I get into the publishing game, the more I realize that what will keep me going when everything crumbles around me is the incredible support, advice, and commiseration I’ve gotten from other writers. It’s that camaraderie we should be celebrating, and talking more about, instead of doubling down on the myth of the lone wolf writer who conquers the world with pen in one hand and whiskey bottle in the other. I may often run around my house with pens and whiskey bottles, but writers are not sustained by whiskey and romantic myths alone. We’re sustained by one another, and our fantastically true stories of the oftentimes funny – and sobering – reality of our chosen profession. |
Short-term rentals disrupting SF housing market SHARING ECONOMY Explosion in short-term rentals disrupts market, runs afoul of regulations Barnaby Thieme and Rebecca Reagan stand at the front entrance to their apartment building in San Francisco, Calif. on Friday, June 1, 2012. Thieme and Reagan discovered that the apartment above theirs had a become an Airbnb rental property after several unfamiliar people tried to walk into their unit. less Barnaby Thieme and Rebecca Reagan stand at the front entrance to their apartment building in San Francisco, Calif. on Friday, June 1, 2012. Thieme and Reagan discovered that the apartment above theirs had a ... more Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 7 Caption Close Short-term rentals disrupting SF housing market 1 / 7 Back to Gallery First came the noisy upstairs neighbors who said they were just "renting the place for a couple of nights" but refused to tone it down. Then came the people who would try to open the front door of the Castro/Duboce Triangle apartment where Barnaby Thieme and Rebecca Reagan live, saying they thought it led to the lobby. The couple looked online and discovered what was behind the disruptions - a unit in their building was being rented out through Airbnb, the marketplace for short-term housing in private residences. "The big surprise for us was when we tried to contact Airbnb" to complain, said Thieme, a writer and editor. "The phone tree had no option remotely relating to people in our circumstance - neighbors." When they finally got through, "the first gentleman didn't seem too concerned about our problem." Their story underscores some unintended consequences of the runaway success of Airbnb, VRBO, HomeAway and other online services for booking stays in people's homes. A growing number of residents - close to 2,000 in San Francisco alone - use these services to sublet their apartments or houses while out of town or to occasionally host visitors in a spare room or sofa. Ad-hoc hotels But others, encouraged by lax oversight and lucrative payoffs, use the rental sites to run ad-hoc hotels, which besides annoying neighbors, takes long-term rentals off a market that desperately needs them - and in cities like San Francisco violates zoning regulations. Now the city is grappling with how to address the problems while still encouraging "collaborative consumption" businesses that let people connect to share assets and skills. "We're seeing a significant growth in the number of San Franciscans who are utilizing websites to share their homes, apartments or couches with visitors from around the world," said San Francisco Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, who has been meeting with stakeholders before introducing legislation to address the trend. "We need to protect scarce rental housing, make sure visitors are respectful within buildings and neighborhoods, and make sure these practices take into account planning, safety and quality-of-life concerns." San Francisco's Airbnb said it has 1,600 active hosts in the city and another 5,400 San Franciscans who have hosted and may become active again. HomeAway of Austin, Texas, which owns both the VRBO and HomeAway sites, has 331 listings in San Francisco. Most of its listings are for entire residences (generally second homes), while Airbnb ranges from couch space to whole houses. Tax dispute Both services said they require that their hosts comply with all applicable laws and regulations. But in April, city officials felt compelled to make clear that San Francisco's 14 percent hotel occupancy tax applies to Airbnb visitors, something the service didn't collect in the past and fiercely opposes. "The elected family of Mayor Ed Lee, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu and his colleagues are focused on fostering San Francisco's Sharing Economy, of which we and our hosts are a part," Airbnb said in a written response to questions. "We are now and will continue to meet with the various stakeholders, neighbors, property owners and tenant groups as the city's codes and zoning laws are updated to reflect the reality of short term rentals." Carl Shepherd, HomeAway co-founder and chief strategic officer, said: "Our terms and conditions say someone has to have the right to rent the property. We verify listings as much as we can, and we actively police and kick off people who do not comply with our rules." Complaints from neighbors have not been an issue, he said. Spokespeople for tenants, neighborhood associations and landlords, groups that rarely, if ever, find common ground in San Francisco, agree that the lodging websites are causing problems. "Many landlords decided they would be able to make more money by renting (their properties) as tourist space," said Ted Gullicksen, president of the San Francisco Tenants' Union, which promotes renters' rights. "We're seeing a big loss of rental housing stock, which we're already losing through other means. This is added pressure." Jon Golinger, president of the Telegraph Hill Dwellers, an association for residents of Telegraph Hill and North Beach, had similar objections. "We are very concerned with reductions in available housing for people to live in the neighborhood," he said. "We want to keep San Francisco a place where people don't just visit and take pretty pictures, but where people actually live." Landlords are equally unenthusiastic, but for different reasons. "Many tenants in buildings in San Francisco are running illegal bed-and-breakfast businesses out of their rental units (as can be seen) by viewing many of the public listing sites," said Janan New, executive director of the San Francisco Apartment Association, which represents more than half of the city's landlords, both big and small. 'No accountability' "If you sublet your San Francisco rental unit on a nightly basis, you are breaking the rent-control law; you could be subject to eviction (for violating leases that ban subletting); and you're putting the other tenants in the building at risk," she said. "There's no accountability to the actual owner of the property if there is vandalism or theft or fire or some other catastrophe." Some building owners have evicted tenants who violated the terms of their lease by subletting to short-term visitors, she said. And San Francisco has a long-standing but little-known ban on renting residential spaces for fewer than 30 days. "It's become so common that people don't even realize it's not legal," said John Rahaim, San Francisco planning director. His department has received 31 complaints over the past four years about illegal short-term rentals. "We'll look online and see if they're advertising somewhere on a regular basis, and then ask them to stop," he said. "In almost every case they've done that." San Francisco residents who want to host short-term visitors can apply for a bed-and-breakfast license, which costs thousands of dollars and requires various documents and hearings - but few do. "It is allowed everywhere except single-family residential districts," said Scott Sanchez, the city's zoning administrator. "If someone is using their building (for short-term rentals), as zoning administrator I would say they need to go through the proper paperwork to legalize the use." However, he said, the city doesn't see many applications. "The process is very tedious; there are lots of reviews and requirements," said a woman who has been seeking a B&B permit for two years for her Panhandle Victorian, where she hosts out-of-town visitors. "You have to hire specialized people to provide site plans and floor plans. You have to make modifications such as putting in gates for the driveway." If the process were easier and cheaper, "absolutely" more property owners would apply, said the woman, who asked not to be identified. Neighbor complaints In fact, a streamlined registration system for guest rentals is among the ideas Chiu is considering, along with creating a system to help investigate neighbor complaints. In the case of Thieme and Reagan, their leasing agent eventually contacted Airbnb and explained that subletting violated the building's rental agreements, and the visitors stopped coming. In general, Thieme has no issues with the service - and in fact has used it himself. "We used Airbnb happily in Europe last summer," said Thieme. "I want to extend them the benefit of the doubt that they are still evolving their business model and have had explosive growth, but they need to evolve appropriate mechanisms of monitoring and control. They should deal with zoning laws and tax laws more aggressively and realistically, or they will antagonize people." Chiu said his legislation, which will be introduced in the next few weeks, will try to take all viewpoints into consideration. "There are hundreds if not thousands of San Franciscans who have benefited from being able to do this once in a while," he said. "We need to create a balance between allowing San Franciscans to take advantage of this creative way of sharing spaces while not permanently displacing (other) San Franciscans from scarce rental housing (and) ensuring that visitors are being respectful." |
This is the next generation Razer device configuration tool bringing the Razer gaming experience to the free OpenSource world. The tool architecture is based on "razerd", which is a background daemon doing all of the lowlevel privileged hardware accesses. The user interface tools are "razercfg", a commandline tool; and "qrazercfg", a Qt based graphical device configuration tool (see screenshot below). Device support Device name Support status USB ID Razer Boomslang CE mouse Stable, but missing minor features. 1532:0005 Razer Copperhead mouse Stable, but missing minor features. 1532:0101 Razer DeathAdder Classic mouse Stable 1532:0007 Razer DeathAdder 3500 DPI mouse Stable 1532:0016 Razer DeathAdder Black Edition mouse Stable 1532:0029 Razer DeathAdder 2013 mouse Stable 1532:0037 Razer DeathAdder Korea PCBang edition mouse Stable 1532:0038 Razer DeathAdder Chroma mouse Stable 1532:0043 Razer Diamondback Chroma mouse Stable 1532:004C Razer Imperator Classic and 2012 mice Driver exists, but is currently broken 1532:0017 Razer Krait mouse Stable 1532:0003 Razer Lachesis Classic mouse Stable, but missing minor features. 