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A leading doctor has spoken out to warn that some patients being sent to hospital with ‘urgent’ brain conditions are now waiting 16 months to be seen. Last week the Department of Health published figures which show that the number of cases where people are waiting more than a year for their first outpatient appointment has just about doubled – to almost 40,000 – in a year. At the same time, the total outpatient waiting list has more than doubled in five years – up from 117,926 in 2011 to 243,141 today – and the total number of people waiting more than nine weeks for an outpatient appointment has exploded by 274% in five years – up from 44,709 to 167,250. The News Letter also revealed that the minister had quietly changed her waiting list targets in a way which makes them easier to achieve – but the NHS still isn’t hitting them. Dr Gavin McDonnell, a consultant neurologist based in the Belfast Trust, said that neurology has the largest number of patients on a waiting list for a new appointment – and it also has the longest waiters for a new appointment. Dr McDonnell said: “In conditions like MS, we know that diagnostic and treatment delay can have adverse consequences for patients in the longer term. To put this in context, new referrals are usually graded as ‘urgent’ or ‘routine’ depending on the significance of the information provided. “However, even being graded ‘urgent’ does not guarantee early assessment – there are parts of Northern Ireland where being “urgent” means a 16-month wait. This is completely unacceptable. “‘Routine’ new referrals can actually include patients with MS, Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy but such a grading is almost the equivalent of being told that one will never be seen. “Sadly many patients feel forced into the private sector which is expensive and unaffordable for many being particularly unsustainable for patients with long-term conditions.” Dr McDonnell said that “undoubtedly” there was a need for reorganisation in the health service, but added that “we also need investment in key resources”. Dr McDonnell spoke out after comments from Patricia Gordon, director of the MS Society NI, who highlighted the human impact of the vast waiting lists. She said that 4,500 people in Northern Ireland are living with the degenerative condition and “everything we know about MS tells us early treatment is vital”. She also warned that some patients are being put on powerful drugs to treat their condition but the medical check ups required to adequately monitor those drugs “are simply not in place”. Speaking in the Assembly yesterday about all outpatient waiting lists, Health Minister Michelle O’Neill admitted that they are “unacceptably long”. She denied a UUP claim that she is “massaging targets to match the poor performance of her department” and added: “I did not inherit this problem”, but rather it was the fault of “Tory austerity”. |
Not to be confused with Art of Noise L'arte dei rumori, published in book form in 1916. Cover of Luigi Russolo 's, published in book form in 1916. The Art of Noises (Italian: L'arte dei Rumori) is a Futurist manifesto written by Luigi Russolo in a 1913 letter to friend and Futurist composer Francesco Balilla Pratella. In it, Russolo argues that the human ear has become accustomed to the speed, energy, and noise of the urban industrial soundscape; furthermore, this new sonic palette requires a new approach to musical instrumentation and composition. He proposes a number of conclusions about how electronics and other technology will allow futurist musicians to "substitute for the limited variety of timbres that the orchestra possesses today the infinite variety of timbres in noises, reproduced with appropriate mechanisms".[1] The Art of Noises is considered by some authors to be one of the most important and influential texts in 20th-century musical aesthetics.[2] The evolution of sound [ edit ] Instruments for futuristic music, called "Bruitism", partly electrically operated, built by Russolo, 1913 Russolo's essay explores the origins of man made sounds. "Ancient life was all silence" [ edit ] Russolo states that "noise" first came into existence as the result of 19th century machines. Before this time the world was a quiet, if not silent, place. With the exception of storms, waterfalls, and tectonic activity, the noise that did punctuate this silence were not loud, prolonged, or varied. Early sounds [ edit ] He notes that the earliest "music" was very simplistic and was created with very simple instruments, and that many early civilizations considered the secrets of music sacred and reserved it for rites and rituals. The Greek musical theory was based on the tetrachord mathematics of Pythagoras, which did not allow for any harmonies. Developments and modifications to the Greek musical system were made during the Middle Ages, which led to music like Gregorian chant. Russolo notes that during this time sounds were still narrowly seen as "unfolding in time."[3] The chord did not yet exist. "The complete sound" [ edit ] The Art of Noises Instruments built by Russolo, photo published in his 1913 book Russolo refers to the chord as the "complete sound,"[3] the conception of various parts that make and are subordinate to the whole. He notes that chords developed gradually, first moving from the "consonant triad to the consistent and complicated dissonances that characterize contemporary music."[3] He notes that while early music tried to create sweet and pure sounds, it progressively grew more and more complex, with musicians seeking to create new and more dissonant chords. This, he says, comes ever closer to the "noise-sound."[3] Musical noise [ edit ] Russolo compares the evolution of music to the multiplication of machinery, pointing out that our once desolate sound environment has become increasingly filled with the noise of machines, encouraging musicians to create a more "complicated polyphony"[3] in order to provoke emotion and stir our sensibilities. He notes that music has been developing towards a more complicated polyphony by seeking greater variety in timbres and tone colors. Russolo explains how "musical sound is too limited in its variety of timbres."[3] He breaks the timbres of an orchestra down into four basic categories: bowed instruments, metal winds, wood winds, and percussion. He says that we must "break out of this limited circle of sound and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds,"[3] and that technology would allow us to manipulate noises in ways that could not have been done with earlier instruments. Future sounds [ edit ] Russolo claims that music has reached a point that no longer has the power to excite or inspire. Even when it is new, he argues, it still sounds old and familiar, leaving the audience "waiting for the extraordinary sensation that never comes."[4] He urges musicians to explore the city with "ears more sensitive than eyes,"[4] listening to the wide array of noises that are often taken for granted, yet (potentially) musical in nature. He feels these noises can be given pitch and "regulated harmonically," while still preserving their irregularity and character, even if it requires assigning multiple pitches to certain noises. The variety of noises is infinite. If today, when we have perhaps a thousand different machines, we can distinguish a thousand different noises, tomorrow, as new machines multiply, we will be able to distinguish ten, twenty, or thirty thousand different noises, not merely in a simply imitative way, but to combine them according to our imagination. [5] Six Families of Noises for the Futurist Orchestra [ edit ] Russolo sees the futurist orchestra drawing its sounds from "six families of noise":[6] Roars, Thunderings, Explosions, Hissing roars, Bangs, Booms Whistling, Hissing, Puffing Whispers, Murmurs, Mumbling, Muttering, Gurgling Screeching, Creaking, Rustling, Buzzing,[7] Crackling, Scraping [7] Noises obtained by beating on metals, woods, skins, stones, pottery, etc. Voices of animals and people, Shouts, Screams, Shrieks, Wails, Hoots, Howls, Death rattles, Sobs Russolo asserts that these are the most basic and fundamental noises, and that all other noises are only associations and combinations of these. He built a family of instruments, the Intonarumori, to imitate these six kinds of noises. [8] Conclusions [ edit ] Russolo includes a list of conclusions: Futurist composers should use their creativity and innovation to "enlarge and enrich the field of sound"[6] by approaching the "noise-sound." Futurist musicians should strive to replicate the infinite timbres in noises. Futurist musicians should free themselves from the traditional and seek to explore the diverse rhythms of noise. The complex tonalities of noise can be achieved by creating instruments that replicate that complexity. The creation of instruments that replicate noise should not be a difficult task, since the manipulation of pitch will be simple once the mechanical principles that create the noise have been recreated. Pitch can be manipulated through simple changes in speed or tension. The new orchestra will not evoke new and novel emotions by imitating the noises of life, but by finding new and unique combinations of timbres and rhythms in noise, to find a way to fully express the rhythm and sound that stretches beyond normal un-inebriated comprehension. The variety of noise is infinite, and as man creates new machines the number of noises he can differentiate between continues to grow. Therefore, he invites all talented musicians to pay attention to noises and their complexity, and once they discover the broadness of noise's palette of timbres, they will develop a passion for noise. He predicts that our "multiplied sensibility, having been conquered by futurist eyes, will finally have some futurist ears, and . . . every workshop will become an intoxicating orchestra of noise."[4] Gallery of Works [ edit ] photo of a Intonarumori concert with noise-machines photo of an indoor Intonarumori machine (must be rotated!) instruction-schema for building an Intonarumori noise-machine Russolo, 1913: score of en-harmonic notation; partitura for Intonarumori Russolo, 1913 and his assistant Ugo Piatti in their Milan studio with the Intonarumori (noise machines) Musicians/Artists influenced by The Art of Noises [ edit ] See also [ edit ] Bibliography [ edit ] Russolo, Luigi: L’Art des bruits . Textes réunis et préfacés par Giovanni Lista, bibliographie établie par Giovanni Lista. L’Age d’Homme, Lausanne, 1975. . Textes réunis et préfacés par Giovanni Lista, bibliographie établie par Giovanni Lista. L’Age d’Homme, Lausanne, 1975. Chessa, Luciano: Luigi Russolo, Futurist: Noise, Visual Arts, and the Occult. University of California Press, 2012. University of California Press, 2012. Lista, Giovanni: Luigi Russolo e la musica futurista . Mudima, Milan, 2009. ISBN 978-88-96817-00-1 . Mudima, Milan, 2009. ISBN 978-88-96817-00-1 Lista, Giovanni: Journal des Futurismes . Éditions Hazan, Paris, 2008. . Éditions Hazan, Paris, 2008. Lista, Giovanni: Le Futurisme: Création et avant-garde. Éditions L’Amateur, Paris, 2001. |
Why we put an app in the Android Play Store using Swift Geordie J Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 7, 2016 Towards the end of 2015 we were faced with a dilemma. No sooner had we released the flowkey iPad app than the requests started streaming in for an Android version. “Don’t you know that Android has the majority market share?” “You do know that iPads are for mindless hipsters, right?” “Don’t you love us anymore??” “Pleeease??” The message was clear, but the problem was large: With Android’s large market share comes a host of issues that iOS development simply doesn’t have to deal with: different screen resolutions, widely varying performance characteristics even on new high-end devices, even fundamentally different processor architectures on same-generation devices. As a small development team (there were four of us at time of writing), the prospect of making an Android app on an unfamiliar stack to try to cover all of those bases in any reasonable amount of time, all the while developing, debugging and improving the browser and iPad versions could have seemed impossible. What we did have however were the blessings of good fortune in the form of our CTO’s early decision to go hybrid (via Meteor), and of good preparation via the huge efforts we put into optimising performance for the iPad version to make it run smoothly even on a prehistoric (in computer years) iPad 2. The core feature of flowkey is what we simply call “the player”. You can watch and listen to the song or excerpt you are trying to learn, slow it down, make loops and – importantly – learn in “wait mode”. Wait Mode gives you as a learner the opportunity to get comfortable with finding the notes in a song at your own pace. The video and sheet music play up until a note or chord, then pause and wait for you to play the right notes on your real piano or keyboard before continuing again to the next note or chord. In the browser, the pitch detection works via JavaScript’s Web Audio API, including getUserMedia() to access the device’s microphone. But this is where the hybrid dream starts to fall apart: the iPad’s browser, Safari, and its programmatic counterparts UIWebView and WKWebView do have an implementation of the Web Audio API, but not of getUserMedia(). This restriction makes it impossible to access the microphone from the browser context, and puts one of our core features out of reach for hybrid use. At first we tried to get around this by using native code to inject microphone audio buffers into the WebView for processing in our existing JavaScript code. It worked, but only barely — there was a significant lag and it had a noticeable performance impact even on the latest model iPad Air. Not wanting to settle for a second-rate experience, we made a decision that would directly affect the future for our Android app as well: we decided to rewrite our pitch detection routines in Swift. Swift is an absolute pleasure to use. Using Swift, it is fun to write concise, beautiful and performant code that reads well, is easy to reason about and easy to debug. Two years after starting with Swift I still very much have the same sentiment about it as the one expressed by Dan Kim about Kotlin here. The Swift version of our pitch detection worked. It was extremely performant and provided a way better experience than the Web Audio API ever could have, with significantly less latency and higher accuracy. And there was much rejoicing. |
Bernie Sanders brought his call for a political revolution to Baltimore this weekend, a city that was rocked by riots one year ago and where struggling residents are desperate for their lives to change. Baltimoreans will have their chance to vote for change on Tuesday when Maryland holds its Republican and Democratic primaries and there are also competitive races for mayor and the U.S. Senate. At two appearances in the Charm City on Saturday, Sanders cited bleak statistics on poverty levels and poor health outcomes, on hungry children and youth who can't find jobs. "In Baltimore, poverty is a death sentence," Sanders told a crowd at an event billed as a "community conversation on young men of colour." The event was another outreach effort by Sanders to African-American voters, a demographic where he has struggled to gain support compared to his rival Hillary Clinton. She's crushed him in states like South Carolina, where she won 86 per cent of black voters. She again outperformed Sanders with black voters in last week's New York contest, and with the primary season winding down, his campaign knows he has to do better with black voters in the remaining states. Clinton's name recognition They are working hard on that front, particularly in Maryland, which has the country's sixth-largest black population. About 40 per cent of Democratic primary voters there are black. Sanders recently released two new ads airing in the state that target black voters and Saturday night's event in Baltimore, where 63 per cent of the population is black, is also part of his strategy. The hour-long panel discussion included actor Danny Glover, one of several black celebrities who campaigns for Sanders. Others included Harry Belafonte and Spike Lee, who has produced multiple ads for him. Kenneth Robinson and Malissa Wilkins were selling Bernie Sanders merchandise outside a rally in Baltimore on April 23. (Meagan Fitzpatrick/CBC News) Vernon Carter, 28, sat with a friend in a pew of the church waiting to hear from Sanders. "People want to see how he has our best interest at heart," said Carter, an undecided Democrat. "I want to hear it in his own voice." Ben Jealous, former head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and a Baltimore resident who works on Sanders's Maryland campaign, said Sanders is making progress with black voters. "We have more black support, a higher percentage in Maryland than we've seen in any southern state," Jealous said in an interview ahead of the event. In explaining why Clinton is more popular with black voters, Jealous and other Baltimore voters said her name is a huge advantage. Her husband, President Bill Clinton, was nicknamed the first black president and some believe she is just as strong a supporter of the African-American community. "I think she'll be better for us," said voter Renee Lawson. "I think she's the only one who is going to get in there that's going to try and help bring us up a little." Generational divide Natarsha Malone, a 24-year-old Sanders fan, said there is a generational divide among black voters. "If you ask my mother, it's because that's what they know," she said referring to Clinton. "She has the name recognition, they know who she is." Malone, who had just come out of a Sanders rally at a downtown arena Saturday afternoon, said the Vermont senator is more active than Clinton in courting the black vote. Earl Williams and his granddaughter, Joeleah, sit on his front stoop in Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighbourhood where riots broke out last April. (Meagan Fitzpatrick/CBC News) "I don't feel like she's doing anything. She knows she has the votes so is just going to sit back and collect them," the college student said. "I feel like he's trying to have that conversation, sit down and figure out what's in our community that is hindering us or helping us." Marissa Wilkins, another Sanders supporter, thinks he's genuinely interested in the issues facing African-Americans, he's not just playing politics. "It's not a façade, it's something that is genuine," the 24-year old said. "I think he really understands what we go through." The generational divide among black voters played out on Earl Williams's front stoop Saturday afternoon. "My man Bernie!" his daughter said when asked who would get her vote. But for Williams, Clinton is the better bet for black voters. "She's white on the outside but she's got a little soul on the inside," he said as his three grandchildren scampered around him. Sandtown struggles Williams lives in Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighbourhood, the epicentre of last April's riots following Freddie Gray's death. He knew Gray, and on the day he was arrested, he heard Gray's screams. Kisha Newsome stands in front of a mural of Freddie Gray, the Baltimore man who died after suffering an injury while in police custody in April, 2015. (Meagan Fitzpatrick/CBC News) Williams's home is a few metres away from the intersection where the police van carrying Gray stopped on the way to the police station. It is believed Gray, 25, suffered a spinal injury while riding unsecured and shackled in the back of the vehicle. He died a week later. "They had him right here on this corner, I heard all the hollering and screaming," said Williams. A few blocks up the street is the spot where Gray was arrested. A large mural of the young man's face now adorns the side of a building there. Kisha Newsome, who was walking by it, also knew Gray. "He was a good kid, good heart," she said, adding he was like many other young men from the neighbourhood, struggling to find their way. She intends to vote on Tuesday, but said many in Sandtown won't because they feel like their votes don't matter, nothing ever changes. "For the African-American community, the promises that people make them, they're just so tired of being disappointed," said Newsome. Anger and frustration in the community boiled over after Gray's death last April and peaceful protests gave way to violent riots. Voter turnout expected to be up There were clashes with police, businesses vandalized, looted and set on fire, then the National Guard was brought in and a city-wide curfew imposed to try and restore calm. A CVS pharmacy was destroyed, forcing seniors in the home next to it to go much further for their medication and other needs for a year. It was rebuilt and re-opened a few weeks ago, but Sandtown residents say not much else has improved. Drugs, crime, murders and gun violence still plague the community and the streets are full of boarded-up abandoned homes. Sanders toured the neighbourhood during a Baltimore visit in December and on Saturday he recalled how struck he was by the dilapidated homes and noted there isn't a grocery store or major bank in sight. Terrence Grant stands outside the newly re-opened CVS pharmacy that was destroyed one year ago during Baltimore's riots. (Meagan Fitzpatrick/CBC News) Outside the new CVS store, Terrence Bert had one plea for those on the ballot on Tuesday: "Bring jobs to the neighbourhood, and stop closing down the recreation centres for the kids." Baltimore has a history of low voter turnout, but Bert and others predict it will rise this year, because of what happened in the city 12 months ago. "I think it's going to be different this year," said Pierre McMillan, as he washed his car outside his Sandtown row-house. "We've got to make some changes." He said he can't stand when he hears people say they won't bother voting. "The vote counts, so use it," said McMillan, 58. He hasn't decided yet between Sanders and Clinton. Tamierra Stridiron will be exercising her democratic right for the first time. The 25-year-old became politically active this year and is volunteering for Sanders in Baltimore. She appreciates his efforts to reach out to the black community, she said after his event Saturday night. Fighting for every vote Sanders's challenge is educating black voters on his long history of fighting for civil rights, combating racism and on his vision for the country, she said. "If they knew what Bernie was doing, they'd get on Bernie's team," said Stridiron. Inside the church, Sanders was cheered on by the crowd when he talked about the need for affordable college and housing, criminal justice reform, investing in jobs not jails, supporting African-American business owners, raising the minimum wage, demilitarizing local police forces and ensuring they are more diverse, and overhauling drug laws. Sanders has an uphill battle in Maryland though, where Clinton is beating him by 25 percentage points according to the latest Monmouth University poll. Among black voters in the state, she's also creaming him, 64 per cent to 20. His campaign isn't predicting he can close those gaps, but Jealous said his supporters want to narrow them so Sanders remains competitive, all the way until California, the last primary in June. |
Fawad Ahmed asylum case: Spin-bowler 'got special treatment' in borderline citizenship case Updated The Immigration Department had major concerns about the way promising Pakistani cricketer Fawad Ahmed got a permanent visa and then Australian citizenship, confidential documents indicate. The former asylum seeker was once lauded as the best leg-spinner since Shane Warne. After Australia's disastrous tour of India last year, Cricket Australia (CA) lobbyists embarked on a campaign to get him a passport and make him available for the 2013 Ashes series in England. But Government briefing documents seen by the ABC, and others obtained through Freedom Of Information, show the department thought his case was "borderline" from the beginning and was worried it "may result in an adverse impact" on other asylum seekers "who apply through the normal channels". Sources inside the department have since told the ABC that Ahmed received special treatment from both major political parties due to ongoing pressure from the cricket establishment. This is a borderline case. The direct grant of a permanent visa may result in an adverse impact on those who apply through the normal channels. Government briefing document, Immigration Department. They also say Ahmed is fortunate his asylum application coincided with Cricket Australia's search for a spinner. Ahmed's claim for asylum was initially rejected by both the Immigration Department and Refugee Review Tribunal, which often overturns departmental decisions. Confidential documents show the tribunal member who reviewed Ahmed's case did not believe many of his claims of persecution. Ahmed said he was targeted by the Taliban because he was a professional cricket player and coach near the border of Afghanistan, and worked for the Al-Asif Welfare and Women Development Organisation. Australia has been looking for a permanent spinner ever since Shane Warne retired. If the early whispers are true, then Fawad Ahmed might just be the man. Cricket Australia website "It was coaching and promoting education for women so they just target me," Ahmed said in an interview with ABC Grandstand in December 2012. The tribunal accepted that he was threatened in 2009 when people ran onto a cricket oval during a match. However, it did not think the Al-Asif Welfare and Women Development Organisation "operated in substance as a legitimate welfare organisation". It also ruled Ahmed could safely continue playing cricket in other parts of Pakistan and therefore "was not owed protection under the Refugees Convention or complementary protection provisions". Ministerial intervention and powerful friends Ahmed impressed a number of people in Melbourne with his temperament and leg-spin, including Derek Bennett from the Melbourne University Cricket Club. With Ahmed on the verge of deportation in mid-2012, Mr Bennett began a campaign to get then-immigration minister Chris Bowen to intervene and overturn the Refugee Review Tribunal's decision. He's (Ahmed) got that surprise element and he doesn't get flustered about anything. I think he could be very good for Australia. Shane Warne - ABC Online, June 2013. In a private letter to the minister, Mr Bennett argued the tribunal's decision was deeply unfair and "failed to comprehend that cricket is synonymous with Western values in the eyes of the Taliban". "Fawad is a target regardless of where he settles in Pakistan. Nobody doubts his claims," Mr Bennett wrote in his letter to Mr Bowen. Mr Bennett gathered letters of support from powerful figures in the cricket establishment including Cricket Australia CEO James Sutherland, the head of Cricket Victoria, Tony Dodemaide, the shadow treasurer of Victoria, Tim Pallas, and the former chairman of the International Cricket Council, Malcolm Grey. "The motivation was to never to find another Shane Warne", said Mr Bennett in a statement to the ABC. "Cricket Australia helped because they wanted to assist a cricketer who had been persecuted for playing the game." In late 2012, Ahmed was offered a contract with Big Bash team, the Hobart Hurricanes. However, the Immigration Department was concerned about the conditions of the job offer. Profile: Fawad Ahmed External Link: Fawad Ahmed profile M W Best Ave ODI 3 3 1/39 48.33 T20 Int 2 3 3/25 22.66 First class 23 70 6/68 31.97 One-day domestic 18 21 4/38 36.76 T20 domestic 4 3 3/25 43.33 "The offers of engagement/employment that are now emerging appear to be entirely contingent on the grant of a permanent resident visa," the confidential documents state. The department thought the "most appropriate" option would be for the minister to grant a six-month tourist visa, instead of a permanent visa, if he decided to intervene in a case. The department believed a tourist visa would allow Ahmed "the chance to apply for another visa on his own merits". "If you decide to intervene, the most appropriate visa to grant is a [tourist visa] ... with work rights," a ministerial briefing document from the Immigration Department said. But this option would have stopped Ahmed getting a professional cricket contract. Ultimately, Mr Bowen went for the permanent option. "The decision for ministerial intervention was the right one," Mr Bowen said in a statement. "Fawad is a great addition to Australia; he has already made great contributions to his community and the nation. "I won't be making any further comments on this case for privacy reasons". Derek Bennett was delighted with the decision. "The minister had to walk a very fine line with his own department to find a solution," he said. "The solution that he arrived at was a very elegant one." CA wanted Ahmed's citizenship application fast-tracked In early 2013 the Australian Test team had a disastrous tour of India, losing 4-0 on dusty, spin-friendly pitches. There were calls for an overhaul of the Test team, but Ahmed was not eligible to represent Australia because he had not lived in the country long enough and did not qualify under international cricket guidelines. Former Gillard government staffer, turned Cricket Australia's government and community relations manager Grant Poulter was given the job of lobbying for changes to the Citizenship Act. Cricket Australia wanted Ahmed's citizenship application fast-tracked, so he could become eligible for selection in the winter Ashes series in England. But the confidential documents indicate there was confusion in the Immigration Department about Ahmed's actual age. The decision to grant Fawad Ahmed Australian citizenship is one of the feel-good stories of 2013. The decision ended months of toing and froing between government officials and Cricket Australia and, fortunately for all parties, saw the right outcome achieved. Cricket Australia website The briefing documents state Ahmed was 33 when he applied for ministerial intervention. However, his biography stated that he was 30. He is now 31. After months of lobbying, the changes to the Citizenship Act quietly passed both house of Parliament in June. The 2013 election campaign coincided with much of the winter Ashes series in England. The ABC has been told some federal politicians felt uncomfortable about the changes to the Citizenship Act, but they did not speak out because they were worried the case could be used as a political weapon during the campaign. Ahmed plays for Australia but yet to get Test call-up Ahmed is yet to don the baggy green. But he has represented Australia at one-day and Twenty20 level, and has played for Australia A. "It's a dream come true. It was a great feeling," he said after taking his first wicket as an Australian in international cricket in September 2013. "A great moment for me ... I will remember this forever." Ahmed's supporters say he loves Australia and does not want to become involved in the domestic politics of asylum seekers. Over the past five months the ABC has repeatedly asked people connected to the case for an interview including; Fawad Ahmed, Grant Poulter and James Sutherland from Cricket Australia, Labor frontbenchers Chris Bowen and Brendan O'Connor, Derek Bennett from Melbourne University Cricket Club and Immigration Minister Scott Morrison. Some declined or didn't respond. Others offered interviews with strict conditions the ABC could not agree to. The ABC has omitted some personal information contained in the confidential documents for privacy reasons. *Additional reporting by Chris Uhlmann. Topics: cricket, sport, immigration, government-and-politics, australia, vic First posted |
Discussion: This report further bolsters the view that the quality of the acute psychedelic experience is a key mediator of long-term changes in mental health. Future therapeutic work with psychedelics should recognize the essential importance of quality of experience in determining treatment efficacy and consider ways of enhancing mystical-type experiences and reducing anxiety. Results: For the interaction of OBN and DED with Time (QIDS-SR as dependent variable), the main effect and the effects at each time point compared to baseline were all significant ( p = 0.002 and p = 0.003, respectively, for main effects), confirming our main hypothesis. Furthermore, Pearson's correlation of OBN with QIDS-SR (5 weeks) was specific compared to perceptual dimensions of the ASC ( p < 0.05). Materials and Methods: Twenty patients with treatment resistant depression underwent treatment with psilocybin (two separate sessions: 10 and 25 mg psilocybin). The Altered States of Consciousness (ASC) questionnaire was used to assess the quality of experiences in the 25 mg psilocybin session. From the ASC, the dimensions OBN and DED were used to measure the mystical-type and challenging experiences, respectively. The Self-Reported Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptoms (QIDS-SR) at 5 weeks served as the endpoint clinical outcome measure, as in later time points some of the subjects had gone on to receive new treatments, thus confounding inferences. In a repeated measure ANOVA, Time was the within-subject factor (independent variable), with QIDS-SR as the within-subject dependent variable in baseline, 1-day, 1-week, 5-weeks. OBN and DED were independent variables. OBN-by-Time and DED-by-Time interactions were the primary outcomes of interest. Introduction: It is a basic principle of the “psychedelic” treatment model that the quality of the acute experience mediates long-term improvements in mental health. In the present paper we sought to test this using data from a clinical trial assessing psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression (TRD). In line with previous reports, we hypothesized that the occurrence and magnitude of Oceanic Boundlessness (OBN) (sharing features with mystical-type experience) and Dread of Ego Dissolution (DED) (similar to anxiety) would predict long-term positive outcomes, whereas sensory perceptual effects would have negligible predictive value. Introduction Psychedelic therapy may be more appropriately thought of as a distinct form of (drug-assisted) psychotherapy than as a pure pharmacotherapy. Psychedelic therapy involves a small number of high-dose psychedelic dosing sessions that are intended to facilitate a profound, potentially transformative psychological experience (Dyck, 2006; Majić et al., 2015). Psychedelic dosing sessions do not take place in isolation but rather are flanked by psychological preparation and integration. Preparation is intended to facilitate trust and rapport and a mind-set tuned toward emotional openness and “letting go” of psychological resistance (Richards, 2015; Russ and Elliott, 2017). Dosing sessions themselves typically take place in a welcoming environment, with dim lighting, eye-shades, calming and emotionally-directing music, with empathic support provided by trained therapists. The integration sessions subsequent to the dosing session(s) involve the same therapists (usually two) listening to the patient's narrative of their experience, which may include e.g., details of specific emotional insights. A guiding principle of psychedelic psychotherapy is that the occurrence of a profound, potentially transformative psychological experience is critical to the treatment's efficacy. Evidence has shown that high-dose psychedelic sessions can reliably produce profound psychological experiences rated among the most “meaningful” of a person's life (Griffiths et al., 2006). A number of research teams have referred to these profound experiences and have applied relevant rating scales that have evolved out of studies of spontaneous and drug-induced “mystical,” “spiritual,” “peak” or “religious” experiences (Maslow, 1959; Stace, 1960; Pahnke and Richards, 1966; Maclean et al., 2012). Regardless of the terms chosen to define them, evidence suggests that profound psychological experiences can be predictive of subsequent psychological health, whether induced by psychedelics (O'Reilly and Funk, 1964; Klavetter and Mogar, 1967; Pahnke et al., 1970; Kurland et al., 1972; Richards et al., 1977; Maclean et al., 2011; Garcia-Romeu et al., 2014; Bogenschutz et al., 2015; Griffiths et al., 2016; Johnson et al., 2016; Ross et al., 2016), or other means (James, 1902; Maslow, 1959; Noyes Jr, 1980; Ludwig, 1985; Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi, 1992; Snell and Simmonds, 2015). Furthermore, some recent ketamine for depression studies have also found an association between the quality of acute experience (Sos et al., 2013; Luckenbaugh et al., 2014)—including the occurrence of mystical-type experiences (Dakwar et al., 2014)—subsequent positive clinical outcomes. Given the growing evidence favoring the therapeutic value of psychedelics (dos Santos et al., 2016; Rucker et al., 2016; Carhart-Harris and Goodwin, 2017), it is timely that we better understand their therapeutic mechanisms. The so-called “mystical” experience has been a classic problem area for mainstream psychology—if not science more generally. The term “mystical” is particularly problematic, as it suggests associations with the supernatural that may be obstructive or even antithetical to scientific method and progress (Carhart-Harris and Goodwin, 2017). It is important to note that by using the term the mystical-type experience, we are referring only to the phenomenology of the experience and are keen not to endorse any associations between it and supernatural or metaphysical ideas. Readers interested in the phenomenology of mystical-type/peak experiences may wish to explore these classic texts (James, 1902; Stace, 1960; Maslow, 1964; Pahnke and Richards, 1966; Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi, 1992; Hood Jr et al., 2009; Richards, 2015). In the late 1960s, William Richards and Walter Pahnke (former pupils of Abraham Maslow and Timothy Leary respectively) developed a measure of “peak” or “mystical-type” experience that was much inspired by the work of Stace (1960). Studying reports of “mystical-type” experiences occurring in a variety of different world religions, Stace identified a number of common or “universal” components that are largely independent of religious or cultural context (Stace, 1960). Based on this landmark work, Richards and Pahnke developed the “mystical experience questionnaire” (MEQ) designed to enquire whether related components featured in the psychedelic drug experience. The scale measured six components of experience: (1) sense of unity or oneness, (2) transcendence of time and space, (3) deeply felt positive mood, (4) sense of awesomeness, reverence and wonder, (5) meaningfulness of psychological or philosophical insight, (6) ineffability and paradoxicality (Pahnke and Richards, 1966; Pahnke et al., 1970). A similar questionnaire which is based on Stace (1960) is the “M scale” (Hood Jr, 1975). Both the MEQ and M scale have been found to be predictive of long-term positive therapeutic outcomes in trials of psilocybin for cancer-related distress (Griffiths et al., 2016; Ross et al., 2016), tobacco smoking (Garcia-Romeu et al., 2014; Johnson et al., 2016) and alcohol dependence (Bogenschutz et al., 2015). Perhaps the most widely used subjective measure of altered states of consciousness, and particularly the psychedelic state, is the altered states of consciousness questionnaire (ASC) (Dittrich, 1998). We chose this scale over the MEQ as it measures a broader range of subjective phenomena, not just the “mystical-type experience.” Crucially, this enabled us to test the specificity of the relationship between mystical-type experiences (vs. e.g., perceptual changes) and subsequent therapeutic outcomes. One of the principal ASC factors is named “oceanic boundlessness” (OBN)—a term that has its origins in a conversation between Sigmund Freud and the French intellectual and “mystic” Romain Rolland (Freud, 1920) and makes reference to an “oceanic feeling” of boundlessness (Freud, 1929). Sharing a common intellectual background in Stace (1960) (Majić et al., 2015), items belonging to the OBN are closely related to those found in the MEQ. Previous factor analyses have parcellated the ASC into either 5 (Dittrich, 1998) or 11 dimensions (Studerus et al., 2010). As one of the original 5 ASC factors, OBN is explicitly linked to Stace's “mystical experience”, (Studerus et al., 2010) and 4 of the 11 revised ASC factors also relate to OBN. Explicitly, the 4 OBN sub-factors are named “insightfulness,” “blissful state,” “experience of unity” and “spiritual