1532:000C Razer Lachesis 5600 DPI mouse Driver exists, but is currently broken 1532:001E Razer Mamba (tournament edition) mouse Stable 1532:0046 Razer Naga Classic mouse Stable 1532:0015 Razer Naga Epic mouse Stable 1532:001F Razer Naga 2012 mouse Stable 1532:002E Razer Naga 2014 mouse Stable 1532:0040 Razer Naga Hex (v1) mouse Stable 1532:0036 Razer Naga Hex 2014 mouse Stable 1532:0041 Razer Taipan mouse Stable 1532:0034 Any other wired, wireless or hybrid wired/wireless Razer mouse not listed here Currently unsupported Supported hardware features Razercfg does only offer options for features supported by the actual hardware of the mouse. So if the hardware does not support button remapping for example, razercfg will not offer button options, even if the windows driver does. Button remapping on these devices has to be done by xmodmap, xinput or other X11 tools. One exception is profiles, though. If the mouse does not support profiles in hardware, razercfg will emulate 20 profiles in software. Device name Supported features Razer Boomslang CE mouse hP, B*, F, D, L Razer Copperhead mouse hP, B*, F, D, L Razer DeathAdder Classic mouse eP, F, D, L Razer DeathAdder 3500 DPI mouse eP, F, D, L Razer DeathAdder Black Edition mouse eP, F, D Razer DeathAdder 2013 mouse eP, F, D, L Razer DeathAdder Korea PCBang edition mouse eP, F, D, L Razer DeathAdder Chroma mouse eP, F, D, L Razer Diamondback Chroma mouse eP, F, D, L Razer Imperator Classic and 2012 mice hP, B*, F, D, L Razer Krait mouse eP, D Razer Lachesis Classic mouse hP, B*, F, D, L Razer Lachesis 5600 DPI mouse hP, B*, F, D, L Razer Mamba (tournament edition) mouse eP, F, D, L Razer Naga Classic mouse (wired) eP, F, D, L Razer Naga Epic mouse eP, F, D, L Razer Naga 2012 mouse eP, F, D, L Razer Naga 2014 mouse eP, F, D, L Razer Naga Hex (v1) mouse eP, F, D, L Razer Naga Hex 2014 mouse eP, F, D, L Razer Taipan mouse eP, F, D, L eP = Emulated profiles hP = Hardware profiles F = Frequency switching B = Button remapping D = DPI switching L = LEDs switching * = Not fully supported Frequently asked questions (FAQ) Q: My buttons don't show up in qrazercfg. What is wrong? A: Most likely there is nothing wrong with that. If the menu does not show, your mouse does not have support for internal hardware button remapping. See the supported hardware features table above. My buttons don't show up in qrazercfg. What is wrong? Most likely there is nothing wrong with that. If the menu does not show, your mouse does not have support for internal hardware button remapping. See the supported hardware features table above. Q: But the Windows driver has a button remapping feature. So razercfg should have that, too. A: Razercfg is only supposed to configure the hardware. If you want any software remapping of buttons, which is what the Windows driver does, you need other tools. Your search engine will help you. How to add support for new devices? The following prerequisites are required to start working on a driver for a new device. You need to be able to understand and write C code. to read the contribution guidelines. the original Razer Windows driver for the device. some way to sniff the USB-traffic of the configuration sequences with the original Windows driver. If you lack one of these prerequisites, please try to get all of them before contacting me. Modern mice most likely implement the "Synapse 2.0" wire protocol or (even more likely) a derivative thereof. That protocol is implemented in librazer/synapse.c. Drivers for mice with synapse protocol are supposed to use that generic code and tell it with feature-flags (enum razer_synapse_features) about slight variations in the wire protocol. See the hw_imperator.c and hw_lachesis5k6.c drivers for examples. New mice most likely require adding more feature flags and modifications to the generic synapse code. Older devices or device families like the Deathadder for example use their own protocol that differs a lot from Synapse. See the implementations of the individual devices for more information. A few words about the Windows driver Synapse 2.0 Framework is the name of the new Windows driver for Razer devices. It basically is a one-supports-all solution. One driver for many devices. That's great. However, what's not to great is the required internet connection, online registration and cloud connection. You guys at Razer, are you serious? A device driver with forced registration and cloud connection? This is ridiculous. I am not going to play this game. I won't buy any new Razer product that requires an online registration or any sort of internet connection to run the device driver. That also means that I will not work on razercfg support for these devices. Installing For information on how to install razercfg see the README.md file that is shipped with razercfg. Bug reports and feature requests If you find any bugs in razercfg or if you have any suggestion for new features, we would like to hear from you. Your help is greatly appreciated and will help to create better software and improve the overall experience for everybody. So don't hesitate to report anything that that limits your razercfg usage. Please file an issue at Github Alternatively you may send your report via e-mail If you have got any code improvements or other improvements that should be merged into the project, please send such enhancements to the razercfg maintainer. Please send a pull request via Github or alternatively send any patches to the project via e-mail Please read the contribution guidelines first. Updated: Wednesday 17 October 2018 17:31 (UTC) |
for pierozek – happy birthday Tuesday, March (trans. Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese) Marcin Świetlicki here we’ll be lovers, in a peeling house at the crossroads, we’ll cross with each other, peeling, right through mattress? sure, a mattress, only the mattress, and ashtray? an ashtray, two cups and mugs, a kettle, a plate, two, and music? music, music without end slowly the layers, more and more layers, the layer of shadow, the hand above the body, slowly the texture, slowly the roughness the sky unveils itself, separates, like a curtain, there appears a clear-lit cave. Comment: How do lovers find each other when they are bodily? They may have to find a way to something static but respectful of their motion. This requires something that “peels.” “Mattress,” “ashtray:” fright of death alone could be said to bring forth sexual impulse. This is only superficially unifying of our couple “here.” They’re still two at breakfast, tea, lunch and dinner. Something less concrete is needed, but it can’t be as universal as sex and death. Music is that airy thing, that which peels back layers even as it is itself layered. What are the layers? “Shadow”/”body”/”texture”/”roughness.” Sexuality is back in a way with shadows, “the hand above the body.” Death is back in a way, with texture turned into roughness. And yet neither are present. The layers have been unraveled. There is duality in each. How, then, does music unify? It revealed a false unity. It rightly deconstructed. Lovers have to discover each other; they have to work with the beloved that is changing. They have to take apart the (artificial) expectation that houses sometimes embody too well. Similarly, the sky’s lovely guises give way to dark night where stars are identifiable. The stars and sky do have a music of their own, that of the cosmos. Peeling away can be natural and whole in the best sense. |
Scholar: Cheney confessed to war crime David Edwards and Muriel Kane Published: Wednesday December 17, 2008 Print This Email This Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley believes that not only did Vice President Dick Cheney "unambiguously" confess to a war crime during an ABC interview on Monday, but the US' future as a nation may depend on taking action. Asked by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann whether Cheney had just confessed to a war crime on national television, Turley at first replied wryly, "It's an interesting question, isn't it? ... If someone commits a crime and everyone's around to see it and does nothing, is it still a crime?" "It most certainly is a crime to participate, to create, to in many ways monitor a torture program," he added. "What [Cheney] is describing is most certainly and unambiguously a war crime." During Monday's interview, Cheney was asked, "Did you authorize the tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohamed?" and replied, "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared." "What happens if the next administration does not press this?" Olbermann asked. "Do we let the International Court at the Hague come in and take over all our responsibilities for policing our own act here?" "That's what worries me the most," Turley replied, "is that you can't talk about change without having some moral component to it. It's not just about creating jobs or lowering the price of gasoline." "What occurred in the last eight years was an assault on who we are," Turley said. "I think that President-elect Obama's going to have to decide whether he wants power without principle or whether he wants to start with a true change, to say that no matter where an investigation will take us, if there are crimes to be found they will be prosecuted." "It will ultimately depend on citizens, and whether they will remain silent in the face of a crime that's been committed in plain view," Turley concluded. "It is equally immoral to stand silent in the face of a war crime and do nothing, and that is what the citizens are doing. There's this gigantic yawn." This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast Dec. 16, 2008. Download video via RawReplay.com |
"That Crawford Tillinghast should ever have studied science and philosophy was a mistake. These things should be left to the frigid and impersonal investigator, for they offer two equally tragic alternatives to the man of feeling and action." –H.P. Lovecraft, From Beyond Tragedy frequently awaits the investigators of Arkham Horror: The Card Game, no matter how feeling or frigid they may be. This shouldn't come as much of a surprise; their investigations typically lead them straight into matters of the foulest cults and elder gods. Murder, mystery, and madness are to be expected. All the same, there's plenty of cause for these investigators to study science and philosophy—or to train at firearms, practice their sleight of hand, or give voice to the strange incantations they find in the thick, dusty tomes that so long lay hidden in the secret libraries of forgotten orders. We can consider each of these practices aligned with one or more of the different investigator classes in the Arkham LCG®, and each of the different classes leads to a different set of strengths. Today, we review these classes and their impact upon the game's rules for deck-building. Investigative Idiosyncrasies Each of the game's investigators belongs to one of five classes, each of which is associated with a variety of player cards that grant it a distinct flavor and identity. While the cards belonging to these five classes create meaningful differences between the game's investigators—and their strengths and weaknesses—some player cards are not affiliated with any class. These neutral cards are mostly skill cards and a variety of tools that any investigator might be happy to utilize—a Knife (Core Set, 86), a Flashlight (Core Set, 87), or a Bulletproof Vest (Core Set, 94). They won't typically improve upon the strengths of your class cards, but they may very well shore up some of your investigator's deficiencies. Puzzling Together the Pieces For all the flavor they grant the game's investigators, the different classes don't exist in a vacuum. They find their expression in the decks you build. In the Arkham LCG, deckbuilding starts with your choice of investigator. You're stepping into a realm that touches on both the traditional roleplaying and card gaming experiences, and your choice of investigator is the nexus of it all. This is because you become that investigator in the game, and your deck becomes an extension of his or her talents, tools, personality, allies, and other resources. Your deck is also an extension of your investigator's weaknesses. As one of the game's investigators, you must not only overcome the challenges presented by cultists, monsters, magic, and madness, you must also rise above the ghosts of your past, or your obsession with dark knowledge, or your fears of abandonment—or any of the other weaknesses that round out the game's characters. Naturally, since we don't choose our weaknesses, you'll find your investigator's required weaknesses listed on the back of his or her card, along with all your other deckbuilding requirements. For example, if you were to play as Wendy Adams, you would be required to create a deck of exactly thirty cards. Since Wendy is a Survivor with some Roguish tendencies, her thirty-card deck can potentially include Survivor and neutral cards of any level—zero to five—as well as Rogue cards of levels zero, one, or two. Of course, these level restrictions don't come into play as Wendy first begins investigating. At the beginning of a campaign, your investigator usually starts with zero experience, meaning you have no experience with which to access any leveled-up cards. Furthermore, you cannot include more than two copies of a given card by title, meaning that if you start with two copies of Lucky! in your deck and decide to spend two of your experience to purchase a level-two version of the card (Core Set, 84), you have to remove one of the level zero copies. To this mix of thirty cards, Wendy's investigator card introduces several other Deckbuilding Requirements that do not count toward your deck size. First, you must add Wendy's Amulet (Core Set, 14), which you'll likely be happy to include. But you'll also have to add Wendy's unique weakness, Abandoned and Alone (Core Set, 15). This card comes with the Revelation ability, which means you must resolve it as soon as it's drawn; then it deals two direct horror and removes all the cards in your discard pile