experience” (Studerus et al., 2010). We recently completed an open-label clinical trial assessing the feasibility of treating 20 patients with treatment-resistant depression (TRD) with psilocybin (Carhart-Harris et al., 2017). Results were encouraging: 47% of patients showed a clinically significant response 5 weeks post treatment (≥50% reduction in depressive symptoms). The present study sought to extend on our previous reports on this trial, by specifically focusing on whether the quality of the acute psychedelic experience was predictive of longer-term clinical outcomes. Specifically, we asked whether psilocybin-induced OBN and Dread of Ego Dissolution (DED) (related to acute anxiety) were predictive of decreases in depression at a key endpoint, whether the relationship between OBN and decreased depression was significantly stronger than between psilocybin's more generic sensory perceptual effects and depression changes. Materials and Methods This trial received a favorable opinion from the National Research Ethics Service London—West London, was sponsored and approved by Imperial College London's Joint Research and Compliance Office (JRCO), and was adopted by the National Institute for Health Research Clinical Research Network. The National Institute for Health Research/Wellcome Trust Imperial Clinical Research Facility gave site-specific approval for the study. The study was reviewed and approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and a Home Office Schedule One license was obtained for drug storage and administration. All participants provided written informed consent after receiving a complete description of the study. Design The full study procedure is reported in Carhart-Harris et al. (2016a). The inclusion criteria were major depression of a moderate to severe degree (16+ on the 21-item Hamilton Depression Rating scale [HAM-D]), and no improvement despite two adequate courses of antidepressant treatment. The patients were asked to be antidepressants-free for at least 2 weeks before the study. Twenty patients underwent two psilocybin-assisted therapy sessions, a week apart. The first involved a low-dose of psilocybin (10 mg, p.o.), and the second, a high-dose (25 mg, p.o.). Post capsule ingestion, patients lay with eyes closed and listened to music pre-selected by the research team (Kaelen et al., 2017) (https://www.mixcloud.com/MendelKa/playlists/psilocybin-v13/). Two therapists adopted a non-directive, supportive approach, allowing the patient to experience a mostly uninterrupted introspection. Preparation session occurred 1 week before the 10 mg psilocybin dose and the integration session occurred 1-day and 1-week after the 25 mg psilocybin dose. Out of the initial 20 patients, 19 completed the study (6 females; mean age = 44.7 ± 10.9; 27 to 64). Eight more subjects were added to the study since publication of the initial 12 in Carhart-Harris et al. (2016a)—for a full clinical report of the 20 patients see Carhart-Harris et al. (2017). Clinical Outcomes Post-treatment ratings of relevant symptomatology were compared against those collected at baseline (before therapy). The main clinical outcome for this analysis was the self-rated 16-item Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptoms (QIDS-SR16 or just “QIDS-SR” for brevity). Five weeks after the 25 mg psilocybin session was chosen as the primary endpoint. The reason for this was that after 5 weeks, the next point of data collection was 3 months, and at this time-point some of the subjects had gone on to receive new treatments, thus confounding potential inferences. The response rate (≥50% reduction in QIDS-SR scores) at the 5 week time point was 47% (n = 9). Secondary clinical outcomes were used to further examine the hypothesis that the mystical-type experience relates to positive clinical outcome. These secondary measures were QIDS-SR at 1-day, 1-week, 3-months, and 6-months; Beck Depression Inventory (BDI, original version) at 1-week, 3-months, and 6-months; Clinician rated Hamilton Depression Rating scale (HAM-D) at 1-week; Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale (DAS; measures trait pessimism) at 1-week and 3-months; Spielberger's Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) at 1-day, 1-week, 3-months, and 6-months; Life Orientation Test Revisited (LOT-R; measures optimism) at 1-week and 3-months; and Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale (SHAPS; measures anhedonia) at 1-week and 3-months. Standard criteria for meaningful “response” were calculated for the depression rating scales (≥50% from baseline). Measures of Acute Psilocybin Session The altered state of consciousness questionnaire (ASC) (Dittrich, 1998) was used to measure the acute subjective experience. It was completed retrospectively by the patient as the psilocybin session was coming to an end (i.e., ~5–6 h post ingestion). As stated above, the ASC can be divided into 5 (Dittrich, 1998) (94 items), or 11 dimensions (Studerus et al., 2010) (42 items). The 5 dimensions are: OBN, DED, visionary restructuralization (VRS), auditory alterations (AUA), and vigilance reduction (VIR) (n.b. translation from the German original may explain the slightly peculiar choice of terms e.g., “visionary restructuralization”). As noted above, the OBN items were formulated based on six of the nine categories of “mystical experiences” proposed by Stace (1960) (Bodmer et al., 1994; Studerus et al., 2010) in a similar way to the MEQ (Pahnke and Richards, 1966; Maclean et al., 2012). Dread of ego-dissolution is considered to probe negative, aversive experiences in which anxiety is a central aspect. Visionary restructuralization measures altered perception and meaning including visual hallucinations and synesthesia. The 11 sub-dimensions are made only from OBN, DED and VRS. The OBN sub-dimensions are experience of unity, spiritual experience, blissful state, insightfulness, and disembodiment. The DED sub-dimensions are impaired control or cognition, and Anxiety. The VRS sub-dimensions are complex imagery, elementary imagery, audio/visual synaesthesia, and changed meaning of percepts. We hypothesized that OBN and DED would predict clinical outcome up to 5 weeks. To test this hypothesis, we used repeated measure ANOVA. (analysis was done in SPSS v24, GLM with repeated measures). Time was the within-subject factor (independent variable), with QIDS-SR as the within-subject dependent variable in baseline, 1-day, 1-week, 5-weeks. OBN and DED were independent variables (covariates in SPSS). OBN-by-Time and DED-by-Time interactions were the primary outcomes of interest. The contrast for the within-subject factor was simple, comparing each level to the 1st one (baseline). Furthermore, we hypothesized specificity in the relationship between OBN and depression changes by comparing the strength of this correlation with that between the perceptual factors from the ASC, namely VRS and AUA, and depression changes (Steiger, 1980; Lee and Preacher, 2013). A threshold of OBN > 0.6 was used to distinguish a “complete” OBN. This threshold is similar to MEQ > 0.6 which was used in other studies to identify “peakers” and “complete mystical-type experience” (Pahnke et al., 1970; Richards et al., 1977; Maclean et al., 2011; Garcia-Romeu et al., 2014; Johnson et al., 2016). In a different study, OBN and MEQ showed a Pearson correlation of 0.93 (Liechti et al., 2017), suggesting that these two questionnaire quantify a similar experience and that a similar threshold can be used. For descriptive purposes, we tested whether those patients who had a “complete” OBN had a better clinical outcome. This analysis was done to expand the initial hypothesis to other time points and questionnaires. We also issued participants an in-house measure, the 29-item “psychedelic questionnaire” (PQ)—which was completed at the same time as the ASC. The PQ has been previously used in a number of our pharmacological challenge studies due to its brevity relative to the full ASC (Carhart-Harris et al., 2012, 2016b). As a descriptive exploratory analysis, correlation between PQ and clinical outcome at 5 weeks was calculated for all items. The same exploratory analysis was also done on all of the 94 items of the ASC. Results Prediction of QIDS-SR up to 5 Weeks These following are primary results of this study. Table 1 presents the results of the repeated measures ANOVA with Time as the within-subject factor (independent variable), QIDS-SR as the within-subject dependent variable in baseline, 1-day, 1-week, 5-weeks. OBN and DED were independent variables. [Sphericity assumed: Mauchly's W = 0.71 (p = 0.411)]. For the interactions of Time X OBN, and Time X DED, the within-subjects effect and the within-subjects contrasts at each time point compared to baseline were all significant (p < 0.05), confirming our main hypothesis. Regression analysis with ΔQIDS-SR (5-weeks) as a dependent variable and OBN and DED as independent variables found that together they explain 54% of the variance (r2 = 0.59, adjusted r2 = 0.54; standardized beta values of OBN, DED, were 0.605, −0.649, respectively). For descriptive purposes, Figure 1 presents plots of Pearson's correlation of the 5 dimensions of the ASC predicting ΔQIDS-SR (5 weeks). Furthermore, based on a standard threshold for defining clinical response (≥50% reduction in QIDS-SR score at 5 weeks vs. baseline), a comparison of responders (n = 9) vs. non-responders (n = 10) in the 11D ASC scores is presented for descriptive purposes in Figure 2. TABLE 1 Table 1. Repeated measures ANOVA; OBN and DED predict changes in QIDS-SR over different time points up to 5 weeks. FIGURE 1 Figure 1. Correlation of ASC (5 dimensions) with change of clinical outcome at 5 weeks (ΔQIDS-SR). FIGURE 2 Figure 2. ASC (11 dimensions) of responders and non-responders at 5 weeks. Error Bars = Standard Error. As hypothesized, OBN was a significantly better predictor of reductions in depression than both VRS and AUA (z = 1.64 and z = 2.01, respectively, p < 0.05) (Steiger, 1980; Lee and Preacher, 2013). Prediction of Secondary Clinical Measures The following are the secondary results of this study. Clinical outcomes for “complete” OBN were compared with those for “non-complete” OBN for secondary clinical outcomes such as measures of trait anxiety, anhedonia, optimism and pessimism (Table 2). Patients that had “complete” OBN (n = 11, OBN = 0.83 ± 0.1) had better outcomes than those who did not (n = 8, OBN = 0.33 ± 0.16), on a number of different measures and at different time points (1-day, 1-week, 5-weeks, 3-months, and 6-months). Response rates of “complete” OBN are presented in Table 2. TABLE 2 Table 2. Comparisons of “complete” OBN (n = 11) and “non-complete” (n = 8) with different clinical measures in different time points. In further exploratory analyses, correlations were calculated between all 94 items of the ASC and ΔQIDS-SR and were ordered by the strength of correlation (Table S1). The same was done for all 29 items of the PQ (Table S2). In both examples, it is apparent that items that best relate to OBN correlate most strongly with positive clinical outcomes, while sensory phenomena correlate less, and anxiety is predictive of worse outcomes. Discussion Consistent with our prior hypothesis, psilocybin-induced high OBN (sharing features with mystical-type experience) and low DED (similar to anxiety) predicted positive long-term clinical outcomes in a clinical trial of psilocybin for TRD. This result replicates those of previous studies showing that psychedelic-induced peak or mystical-type experiences are predictive of positive long-term outcomes (O'Reilly and Funk, 1964; Klavetter and Mogar, 1967; Pahnke et al., 1970; Kurland et al., 1972; Richards et al., 1977; Maclean et al., 2011; Bogenschutz et al., 2015; Griffiths et al., 2016; Johnson et al., 2016; Ross et al., 2016). This relationship appears to be somewhat specific, in that OBN was significantly more predictive of positive clinical outcomes than altered visual and auditory perception—endorsing the moniker “psychedelic” (“mind-revealing”) over “hallucinogen” when referring to this class of drug—at least in the context of psychedelic therapy. It also suggests that the therapeutic effects of psilocybin are not a simple product of isolated pharmacological action but rather are experience dependent. We also found that greater DED (anxiety and impaired cognition) experienced during the drug session was predictive of less positive clinical outcomes. One may naturally infer from these findings that the occurrence of OBN or mystical-type experience mediates long-term positive clinical outcomes (Griffiths et al., 2016; Ross et al., 2016) and while this assumption may be valid, we must exercise caution about ascribing too much to this relationship. It remains possible that as yet unmeasured and therefore unaccounted for components of psychedelic therapy play important roles in mediating long-term outcomes. There are several candidate factors in this regard, and the following should not be considered an exhaustive list: emotional insight/breakthrough or catharsis; priming and suggestibility; reliving of trauma/defining life events; insights about the self and relationships; the patients relationship to music heard; his/her success at “letting go”; the quality of therapeutic relationship; and the degree of “closure” attained during post-drug integration work (Frederking, 1955; Sandison, 1955; Abramson, 1956; Martin, 1957; Eisner and Cohen, 1958; Leuner, 1961; Jensen, 1963; Shagass and Bittle, 1967; Richards, 1978; Loizaga-Velder, 2013; Gasser et al., 2014; Belser et al., 2017; Russ and Elliott, 2017; Watts et al., 2017). These factors may exert influence before, during and after the acute experience itself and may also be more or less dependent on particular psychological frameworks and their relevant vocabularies. For example, the psychoanalytic models of Freud and Jung were dominant in psychiatry in the mid-twentieth century and thus references to ego, repression and the unconscious are commonplace among the psychedelic research literature of this period. While the processes that underlie these constructs may indeed be operative in the context of psychedelics, little effort has been made to define, measure and quantify their contributions (Shagass and Bittle, 1967; Barr et al., 1972). The development of subjective (Nour et al., 2016), behavioral and biological measures (Carhart-Harris et al., 2012, 2016b; Lebedev et al., 2015; Tagliazucchi et al., 2016) relevant to these constructs, and more importantly, the processes that underlie them, would represent an important advance not just for psychedelic science but for the psychological frameworks themselves (Carhart-Harris et al., 2014). We should be conscious of not being too attached (or averse) to any specific theoretical frameworks however, and approaches that endeavor to access “framework-free” descriptions of phenomena may prove particularly useful in this regard (Varela, 1996; Petitmengin, 2006). Critically, it is our view that it is possible to work toward a secular, biologically-informed account of the mystical-type experience that does not resort to “explaining away” or “reducing down” the core phenomenology and depth psychology may be a useful bedfellow in this regard. Returning to the present study's main findings, DED was found to negatively correlate with clinical outcome, yet, none of the patients showed a worsening of clinical symptoms at 5 weeks. Less DED combined with high OBN predicted 54% of the variance of clinical change at 5 weeks—a substantial contribution and one that helps justify the emphasis placed on minimizing anxiety and relinquishing psychological resistance in psychedelic therapy (Eisner and Cohen, 1958; Sherwood et al., 1962; Grof et al., 2008; Richards, 2015), as well as paying careful attention to preparation and “set and setting” (Hartogsohn, 2017; Carhart-Harris et al., in press). That anxiety arises in parallel with psychological struggle is resonant with principles of psychoanalytic theory (Sandison, 1961), as can be seen in the choice of terms for the “DED” and “OBN” factors of the ASC—both of which invoke constructs that can be traced to Freud (1929, 1962). According to psychoanalytic theory, the overcoming of psychological resistance is required for emotional breakthrough and insight (Freud, 1920) and the occurrence of mystical-type/peak experiences (Jung, 2014). Consistently, writers on the mystical-type/peak experience have reliably identified loss of self or “ego-dissolution” as one of its basic pre-requisites and features (James, 1902; Stace, 1960; Maslow, 1964). Recent work has sought to develop and validate a measure that is sensitive to difficult or challenging psychedelic experiences (Barrett et al., 2016; Carbonaro et al., 2016) and there is some evidence that the intensity of such experiences is predictive of positive long-term outcomes, whereas the duration of struggle is predictive of negative outcomes (Carbonaro et al., 2016). This is presumably because the successful resolution of conflict brings with it, insight and relief, whereas the failure to breakthrough perpetuates suffering. ASC and other questionnaires such as the challenging experience questionnaire (CEQ) (Barrett et al., 2016) may be insensitive to whether or not successful resolution of psychological conflict has occurred. Therefore, the development of new scales specifically designed to focus on emotional breakthrough after struggle may add considerable value. Improving our subjective measures of high-level human experiences such as the mystical-type/peak experience will enhance our ability to understand their psychology and underlying neural substrates. As touched on in the introduction, psychopharmacology is increasingly acknowledging the importance of “context” and particularly “environment” as a factor mediating the effects of both intrinsic neurobiological features (e.g., genotypes) and exogenous pharmacological inputs—such as drugs (Alexander et al., 1981; Caspi et al., 2010). For example, a recent popular model of the action of SSRIs incorporates “environment” and cognitive (re)appraisal (Harmer et al., 2017) as key determinants of therapeutic efficacy (see also Branchi, 2011; Belsky, 2016). Like SSRIs, classic psychedelic drugs also work on the serotonin system; however, unlike the SSRIs, they are direct agonists at the 5-HT2A receptor (Nichols, 2016). There is compelling evidence that the 5-HT2A receptor is psychedelics' key site of action (Nichols, 2016). Intriguingly, recent work has found that the phenotypic expression of 5-HT2AR genotypes is significantly dependent on the influence of “environment” (Jokela et al., 2007). These findings may imply that enhanced sensitivity to context is an important function of 5-HT2A receptor signaling (Carhart-Harris and Nutt, 2017). Ascending from the pharmacological to the whole-brain systems level, increased cortical entropy has been found to be a reliable feature of the psychedelic state (Carhart-Harris et al., 2014), to relate to high-level subjective experiences such as “ego-dissolution” (Nour et al., 2016; Atasoy et al., 2017; Schartner et al., 2017) that are relevant to the mystical-type experience, and to be predictive of longer-term trait changes—such as increased “openness” (Lebedev et al., 2016). Recent work suggests that increased brain entropy under psychedelics is consistent with the brain being more closely tuned to “criticality” (Atasoy et al., 2017). Criticality refers to systems that reside in a functional “sweet spot”, critically poised between order and disorder—in which they can effectively retain information (by being sufficiently ordered) while being appropriately adaptive and sensitive to change (by being sufficiently disordered). Intriguingly, one of the signatures of a critical system is a sensitivity to perturbation (Bak, 1996). It follows that enhanced sensitivity to perturbation in a psychedelically-induced “entropic” and “critical” brain may account for the special sensitivity to “environment” that is characteristic of the psychedelic state (Hartogsohn, 2016; Carhart-Harris et al., in press). Understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of OBN, mystical-type or peak experiences (Vollenweider, 2001) should enable us to better comprehend, define and study them. This is important, not least because they are proving to be important determinants of treatment success in psychedelic therapy (Richards et al., 1977; Bogenschutz et al., 2015; Griffiths et al., 2016; Johnson et al., 2016; Ross et al., 2016). Crucially, better understanding the biological basis of mystical-type/peak experiences and their longer-term impact on the mind and brain should help to demystify them, facilitating an easier conversation about them with mainstream psychology. Researchers in the mainstream have as much a responsibility as those in “the periphery” to facilitate this. Denying the relevance of these phenomena is as damaging to scientific progress as denying their physical basis. The prize for successfully integrating mystical-type experience into mainstream science may be their potential to have a substantial positive impact on medicine, education and society—which ironically, may, at least in part, explain why their integration into western society has proved so difficult to achieve (Stevens, 1987). To summarize, the occurrence of high OBN (sharing features with mystical-type experience) and low DED (relating to anxiety and impaired cognition) under psilocybin predicted positive clinical outcomes in a trial of psilocybin for TRD. This relationship exhibited a degree of specificity, in that psilocybin-induced OBN was significantly more predictive of reduced depressive symptoms than the drug's more generic visual and auditory perceptual effects. Future work, with a larger sample size, is required to more comprehensively and systematically measure the influence of different potential predictive factors on the quality of acute psychedelic experiences (Gasser et al., 2014; Belser et al., 2017; Watts et al., 2017) and subsequent long-term outcomes (Carhart-Harris et al., in press). As psychedelic therapy gains influence and credibility (Carhart-Harris and Goodwin, 2017), it seems vital that appropriate consideration is paid to the importance of promoting a certain kind of experience, as the quality of that experience may be the critical determinant of therapeutic success. Author Contributions LR analyzed the data and wrote the paper; DN sanctioned the research and approved an earlier draft of the manuscript; RC-H designed and conducted the research, and wrote the paper. Funding LR is funded by the Imperial College Scholarship Scheme; DN is funded by the Edmund J. Safra Foundation (P17264) and RC-H is funded by the Alex Mosely Charitable Trust. This study was funded by an MRC clinical development scheme grant (MR/J00460X/1), the Alex Mosley Charitable Trust (G30444), the COMPASS group (I30006), and the Beckley Foundation. 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As for the VV, frankly, I don’t want to Vince my words, but what of the Vaughnaissance?? As the season progressed I became less and less aware that I was watching a schlocky washed up comedian and his fivehead and more convinced of Frank Semyon; a gangster with a heart o’ solid gold navigating LA’s underbelly with a steadfast moral compass. Back to the heavily criticised convolution of the story; I think that this season was less about the case and more about these characters striving for some kind of redemption. And at the end of the day, I felt for these characters and wanted them to find some kind of peace so someone was doing something right. The world that Pizzolatto crafted is so dense that I could spend an entire article dissecting the Grecian nods alone: from the Oedipal gouging of Caspere’s eyes, the Elektra-esque revelation of Caspere’s illegitimate daughter having slept with him to the seer-like prediction of Ray Velcoro’s fate: shit felt straight up lifted from a Euripides tragedy! I did like the writing on the whole, but I will admit that the dialogue wasn’t as consistently on-point as season 1 (I’m not sure if the actors were coached to mumble their lines to enhance the austerity or if the audio mixing was so off, but I always NEEDED subtitles). Regardless, I feel that people are looking past some fantastic little one-liner gems. Case in point, the following list: Ray: Well, just so you know, I support feminism. Mostly by having body-image issues. Ray: Pain is inexhaustible. It’s only people that get exhausted. Frank: I used to want to be an astronaut. But astronauts don’t even go to the moon anymore. Frank: In the midst of being gangbanged by forces unseen, I figure I'd drill a new orifice, go on and fuck myself for a change. I really feel that this is where the comparisons have to stop. Is Louisiana comparable to LA? Sure, both are desolate landscapes but we move beyond swamplands and poverty to empty highways and full pockets. That being said, the intersecting shots of the highways of LA seemed to hark back to the atmospheric sprawling miasma of bleak lifelessness that was Season 1. The utterly smashing soundtrack also helped set the tone. I have to fess up to moodily crooning Lera Lynn’s dive bar laments for the past month or so because they’re just so darn tootin’ great. Despite my gloriously positive view thus far, I do have some gripes with this season. Taylor Kitsch wasn’t bad as the emotionally stiff, closeted veteran but wasn’t particularly good either. I believe that he played Paul Woodrough well but I didn’t find the character to be particularly fresh; ‘Oh I know, we’ll create a cold, calculated war survivor but we’ll make him gay!!!!1’ That move felt a bit forcefully contrarian to me, so much so that it became trope-ish. On the subject of tropes, although Velcoro encapsulated some of McConaughey’s existential car musings, it fell short for me in the absence of Rust Cohle’s signature nihilism. Perhaps outside my diehard dedication to the character of Cohle, I may well have fallen in love with Velcoro’s audio love notes to his perplexedly ginger son (who is in competition with Velcoro’s ‘stache as my favourite character). No series is perfect. Heck, season 1 had some serious issues itself, but the case remains: TD S2 was an exhilarating ride. It had a heart-wrenchingly satisfying ending and some seriously fantastic climaxes: (e.g. the clusterfuck firefight in which Woodrough emerged a “god warrior”, the sinister, orchestral mind-spin that was the sex party, and the tragic last stands of our brooding antiheros). I await news of S3 with bated breath and challenge anyone who wants to slander the past season to a Bezzerides style knife fight. |
Even as Intel neither confirms nor denies reports of it abandoning socketed client desktop processors in favor of BGA packages that permanently bind chips to motherboards, AMD has come forward and asserted that it won't abandon socketed client processors, and will continue to support the DIY PC enthusiast market, reinforced with the fact that BClk multiplier-unlocked processors from the company start for as low as US $129.99. In a statement to the TechReport, AMD's Chris Hook said: 38 Comments on AMD Won't Abandon Socketed Client CPUs: Company Spokesperson 1 to 25 of 39 Go to Page 12 PreviousNext #1 btarunr Editor & Senior Moderator Then again, I'm skeptical. With Intel not making orders anymore, I doubt Foxconn or Lotes will maintain their CPU socket design team. Posted on Dec 4th 2012, 20:48 Reply #2 PatoRodrigues WOW That's a amazing statement after all those rumors made by "sources close to Intel". Posted on Dec 4th 2012, 20:50 Reply #3 Dos101 PatoRodrigues said: WOW That's a amazing statement after all those rumors made by "sources close to Intel". Any time AMD can have an advantage over Intel, you know they'll go with it. Any time AMD can have an advantage over Intel, you know they'll go with it. Posted on Dec 4th 2012, 20:52 Reply #4 btarunr Editor & Senior Moderator Yup, so AMD's statement only reinforces the BGA apocalypse rumor, because AMD won't make such a statement without its own research and legal opinion. Posted on Dec 4th 2012, 20:53 Reply #5 DoomDoomDoom I certainly hope Intel doesn't go down that route. They have such great products... Though if AMD offers something down the road which heavily competes with Intel's products, and still supports overclocking, I'll of course give them a look. Good on AMD for clearing up any concerns and jabbing a bit at the competition. Posted on Dec 4th 2012, 20:55 Reply #6 BUCK NASTY F@H Mod & 4P Enthusiust Good to know that the enthusiast will still have a option(s). This may turnaround AMD's decision to not pursue the performance crown any longer. Posted on Dec 4th 2012, 20:57 Reply #7 newtekie1 Semi-Retired Folder At this point I'm not too concerned with the performance crown, especially not at the prices and sacrifices Intel makes us pay. I've not found anything my Phenom x6 can't handle. Posted on Dec 4th 2012, 21:08 Reply #8 NC37 AMD doesn't need to beat Intel in performance, they just need to commit themselves to making their customer's happy in other ways. This being one major way. If the BGA rumors are true, I hope AMD taking this stand makes people think harder about the future of their computers. I was really finally considering an Intel build but now...I'm glad I stuck with AMD for one more round. Posted on Dec 4th 2012, 21:21 Reply #9 Zakin Still happy I went with my new i5 system, although those piledriver systems are very attractive and seem monstrous around that 4.8-5Ghz range for eight cores even if they are faked cores. Something I'd love to build just to have and use honestly. Posted on Dec 4th 2012, 21:52 Reply #10 ensabrenoir Deposit 2 cent now.. aahhh.... if the current trend continues.... there won't be a desktop market (unless apple makes one and then the it crowd follow and desktops become cool again :rolleyes:) So ...this is sorta just fluff.... Amd needs to first save itself and evolve. A shriveling company making promises to a niche market that is not large enough to solely support it aint gonna work. Especially if a bga system still hands an overclocked Amd lga its transistors. Honestly I see workstations in our future. Dont get me wrong, big ups for the support but survive first... history is littered with companies that "stayed true" to the past and is now a part of that past too. Posted on Dec 4th 2012, 21:56 Reply #11 FordGT90Concept "I go fast!1!11!1!" btarunr said: Then again, I'm skeptical. With Intel not making orders anymore, I doubt Foxconn or Lotes will maintain their CPU socket design team. It's a headache to get 1500+ pins connected in a motherboard. The move to soldered CPUs is an inevitability when they have, and keep demanding, more contacts. AMD has been able to keep the contact count modest so they can afford to keep them unsoldered. I could see AMD eventually having to have more contacts and reverse this decsion but it appears to be a ways off. I think, for desktops, this is going to make AMD processors a no-brainer for me. If Intel goes forward with soldering chips to motherboards, Intel chips aren't in my future. It's a headache to get 1500+ pins connected in a motherboard. The move to soldered CPUs is an inevitability when they have, and keep demanding, more contacts. AMD has been able to keep the contact count modest so they can afford to keep them unsoldered.I could see AMD eventually having to have more contacts and reverse this decsion but it appears to be a ways off. I think, for desktops, this is going to make AMD processors a no-brainer for me. If Intel goes forward with soldering chips to motherboards, Intel chips aren't in my future. Posted on Dec 4th 2012, 22:23 Reply #12 NC37 ensabrenoir said: aahhh.... if the current trend continues.... there won't be a desktop market (unless apple makes one and then the it crowd follow and desktops become cool again :rolleyes:) So ...this is sorta just fluff.... Amd needs to first save itself and evolve. A shriveling company making promises to a niche market that is not large enough to solely support it aint gonna work. Especially if a bga system still hands an overclocked Amd lga its transistors. Honestly I see workstations in our future. Dont get me wrong, big ups for the support but survive first... history is littered with companies that "stayed true" to the past and is now a part of that past too. It isn't just about the enthusiast market. This is a big move for businesses and professional environments too. If Intel pulls an Apple and tries to strong arm people into BGA, they now have an alternative with AMD. AMD may be weak now but all it needs is Intel blundering like this for them to pick up a lot of market. This will not only help DIY builders but also businesses and smaller PC resellers who can't afford to go BGA. BGA is not going to lower prices. In fact, I think it'll raise them. Its extra work for vendors to do. Cost of production added plus testing/etc. Then imagine problems happen in production. How much higher the cost will be to replace vs just a single part. It is cheaper to just make the board then the PC maker compile the parts. It isn't just about the enthusiast market. This is a big move for businesses and professional environments too.If Intel pulls an Apple and tries to strong arm people into BGA, they now have an alternative with AMD. AMD may be weak now but all it needs is Intel blundering like this for them to pick up a lot of market. This will not only help DIY builders but also businesses and smaller PC resellers who can't afford to go BGA. BGA is not going to lower prices. In fact, I think it'll raise them. Its extra work for vendors to do. Cost of production added plus testing/etc. Then imagine problems happen in production. How much higher the cost will be to replace vs just a single part. It is cheaper to just make the board then the PC maker compile the parts. Posted on Dec 4th 2012, 22:35 Reply #13 mandis :twitch: Intel will stop offering socketed CPUs??? What on earth is this all about? Home builds are a niche market???? Since WHEN? Just because people invested money on tablets and smartphones it doesn't mean the PC market is dead! Without upgradable/repairable computers it will be just like the 80s all over again... :banghead: Posted on Dec 4th 2012, 22:41 Reply #14 TheGuruStud mandis said: :twitch: Intel will stop offering socketed CPUs??? What on earth is this all about? Home builds are a niche market???? Since WHEN? Just because people invested money on tablets and smartphones it doesn't mean the PC market is dead! Without upgradable/repairable computers it will be just like the 80s all over again... :banghead: Now, yell at us to get off your lawn. :p Now, yell at us to get off your lawn. :p Posted on Dec 4th 2012, 22:48 Reply #15 MilkyWay I could see how the OEM market might want to go with BGA because the type of buyers are not likely to upgrade the cpu and its easy for them to make one type of motherboard; not like motherboard manufacturers that offer multiple products and with different needs of buyers (fragmented market). Posted on Dec 4th 2012, 23:38 Reply #16 KingPing At least i already know which CPU brand i'll buy for my next upgrades. Posted on Dec 5th 2012, 0:48 Reply #17 RejZoR Same here. If AMD fixes up their CPU division a bit it will be a no brainer next time... Posted on Dec 5th 2012, 1:26 Reply #18 jmcslob WOW! The folks here that are gonna hold true to the dead enthusiast market, even though the writing is literally on the wall, is somewhat commendable and very much laughable... This market is on life support people! Nobody gives a flying F#ck about PC gaming anymore or Enthusiast PC's or what you can do on a desktop and nobody will really care when they can take their gaming system with them wherever they go! I give it 4 years before Googles OS is the major competitor out there with uber craptastic devices that can game. Posted on Dec 5th 2012, 1:40 Reply #19 craigo jmcslob said: WOW! The folks here that are gonna hold true to the dead enthusiast market, even though the writing is literally on the wall, is somewhat commendable and very much laughable... This market is on life support people! Nobody gives a flying F#ck about PC gaming anymore or Enthusiast PC's or what you can do on a desktop and nobody will really care when they can take their gaming system with them wherever they go! I give it 4 years before Googles OS is the major competitor out there with uber craptastic devices that can game. Not to bust your bubble, But whilst I understand the formfactors are changing nobody who owns the new tech devices goes without tethering them to something, sure "I heart my tablet and smartphone"..but if they did not sync with my laptop and desktops they would be useless. the sad reality is consumer electronics/computing does not make for a productive workspace. as for this thread I am saving AMD all by myself by building an AM3+ system...and so should you be...oh enthusiastic ones. Not to bust your bubble,But whilst I understand the formfactors are changing nobody who owns the new tech devices goes without tethering them to something, sure "I heart my tablet and smartphone"..but if they did not sync with my laptop and desktops they would be useless.the sad reality is consumer electronics/computing does not make for a productive workspace.as for this thread I am saving AMD all by myself by building an AM3+ system...and so should you be...oh enthusiastic ones. Posted on Dec 5th 2012, 1:55 Reply #20 Radical_Edward As a guy who owns both Intel and AMD machines, and builds Intel all day at work.... I will keep my money on AMD. I love my AMD machines and my current X6 machine does everything I need it to do and more. Posted on Dec 5th 2012, 1:58 Reply #21 jmcslob craigo said: Not to bust your bubble, But whilst I understand the formfactors are changing nobody who owns the new tech devices goes without tethering them to something, sure "I heart my tablet and smartphone"..but if they did not sync with my laptop and desktops they would be useless. the sad reality is consumer electronics/computing does not make for a productive workspace. as for this thread I am saving AMD all by myself by building an AM3+ system...and so should you be...oh enthusiastic ones. I already did....well mostly gonna buy an 8350 soon...but the market is still dying and Google cloud sync will hold all the info you need (and will share it with everyone you don't want them to) I already did....well mostly gonna buy an 8350 soon...but the market is still dying and Google cloud sync will hold all the info you need (and will share it with everyone you don't want them to) Posted on Dec 5th 2012, 2:07 Reply #22 iKhan Maybe BGA for lower end and LGA for higher end processors? Posted on Dec 5th 2012, 2:08 Reply #23 bpgt64 iKhan said: Maybe BGA for lower end and LGA for higher end processors? That's always been my interpretation of this whole shlog. It sounds like intel doesn't make much money on the i3/i5 line-up and see's the mobile-apocalypse(the shrinking of the desktop segment) that's coming and wants to consolidate cost/liability. Sell interchangeable parts at the high end i7 side of things for workstations that remain needed. That's always been my interpretation of this whole shlog. It sounds like intel doesn't make much money on the i3/i5 line-up and see's the mobile-apocalypse(the shrinking of the desktop segment) that's coming and wants to consolidate cost/liability. Sell interchangeable parts at the high end i7 side of things for workstations that remain needed. Posted on Dec 5th 2012, 2:17 Reply #24 jmcslob personally I wish AMD would follow suit... Cut out the Graphics card slots,give up on memory expansion and release a few new APU models a year....then we would get the best bang for our buck as programs would get coded way better. Posted on Dec 5th 2012, 2:30 Reply #25 btarunr Editor & Senior Moderator iKhan said: Maybe BGA for lower end and LGA for higher end processors? Yeah, HEDT. Starts at $350 for the processor, $200 for the motherboard. Yeah, HEDT. Starts at $350 for the processor, $200 for the motherboard. Posted on Dec 5th 2012, 2:31 Reply |