from the game. Wendy's past is not something she wishes to revisit. Finally, Wendy's investigator card forces you to add another basic weakness to your deck, chosen at random from the available options. Mutations and Madness As we have discussed in the game's announcement, on the website, and in our preview on campaign play, your investigations in the Arkham LCG are likely to lead you through multiple layers of mystery. At each step, after the resolution of a new adventure, you have the opportunity to make some adjustments to your deck. You won't be able to change the cards listed in your investigator's Deckbuilding Requirements, nor will you be able to shake any of the new weaknesses you might accumulate along the way, but you will have the opportunity to purchase other tools and talents, spending the experience you have gained to do so. You've already seen that, between adventures, you can spend your experience to purchase higher level cards and add them to your deck. However, it's worth noting that you can also purchase new level zero cards, but purchasing one of these still requires the expenditure of one experience. You may change your deck, and your personality may also change, but only as you grow through or are affected by your experiences. This means that by the end of an Arkham Horror: The Card Game campaign, your deck will serve as a physical manifestation of your investigator's scars, studies, and achievements. How Will You Arm Yourself Against Madness? Confronted by cultists and conspiracies in a world of supernatural, Lovecraftian horror, how will you prepare yourself for survival? Will you delve for answers amid dusty old tomes? Will you arm yourself with a pair of .45s? Will you dare invoke the arcane powers you've managed to uncover? Will you trust your luck? Deckbuilding in Arkham Horror: The Card Game isn't just a process that prepares you for play. It's an experience that deepens throughout the course of your campaign and helps define your encounters with otherworldly horrors. Your decisions matter, so choose wisely! The many terrors of Arkham Horror: The Card Game are nearly upon us. Head to your local retailer and pre-order your copy today! |
In endeavoring to identify a scintilla of logic related to events emerging from the Ohio State University In endeavoring to identify a scintilla of logic related to events emerging from the Ohio State University attack in which Somali refugee Abdul Razak Ali Artan, 18, tried to kill pedestrians, first attempting mass slaughter by running over them with his car and then by jumping out to attack them with a butcher knife purchased for this purpose, a thread of logic emerges. To best discern it, one need consider the following: 1 According to his own Facebook entry, Artan acted out of anger his fellow Muslims were being killed in Buddhist-majority Burma, 1 According to his own Facebook entry, Artan acted out of anger his fellow Muslims were being killed in Buddhist-majority Burma, writing , “I can’t take it anymore.” So, since fellow Muslims were dying at the hands of Buddhists, Artan felt compelled to kill Americans. 2 Former Republican presidential candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich 2 Former Republican presidential candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich proferred , despite Artan’s declaration, “We may never totally find out why this person did what they did or why they snapped … we may never find out.” 3 While several victims were wounded during the attack, the only reason none was killed was the quick action of a campus police officer who shot Artan dead before he could inflict any fatalities. Yet, despite her son’s murderous rampage, Artan’s mother, just before her son’s funeral, lamented he had been killed “ 3 While several victims were wounded during the attack, the only reason none was killed was the quick action of a campus police officer who shot Artan dead before he could inflict any fatalities. Yet, despite her son’s murderous rampage, Artan’s mother, just before her son’s funeral, lamented he had been killed “ for no reason. 4 Despite the Muslim attacker’s declared motivation for his actions, despite a 4 Despite the Muslim attacker’s declared motivation for his actions, despite a declaration by ISIS he was acting in the name of his religion and despite an established track record of Muslims attacking non-Muslims, both in the U.S. and Europe, the White House urges us not to “increase our suspicion of people who practice a particular religion.” Accordingly, President Barack Obama refused to link Artan’s acts to radical Islam. For anyone unable to grasp the common thread of logic in all this, it is the following: No one has used it to link Artan’s terrorist attack to Islam! We can actually take this lack of logic further. After the attack, Fox news correspondent Tucker Carlson interviewed Georgetown University’s Muslim professor Engy Abdelkader, asking her After the attack, Fox news correspondent Tucker Carlson interviewed Georgetown University’s Muslim professor Engy Abdelkader, asking her how one goes “from refugee to ISIS sympathizer in two years.” As a college professor and as a Muslim, Abdelkader’s answer was not surprising: Islamophobes are a driving force behind terrorism. As Carlson queried whether a peaceful Muslim community should do some soul-searching on the issue, the professor would have none of it. Again, unsurprisingly, she sought to take the spotlight off Islam, claiming the anti-Muslim bias known as Islamophobia causes Muslims to suffer “cultural homelessness” so that they do not identify with their host country. Furthermore, she suggested, the greater terrorist threat was not posed by Muslims but by “white supremist groups and right-wing extremists.” As Carlson disputed a terrorist threat Abdelkader falsely offered as fact – pointing out we have “had an awful lot of Americans killed and injured by Islamic terror in the last eight years” – and, thus, whether it was unfair to blame Artan’s violence on his victims, the professor responded, “Absolutely not!” She credited the majority of Muslims as not only being peaceful but also contributing to society in a positive manner. When pressed by Carlson on whether there might be issues of violence within the Muslim community, the professor adamantly rejected such thoughts. All of Abdelkader’s responses to Carlson’s questions were clearly designed to hold Islam blameless. They also were offered in accordance with Islam’s age-old principle of imposing a duty upon Muslims, known as “ All of Abdelkader’s responses to Carlson’s questions were clearly designed to hold Islam blameless. They also were offered in accordance with Islam’s age-old principle of imposing a duty upon Muslims, known as “ taqiyya ,” to lie to non-Muslims on behalf of Allah in order to further Islam’s advance. There are certain realities and facts, however, the professor simply cannot ignore about “peaceful” Islam: Why are the world’s 27 most violent cities, experiencing the worst quality of life, all dominated by Islam? Why do Muslims who criticize Christianity not have to live in fear for their lives while non-Muslims daring to criticize Islam do? A list of the latter includes the likes of Somali and former Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali, British Indian novelist Salman Rushdie, Danish cartoonist Fleming Rose, who drew Muhammad, and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders. Why did a Moroccan television program on women’s beauty aides feel it necessary to air a segment on how best to hide domestic-violence bruises? Why, as Abelkader claims, if Muslim Americans are the group most responsible for reporting tips to law enforcement about terrorist plots, is that not a telling indictment against her community that so many such plots are being hatched there? A refrain from a song written by English singer Steven Patrick Morrissey repeatedly laments, “I’ll never learn.” In the wake of yet another terrorist attack by a Muslim in the U.S. and our continuing reluctance to link the attacker to his religious motivation, Morrissey’s refrain seems most appropriate. |
If you've driven through the on-ramps to Interstate 280 and Interstate Highway 380 over the last few weeks, you may have noticed some signs that look out of place. Not the freeways signs, of course. If you've ever glanced off to the side, you'll see a Ron Paul for President sign. Two to be exact—one at I-280 and the other at I-380. No one knows who put up the signs. Matthew Heath, the Northern California state coordinator for Paul's campaign, said he didn't know anyone who had put up any new signs in all of California after the June primary, when Mitt Romney won the Republican presidential nomination with ease. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, a three-time presidential candidate, came in a distant second place with 9 percent of the vote. However, the Ron Paul signs in San Bruno have yet to come down—or no one has bothered to take them down—even though the Texas congressman has essentially ended his campaign for president. It's almost as if the signs are still standing in defiance of the popular vote just like Paul's views often stand in opposition to popular beliefs and even those of his fellow Republicans. "It just shows the level of support," Heath said in pondering a reason for why the signs are still up. The question still remains, though: Are there Paul supporters here in San Bruno? And, if so, will they ever make themselves known? After all, California is a majority blue state and half of the voters in San Mateo County are Democrats. In San Bruno, Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than two to one. Here, there are also 78 Libertarians, like Paul, but that's according to 1999 figures, the latest information available. For more news about San Bruno, follow San Bruno Patch on Twitter and "like"us on Facebook. Got Patch in your inbox? Sign up for our newsletter. |
Over twice as many Muslims fought - or supported - Britain, France and the Russian Empire during World War I than was previously thought, according to new research. The research also reveals the surveillance techniques used by army authorities to detect what they were already calling “Islamic fanaticism” and to prevent Muslim soldiers from defecting to the Ottoman-allied German forces. The findings stem from research commissioned by the British Muslim Heritage Centre, a Manchester-based centre that is hosting an exhibition detailing the contribution of Muslims to the Allied war effort. At least 885,000 Muslims were recruited to fight for the Allies - including Britain, France, the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Hejaz (now western Saudi Arabia) – against Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire. Of these, over 89,000 are known to have been killed during more than four years of a grinding war of attrition. The contribution of Muslim soldiers, mostly from India but also from other colonised countries like Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia, to the eventual Allied victory had until now been much less well-known than their role in the World War II. Islam Issa, a lecturer in English Literature at Birmingham City University who led the research, told Middle East Eye he had sifted through “thousands" of letters and secret internal army documents to find archival traces of the tens of thousands of Muslim soldiers. Letters sent by Indian soldiers on the Western Front to family back home provided much of the material for the research. Many of these letters are now available to researchers thanks only to a strict censorship regime that was set up to monitor Muslim soldiers and stop them from defecting to forces fighting alongside the Ottomans, who at the time “represented Islamic power,” Issa said. “Interesting letters originally in languages other than English would have to be translated for the censors. Some were from people who had deserted, trying to get their former comrades to do the same. [The censors] were basically on the lookout for what they called ‘Islamic fanaticism’." “Looking at it and the bureaucracy surrounding it, you realise that not too much has changed.” Though the justifications for state surveillance of Muslim lives resemble those of today - namely countering "Islamic fanaticism" as it was then called - the documents revealed a very different approach to countering it: army authorities and the British press at large went to great pains to court Muslims who were supporting the Allied war