Getty Images Holiday travelers wait in line to go through the security checkpoint at the Los Angeles International Airport. Foreigners who want to visit the U.S., even for a short trip, could be forced to disclose contacts on their mobile phones, social-media passwords and financial records, and to answer probing questions about their ideology, according to Trump administration officials conducting a review of vetting procedures. The administration also wants to subject more visa applicants to intense security reviews and have embassies spend more time interviewing each applicant. The changes could apply to people from all over the world, including allies like France and Germany. The measures—whose full scope haven’t yet been publicly discussed—would together represent the “extreme vetting” President Donald Trump has promised. The changes would be sure to generate significant controversy, both at home, from civil libertarians and others who see the questions as overly intrusive, and abroad, with experts warning that other nations could impose similar requirements on Americans seeking visas. “If there is any doubt about a person’s intentions coming to the United States, they should have to overcome—really and truly prove to our satisfaction—that they are coming for legitimate reasons,” said Gene Hamilton, senior counselor to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly. An expanded version of this story is available at WSJ.com Also on WSJ.com Kushner flies to Iraq for briefing on anti-Isis strategy Tesla passes Ford in market value |
Breaking News: SUP Is In The Beach Olympics With surfing getting the nod for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, there has been a lot of talk about SUP and it’s path to becoming an Olympic sport. The Olympic process is long and full of politics, however, with surfing’s inclusion, SUP is one step closer to Olympic gold. These are exciting times for our fast growing sport and Friday’s news just made things even more interesting. SUP is included on the shortlist of the 22 events to be included in the 2017 World Beach Games in San Diego. The news comes as San Diego was chosen Friday as the host city for the inaugural ANOC World Beach Games. With San Diego’s inclusion comes their planning committee’s recommendation for events to be included in the Games. SUP is one of the recommended events but still must be officially voted in by the Olympic and San Diego planning committees sometime next year. With consideration for beach events like e-sports (video gaming), beach badminton and flying disc (frisbee), I like to think that SUP has a good chance for making the final cut. Officially, the games are called the ANOC World Beach Games. The Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC) voted on Friday to back the bid of San Diego for the 2017 host city. The ANOC World Beach Games come at a time when the Olympic movement is struggling to gain the attention of younger viewers. There is a reason youth sports like surfing and skateboarding will likely be included in the 2020 Tokyo Games. “The ANOC World Beach Games will be something new and exciting that people have not seen before. It will help National Olympic Committee’s to reconnect with a whole generation of young people and deliver a positive and lasting legacy for the Olympic movement.” said ANOC president Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah. The decision for the games to be hosted in San Diego is a further boost to the U.S. Olympic Committee’s attempt to become more involved in Olympic activities and comes as another Californian city, Los Angeles, bids to host the 2024 Summer Olympic Games. Perhaps a 2024 LA Olympics will see SUP racing in Doheny or off of the Santa Monica Pier? San Diego has an array of options when it comes to SUP racing venues and formats. The San Diego World Beach Games website lists the Mission Beach area as the primary location for events. Mission Beach offers typical California beach break conditions that would help display exciting surf racing action. The options are limitless with the ability to also access one of the largest man-made bays in the world, Mission Bay, directly behind the beach. As president of the Stand Up Paddle Athletes Association, and resident of San Diego, I will be sure to let the San Diego planning committee know the desires of SUP athletes around the world. Would you like to see SUP included in the 2017 World Beach Games? It is our mission to grow the sport of SUP in an organized, safe and fun manner. The World Beach Games seem to offer a great opportunity to show the world SUP racing at it’s best. I look forward to hearing your feedback and continuing our mission to grow the sport during these exciting times. |
Stephanie Levitz, The Canadian Press OTTAWA -- MPs have begun to grapple with an issue that's sure to become a hallmark of the next Parliament: what does one do if a piece of legislation flies in the face of their fundamental beliefs? One Conservative MP proposed an answer in the form of a motion debated in the Commons Thursday: their parties should allow them to vote freely on matters of conscience. Motions aren't binding on government, however the debate underscores that MPs are already seeking to shape how the Commons deals with the landmark Supreme Court decision earlier this year on physician-assisted suicide. The legislation that will flow from that decision is a matter of conscience because it deals with the termination of life, and freely being able to debate that, without fear of party discipline or political repercussion is essential, said Ed Komarnicki, the Conservative MP who brought forward the motion. "We should have legislation go forward, agreeing that this is precisely the place where hard and difficult decisions must be made, accepting the fact that members may have to struggle with their conscience to support a particular position," he said during Thursday evening's debate. "In the interest of democracy, justice and good government, we want all members to vote on these issues freely and without impediment." In its February decision, the top court struck down the ban on physician-assisted suicide as unconstitutional, giving the government a year to draft new laws. The bill isn't expected until after the fall election. While private member's bills and motions are often free votes, government legislation is most often not, with MPs expected to vote on party lines. If they don't, there can be consequences: New Democrat MPs who sided with the Conservatives and against their party on the end of the gun registry ended up benched, with one eventually quitting caucus over the issue. But that doesn't mean MPs can't vote their conscience, said NDP MP Alexandrine Latendresse, who said she found it disturbing that Conservative MPs felt otherwise. "We are all free men and women, with a free will," she said. The NDP has said it will support Komarnicki's motion. For the Liberals, each vote is a matter of conscience, said MP Ted Hsu during the debate. "We have to figure out what we promised to our constituents. What did my party promise? What do scientists say? What is the best evidence? What are the consequences of the vote? What did we say in debate in the House? We have to juggle a lot of things, and all these votes are matters of conscience," he said. It is not clear whether the Liberals will support the motion; party leader Justin Trudeau has previously told his caucus he expected all of them to vote in favour of upholding abortion rights, even if it went against their personal beliefs. While Parliament awaits the government's formal answer to the Supreme Court ruling on assisted suicide, there are actually pieces of legislation allowing for it already before the Senate, introduced there by backbench Conservative MP Stephen Fletcher after the ruling in the hopes they would make it to the Commons before the summer break. That's unlikely to happen as Parliament rises in three weeks and is not expected to return prior to the election call, It's equally possible that MPs will never get to vote on Komarnicki's motion. MPs only debated Komarnicki's motion for an hour Thursday night. No date has been set for the second hour of debate or subsequent vote. Komarnicki, who represents a Saskatchewan riding, is not seeking re-election. |
Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. Jan. 20, 2017, 3:43 PM GMT / Updated Jan. 20, 2017, 7:53 PM GMT By NBC News As Donald Trump is inaugurated as 45th president of the United States, NBC News takes a glance at what people around the planet — from world leaders to ordinary citizens — are saying about America's new leader. Russia Around 4,800 miles from Washington, D.C., a Donald Trump inauguration party was in full swing. On the eve of Trump being sworn into office, around 180 partygoers at a jazz club in downtown Moscow were being entertained by a group named The Trump Band and well-known Russian-American singer Willi Tokarev, who has just released an album named "Trumplissimo America." Tokarev, who is 82, praised the incoming leader as an "unbelievable superman, the symbol of America." Related: 9 Things Trump Has Said That Might Make Putin Smile "It's no secret the Russians are welcoming Trump's victory," Igor Khaletsky, the owner of the Arbat 13 club, told NBC News. "But all this is in advance, based on his electoral promises." The Trump Band performs in Moscow on Thursday. Alexey Eremenko / NBC News Russian President Vladimir Putin has exchanged pleasantries with Trump and signaled he may seek a rapprochement with the United States under its new administration. Trump has also suggested he may lift biting economic sanctions slapped on Russia for its annexation of Crimea. "It looks like a Christmas gift from the American people with very beautiful packaging, but we don't know what is inside," former Russian lawmaker Sergei Markov said. Like Markov, many of the well-dressed crowd at the retro-themed nightclub were similarly enthusiastic about the incoming U.S. president. "I do support Trump, I hope he will make relations better," said Alexey Smirnov, a tattooed 49-year-old musician, although he admitted that he was mainly there for the music. Others are worried, however. One opposition leader, Vladimir Ryzhkov, said he feared that "Donald Trump will close his eyes on democracy and human rights and freedom of the press and political prisoners in Russia." Related: Russian Rights Groups Urge Trump Not to Forget Them Even at the Kremlin, Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told the BBC that they would not be watching the inauguration, instead celebrating the Orthodox Christmas holiday, Epiphany, in which people skinny-dip in the frigid outdoor winter. Russia was just one of many nations reacting to Trump's imminent inauguration Friday, and anticipating what his administration will mean for their part of the world. Israel Trump's promise to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has pleased Israeli right-wingers but dismayed Palestinian leaders. After a fractious relationship with President Barack Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has welcomed Trump's incoming administration. In December, both men condemned the Obama administration's abstention from a United Nations resolution labeling Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal. "After eight difficult years, a true friend is entering the White House," Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said Wednesday ahead of Trump's inaugural. "Together, we will remind Washington that Israel remains its greatest friend and closest ally." "I’m happy for him, it can show us that everyone can become a president, and maybe its nice to see a businessman as a president," Bat Sheva Hass, 35, said. Despite these overtures from Russia and Israel, the president-elect has recorded historic unpopularity in other parts of the world. Just 9 percent of people living in the European Union have confidence in Trump's foreign policy game, according to a Pew study in June. That figure is just 8 percent in Japan, 14 percent in India and 22 percent in China. The West Bank Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has criticized Trump's vows to move the U.S. embassy in Israel, saying Saturday that "it will not help peace and we hope it does not happen." It's a sentiment echoed by many Palestinians on the day of Trump's inauguration. The Palestinians see East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. Raful Saade, 26, called the move "dangerous," warning that the decision could lead to more bloodshed. "At the end of the day we want peace, peace is obtainable if the two sides want it, and by moving the embassy it won’t be happening any time soon," said 17-year-old Sona Hazbun. "It’ll be stopping the peace process." China Trump spent much of his presidential campaign attacking Beijing's allegedly unfair trade practices, and even threatening to launch what experts said amounted to a trade war. While the Chinese government has refrained from reacting with bombastic statements, one state-run newspaper warned the U.S. to "bone up on nuclear power strategies." This was after Trump's pick for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, suggested he might try to stop China accessing China's controversial outposts that it has built in the disputed South China Sea. However, some Chinese citizens, such as 41-year-old lawyer Jenny Chen, are more upbeat about Trump's impact on their country. Jenny Chen David Lom / NBC News "I'm in general very optimistic, in a cautious way," said Chen, who is from the southeastern province of Fujian. "I think China and America will remain good trade partners. I don’t think they will abandon each other’s business interests just over small disputes." Xiong Li, a 25-year-old software engineer from Jiangxi, agreed. "For the past two decades, especially for the past few presidents, they are almost the same," Xiong told NBC News. "This is the first time an outsider, a true outsider, is coming to the White House. I think it will bring some change. Hopefully some good change, positive change." However, Xiong conceded that "one thing i think is a little bit dangerous to me is, Trump seems to be a dictator." Iraq Trump moves into the White House at a time when the U.S. remains locked in battle with ISIS across Iraq and Syria. Although he originally supported the war, Trump spent much of the campaign saying that the invasion "may have been the worst decision" in presidential history. It's not clear what his next move in the region would be, but many Iraqis are angry at America's impact on their country over the past three decades. "What goes around comes around … America should pay the price of invading my country," said 29-year-old Marwa Fadhel, who works in Iraq's Ministry of Oil. "Having such a president is a curse from God, and this is the price that Americans are going to pay for invading my country." Tawfeeq Majeed Mohammed, a 43-year-old English teacher, called Trump a "clown" and said that "America is going to gain more enemies and haters than it had before" because of his policies. Not everyone was so negative, however. Wurud Salih, a 32-year-old journalist from Basra, said that Trump would "bring balance to the region." Egypt Trump's proposal to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem is sending ripple effects to Israel's southern neighbor as Egyptians try to brace for the next American administration. “I don’t feel secure now," Hanan Mahmoud, 45, said. "I am afraid he will make a war in the Arab countries. That is what frightens me.” Ali Ibrahim watches the inauguration of Donald Trump as he sits on the couch with his nieces, Nada 7, and Mina, 10. NBC News Forty-year-old Ahmed Ibrahim voiced concerns that Trump didn't seem fully prepared for the job and that his rhetoric sounded increasingly isolationist. "He is only talking about his country, 100 percent," Ibrahim said. "When Obama spoke he spoke about many countries, but [Trump] only spoke about America." Europe and elsewhere Anti-Trump demonstrations took place and were expected in as many as 57 countries on Friday, according to various groups, including the Women’s March on Washington, a movement critical of the rhetoric used during the election cycle. In London, protesters from the Bridges Not Walls group unfurled a banner on the city's iconic Tower Bridge reading: "Act now! Build bridges not walls," a reference to Trump's promise to build a wall on the Mexican border. Activists from the Bridges Not Walls movement display messages on Tower Bridge in London on Friday. Daniel Leal-Olivas / AFP - Getty Images On Westminster Bridge, near the Houses of Parliament, another banner read: "Migrants welcome here," referring to the president-elect's statement during the campaign that America should halt all Muslims from entering the country. When he was mayor of London in 2015, British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson said that Trump was "clearly out of his mind" and "frankly unfit to hold the office of president of the United States," after Trump claimed some parts of London were "no-go areas" for police because of the threat posed by Muslims. After Trump's election, however, Johnson has fallen in line with the British government's official stance that it is looking forward to working with its long-time ally. Following a similar display after Trump was elected, some European newspapers used their front pages to mark the occasion. Britain's measured tone was repeated in Japan, where Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Friday that his alliance with the U.S. was "the cornerstone of our nation’s diplomatic and security policies," something he called an "immutable principle." However, the country was among those that saw protests against Trump's inaugural. Protesters gather in Tokyo on Friday. Toru Hanai / Reuters In Germany, Trump's criticism of Chancellor Angela Merkel, as well as German trade and the European Union, has caused alarm among officials. "This day really marks a celebration of American democracy and usually people here look at Washington with admiration … but I think this time it's different," said Niels Annen, foreign affairs spokesman for the center-left SPD party, a coalition partner in the government. He said that on inauguration day there would be "a lot of uncertainty and also I think some resentment." Nikole McDuffie, a 23-year-old California native who works in the tech industry in Berlin, visited the city's Brandenburg Gate to show her discontent with Trump. "I was hoping to see the first female president elected and I woke up to this awful human being," she told NBC News. "Every time I meet someone new in Berlin, they ask me about Trump. Many people here say they were so surprised to see that there were enough people in America who would actually elect him." |
Capitalism: Money, Morals and Markets by John Plender, London: Biteback Publishing, 2015, 334 pages. The efficiency of capitalism was once widely questioned. In addition to charges that capitalism was ethically dubious because it seemed to make virtues out of greed and indifference to others, it also seemed inherently prone to booms and busts in a way that planned economies were not. But as the horrors perpetrated in the Soviet Union and elsewhere became known, true believers in the collectivist dream and many of their fellow travelers were forced to rethink their positions. Was systematic and frequently brutal suppression of dissent endemic to such rigidly controlled systems? And could it also be true that instead of liberating workers, those systems kept them impoverished? A consensus developed that capitalism "delivered the goods." Yet many people remain troubled by capitalism's ethical underpinnings and believe that the worst of its excesses must be tempered by a good deal of state intervention to keep people and businesses from running amok. In Capitalism: Money, Morals and Markets, John Plender, a columnist for the Financial Times who once worked in London's financial district, seeks to explain why capitalism, despite its many successes, continues to command "such uneasy support." He employs a wide range of sources to examine "many of the great debates about money, business, and markets not just through the eyes of economists and business people, but through the views of philosophers, politicians, novelists, poets, divines, artists, and sundry others." Sometimes this approach works. The people he quotes, almost always at great length, usually are on point and yield novel historical insights. At other times, the approach falters. The sourcing can seem gratuitous and distract from the narrative. More problematic than the extensive quotations he uses to put into context his own arguments are some of the arguments themselves. Two in particular stand out. First, he characterizes capitalism as something it isn't. Second, his criticism of the economics profession is too strong. People differ on the definition of capitalism. For some, it's a system of exchange unfettered by government intervention. For most, though, capitalism is defined less narrowly. The market is the principal instrument through which goods are allocated, but it's not the only one. There is room for government action to alleviate poverty and to provide education, among many other services — what believers in laissez-faire might call a "mixed economy." Plender certainly agrees that ample state provision of services is consistent with capitalism. Indeed, he thinks it's essential in order to fill in where markets fail and to keep the system sustainable. But the overwhelming sense one gets throughout the book is that Plender believes that a dominant — and perhaps the dominant — characteristic of modern capitalism is an oversized banking system dominated by a few very large institutions that have unfairly benefited from government support and whose executives are overcompensated relative to their performance. It's hard to argue that policymakers have not made mistakes in the way they have treated the banking industry. But insofar as this is true, Plender's complaint is with crony capitalism, not market capitalism. That the two have become so widely conflated is a serious problem for advocates of the latter. As for the economics profession, Plender writes that "much of the instability that currently afflicts the world economy is a direct reflection of an aberrant turn in the direction taken by academic economics over the past sixty years or so." Further, economists' "modelling activity is rooted in a form of deductive reasoning reminiscent of the medieval schoolmen. The underlying assumptions belong to the world of fantasy." On the first charge, he argues that a belief in market fundamentalism among economists, many of whom have made their way into policymaking in either an official or advisory capacity, laid the groundwork for the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and what he predicts will be "a further and more damaging crisis in due course." But it's hard to see how a doctrinaire faith in markets is to blame, as the economy has become, on balance, more regulated, not less regulated, over the past 60 years. And in the case of the financial sector, most proponents of the efficient markets hypothesis, which Plender derides, would like to see institutions bear the true costs of their mistakes, imposing discipline on them where not enough currently exists. As for the second charge, economists probably would benefit from more fully appreciating insights from related disciplines, but to say that their work is fantastical goes too far. There is good reason why assumptions are often oversimplified — and a lot of useful work has come from models with admittedly unrealistic assumptions. This review has been largely critical. Is it because Plender has written a bad book? No. It's because he could have written a better one. He is a person of vast learning and talent. Would that most of the book resembled this graceful and discerning passage from the closing chapter: "[I]t is the efforts of business people working within a market system that have lifted millions from poverty all across the world over the past two and a half centuries. It would take far worse than anything capitalism has inflicted on the world so far to outweigh that enormous benefit on any true set of scales." |
Docker, the company that backs the open source Docker container platform, announced on Tuesday that it has raised a $40 million Series C funding round, bringing the company’s total funding to $66 million. Sequoia Capital led the investment along with existing investors Benchmark Capital, Greylock Partners, Insight Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Jerry Yang. This current round of funding highlights just how important Docker’s take on container technology is perceived to be among investors and the tech community; in early August, two sources familiar with the funding round described Docker’s valuation at around $400 million. Docker has not disclosed its current valuation. Advertisement The container-management startup has captured the attention of the cloud world this summer with numerous big tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and VMware showing support for the startup by ensuring that their own platforms are compatible with Docker’s container technology. What makes Docker so big right now is the potential that container technology could bring to application development, as well as how it could make it possible for companies to have more efficient and better-performing operational infrastructure, the likes of which are seen at [company]Google[/company] and elsewhere around the web. A mini startup ecosystem has started to emerge around [company]Docker[/company] as well, with [company]CoreOS[/company] and its custom Linux operating systems that power Docker containers gaining a lot of attention by developers. Startups like ClusterHQ and ElasticBox have been busy launching container orchestration tools to help make managing several Docker containers less of a hassle, and even telecommunications firm CenturyLink has developed one. Developers can benefit by using containers — essentially, a type of virtualization technology that allows for multiple applications to run on the same host Linux OS kernel without impacting each other — to help them craft modern-day software applications, which are generally comprised of many different components distributed across several cloud servers. With their applications tucked away in the shell of a virtual container, Docker’s platform makes it easier for developers to deploy their applications across many different environments without having to worry that one particular component of an application — like a database — will impact another component. In an interview with Gigaom in June, Docker CEO Ben Golub told me that Docker solves this “matrix from hell.” Golub also said that with containers, it’s possible for companies to see their operational workloads end up being 20-80 percent lighter than using only virtual machines, because unlike with virtual machines, a user doesn’t have to spin up multiple operating systems for each application. The company says that the Docker platform has been downloaded 21 million times and its Docker Hub now houses over 35,000 Docker-centric applications. Sequoia Capital partner Bill Coughran, who was a Google senior vice president of engineering for over eight years, will be joining Docker’s board. |
War-torn South Sudan could become the scene of the worst famine catastrophe in Africa in decades without more aid and a ceasefire to let farmers reach their fields, the UN warned Thursday. "If we miss the planting season, there will be a catastrophic decline in food security," Toby Lanzer, the UN's top aid official in the country, told reporters in Geneva. "What will strike that country, and it will hit about seven million people, will be more grave than anything that continent has seen since the mid-1980s," he warned, referring to the massive famine in Ethiopia that shocked the world's conscience. South Sudanese farmers usually plant their fields in April and May, but they have been unable to start this year amid a raging civil war. "We've got 3.7 million people who are already at severe risk of starvation," Lanzer said. If people can't make it to their fields in the next two months, he said, "it doesn't take much to imagine what will happen when the harvest is due in November and December: There won't be one". Making matters worse, the violence has meant UN agencies are having huge difficulty pre-positioning food stocks before the onset of the rainy season, when downpours will make already challenging roads even more difficult to navigate, he said. The violence in South Sudan erupted last December between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and fighters loosely allied to former vice president Riek Machar. A ceasefire signed in January is in tatters. More than 800,000 people are displaced inside South Sudan, while almost 255,000 have ?ed to the neighbouring countries of Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Sudan, the UN says. Lanzer insisted on the need to quickly ensure enough security for people to feel it is safe to head to their fields, and to bring in far more aid in the form of seeds and tools to help get things started. He said that donations so far had fallen far short of needs, with a UN appeal for nearly $1.3 billion for aid to the country only a quarter funded. The world body needed $232 million to ensure only the bare minimum of humanitarian aid in South Sudan through the end of May, he said. Lanzer said the UN was working hard to prevent the existing catastrophe from metastasising, stressing that "if that were to happen, it's going to cost people a whole lot more." "We are facing certainly one of the gravest humanitarian challenges that I have every seen," said Lanzer, who has also served in East Timour, Darfur and the Central African Republic. "And it could get a lot worse." Short link: |
Disclaimer: We don't actually think any of this stuff is all that weird... But then, we live here. So we're accustomed to watching shrieking bats fly overhead, sipping avocado margaritas, and attending secret underground wrestling leagues in breweries. It's all part of the cultural fabric that makes Austin, Austin. They say "From the outside looking in you can never understand it, and from the inside looking out you can never explain it," but we'll give it a try anyway. Here are some of the Weirdest Things You Can Do in Austin. By Rory Jones Photo Credit: Courtney Goforth Chicken Shit Bingo at Little Longhorn Saloon / C-Boys 5434 Burnet Rd 2008 S Congress Ave Yes, Chicken Shit Bingo is a real thing, and we love it. There's just something downright beautiful about a bird's completely random pooping pattern defining the outcome of a high stakes parlor game. As an added bonus, it confirms the rest of the country's strangest suspicions about what we get up to for fun. Photo Credit: Courtney Goforth 412 E 6th St If you possess any interest in the strange, peculiar, or supernatural, the Museum of the Weird needs to be on your radar. For the $12 price of admission, guests have the opportunity to feast their eyes with enough weirdness to last a lifetime. A walk through the museum features terrifying props from mostly forgotten B-Horror movies, pirate skeletons, Fiji mermaids, medical oddities of varying sizes encased in glass boxes or entombed in formaldehyde, shrunken heads, an assortment of wax figures, a photo-ready King Kong replica and the exclusive privilege of getting to view what is perhaps the holy grail of cryptozoological artifacts, The Minnesota Iceman. Resist the urge to Google that one, it's more fun to go in blind. Suffice it to say, guests are strictly forbidden from taking photos of whatever lies in that final back room. 4422 Lareina Dr. This one's an Austin original. The Cathedral of Junk is exactly what it sounds like - a cathedral made of junk. That doesn't make it any less impressive, though. Scraps of all conceivable origin have been painstakingly assembled into what is probably the most astounding collection of bric-a-brac ever. Find out more about the Junk King right here. Photo Credit: Roger Ho Living in a bubble typically gets a bad rap. But how about playing soccer in one? Austin Bubble Soccer has turned that notion into a full-blown mission, and we can happily report that the activity is safe, silly, and super fun - probably all in equal measure. The game basically mirrors the mechanics of actual soccer, except you're in, you guessed it, a giant bubble. This allows for fun things like front and back flips, as well as high speed, bouncy-but-painless collisions with other players. 812 Airport Blvd Be honest, you've probably never really thought about throwing an ax. Short of ruminating on an inner Viking fantasy in which you conquer an unsuspecting coastal village... why would you? Having now chucked a handful of hatchets through the air ourselves, we can field that question with a simple answer: because it's really, really fun. How does competitive ax throwing work, exactly? You throw a 1.5 lb hatchet at a large wooden bullseye while drinking beer. For the record, the beer part isn't a necessary part of the process, but Urban Axes is BYOB and boy does it make for some nice company. Essentially, the game closely mirrors the rules of darts, but with well, axes. Read more about it here. Weird Wednesdays at Alamo Drafthouse At The Ritz 320 E 6th St Weird Wednesdays at the Alamo Drafthouse is kinda like the equivalent of that weird friend you had in college who played Magic: The Gathering and was a little too into Captain Beefheart. Okay, maybe you didn't have that specific friend in college, but the point we're making here is that Weird Wednesdays showcase the kind of fringe elements of cinema that would otherwise never find a wider audience. Find out more. 313 E 6th St You may have heard of Midnight Cowboy… then again, perhaps not. Nestled in a small space on 6th street and with no discerning physical qualities to attract passersby, it's easy to miss--unless you already know what you're looking for. The space itself is infamous, existing in its prior incarnation as a "massage parlor." Okay, that means a brothel. With 6th Street's well-deserved reputation for rambunctiousness, the weirdest thing about Midnight Cowboy is how downright dignified it feels. This old-school style speakeasy requires you to ring a buzzer to enter and have your cell phone kept firmly in your pocket for the duration of your stay. Now enter, and have your cell phone kept firmly in your pocket for the duration of your stay. Not being allowed to check your phone every five seconds? Now that's weird. Eeyore's Birthday at Pease Park 1100 Kingsbury St Eeyore's Birthday Party certainly attracts a varied crowd. You've got hippies, weirdos, furries, responsible parents, dogs, and all other manner of folk attending this adored annual tradition. It's a perfect harmony of the people who make up Austin, Texas. It's held annually on the last Saturday of April at Austin's Pease Park. TuesGayz at Barbarella 615 Red River St TuezGayz at Barbarella is a weekly queer-friendly dance party, but everyone is welcome to pack this smoke-machine dance floor and shake that booty into a frenzy. If you see a friend on a Wednesday and they look a little (read: a lot) more haggard than usual, Tuesgayz is likely the culprit. 525 E 6th St You know you're a true weirdo when they make a documentary about how weird you are. "Crazy" Carl Hickerson has been a fixture outside of Esther's Follies for a while now. Step inside Esther's, and you'll find nightly shows that run the gamut from sketch comedy to modern-day vaudeville and everything in between. 7000 Comanche Trail It doesn't get much weirder than Hippie Hollow. The fact that it's the only clothing-optional public park in the entire state of Texas actually makes it legally weird. So yes, if you come to Hippie Hollow, you're going to see people in their birthday suits. Don't be shy. A landmark Austin hangout since the 1960s, Hippie Hollow has weathered the storms of change and remained an idyllic microcosm of the Free Love Generation. Indeed, the park is most notable for being the sole legally recognized clothing-optional public park in Texas, but its general air of goodwill and casualness is equally important. Photo Credit: Instagram / Toddwhite The Museum of Natural & Artificial Ephemerata 1808 Singleton Ave The first weird thing about the Museum of Natural & Artificial Emphemerata is that it's located in a house in East Austin. The makeshift museum hosts weird bits of esoterica like jackalopes, pickled critters, and a wide array of artifacts that fall squarely into the "Huh?" category. Be sure to check out their four-legged duck while you're there. Photo Credit: Roger Ho Peter Pan Mini-Golf 1207 Barton Springs Rd Peter Pan Mini Golf is the only place in town we're aware of that has a giant T-Rex statue, which is notable in and of itself. Beyond that, the course has a ton of creepy old sculptures with painted faces to keep you company as you play your round of miniature. It's also BYOB, so you can uh, weirdly stumble around the course. Party World Rasslin' at 4th Tap Brewing Party World Rasslin' brings body slams, laughs, and beer to 4th Tap Brewing in North Austin. "Wrestling is ballet with violence," former professional wrestler and muckraking god Jesse Ventura once remarked. While Ventura's aphorism may seem like nothing more than a pithy joke, an implication lies underneath his irony that begs further exploration: Wrestling—in all its forms—requires focus, meditation, and planning. Like ballet, wrestling is not a sport, but an art; a craft to be studied and perfected. But if ballet dazzles audiences with grace and beauty, then wrestling, or at least professional wrestling, dumbfounds spectators with action and excess. Find out when PWR's next event is here. Photo Credit: Instagram / fwootbat Carousel Lounge 1110 E 52nd St Carousel Lounge is the definitive answer to a question nobody asked: Where would Hunter S. Thompson wet his whistle in Austin? With its disorienting cascade of brightly colored lights and baffling commitment to a distinctly tacky, circus-like aesthetic, Carousel Lounge feels exactly like the kind of Vegas bar Thompson would stumble into in a debauched fury and then write about later. Photo Credit: Alamo Drafthouse 1120 S Lamar Blvd The Highball might just have the strangest karaoke rooms in the United States. In fact, Spin Magazine enjoyed the weirdness enough to do a whole story about them. One room looks satanic, another is themed after David Lynch's cult phenomenon Twin Peaks, and yet another is modeled after Super Mario Bros. It's an amazingly strange place to belt out your favorite tune. |