effort. “[Army authorities] realised it was a huge amount of manpower - having Muslim soldiers on side would be a massive asset. There were examples of them trying to be culturally sensitive and offer them space to complete their religious rites.” Regimental diaries from battalions with predominantly Muslim soldiers note efforts to make sure the men had space to pray and enough Islamic books. On some occasions soldiers were given special permission to pray en masse on the decks of warships. The British press - an integral propaganda arm of the British war effort - was “interestingly tolerant [of Muslims] for the time,” Issa said. Contemporary coverage describes 1915 Eid prayers by wounded Indian soldiers as 'exceedingly picturesque' (© The British Library Board, Daily Mirror 14 August 1915 - page 12) While the British press was generally positive about the Muslim contribution to the war effort, he said, “there are some overlaps with modern coverage. The word terror was used – but it was intended to be positive. They were said to be invoking terror on ‘our’ enemy.” The British authorities, and their press, took great interest in the good treatment of wounded Muslim soldiers. King George V would regularly visit Brighton Pavilion, an ornate seaside palace - styled on the Taj Mahal – that had been turned into a makeshift 722-bed hospital for Indian soldiers. A separate kitchen prepared halal meals for the Muslim soldiers, and pork products were banned from the grounds. By the end of the war, the army had sold 120,000 commemorative postcards depicting the soldiers convalescing in their decadent temporary surroundings. British efforts to court Muslim soldiers were matched by those of arch-rivals Germany. In 1914, just months after the outbreak of the war, authorities built the Half Moon Camp. Some 30 kilometres south of Berlin, the camp was specifically designed to house thousands of Muslim prisoners of war from the Allied side. It was also the site of the first purpose-built mosque in Germany. Based on Jerusalem’s iconic Dome of the Rock mosque, the wooden building was completed in July 1915. A contemporary postcard shows Germany's first purpose-built mosque (Courtesy of Zeno.org) A decade later, the once-ornate structure would be torn down due to disrepair. While it was in use, though, the mosque served as a focal point for German-sponsored Islamic preaching aimed at convincing the POWs that being a good Muslim meant fighting for the Ottomans. An account from 1982 notes that the Tunisian mufti Salih al-Sharif al-Tunisi – who also served in the Ottoman intelligence services - arrived to preach djihad (sic) and attempt to persuade the camp’s “inmates” to switch sides and start fighting the French. Tunisi went so far as to start a newspaper, al-Djihad, aimed specifically at the Muslim POWs. Tunisi’s support was so much in demand that, after his return to Istanbul, German authorities set about finding ways to convince him to return to the camp to continue preaching. As a result of initiatives like these, says Issa, “the British had no option but to increase their propaganda and court the Muslim soldiers”. By the end of the war, at least 89,000 soldiers listed as Muslim in army records had been killed. The largest memorial to them in the UK is in the small Surrey town of Woking. Britain’s War Office established a special burial ground for Muslim soldiers at the site – close to the UK’s only purpose-built mosque at the time – after rumours spread among troops that those killed were not being buried according to proper Islamic rituals. A postcard shows the Muslim burial ground at Woking (Image reproduced by permission of The Lightbox, Woking) Many of those who survived the war returned to their homes and slipped from the Western historical record – with their letters no longer subject to army censorship, archival traces of their lives mostly dried up. Even to relatives, said Issa, many of the soldiers spoke little about their experiences during the war. “One person told me they never heard any stories from their grandparent who had fought in WWI - he said he just wanted to forget it.” Some survivors, though, would end up back in army uniform two decades later, fighting for the Allies again in World War II. The Stories of Sacrifice exhibition will be open until 1 July 2016 at the British Muslim Heritage Centre's site in Manchester |
A spokeswoman for Speaker Paul Ryan said that House Democrats are demanding their own changes to the bill. | John Shinkle/POLITICO Russia sanctions bill hits new hurdle in House As President Donald Trump prepares to meet Vladimir Putin on Friday, a bipartisan congressional attempt to constrain Trump's ability to warm up to Russia is running into new trouble. The Senate relented last month on a fix to the sanctions bill after House Republicans raised constitutional concerns with it. But on Thursday, House Democrats objected to speedy consideration of the fix — opening a new partisan schism as Trump prepares to potentially forge a new, more cooperative relationship with Putin during their bilateral meeting at the G-20 summit in Germany. Story Continued Below At issue in the ongoing dispute over the bill, which imposes new sanctions on Russia and Iran, is the impact of the House's proposed fix. Even though the Senate agreed to changes that Democrats on that side of the Capitol described as merely technical, House Democrats disagree. "House Republicans are prepared to send the Iran-Russia sanctions bill papers back, which will allow the Senate to automatically resend us a fixed bill, but House Democrats are blocking that and demanding their own changes to the bill," AshLee Strong, spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan, wrote in an email. Two House Democratic aides told POLITICO that Thursday's hurdle arose because the agreed-upon fix would weaken a key provision in the sanctions bill — empowering Congress to block Trump from ending or easing sanctions against Moscow. The proposed fix, according to the Democratic aides, would make it harder for the House minority to force a vote blocking Trump's sanctions policy by no longer treating any disapproval measure as a privileged resolution. The most reliable politics newsletter. Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get the latest news, every morning — in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. "Stalling the Russia sanctions bill is just the latest outrage in House Republicans' long-running complicity in the Trump White House's weakness toward Putin," Ashley Etienne, spokeswoman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, wrote in an email. "While Putin and President Trump meet privately, the American people are left to ask why Republicans are more concerned with Russia's interests than the integrity of our democracy." Another Democratic aide acknowledged that their Senate counterparts might not have seen the tweak as substantive because it did not affect the upper chamber's ability to handcuff Trump. The White House already has said it plans to seek Trump-friendly changes to the Senate's version, beyond the procedural changes currently fueling the partisan clash. If Trump emerges from his meeting with Putin having agreed to a more cooperative relationship on anti-terrorist operations, Democrats are preparing for the administration to make more overt moves to kill or weaken the sanctions bill in the House. Rachael Bade contributed to this report. |
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers scribe Kyle Higgins returns to Nightwing next week in Nightwing: The New Order, and DC has provided ComicBook.com with an exclusive preview of the first issue. In The New Order, Dick Grayson has taken control of an alternate future where he has outlawed all use of superpowers. Those who exhibit powers have either been eliminated or exiled, and writer Kyle Higgins knows that it will throw some fans for a loop. “My all-time favorite DC books throw characters we know and love into future worlds that are equal parts familiar and terrifying, laced with moral issues that aren’t black and white or easily solved,” Higgins said when the series was announced. “Ultimately, these stories say something about our world. And that’s what we are aiming to do with this Nightwing series, through the lens of a future generation of heroes.” Shortly after it was announced, Higgins went online to reject comparisons to Secret Empire, Marvel's controversial crossover that shows Captain America aligned with the Nazi organization Hydra. "Nightwing is NOT running around killing people. He has NOT committed genocide. That's NOT what this book is," Higgins explained. "His love, optimism, and belief in his fellow man is second to none. Which is why it's so unsettling that 20 years from now, he's become the face of the ban on metahuman powers. How does someone like him get to that point? What did he lose? How bad had the world become? And how much better is it now? Really, this is a story about how good people can come to believe in terrible things. It's a look at a possible future of the DC Universe." Interestingly, the Batman-themed peace officers roaming the streets of this dark take on Neo-Gotham (Higgins also wrote Batman Beyond for a while, remember) feel right at home in the current DC Universe; the first arc of James Tynion IV's Detective Comics saw Batwoman's father trying to build an army of Batmen to carry out law enforcement and military tasks, while Batman is currently having nightmares over in Metal that he will spin similarly out of control, with airborne Bat-sentries watching over a cowed populace. Higgins first wrote Nightwing at the start of DC's The New 52 relaunch, helping to make him a household name in comics circles and enjoying mostly positive reviews at a time when DC did not have many titles that could say that. He would go on to write a digital first Batman Beyond series at DC before turning to creator-owned projects and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. You can check out the preview pages in the attached image gallery and the solicitation text for the first issue below. NIGHTWING: THE NEW ORDER is the story of a future world without “weapons” — where superpowers have been eliminated and outlawed. The man responsible? None other than Dick Grayson, a.k.a. Nightwing, now leader of a government task force called the Crusaders who are charged with hunting the remaining Supers. But when events transpire which turn the Crusaders’ aim toward Grayson’s own family, the former Boy Wonder must turn against the very system he helped create, with help from the very people he’s been hunting for years — the last metahumans of the DC Universe. Don’t miss this bold new vision from the team behind the New York Times bestseller BATMAN: GATES OF GOTHAM! Nightwing: The New Order will hit the stands on Wednesday, August 23rd. You can get a copy from your retailer, or pre-order it digitally. |
Talks are underway between Microsoft and Remedy Entertainment to bring the original Alan Wake to the Xbox One, Remedy's chief creative officer Sam Lake told Polygon. "I would love that to happen," Lake said. "Nothing has happened yet, but we are discussing this possibility with Microsoft. "I hope it happens, we'll see." If it happens, that port would likely include the post-release DLC as well, Lake said. While the franchise is owned by Remedy, Microsoft published the original title. I asked Lake what the chances were of the original game showing up on the PlayStation 4 or Wii U as well. "Highly unlikely," he said. Earlier this week, Remedy Entertainment released to Polygon a video of the 2010 prototype created to pitch Alan Wake 2 to a number of publishers. That game never happened, but in an interview Lake said that once Quantum Break wraps up, the studio would love to return to Alan Wake to make a sequel. Alan Wake showing up on the PS4 is highly unlikely, but that's not the case for the game's sequel. If Microsoft doesn't pick up the Alan Wake 2 sequel for the Xbox One, that doesn't mean it won't see the light of day. Today's publishing road can completely circumvent big companies like Microsoft thanks to the likes of Kickstarter and Steam's Greenlight. And both Alan Wake and the follow-up, non-sequel American Nightmare showed up on Windows PC. And Lake said Remedy isn't ruling those out. "Ultimately, these things are business decisions," he said. "We are definitely not ruling anything out and looking at different opportunities, but nothing is set in stone at the moment." And there's even the possibility that the sequel could go to a platform that didn't have the original game. "When it comes to sequels it's our thing, we can do whatever makes sense and what's best for the franchise overall," Lake said. "But obviously it depends on many different things. I think that regardless of the platform, a good sequel — while it continues the story of the original one — it's still something that someone who hasn't played the original one can enjoy and jump on board and dive into the setting and the world and enjoy themselves. "It's not like a potential sequel of Alan Wake would be only something that someone who has already played everything in the Alan Wake franchise can enjoy." You can also watch the video on YouTube right here. |