I’ve been writing this blog for a long time. It’s pretty amazing to me to realize just how long – the original version of Good Math/Bad Math started over 9 years ago! I’ve gone through some times when the blog was really busy, and some when it was really slow. Lately, it’s been the latter. Since my mom died a few months back, I’ve been depressed, and finding enough motivation to blog after a full day of work has been difficult. But I’m trying to get back to normal, and start updating the blog at least a couple of times a week. A few weeks back, one of my blog-friends asked me to write about type theory. Type theory comes up a lot in programming language design, particularly in the functional programming world. If you can’t talk intelligently about quantified types, existential types, dependent types, and similar stuff, you’re largely locked out of discussions. I’ve taken a couple of weak stabs at type theory over the years, but I’ve never tried to really do it justice. It’s a hard topic, and even though it’s got a lot of overlap with my professional focus, I’ve never been formally trained in it. I’ve never actually taken a course in type theory – I’ve learned it on my own, as I’ve studied programming languages and denotational semantics. Now seems like a good time to give it a try. It’s a subject that I’m obviously pretty interested in. To start, I’m going to recycle a couple of old posts. I’ve written about the simplest version of type theory that I know, something called ST. I’m rewriting tha old post here. After that, I’ll rewrite some material about the simply typed lambda calculus, putting into a more type-theoretic framework. Then I’ll move from there into basic type theory, intuitionistic type theory, and the various type system heirarchies, like System-T, System-F, Lambda-cube, etc. So, today: ST type theory. I’ve said many times that I’m a programming language guy, and that’s how I approach this stuff. For someone who works on programming languages, types are old hat. They seem like such an obvious idea that it’s hard to conceive of a world in which they aren’t a part of the mathematical background. But in the world of math, they’re a relatively recent invention. (In computer science, they’re ancient history: type theory predates the first real computers.) The roots of type theory are the same as the roots of axiomatic set theory. The point wasn’t to support anything computational; the point was to try to salvage set theory. Cantor had devised set theory, and once people started to understand it, the mathematical community thought it was the neatest thing ever! Set theory was just wonderful! Except for the part where it was a total inconsistent train wreck. Mathematicians love set theory. It’s a system on which all of mathematics can be built, using a basis which is simple, using nothing but intuitively clear concepts. That’s lovely. Unfortunately, as we know, simple intuitive ideas often don’t work. Cantor’s set theory had a huge problem: it was inconsistent. Here’s the problem. In set theory, you’ve got these collection of things called sets. The main thing that you can do with sets is say, “I’ve got this object here. You’ve got a set. Is my object part of your set?”. For any possible pair of object and set, there can be only one correct answer: either the object is in the set, or it isn’t. There’s no middle ground: there’s no way an can be both in and not in a set. In Cantor’s version of set theory, you could define a set using logic, in a process called comprehension. He said that if you can write a logical predicate, then there’s a set which contains the collection of objects that satisfy that predicate. Using comprehension, you can define sets that range over sets. For example, you can define the set of all sets with an even number of elements. The catch is that Cantor didn’t place any restrictions on those predicates. So you can create sets based on predicates that range over themselves. You can define a set which is a member of itself, like the set of all sets. Using that, you can make up some silly sets. For example: Is the set of all sets that contain themselves a member of itself? Well, if it is, then it is. If it isn’t, then it isn’t. Both yes and no! The english statement, “the set of all sets that contain themselves”, doesn’t uniquely identify one set. There are two different sets that match that description! There’s one that does contain itself, and there’s one that doesn’t! We’ve already a problem in a lesser way: even written in careful predicate logic, the definition is ambiguous when it shouldn’t be. But there’s more trouble ahead. If we can define the set of all sets that do contain themselves as a member, then we can also define the set of all sets that do not contain themselves as a member. Let – that is, it’s the set of all sets that do not contain themselves as a member. Is ? If is not a member of itself, then by the definition in the comprehension, it must be a member of itself. But if it is a member of itself, then by that same definition, it can’t be. It can’t be a member of itself. But it also can’t not be a member of itself. That’s a demonstration of the fundamental inconsistency in Cantor’s set theory, and it’s commonly known as Russell’s paradox. It’s caused by the ability to build unlimited self-referential statements about sets and set membership. Inconsistency is a big deal in mathematics: if you’re working in an inconsistent system, then every statement is provably true in that system. That’s another way of saying that proving something in an inconsistent system is completely useless, because the proof doesn’t actually tell you that the thing you proved is true! Using Cantor’s formulation of set theory, I can start with a statement that I know really is true, and I can work out a valid proof to show that it’s true. But I can also start with a statement that I know is false, and I can work out a perfectly valid proof that shows that false statement is true. I can prove that the sum of the integers from 1 to N is , and I can also prove that . Any inconsistenty in a formal system means that the entire system is useless. Russell’s paradox meant that nothing that had been proven with set theory could be trusted! None of the methods of proof that people had come to love from working with set theory could be followed, because the entire basis was inconsistent! Mathematicians wanted to find a way to preserve as much of set theory as possible, while getting rid of the inconsistency. That led to a lot of different systems. I’ve talked a lot on this blog about axiomatic set theory, which was the most well-known and widely accepted approach to the problem. Type theory is a different one. What type theory does is start with a notion very similar to sets: collections of objects. The difference is that in type theory, instead of having sets which define collections of objects using logical predicates, in type theory, you have collections called types. The types are highly stratified, in a way that prevents you from creating anything self-referential. The way that you do that is by building a ladder of types. Any type theory has some collection of primitive atoms. An atom is, as the name suggests, a simple object which isn’t made up of other objects. An atom is just itself – it doesn’t contain anything. In our ladder of types, we start with the atoms. Atoms are level-0 objects. Using atoms, you can define types, which are collections of atoms. A level-1 type is defined by a predicate over level-0 objects. The level-1 type is, itself, a level-1 object. So a level-1 object is a collection of level-0 objects. A level-1 type can only range over level-0 objects, so it’s impossible for a level-1 object to contain itself. No self-reference paradox can even be written here! You can continue the process by adding new levels. You can define level-1 predicates (that is, predicates ranging over level-1 types) – and the resulting collection is a level-2 type. And so on: any level-N type is a collection of types from level N-1, defined by a level N-1 predicate. This produces a strict ladder of types and objects, and no type can contain anything from its own level. Russell’s paradox is averted. But the cost is complexity: most theorems that were provable in set theory are also provable in type theory, but they’re often a lot more complicated, both in how they’re stated, and in how they’re proven. Of course, as I always say, informal explanations of formal things are always wrong. Formality exists for a reason: it allows us to say things in precise, unambiguous ways. If we want to understand even the simplest bits of type theory, we can’t just stop with the informal explanation: we need to hit the formalisms as well. We’re going to start with the simplest version of type theory, a system called ST. ST is defined axiomatically. The axioms are, mostly, very similar to the basics of axiomatic set theory – especially to the NBG formulation. In NBG set theory, we have a collection of axioms that define what sets are and how they work. We define set equality with an axiom of extensionality; we define how we can construct new sets using logical predicate via an axiom of comprehension; we define the existence of infinite sets using an axiom of infinity. In ST type theory, we have similar axioms – identity/extensionality, comprehension, and infinity (but as we’ll see, the ST axiom of infinity is strange and back-handed compared to NBG). The axioms explicitly capture the idea of stratification that I described informally above. In each axiom, I’ll refer to objects of one level using lowercase letters; I’ll write objects of the next higher level by appending a prime-mark to the letters. So if is a level-1 object, then would be a level-2 object. ST has four axiom schemas. Axiom of Identity: This is straightforward – it’s an upside-down version of the axiom of extensionality in NBG set theory. If two objects are members of exactly the same collection of types, then they’re equal. Another way of saying that is that two objects are equal if there is no predicate that can distinguish between them. Axiom of Extensionality: This is pretty much an exact copy of the NBG axiom of extensionality, except that it specifies the fact that an object can only be in a type that is one level higher than . Axiom of Comprehension: If is a th-order predicate, then This is very similar to the axiom of comprehension from NBG set theory, modified for the strict stratification of type theory. It says that if there’s a predicate over level- objects, then the set of level- objects that satisfy that predicate are a level type. Axiom of Infinity: There exists a relation, “ ”, which ranges over pairs of atoms, and which is total, irreflexive, transitive, and strongly connected, such that . This axiom is a strange beast. It’s defining the fact that there is an infinitely large type, but it’s doing it in a very backhanded way. In set theory, we were able to use Cantor numbers to define an infinite sequence of sets corresponding to natural numbers – and then using the construction of natural numbers with the other axioms, we could build more expansive sets of numbers – integers, reals, complex, etc. But in type theory, we can’t do that. The Cantor numbers are defined by using things that belong not just to different types, but to different type strata. In cantor numbers, the number is the set of the representation for . So the cantor-0 is the empty-set, which is level-0. The Cantor-1 is the set containing the empty set, which is level 1. The Cantor 2 is the set containing the Cantor 1 – which is level 2. And so on. The canonical infinite set in axiomatic set theory is an object which can’t exist in type theory, because it’s got members that span multiple levels. In ST type theory, there’s no simple constructive way of building an infinite collection like the Cantor numerals which doesn’t violate the stratification of type theory. So type theory needs to go at in a different way. The way it does it is by defining a relation between atoms that can only be satisfied by an infinitely large set. The existence of the relation over the type implies that the type must also exist. The relation itself isn’t that hard – what’s hard about it is grasping the full implication of it. The relation is just something that behaves like numeric less-than: It’s a relation over a pair of values. You can think of it as a function, . It’s total, meaning that every possible value appears as both the left and the right parameter of <: so no matter what, for any value , there is some atom where , and some atom where . It’s irreflexive: so there is no smallest number , where . It’s transitive – so if and , then . It’s strongly connected – so there isn’t a group of free-standing finite pools. All of that, together, means that there’s an infinitely large pool of numbers, and that they’ve got enough properties to represent the integers. ST type theory is, in my opinion, a mixed bag. From the perspective of a programming language guy, we haven’t gotten anything out of it that’s particularly valuable. It’s not particularly expressive. It is a simpler system, axiomatically, than type theory – and that’s nice. But proofs written using this kind of theory as a basis are more complicated – sometimes a lot more complicated – than they’d be in NBG or ZF set theory. The additional effort to understand the set theory axioms has a payoff in making everything easier. But ST is just a starting point. In fact, most programming language type systems are derived from a very different school of type theory: Per Martin-Lof’s intuitionistic type theory. The basic ideas are similar, but intuitionistic type theory is much more useful in computer science. |
Bobblehead Bobblehead Max Scherzer , which is absolutely not thinking evil thoughts right now. Nope. (h/t Tom Leyden Opening Day means crazy promotions and fun festivities for the whole family at ballparks across the country. In Detroit, it also apparently means scaring the living everything out of Tigers fans as they enter Comerica Park, courtesy the life-size Max Scherzer bobblehead the team created and apparently had no one double check to make sure it didn't look like it was thinking of invading your dreams and murdering you. It's impressive how everything comes together to make this photo so horrifying: The weird titled angle of Bobble Scherzer's head, his demonic rictus smile, the way his eyes seem to be pointing in two completely opposite directions. Maybe the plan was to place Bobble Scherzer outside the visitors' clubhouse and just make them too scared to come outside. Of course, Detroit could've gone another direction with its well-intentioned yet deeply distressing Opening Day display. https://twitter.com/SBNationMLB/status/450666464735809536 |
In an extensive post-mortem submitted to Gamasutra Danny Hayes describes the gruelling five-year development of parallax platformer Poncho. He says that he and his two colleagues have yet to make “a single penny from Poncho” and puts much of that failing on the game’s publisher Rising Star Games. However, in describing Poncho’s development and his interactions with RSG, it looks like many of Hayes’ problems may have been of his own making. Hayes was initially ambiguous about RSG’s involvement in Poncho’s development, saying After negotiating through all our options, we landed on Rising Star Games, mainly because they were in the same country and seemed to know what they were doing with indies. I also thought they seemed like nice people at the time. We got funded for slightly less than what we asked for in our kickstarter, but we were funded. We did have much higher offers, but turned them down since other publishers asked if they could change the game. Now, this is where writing this gets tough. For legal reasons, there’s a bunch of events here that we can’t talk about. There would be massive repercussions if we do, and we’ve been told as much. I would, however, suggest this to all you other developers out there: Think very, very, very hard about whether or not getting a publisher is right for you. Later in the article Hayes states that Poncho’s ports were taken away from his studio, Delve Interactive, and outsourced to another company. Shortly after publication, Hayes’ post-mortem picked up traction on Twitter with many developers discussing its contents. The publicity of the article led to Rising Star Games posting a response in the comments of Destructoid, where a summary of the post-mortem was being discussed: The statement from RSG begins by explaining why the company chose to comment when it would normally remain silent: “The piece from Danny Hayes calls into question our professional abilities and may impact upon our games publishing business – we’d like to set the record straight or, at least, provide some sort of balance.” The statement goes on to say RSG struck a deal with the studio to advance funds to the team as it completed development milestones “proposed by Delve”. RSG also funded Poncho’s marketing, which included getting it on the show floor at events like Rezzed and Gamescom in 2015. However RSG went on to say that: [N]ot one development milestone was achieved to schedule by the dev team. Consequently, the game release was postponed. RSG kept spending. Delve kept working but eventually communicated ‘It’s just too much for one person to handle’ – the game would be many more months in development. As a result of these delays, RSG took the PS4 devkits from Delve and hired another studio to handle the port. Development of the Vita version of the game remained with Delve and Rising Star says that “The first notice we have received that the PS Vita version will not be completed by Delve is in the post-mortem posting across the weekend.” It is worth spelling out what this means, inasmuch as RSG has learned from the media that a game it had contracted and scheduled for release is now cancelled. RSG now has to inform the platform holder and distributors about this cancellation, after everyone’s already read the news. RSG’s statement ended with what, in the circumstances, is a restrained summary of Poncho’s development and their involvement. It is striking that Delve, who ended up making a 2D platformer over five years, should attribute the game’s lack of success almost entirely to a publisher that got involved at a relatively late stage. “We are desperately upset that “Poncho” wasn’t a hit product,” Rising Star Games says. “We funded and promoted at each turn – determined to give the game its best shot. It’s what we do for many games from many partners. This one didn’t work out. We got things wrong too but to suggest that RSG caused a series of “events” that largely contributed to Danny’s parlous state ignores the repeated failings of the dev team to deliver on the promises and agreed work.” Two hours after Rising Star commented, Hayes responds in greater detail about the publisher’s actions through Poncho’s development, saying that “Rising Star Games have decided to take [sic] their dirty laundry out in public.This is the very thing we restrained ourselves from doing while writing the post-mortem, which we wrote for other developers in order to stop them from making the same mistakes we made.” Hayes begins by saying what Rising Star provided: “They provided the following things for Poncho: Localisation, a trailer, taking the game to a few big game expos and doing interviews there, provided sony dev kits and sending out a few press releases as well as some social media posts. We agreed on funding Poncho for £25K, which we calculated as the bare minimum we needed, as long as we got a small amount in advance, as you may remember in the postmortem, I said that I had less than £100 personally at this time.” Hayes then admits that while Delve Interactive negotiated “an ‘on delivery’ milestone system”. The day after signing the contract he contacted Rising Star Games asking for “a small amount of start up funds”. Rising Star said no to providing an advance and Hayes told the publisher this would cause delays. “ Now of course, it's my fault for not having this amended in the contract, but they could have easily paid a couple thousand in the beginning to ensure smooth development,” Hayes writes. “As a result, we had to work part time immediately and take time off the game to be able to live, plus we couldn't pay anyone to work on the game.” Hayes admits to missing milestones, saying “this bump caused a ripple throughout development.” He also says that he contacted Rising Star “many times” asking for £2,000 or more in advance to get back on track. The final milestone Delve Interactive and Rising Star Games had agreed in the contract was that on completing the game and all its ports the final 20% of the game’s development funds would be released to the developer. As Poncho’s Vita port remains uncompleted, Delve has not fulfilled that final milestone and so has still not received the final 20% of development funds. Hayes then claims that Rising Star Games has blocked Delve from being able to complete its final milestone by not providing the studio with a PlayStation Vita development kit. “I knew, and they knew, that sales had been disappointing,” Hayes writes. “It just wasn't worth it to [Rising Star Games] anymore to give up some thousands for the vita version. So they blocked us. Not officially, but by not allowing us a dev kit and not allowing [port developer Just Add Water] to work on it anymore.” Update: In a clarifying email, RSG's COO Martin Defries said "To develop the PS Vita version the developer doesn't actually need the dev kit to make the game – just to test it in a Vita environment. So we use our kit to test the builds he sends to us – we make use of the same kit for other games we are working with. He had continued to make builds and send them to us. They were unsatisfactory. It appears he has now ceased to do that." Finally, Hayes says Delve tried to end its contract with RSG: I offered many reasonable terms, including still giving them a hefty percentage of the game as a divorce fee. Their return offer was to threaten to sue us for hundreds of thousands of dollars and take control of the game if we attempted to go through with it. We were stuck. We were also told that we couldn't run a second kickstarter or look for funding elsewhere. It felt like we were being sabotaged by our own publisher. RSG didn’t want to comment further than its statement on Destructoid when I contacted them for this article. I also contacted Hayes, asking if Delve had given RSG any indication it didn’t have the funds to complete the work for the first milestone before it signed the contract. Hayes doesn’t answer explicitly, repeating what was in the Destructoid comment, saying “our initial impression was that the first milestone would be paid in advance, and the milestone deadlines that we provided were based on a plan that depended on this. Despite having already made a couple of amendments to the contract, we obviously made a mistake and missed a few things before signing since we then had to deal with the fact that we wouldn't be receiving funding for some time.” Sticking with