Role of fathers in parenting as important as the role of the mother. In fact, some aspects of the father has advantages over mothers in parenting. 1. More Calm Men normally more able to think rationally and calm in any situation. No exception when they are watching their children. If you see the little guy climb up to the top of the table, the mother will usually scream and immediately said "no". In contrast with the father, they can calmly said, "it's not safeboy, come down from there,". 2. Attend Fully One of the challenges of becoming a parent is the split of time. With existing energy left, the mother still had to make dinner or clean the house. No wonder sometimes when playing with children of our attention will be divided. But, not with the father. Maybe because there must be preoccupied with domestic matters, while playing with her baby they would total "fun". The house may look messy when they play, but the father was the best friend to his children. 3. More Relaxed As compared with mothers who are often worried about many things, ranging from hygiene to the little guy safety, the fathers tend to be more relaxed. When the little guy eat with the mess they are in no hurry take a rag and clean the table. When faced with a difficult child to eat, they are also more calm and able to persuade the child to open his mouth. 4. Protectors Not that mothers protect their children less, just that a father figure is identical with the family protector. Because it's normally more like a child telling their father about something that makes them afraid. 5. Teach Independence The mothers normally less patient in letting their child doing something right. For example, when wearing shoes or dress himself. Because there are still many things to be done, normally mothers always wanted to help children so that the child's independence longer formed. The father normally better in this regard. They prefer to believe that their baby can do and can learn from his mistakes. |
Allegations of racist threats and mob-style intimidation in a West Bluff neighborhood Friday captured national attention over the weekend, but some say the claims were exaggerated. A group of 50 or so young people was walking down Thrush Avenue toward Sheridan Road about 10:50 p.m. Friday, concerning some residents. Allegations of racist threats and mob-style intimidation in a West Bluff neighborhood Friday captured national attention over the weekend, but some say the claims were exaggerated. A group of 50 or so young people was walking down Thrush Avenue toward Sheridan Road about 10:50 p.m. Friday, concerning some residents. Paul Wilkinson, who has lived on Sheridan for 11 years, says the group was blocking four lanes of traffic, fighting and yelling racist comments at neighbors. "They were yelling 'We're gonna kill all the white people. This is our neighborhood,'" Wilkinson, 45, said. He emailed his account of the incident to several City Council members and one local blogger. The report at The Peoria Chronicle website was quickly picked up by dozens of other sites, including the widely read online news site The Drudge Report with the headline "Pandemonium in Peoria: Mob yells 'Kill all white people.'" Some residents, unaware of the media attention, confirmed Sunday there was a crowd in the street Friday, but said that race was not involved. A police report on the incident does not even mention the word race. Police responded to Thrush on Friday night on a report of fireworks and fighting but found neither of those activities occurring, a police report stated. The group dispersed in multiple directions when an officer arrived. No one was arrested. Khalid Davis, who lives on Thrush, said the group blocked a few cars but was very orderly. He witnessed no fights and called the racist allegations a "heck of an exaggeration." "If I heard them screaming any such thing, I would have called police immediately," said Davis, 62. Wilkinson, the president of the Altamont Park Neighborhood Association, said Sunday the neighborhood has seen its share of problems with drugs and guns in his 11 years there, but the problems have visibly increased as of late. He said police recommended residents stay inside and keep their doors locked. The effects of the allegations were evident in the neighborhood Sunday. A police nuisance abatement truck called the Armadillo, outfitted with cameras, was parked on the side of Thrush. Peoria City Councilwoman Barbara Van Auken said Sunday she is outraged by Wilkinson's allegations. Van Auken, who has known Wilkinson for six years, said he's had a history of "wildly exaggerating" reports, many of them involving race. And police are well aware of it. "We have some very gullible new council members who were dumb enough to believe him," she said, declining to name names. Wilkinson said he met with Councilwoman Beth Akeson following his email and spoke to Councilman Chuck Weaver over the weekend. Weaver told the Journal Star he planned to meet with the mayor about the incident. Van Auken said there are few, if any, racial tensions in the neighborhood where the incident occurred. "It's a national embarrassment now," she said. Mayor Jim Ardis was unaware Sunday evening of the national attention the issue had caused. He called it "concerning" but said he did not think Peoria was unique when it came to such incidents. Ardis said he wasn't sure to what extent the reports were accurate. "Not knowing all the details, it's surprising that it's caught national attention," he said. In the meantime, police have increased patrols in the area, and Ardis, who is out of town, expects more reports on the incident to be available when he returns Wednesday. Kenny Rogers, who has lived on Sheridan for 10 years, called police Friday after he saw the group "hollering" and stopping traffic on the street. He did not hear anyone yell that they wanted to kill white people. Rogers says the crowd was running wildly around yards and porches. It was the largest Rogers, 38, had ever seen in the neighborhood. "They were doing a show of force," he said, "to show everybody, 'Hey, this is their hood.'" Michael Boren can be reached at 686-3194 or mboren@pjstar.com. View Larger Map |
The Movie (5/5) If you’re like me, and you live for the 70s, when filmmaking broke out of the shadow of the antiquated studio system, then you probably know who Sam Peckinpah is. Director of some of the most groundbreaking, violent westerns and dramas such as The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs, he demonstrated a flare for blood, large scale shoot outs with lots of cuts, and angry characters who are forced into unfortunate situations by a world that just doesn’t care. He had legendary battles with the studios during the 60s, and many of his films are seen as controversial even today. However, there was a time before Peckinpah waged war with the studios, and made films that were more approachable, less violent, and well viewed by critics, executives, and filmgoers alike; one of these films is Ride the High Country. Released to theaters by MGM in 1962, the film opened to critical acclaim and mild box office returns. It is considered by many scholars to be his first great film in a storied career built on the backs of loners making desperate decisions and plenty of violence. Ride the High Country is the story of former lawman Steve Judd, a man who’s lived beyond his prime. Hired by a local bank to ferry gold from a mining town that’s been plagued by bandits, he enlists the help of his former partner, Gil Westrum, and his young friend, Heck Longtree, in order to safeguard the gold through the rough territory. Along the way they stop at a local farmstead, and on accident pick up Elsa, a young woman attempting to escape her oppressive father with the hopes of finding her would-be husband in town. Once there, they find that not everything is as they seem, as her husband is waiting turns violent, and plans for a betrayal are unmasked, forcing Steve to make a challenging choice; give up everything he’s worked so hard to put behind him, or embrace the joys of his old life and ride the high country once more. Ride the High Country is a masterful examination of the mistrust and anger that flowed through the wild west, stretching even to the wildernesses of California during its famed gold rush. The characters of Judd and Westrum play perfectly into their roles as, “End of the West,” cowboys, struggling to find meaning in the days after their prime; they’re too old to go raiding or do meaningful work, too young and too poor to comfortably retire. It forces them to reexamine their lives and existences in two very ways, one searching for redemption, while the other grasps at straws in order to keep things exciting. In the middle of their dilemma is Elsa, a young woman condemned by the anger and abusiveness of her father, and Heck, who’s too naive to truly understand the consequences of his actions, getting caught up in a scheme that leads to terrible violence and destruction, as a result of the pent up frustrations of western California settlers, starved for entertainment and sex. Led by a cast of hardened western actors, such as Randolph Scott as Gil Westrum, and Joel McCrea as Steve Judd, who approaches the role of a retired, disgraced cowboy with authenticity. He plays into the role with a sense of sadness and regret, but also with hope for the future as he pushes for his last chances at redemption with this mission. Scott shines too as Westrum, playing into the role of a scheming, hardened outlaw with a measured reserve. He never goes fully sinister or expanding beyond his means, existing comfortably in that grey area where he fosters an excellent sense of mistrust, both onscreen and with the audience. The two young bloods that join in for the ride, Mariette Hartley as Elsa and Ron Starr as Heck Longstree are excellent as well, filling their roles of the passionate young people searching for love and riches in a desolate land quite admirably. The supporting cast, which mostly consists of angry drunk minors, fill the roles of a much needed over the top villain with gusto, embracing the chaos they cause with enthusiasm and energy. Shot by Lucien Ballard, who would go on to work on many of Peckinpah’s most important features of the next decade, the film is a love letter to the locales of the forests of California. The film constantly cuts to these beautifully framed wideshots that really allow you to breathe in the region of the world they’re traversing. The composition of shots as well as the set and prop design really gives the film’s setting a lived-in authenticity, which goes to great lengths to solidify it as a western. Edited by Frank Santilo, the film flows smoothly, with the shot pacing allowing us to take in the consequences of each gunshot during the film’s many large scale shoot outs and reflect on the violence that the plot demands. A confident film, Ride the High Country is a great look at what was to come with Peckinpah’s career, presenting his early musings on what cowboys do when the world doesn’t really need cowboys. It hits all the marks, in both a technical and narrative sense, and carries a finale that is both action packed, but also somber and thought provoking. I for one, thoroughly enjoyed this trip back to the Wild Wild West. The Video (4.5/5) Shot on 4-perf 35mm film with Cinemascope anamorphic lenses, Ride the High Country was originally presented in theaters in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio on 35mm prints. Sourced from a brand new HD master prepared by Warner Archive, the film is presented in 1080p resolution, in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Stunning is the word I would be most likely to use when describing Warner’s new presentation of this early Peckinpah film. The second of many projects in which the director would collaborate with Lecien Ballard on photography, the film is imbued with soft whites, murky browns, golden yellows, and wonderfully saturated greens to embellish the natural qualities of the California wilderness. This new transfer handles all of this color information brilliantly, even when upscaled into 4K resolution. The presentation, caked in a layer of soft, natural grain, is generally sharp and detailed, especially in mid and close-up shots, revealing every bit of effort thrown into the mis en scene of the film. Occasionally, as a consequence on the lenses used by the production, the occasional shot registers softly, and optical grain and resolution reduction is present, but not troubling in any significant way. As usual, Warner Archive’s team steps up to the plate, and knocks it out of the park. The Audio (4/5) Ride the High Country was originally presented on film prints with a mono optical soundtrack. This new Blu-ray has recreated that track using a DTS-Master Audio 2.0 mono lossless soundtrack. The mono soundtrack, much like many produced by Warner Archive, is adequate at meeting the demands on such a western. The track is well mixed, handling dialogue and balancing the needs of the film’s more action packed sequences with ease. George Bassman’s score carries through well, never overpowering or getting lost in the shuffle. The track is clean, and free of any pops or distracting clicks. Special Features/Packaging (2/5) Ride the High Country has been released to home video by Warner Archive in a standard Blu-ray keepcase. The front artwork carries forward the home video artwork that was previously used in other releases, with a shot of MrCrea and Scott positioned behind Hartley riding a horse and looking in the distance, with the title and cast above and below the imagery. The back artwork features a shot of the three main male characters riding their horses, with a cutout image from the film also featured below a few paragraphs about the film and a review quote. Below this is a list of features, credits, and technical specs for this release. A good looking package, but unmemorable compared to other Archive releases. Onto the features: Audio Commentary – a commentary performed by Peckinpah biographers Kick Redman, Paul Seydour, Garner Simmons and David Weddle. They discuss various aspects of the production, and its history as well as its place in Peckinpah’s filmography. A Justified Life: Sam Peckinpah and the High Country – a feature carried over from the 2006 DVD release of the film, the feature is a 23 minute retrospective on the history and life of Sam Peckinpah through the lens of his sister. She reflects on how their lives influenced the work of Peckinpah’s career, and other various topics. Trailer – the film’s original trailer, as seen before it’s release in 1962. Standard stuff. With decent package, and a few extras, this release isn’t a total bust in this section, but it comes close. I would have liked a new extra, or something else to sweeten the deal. Technical Specs (click for technical FAQs) Video Region Coding: None Codec: AVC Resolution: 1080p Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Audio DTS-Master Audio 2.0 mono (English) Subtitles English Runtime: 94 minutes Overall (4/5) Ride the High Country is a great western, and although it is admittedly less than bombastic and bloody than his later, more significant efforts, a great piece of the Sam Peckinpah filmography. It highlights his flare for flashy shootouts, sharp dialogue, and visual style that he would later refine in making films such as The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. The film has been presented in style by Warner Archive, with standard packaging and few extras, but a great 1080p video presentation and mono soundtrack presentation. Recommended. [paypal_donation_button] |
Peek Inside the Pentalum, a Massive Inflatable Maze at Lawn on D Natural light filters through the thin plastic structure to create trippy displays of color inside. Keep your weekends full of the coolest things to do around Boston with our weekly Weekender newsletter. This weekend at the Lawn on D, a massive inflatable maze-like structure beckons visitors to get lost inside its tunnels, domes, and trippy displays of color. The outdoor space in Southie is the first east coast location to host the futuristic-looking structure—Pentalum—designed by European group Architects of Air. “Pentalum is a luminarium. If you’ve never heard this word, it’s normal—we invented it,” says Flor Guerin, exhibition manager at Architects of Air. “A luminarium is like an aquarium of light. It will affect your senses, it will affect your perception in a quite nice way.” The structure, which spreads across more than 150 feet of the Lawn on D, consists of portable sections of thin plastic. “The structure looks very futuristic and high-tech, but it’s not. It’s very low-tech,” says Guerin. “We did everything by hand. Every single bit of PVC you see here, we cut it by hand and glued it by hand in a tiny workshop in Nottingham.” Inside Pentalum, natural light filters through the plastic to create radiant displays of color. Variations in time of day and weather render different displays, creating a new sensory experience for each set of visitors. “There is no artificial light. It’s the beautiful Boston light of the day passing through the walls and making the color that you will see inside,” says Guerin. “It’s like a stained glass window, but in three dimensions.” Take a peek inside the Pentalum below: Photo by Olga Khvan Photo by Olga Khvan Photo by Olga Khvan Photo by Olga Khvan Photo by Olga Khvan Photo by Olga Khvan Photo by Olga Khvan Photo by Olga Khvan Photo by Olga Khvan Photo by Olga Khvan Photo by Olga Khvan Photo by Olga Khvan Pentalum will be open for walk-throughs at the Lawn on D on Thursday, May 28, and Friday, May 29, from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturday, May 30, and Sunday, May 31, from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. Admission is $5, cash only. |
The center of the pop culture universe has once again converged on San Diego for this year’s Comic Con as over 130,000 people gather to experience a five day long orgy of everything gloriously geeky. This year though, there is one gloriously geeky thing that is taking the convention by storm, and no – it’s not the rumors surrounding the upcoming Batman vs. Superman movie. Virtual reality is inescapably Present at this year’s show. Just look at Google Cardboard, this year the floor is absolutely flooded with them – and companies are giving them away by the literal truckload. Lionsgate Films (50,000), Conan (40,000), and SyFy (13,000) are all leading the charge bringing over 103,000 cardboards between the three of them alone. Lionsgate is using virtual reality at this year’s Comic Con to promote two of their upcoming films, Crimson Peak and the Warcraft movie. As a WoW player in my former life (double glaives – still my top pieces of video game loot ever) it was pretty epic being able to fly over Azeroth for a moment (even if it was Stormwind – Forever Horde), but for someone who may not be a massive fan of the game it might feel a bit lackluster. There is little action going on in the scene other than the city itself – and it does nothing to clue us into the film’s plot. But for fans – which is who this event is for, after all it is a solid, brief experience. Crimson Peak takes you into a haunted house complete with the obligatory jump scares and Slenderman-esque character appearance. Legendary has made both experiences available to the public through it’s app, available on Android and iOS. Conan O’Brien is also getting heavily into the VR game for Comic Con this year, becoming the first major talk show broadcasted in VR. The 360 broadcast is recorded concurrently with the broadcast for television and there are points in the flat broadcast that actually switch over to the 360 camera, which is controlled by the director. The clips of the VR broadcast will be available online on Conan’s website the day they are recorded thanks to a lightning fast production process headed up by Immersive Media. Also put together by Immersive Media is SyFy’s Cardboard experience for it’s new show, The Expanse. The experience is fairly short – lasting less than 2 minutes, but takes you into a little of the backstory of the series. According to Variety, the experience is only the first piece of VR tie in content for the show, and that we should expect to see more. The Expanse VR is available to download on Android and iOS. But it isn’t just copious amounts of Cardboard – theres plenty of other VR around Comic Con as well. We reported earlier that HTC will be demoing the Vive on a first come first serve basis as a kickoff to their Vive bus tour. But they won’t be the only little seen headset being officially demoed around the show. Starbreeze will be bringing Overkill’s Walking Dead experience, which was first demoed at E3, in a bus as well. The experience will be shown on the StarVR headset which has drawn rave reviews with it’s 210-degree horizontal FOV and 5K resolution. Those interested should head to Petco park across from the event, opening hours are on Friday and Saturday between 11AM-6PM and 6PM-11PM respectively. Sony will also be bringing the Morpheus with them to the show floor, letting fans try a few different experiences. According to VRFocus, Sony will bring both sections of London Heist – the interrogation and robbery as well as the gun battle on the highway – as well as two indie titles Headmaster and Superhypercube to the show. The Samsung GearVR will also have a significant presence on the floor. FX is bringing it’s show The Strain to VR in a two and a half long experience starring series regular Kevin Durand. But perhaps the biggest draw for the Gear at Comic Con this year will be porn. Naughty America, one of the top porn websites on the net, will be displaying a threeway experience at the show. In it you will have the chance to experience a threeway from either a male of female’s perspective. Expect plenty of “is that a lightsaber in your pants…” jokes anywhere within fifty feet of the booth. Oculus, while not possessing an official presence at the show will be present on the show floor. TNT will be showcasing an Oculus Rift experience for its show, The Last Ship. The experience will have participants boarding a cargo ship that has been taken over by the Immunes (those who were immune to the plague that wiped out the planet in this universe) where they will revive the last remnants of the primordial strain. It’s still early for the Con so we may yet see even more VR. We will be sure to report back with any more experiences we are able to find on the floor! Tagged with: Comic Con, Conan, FX, gearvr, htc vive, london heist, morpheus, oculus, samsung, SDCC, starbreeze, starvr, the strain, virtual reality, Vive, VR |
ES News Email Enter your email address Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in or register with your social account Giant rats the ‘size of cats’ were found living on a south London housing estate. Pest controller Lord Dean Burr made the shocking discovery when during an inspection of an estate in Tooting. Lord Burr, 36, the self-proclaimed “People’s Lord” of Wimbledon, told the Daily Star were about 2ft in length. He said the supersize rodents could have grown so big by feeding off smaller rats. He told the newspaper: “Rats will eat mice and they will eat each other as and when they die. “So it’s possible that these rats got so big by attacking and eating smaller rats. “Getting six this big in one swoop is unheard of. I reckon we got the majority of the family. “They were big, a foot to two feet long – that’s the size of a cat.” He added it was the biggest vermin he had seen since setting up his rat catching company 15 years ago. The discovery comes a month after gas engineer Tony Smith spotted a four-foot rat while working at a block of flats in Hackney Downs. The giant vermin was spotted lying in a bush near a children’s playground. |
March 26, 2012 The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is the most powerful corporate front group you’ve never heard of. The organization, funded mostly by large corporations, writes model legislation and then sends these bills to state legislators across the country. It has successfully passed scores of laws on various issues. ALEC has come under scrutiny lately for writing and helping to pass “Stand Your Ground” laws, which allow for an expansive definition of self defense that lets individuals use deadly force if they feel threatened. It is a law like this in Florida which may allow Trayvon Martin’s killer to go free. The National Rifle Association, which is partly funded by the gun industry, worked closely with ALEC to pass the law. (It also sponsors ALEC’s conferences.) But ALEC’s “Stand Your Ground” is far from the only deadly law that this corporate front group has pushed. ALEC’s network of laws have endangered every area of American life, from the air we breathe to the water we drink to the education our children receive in our schools. Here are five despicable laws that ALEC has helped pass in states nationwide: As a reminder, the only reason ALEC has so much influence with state legislatures and is able to get these laws passed all over the country is because of its roster of corporate sponsors. These companies should be held accountable for the laws that are passed thanks to the funding and prestige they lend to the organization. |
A 26-year old Romanian hacker has been arrested for damaging computer systems at NASA, according to a release from the Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT). Robert Butyka is charged with breaking into an unspecified number of servers at NASA starting in December of 2010. NASA has become something of a reputation-building target for Romanian hackers. In an unrelated security breach in May of this year, another Romanian hacker claimed to have stolen classified satellite data from servers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. That hacker, who calls himself TinKode, posted screen shots from an FTP server related to NASA's SERVIR Earth observation program, which provides data to relief agencies and other humanitarian organizations. And in 2008, another Romanian, Victor Faur, was convicted in Romania of hacking NASA and US Navy sites in 2005 and 2006. He avoided jail time, but was fined $238,000 to compensate the US for damages. Romania has no extradition treaty, so the case is being brought against Butyka under Romania's own anti-hacking laws. According to a report from Lucian Constantin of IDG News Service, Butyka is an unemployed self-taught hacker who went by the online name of "Iceman," and a resident of the western Romanian city of Cluj. He's being held for 24 hours with a court hearing pending to determine if his pretrial detention will be extended. DIICOT alleges that he caused over $500,000 in damage to NASA systems through "introduction, modification and damage to computer data, and restricting access to data." |
------ 1/19/2014 Retrospective: Holy shit, I got another Daily Deviation just over 2 weeks ago and I didn't even know. I just kind of mindlessly accepted the 20 groups that wanted to add it to their gallery, which I thought was cool but, sometimes something gets featured somewhere and I get small floods. I'm not sure how it didn't even occur to me to go check out where it was featured. I only noticed because I got a group request to have it on DailyDeviation-Archive, and the first thought to pass through my head was, hmm, that's weird. This painting is definitely very raw. My original description from 2011 says I pushed it out it in just 3 hours, which, even now, is excellent for me. There's a lot I would change about this drawing if I could do it over again, but three of the things I wouldn't change would be the interaction of the texture and the work, which I'm still trying to figure out at how I managed to do that. Mulan's face and foot were great as well, which is a great example of how my magum opus of a metric shitton of faces in varying degrees of quality Deus affected my knowledge in how to paint and light faces in general. Anyway, that brings my daily deviation count up to two, which is totally cool. Thanks for all the comments and group adds, that is the bomb. Follow me over on Tumblr serain.tumblr.com, which I check much more often than here. |
If you’ve ever worked in the service industry, you have at least one horror story to tell. Here are eight of them. 1. Chris Kaysen—Philippe, New York City Advertisement “There was this man who showed up in shorts and a marathon runner’s bib, jogging in place, super sweaty. He said he had to get back to the race and asked me to seat him as soon as possible, so I did. He kept asking for more and more water, gulping it down furiously. He never ordered anything. He stayed until closing, about eight hours, his legs constantly moving up and down under the table.” 2. Jenna Weitz—Stinson’s, Austin Advertisement “A table of five got maybe $90 of food, which is a lot for our diner. But when I came back with the bill and noticed they were gone, I ran to tell my manager. She was gone too. I ran outside and the streets were empty…cars idling in the road with no drivers. No one left. Everyone was gone.” 3. Ronda Ishida—Sushi Nakazawa, New York City Advertisement “So, I’m going around confirming people’s orders, and when I get to this woman I say something like, ‘And you had the salmon roll?’ That sets her off. She goes, ‘Yes, the salmon roll. Was I unclear? S–A–L–M–O–N. Salmon. You make sure you remember that.’ Then she takes out a tape recorder and speaks into it: ‘Just for the record, I ordered a salmon roll. I want salmon.’ When I bring the salmon, she says she ordered tuna! I tell her I’m sure she said salmon roll. She says she’s positive she said tuna. I say, ‘Well, what about the tape recorder?’ ‘Tape recorder?’ she says, like she’s confused. I say, ‘You know, the tape recorder you used to record your order?’ Then she’s like, ‘Oh, you mean this tape recorder?’ She gets it from her pocket and shoves it in her mouth and bites down with just incredible force. Obliterates it. She tried to talk through her mouthful of metal and cords. I think what she said was ‘Here’s your goddamn tape recorder.’” 4. Martin Turner—Rustic House, Chicago Advertisement “This guy wrote on the tip line, ‘TL;DR’ and on the total line he wrote ‘whatever.’ I ended up just throwing the whole bill out.” 5. Will Keller—Cleo, Los Angeles Advertisement “It was a boy no older than 4 or 5. He shook my hand and told me he was 48 years old and worked for Michelin. At first, I gave him a skeptical glance, but then I recovered my composure and took his order. The boy ate more food than I’ve seen someone consume in one sitting before or since. He was glaring at me the entire time, and I started to wonder if he was telling the truth. Had my skeptical glance offended him? Sure enough, three weeks later, Michelin released its one-time special edition guide of the worst waiters in America, and there I was on the front cover with that squinty look on my face.” 6. Josephine Dunlop—Barbacco, San Francisco Advertisement “The worst was the blindfolded man who crashed through one of the windows and staggered around the restaurant, knocking over tables, trying to lick the food off the floor, and demanding to speak to the manager the entire time.” 7. Diana Chen—Southwest Diner, St. Louis Advertisement “A local jazz quartet would come in every Saturday night at 2 a.m., after their show or whatever. They asked for food according to their instruments: The drummer wanted drumsticks, the pianist wanted the Piano Burger, the saxophonist wanted the Saxophone Special, and the trumpet player wanted the Trumpet Tater Tots. I would always tell them that only the drumsticks were a real item on the menu, and the other three would get up and leave the drummer to eat in peace.” 8. Rebecca Bernard—Rico’s American Grill, Phoenix Advertisement “This has only happened once, but there was one smug asshole who, instead of asking, ‘Please, may I have the fries?’ had the audacity to just say, ‘I’ll have the fries.’ Like it was his right. Some people.” |
Was Barbara Sheehan a battered wife who shot her husband, a retired police sergeant, in self-defense, or was she a calculating killer determined to collect on his life insurance? After three days of deliberations, a jury Thursday chose the former. It acquitted Sheehan of murder in a trial that was seen by some people as a referendum on battered-woman syndrome. Sheehan, 50, was convicted of a weapons charge for her use of a gun in the 2008 slaying and could face three to 15 years in prison when she's sentenced in November. But family members, friends and supporters who packed the courtroom in the New York borough of Queens erupted in cheers and wept in relief when the acquittal on the murder charge was announced. It came a day after jurors had declared themselves deadlocked, only to be sent back to the deliberating room by the judge. The case had drawn considerable attention in New York because of the defense strategy. Outside of court, Sheehan's lawyer, Michael Dowd, said that despite the relief, there was no joy. "The only thing that could bring joy to this family is to bring them back to 17 years ago, before the first blow was struck," he told reporters. Sheehan was married for 24 years to Raymond Sheehan, who was a retired New York police sergeant when he was killed in their Queens home in February 2008. She admitted shooting her husband but said she did so after years of abuse and after he had threatened to kill her. During the trial, which lasted nearly a month, Sheehan testified that she was too scared to leave her husband. Her grown daughter and son testified on their mother's behalf, describing their father as violent, unpredictable and always armed. Sheehan's 25-year-old daughter, Jennifer, testified last month that she recalled "millions" of violent outbursts from her father as she was growing up. "It happened every day." Asst. Dist. Atty. Debra Pomodore, though, said that Sheehan was angry because she thought her husband was cheating on her, and that she shot him 11 times, using two different weapons, as he shaved in the bathroom. Pomodore called it a "self-serving execution." Afterward, Richard Sheehan's brother, Vincent, told reporters outside the courthouse that it was a "wrong verdict. But the verdict is the verdict." -- Tina Susman in New York ALSO: Hank Williams Jr., ESPN part ways Steve Jobs biography release date moved up More arrests after latest Occupy Wall Street march Photo: Barbara Sheehan, shown last month during her murder trial. Credit: Rich Maiman / Associated Press |
Paintings on Star Trek: The Next Generation I’ve been catching up with Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) on Netflix and what would you know, paintings are everywhere on the USS Enterprise. You’ll find paintings in living areas and offices, but not the bridge or engineering areas. Most are starry landscapes, and there’s no portraits to be found. It’s odd, then, that in this future without portraits, paintings are made only by humans. Klingons do not make art (too war-driven), neither do Vulcans (too logical), and androids, well, they definitely can’t make art. Just look at the almost-human character Data. In several TNG episodes, the crew’s android tries his hand at painting. And while Data’s landscapes aren’t disasters, they’re just boring, never more than technically skilled reproductions. In the world of Star Trek, art can’t be learned, it must be felt. Even Klingons have their own opera, so it’s hard to believe painting retains a special human-only status. That’s just visual art, of course. Not once does conceptual art make an appearance, though maybe it evolved into other non-art forms in the future. I imagine Q, the continually evasive, comedic trickster that he is, to be a direct descendant from Bruce Nauman. |
PHILADELPHIA—A new study from the University of Pennsylvania revealed Wednesday that 81 percent of Americans experience muscle tension, elevated heart rate, and profuse sweating when asked what kind of music they most enjoy listening to. "I got so nervous I ended up just blurting out, 'Ween,' and sure, they're fine, but I have no idea why that was the first thing out of my mouth," said 28-year-old Richard Rowe, a participant in the study in which a request to specify even one genre preference induced stress levels seldom observed outside of military combat zones. "Then I muttered something about liking 'a lot '70s guitar stuff.' I hope that didn't make me sound lame." The doctors conducting the study recommended that people confronted with the question in real life should answer, "Yes, I like music," and then quickly walk away. Advertisement |
There's new controversy brewing over the statue known as "Fearless Girl." The statue was placed opposite the Charging Bull on Wall Street -- by Boston-based State Street -- for International Women's Day. New York artist Alex Gardega calls that a publicity stunt -- so he created his own statue. He put a dog -- relieving itself -- next to Fearless Girl. Gardega insists he's "pro-feminism" and has nothing against the sculpture. There's new controversy brewing over the statue known as "Fearless Girl." The statue was placed opposite the Charging Bull on Wall Street -- by Boston-based State Street -- for International Women's Day. New York artist Alex Gardega calls that a publicity stunt -- so he created his own statue. He put a dog -- relieving itself -- next to Fearless Girl. Gardega insists he's "pro-feminism" and has nothing against the sculpture. Advertisement Related Content Firm behind 'Fearless Girl' settles allegations it paid women less AlertMe |
Brad Pitt is the cover star of GQ Style's summer issue and, in the interview, the actor discussed his newfound approach to his life and career. ADVERTISEMENT When asked about playing characters that are in pain, Pitt said that he was done taking those kinds of roles. "I've never heard anyone laugh bigger than an African mother who's lost nine family members," Pitt told GQ. "What is that? I just got R&B for the first time. R&B comes from great pain, but it's a celebration." Apparently, the actor has cultivated this newfound interest in R&B by listening to Frank Ocean. "I find this young man so special," Pitt said of Ocean. "Talk about getting to the raw truth. He's painfully honest. He's very, very special. I can't find a bad one." Read Brad Pitt's GQ Style cover story here. |
The giveaway has ended. Thanks to everyone that entered. Congrats to the winner, Kerry T.! Have fun shopping at HomeGoods! When I first posted photos of my new home in Pittsburgh, one of you asked to see my bathroom. Well, today is your lucky day. Not only am I sharing a look at my bathroom, but I’m also directing you to some decor hacks to add style to any bathroom. PLUS, I’m giving away a $100 HomeGoods gift card! (Be sure to enter toward the bottom of this post before you click away.) I’ve never been much for sharing bathroom spaces on Inspired by Charm because I didn’t have a bathroom worth sharing. Most of the bathrooms in my St. Marys home need a major makeover. Not only that, but they don’t have windows, making them a challenge to photograph. Now that I have two presentable bathrooms, I’m more apt to share. As you might expect, because I’m renting, I’m stuck with builder basic. Part of my brain is already thinking, “Get a new light fixture, swap out the mirror, change the hardware, etc.” However, I’m trying to be smart about the changes I make here since I know that, one day, I’m going to have to switch it all back. (That’s one of the things I don’t love about renting.) Whether I decide to change the mirror and light fixtures is still TBD, but that’s not going to stop me from creating a stylish and welcoming bathroom in the meantime. As you may know, I write a monthly post for the HomeGoods Design Happy Blog. My latest post talks all about my bathroom and specific hacks for adding style to any builder grade bathroom. You can check out that post here. In a nutshell, it’s about bringing in personal style with unique, decorative, and functional touches. For example, I had enough space for a basket with a lid. Not only does this add great texture to the room, but it provides additional storage for towels as well as a surface for things like bubble bath and a small vase of flowers. It’s little details like these that personalize a space. No matter what type of bathroom you have. you can easily add such items. I think it’s also important to get creative when styling a space that’s typically rather bland. Remember that creamer and sugar set from my beverage station? I decided to try it in the bathroom to corral cotton swabs and balls. It serves a purpose and looks cute. Winning! I also picked up a brass and glass lantern and filled it with bath bombs. It’s a triple threat with bling, color, and scent. (I’m crazy excited that I now have a tub large enough to allow me to enjoy a bath bomb.) Sidenote: Did you know you can make your own bath bombs? I have a DIY tutorial that will show you how. You can find it here. In addition, I used a large-scale piece of art in the space for a pop of color and interest. I also opted to mix up my bath towels for a more collected look. While this room certainly has a long way to go, I’m thrilled it’s a bit cozier and that it has a touch of my personal style. If you’re wanting to update the decor of your bathroom (or any room in your home), I thought a $100 gift card to HomeGoods might help. Who’s down for a giveaway? I’m giving away one $100 HomeGoods Gift Card to one lucky IBC reader. To enter to win, use the entry form below. (Those viewing this on a blog reader may need to visit the actual post by clicking here.) This giveaway is open to readers in the United States. You must be 18 or older to win. Void where prohibited. This giveaway will end at 11:59 pm EDT on Friday, July 7. The winner will be randomly selected, contacted by email, and announced at the top of this post. Good luck! I hope you enjoyed this peek at my bathroom and picked up a few tips along the way. I have lots more apartment updates to share with you. Have a happy weekend! |
At least 45 whales died after they washed ashore overnight on a beach in Tamil Nadu’s Tuticorin district, officials said on Tuesday, with experts attributing the deaths to a possible underwater disturbance like an earthquake or volcano. Helped by local fishermen, workers of the Tamil Nadu fisheries department, police and the administration managed to save 36 whales of the pod -- or group -- by towing them back to sea on Tuesday, officials said. While beaching of whales and other aquatic animals is common around the world, experts said it was rare to find such a large number of whales washing up ashore and hinted at the mammals being disoriented by underground activity. Officials said that the pod of 81 short-finned pilot whales had beached near Mandapu village since Monday evening. The area is around 600 km south of Chennai. “It appears the whales are in shock. It mainly happened due to unusual activity deep inside the sea,” said a scientist with the Chennai-based Central Marine Fisheries Institute. A team of experts have also rushed to the village for an on-the-spot assessment of the cause. Watch | More than 50 whales washed ashore on Tuticorin Beach Pilot whales – known to be among some of the most social aquatic mammals -- are so named because they are led or ‘piloted’ by a leader in their search for food or breeding grounds. A forest department official who had visited the beach said there were injury marks on the dead whales which indicated “high intensity” underwater activity. “This may have happened hundreds of kilometres away and the whales may have been washed to the coast because of the tide,” said the official who did not give his name. Rescue workers and fishermen worked through the day to pull the whales -- each weighing between 1 tonne to 1.5 tonne and measuring between 8 feet and 10 feet -- back into the sea. Fishermen try to drag a whale that washed ashore in Manapad in Tamil Nadu's Tuticorin district. (AFP) Ten fishing boats and one mechanised fishing made several sorties, each ferrying one whale at a time to sea and returning for more on the shore. Local residents said that the last time they saw such a large number of whales beaching was way back in 1973 when 140 whales had washed ashore. Many of them had died. First Published: Jan 12, 2016 17:22 IST |
The Government is committed to bringing net migration to sustainable levels. The United Kingdom values its existing close co-operation with Australia, Canada and New Zealand. There are already a number of schemes which nationals of those countries can take advantage of in order to come to the UK to work. Australia, New Zealand and Canada are among the few countries whose nationals are able to participate in the UK’s Youth Mobility Scheme which gives people aged 18-30 the opportunity to come to the UK for two years to work, study or, under certain conditions, be self employed and set up a company. These schemes are reciprocal in nature meaning that UK nationals have access to similar schemes in the countries concerned. The number of people from Australia, Canada and New Zealand admitted to the UK under these arrangements is consistently far short of the number of places made available. Commonwealth citizens are also able to benefit from UK Ancestry visas if one of their grandparents was born in the UK. These visas, which last for five years, and can be extended, allow the visa holder the right to work and study in the UK, as well as to bring family members into the UK. It is also possible for a person who has lived in the UK for five years on an ancestry visa to apply to settle in the UK permanently. Citizens of Australia, New Zealand and Canada can also apply for work visas in the normal way. In 2015 these countries were, respectively, second, fifth and sixth in the number of work visas issued by the UK. However, when population is taken into account, the ratio of work visas issued is higher for these three countries than for any of the other top ten countries. In 2015 the number of work visas issued to Australian, Canadian and New Zealand nationals increased by 5.3%, 4.6% and 21.2% respectively, as compared to 2014. Home Office |
Richard Charnin Aug. 26, 2016 Matrix of Deceit: Forcing Pre-election and Exit Polls to Match Fraudulent Vote Counts Proving Election Fraud: Phantom Voters, Uncounted Votes and the National Poll LINKS TO POSTS Democratic Primaries spread sheet From TDMS Research: Democratic 2016 primaries In the Aug. 24 Ipsos/Reuters poll Clinton had 39%; Trump 36%; Johnson 7%; Stein 3%. The sample of 1,516 Americans included 635 Democrats (41.9%), 527 Republicans (34.8%), 174 Independents (11.5%) and 180 (11.8%) who did not indicate a preference. http://www.ipsos-na.com/news-polls/pressrelease.aspx?id=7349 The latest Gallup Party-ID survey indicates 28% Democrats, 28% Republicans and 42% Independents. http://www.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx In the July 17 Ipsos poll, Independents comprised just 14% of the sample. Stein had 1%. Clinton and Trump were tied. https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2016/08/07/strange-polls-jill-stein-at-1-and-just-14-of-respondents-are-independents/ Why the large discrepancies between the Ipsos poll and Gallup Party-ID survey? The Ipsos poll also indicated a Party_ID split of 36% Democrats and 25% Republicans – an apparent contradiction to the polling sample. Assuming the other 39% were Independents, it is a close match to the Gallup Survey. In the primaries, Sanders won approximately 65% of Independents and 35% of Democrats. One would logically expect that Stein would do nearly as well as Sanders against Clinton in a four-way race. They are in essential agreement on major issues – and Clinton has very low approval ratings. But Stein had an implausibly low 3% on Aug. 24 and 1% on July 17. True Vote Model Model Base Case This is not a forecast. It is a scenario analysis based on the following assumptions. Party-ID: 39% Independents, 36% Democrats, 25% Republicans. Vote shares: Stein has 40% of Independents and 35% of Democrats. Clinton has 25% and 50%, respectively. They each have 5% of Republicans. Base Case Result Stein 29.45% and 231 EV, Clinton 29.00% and 196 EV, Trump 25.15% and 111 EV. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sGxtIofohrj3POpwq-85Id2_fYKgvgoWbPZacZw0XlY/edit#gid=1739803045 Party-ID Pct Stein Clinton Trump Johnson Ind 39% 40% 25% 15% 20% Dem 36% 35% 50% 5% 10% Rep 25% 5% 5% 70% 20% Total 100% 29.45% 29.00% 25.15% 16.40% Votes 129,106 38,022 37,441 32,470 21,173 Elect Vote 538 231 196 111 0 SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS Stein % Dem Stein % 31.0% 33.0% 35.0% 37.0% 39.0% of Ind Stein 45% 30.0% 30.7% 31.4% 32.1% 32.8% 40% 28.0% 28.7% 29.45% 30.2% 30.9% 35% 26.1% 26.8% 27.5% 28.2% 28.9% Clinton 45% 28.5% 27.8% 27.1% 26.3% 25.6% 40% 30.4% 29.7% 29.00% 28.3% 27.6% 35% 32.4% 31.7% 31.0% 30.2% 29.5% Stein Margin 45% 1.5% 2.9% 4.4% 5.8% 7.2% 40% -2.4% -1.0% 0.45% 1.9% 3.3% 35% -6.3% -4.9% -3.5% -2.0% -0.6% Vote Margin (000) 45% 1,898 3,757 5,616 7,475 9,334 40% -3,137 -1,278 581 2,440 4,299 35% -8,172 -6,313 -4,454 -2,595 -736 Advertisements |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.