finances, Hayes said “it literally only came down to that single miscommunication on the first milestone being an advance or not. We stipulated in the postmortem that £22,500 was the absolute bare minimum we needed in order to successfully develop the game, based on how much we all needed to survive and still work full time. This is why we set that as our kickstarter goal. As well as the miscommunication surrounding the first milestone causing delays, 20% of the funding we agreed on with Rising Star was set to be withheld until all development including ports had been completed, which means that we then had to deal with not being able to use 20% of the agreed funding on the actual game. We tried to explain to Rising Star many times how little sense that made, but again, we couldn't reach an agreement. I don't think they realised that we literally had no funding except what they gave us, which turned out to be less than the bare minimum goal we had set for the kickstarter. Since we didn't have enough to fulfil our plans, development was affected, but we pushed through and still released a game on multiple platforms, we'd never take someone's money and run away with it.” However, while Hayes puts all the blame of financial struggle on not getting an advance from his publisher, the fact is that if a publisher hadn’t signed with Delve then the team was out of cash. In Hayes’ post-mortem he says that he was down to his last £100 when RSG approached the team with a deal, having spent the last of his money and taken out a loan to exhibit the project at EGX. Delve is returning to Kickstarter for its next game: Change. Considering the financial trouble the team struggled with throughout Poncho’s development and its failings with sticking to its schedule, I also asked Hayes why potential backers should trust that Delve can deliver its next game. “Potential backers can feel safe in knowing that we won't let them down, especially since development of CHANGE is already 80% complete; we learned from our "Don't quit your day job" lesson and have been developing it over the last year,” Hayes answered. “The funding from the kickstarter will be used on porting costs as well as an overhaul of the art and music. Additionally, one of the backer rewards will be a download of the beta on the same day the kickstarter ends, and there will be a demo available publicly in the next month or so. Because of this we hope people will have faith that CHANGE will be in their hands soon.” It’s certainly refreshing to know there will be a demo of the game available to try. It’s a huge effort to take a personal project from conception to completion and I have the utmost respect for anyone who manages it. Poncho is a testament to the rigour and dogged determination of its makers. But the game’s development has mistakes which I don’t think the post-mortem really comes to terms with. The games industry is not unique in that you shouldn’t negotiate a contract you can’t meet. Delve set up a deal with a company that stipulated it would only be paid on completing its first milestone, but it didn’t have the development funds to do that work. Delve asked for an advance on the first day after signing this contract. Delve then proceeded to miss every deadline it had. It seems blinkered to blame the publisher for every problem in Poncho’s development. Whatever the truth behind this dispute, it serves as an object lesson for young developers. There is much to learn from Hayes’ post-mortem, but perhaps not in the way he thinks. Clarification: Hayes' post-mortem was posted on Gamasutra through its developer blog system and wasn't commissioned by Gamasutra. Update: A clarifying statement from RSG regarding how the publisher handles PlayStation Vita development was added. |
For years now, a defining assumption of the 2016 race has been that the House Republican majority is fundamentally not on the ballot. But thanks to Donald Trump, one of the leading House election analysts in America says it may be time to reconsider that assumption. Folks, it may be time to rethink whether the House could be in play in 2016. https://t.co/NtA8rniKuh @CookPolitical — Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) March 18, 2016 Dave Wasserman is the US House editor of the Cook Political Report, the gold standard for granular analysis of congressional races. The story he's teasing with this tweet doesn't say Democrats are likely to win a majority in November. It really just says that he's downgrading Republicans' chances in 10 races. But it says that a scenario that was previously thought to be simply impossible is now in the realm of possibility. Why Trump changes everything To see why a Democratic majority suddenly seems possible, just read Andrew Prokop's pre-Trump explanation of why it seemed so unlikely: Democrats currently need to pick up 30 seats to retake the House. The last time an incumbent president's party did that was 1964, when Lyndon B. Johnson won a 23-point victory over Barry Goldwater and Democrats romped nationwide to a 37-seat pickup. An incumbent president's party has not come even close to that since. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan each won 49 states in their landslide reelections of 1972 and 1984, but they only picked up 13 and 16 seats in the House, respectively. And landslides like those are all but inconceivable today in our increasingly polarized politics. When presidential elections are closer, the makeup of the House tends not to change very much. Democrats couldn't win a House majority because the only way to generate a wave election under normal circumstances is as a backlash against an unpopular incumbent president. The exception that proved the rule was 1964, when Republicans nominated an extremely unpopular candidate who deeply divided their party. That's a crazy thing to do, so most analysts simply assumed it wouldn't happen. And yet it's happening! Republicans still have big advantages The high odds of a Trump nomination and the fact that any alternative to a Trump nomination would almost certainly entail some kind of party-crushing convention hijinks mean that a Democratic wave is definitely on the table in a way it wasn't previously. But there is a big distance between possibly and likely. Recall that in 2012, not only did Barack Obama win a majority of the popular vote but more people voted for Democratic House candidates than for Republican ones. Nonetheless, Republicans won a majority of House seats due to gerrymandering and favorable geography. These advantages exist, along with the standard incumbent advantage and the reality that Trump would still be running in the context of a much more polarized country. That polarization could put a floor beneath Trump's vote share, or it could mean that center-right voters who won't back Trump will nonetheless vote to reelect a Republican House to check Hillary Clinton. Paul Ryan will probably be speaker in 2017 just as much as he is today. But while four months ago the idea that he might not be seemed totally crazy, as of mid-March it doesn't seem crazy at all. |
Testosterone is not good just for growing big muscles and turn men and women horny. A pilot research at UCLA indicates that testosterone fights multiple sclerosis (MS) in men after another large-scale clinical trial just underway confirmed that the female hormone estriol has the same effects on women. The team led by Dr. Rhonda Voskuhl, the director of Multiple Sclerosis Program, has discovered that a testosterone gel for men decreased MS symptoms, brain degeneration and grew up muscle mass in men with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (the most common type). Multiple sclerosis is a progressive degeneration of the central nervous systems due to the immune system. "MS and many other autoimmune diseases (in which the body attacks its own systems or tissues) are less common in men than in women, at a ratio of about three women to one man." said Voskuhl. This made researchers suspect that sex hormones and/or sex chromosomes could be behind this higher predisposition, and as testosterone has been found to combat MS-like condition in animals, the team started on this trail. 10 men with relapsing-remitting MS, average age 46, characterized by periods of neurological symptoms, like numbness or difficulty in walking, mingled with remissions, were enrolled. During a six-month pre-treatment phase, their symptoms were just monitored, without any therapy. During the 12 month treatment, each subject applied 10 grams of a gel (100 mg of testosterone) on his upper arms once daily. "After a year we saw an improvement in cognitive performance and a slowing of brain deterioration," said Voskuhl. The men displayed a brain deterioration rate 67 % lower and a muscle mass increase an average of 1.7 kg (3.74 pounds), with no side effects. "The other optimistic thing about this study was that the protective effect of testosterone treatment on brain atrophy was observed in the absence of an appreciable anti-inflammatory effect, which suggests the protection the testosterone provided may not be limited to MS, but may be applicable to other non-inflammatory neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease." said Voskuhl. "Overall, the use of the testosterone gel treatment in men with MS was shown to be safe and well tolerated. In addition, our exploratory findings suggest there's a possible neuroprotective effect of testosterone treatment in men, which we feel warrants a larger study." she added. |
My New Year's resolutions tend toward the prosaic: hit the gym, call Mom more often, clean out the 12,467 moldy emails clogging my inbox. But thanks to Ayse Birsel, this year I'm thinking bigger. In 2011, I plan to redesign my life. Birsel is a New York-based designer famous for her Resolve office system for Herman Miller, a versatile and people-friendly suite of workplace furniture, and for her wildly colorful and inventive M'Afrique collection for Moroso Over the past couple years, as she tried to juggle her business, her kids, and a commuter marriage between Manhattan and Dakar (and you thought your commute was brutal!), she kept trying to figure out a better way to stay on top of it all, to prioritize things so that she felt like she was controlling her life instead of the other way around. Eventually it dawned on her: organizing your life is not unlike other design problems she had tackled - messy, unfocused, fraught with constraints and complications. Why not, she thought, use the same processes and tools she would use to create, say, a new line of cookware for Target, to create a better life? With a bit of tinkering, her plan, "Design the Life You Love" was born. In November, she rolled out the prototype in a workshop at The School of Visual Arts sponsored by the Academi of Life, an educational organization devoted to exploring the art of living. Having tried it, I thought the exercise was a more interesting way to think about the New Year than another round of tired old pledges, sure to be abandoned by mid-month. So I asked Birsel to distill her program into simple steps that anyone motivated to make 2011 better than 2010 can put into practice. The week between Christmas and New Year's is a good time to think about what you want to happen in the year ahead, as the dregs of the old year give way to the fresh slate of the new. In her studio at Birsel + Seck, Birsel tackles each design project using four major steps: deconstructing the project, developing a new point of view, reconstructing a hierarchy, and expressing the result in a new way. Sounds tricky, but it's actually fun - which is central to the exercise. A playful state of mind will yield the best results, so put on some music, pour yourself some tea, grab a piece of paper, and play along. First step: Deconstructing. Draw a little map with all the important pieces of your life in circles: your work, your family, your hobbies, health, sports, places, etc. This is what a visual map of my life looked like. You may want to expand each of those to get a richer sense of what, say, "family" includes. That might mean spouse, kids, grandparents, siblings, etc. Same with work, and with hobbies. These are the pieces you'll be juggling to find a new, more satisfying, order. Now, look at this tangle of priorities and think about your current point of view toward your life. It helps, Birsel says, to imagine your life as a metaphor. What would it be? At the seminar in November, I tried this. It wasn't pretty: My life is a hamster Habitrail. My life is a juggling act, a pressure cooker, a stop watch, a taffy pull. Yikes! Get me a designer! Next, Birsel says, make a list of your heroes, and think about what it is about their lives that inspires you. That's easy! Tina Fey for being brilliantly funny, creative, and successful, while not taking herself too seriously. Anna Wintour for her steely commitment to excellence. Paula Scher for her feisty, opinionated, obsessive artistry. Julie Taymor. Cleopatra. Nora Ephron. A theme here? OK. So we've got a map, a metaphor, and some inspiration. Time to take these ingredients and shake them up. Step two: Shifting your Point of View The next task, Birsel says, is to shift your current point of view on life to a new one, using your heroes as inspiration. First up, imagine a metaphor that would describe the life you would like to have. Hmmm. Tough one. My life as a paintbox? A perennial garden? A cookbook? A ballet --- seemingly effortless elegance, underpinned with rigorous technique? In design, Birsel says, she uses tools to shift a current POV to a new and desired POV as a way to solve problems. "Most of us do this intuitively in our lives," she says. "We turn a negative into a positive (constraints into opportunities). We take something we learn in one area and apply it somewhere else (cross fertilization). We shift hierarchies. We put ourselves into someone else's shoes (empathize), we combine two things to have our cake and eat it too (dichotomy resolution). We are jolted into a new perspective by life's events like 9/11, the economy, or the birth of a child (catalyst events). " Think about the times when you found yourself shifting your point of view on something and think how it might apply to your current life. Gee. What if I moved to a different city? Changed jobs? Launched a new business? I think we can rule out having a baby.... Step three: Reconstructing the hierarchy Time to think about putting all these things back together in a new way. Birsel suggests drawing three circles and dividing them up into the things that are dominant in your life --- where you invest the most energy; subdominant - your secondary investment; and subordinate - the icing on the cake. Imagine if this were an Apple product. The dominant thing would be the screen. The subdominant would be the utilities. The icing would be the apps. Currently, my life might look like this: But what if I up-ended it by moving to Paris so it looked like this? Or if I decided to move to Paris and study painting, so it would look like this? Keep playing with the charts, shifting hierarchies, imagining different things at the center. Keep in mind the metaphor you aspire to, and think about your heroes and the qualities they have that inspire you. Step four: Express the life you envision in a new way. In a design studio, this might be the prototype stage. "My teacher Bruce Hanna at Pratt had a saying," Birsel says. "Mock it up before you fuck it up." So your homework now is to express this new vision in several ways: Write a few sentences describing it. Maybe now's not the time for that move to Paris. But I'll take a course at MOMA this spring, sign up for one of those painting courses in Provence for vacation, and look for a new apartment where I can have room for an easel. Do a little drawing of what it might look like, with stick figures. Diagram it. Make it visual. Tuck the picture or your little description in the pocket of your jeans, and start looking for ways to make that vision happen. |
Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. Singer and actress Demi Lovato is a strong supporter of LGBT rights. She played a lesbian character on Fox’s Glee, served as the Grand Marshal of the Los Angeles Pride Parade this year, and has spoken openly about her grandfather’s homosexuality. “I believe in gay marriage, I believe in equality,” Lovato told Cambio magazine. “I think there’s a lot of hypocrisy with religion…I just found that you can have your own relationship with God, and I still have a lot of faith.” Now, she’s made a video (watch above) with the Human Rights Campaign in support of marriage equality. The video, released on Wednesday, is part of HRC’s recently re-launched Americans for Marriage Equality campaign, which includes messages from Hillary Clinton, Bryan Cranston, Mo’Nique, and Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman. Here is Lovato’s message: Hey, guys, I’m Demi Lovato, and I’m an American for marriage equality. I believe that love comes in all different shapes, sizes, and colors. So whether you’re LGBT or straight, your love is valid, beautiful, and an incredible gift. So let’s protect love and strengthen the institution of marriage by allowing loving, caring, and committed same-sex couples to legally marry. Please join me and the majority of American citizens who support marriage equality. “We reached out to her [a couple months ago] knowing what a supporter of LGBT equality she is, and thought she would be great for this campaign,” Charles Joughin, an HRC spokesman, told Mother Jones. He also mentioned that they have more Americans for Marriage Equality videos lined up featuring other big names, from pro-athletes and movie stars to politicians and civil rights leaders. HRC will likely be released one video a week over the coming months. When asked if Lovato has any further plans to work with the LGBT civil rights group, Joughin said that nothing was discussed, but that they’d be more than happy to do so. “She certainly has done a lot for the larger movement…We haven’t taken it into consideration, but we’re such big fans of her we’d be thrilled to work with her in the future. Whether she’s doing work with HRC, or elsewhere, I am certain this is a cause she’s very committed to.” Now check out this video about Lovato sticking it to Russian president Vladimir Putin (and his anti-gay policies) during her New York City gay pride performance this summer. During the show, two of Lovato’s male backup dancers shared a kiss; one of them appeared to be naked and was holding a picture of Putin’s face over his crotch: |
Since next year's Big Ten basketball schedule was first published back in late February, I've been interested to see how the new 14-team layout might affect parity in an 18-game conference season. This year, each Big Ten team will play a home-and-home against five teams, whereas each team will play four teams only at home, and four teams just on the road. This will be different from last season, in which each B1G team played seven home-and-homes, two home only opponents, and two road only opponents. Thus, instead of playing about two-thirds of Big Ten teams twice, each conference member will only get home-and-homes against about one-third of the B1G. As a result, I wanted to figure out how imbalanced this new conference schedule would be, both in terms of the opponents that each team faces, as well as the amount of distance traveled for each game. I've been playing around with this for a while, but with basketball back in the spotlight as the Hoosiers took on opponents in Montreal earlier this week, I decided this would be a good time to finish up this analysis. Though let's be honest - basketball is always in the spotlight here in Indiana. The scheduling grid for the entire Big Ten Conference can be found here. I also made this table specifically of IU's opponents in the 2014-15 season: Table 1: Indiana Big Ten Opponent Breakdown, 2014-15 Home and Away Games Home Games Only Away Games Only Maryland Iowa Illinois Michigan State Michigan Nebraska Ohio State Minnesota Northwestern Purdue Penn State Wisconsin Rutgers As you can see, we once again get Purdue twice this year - which is how it should be - along with two more east coast trips in addition to the two we will be making to Madison Square Garden before conference play starts. Avoiding a Minnesota roadtrip to The Barn, which has been a tough location for us in recent years, will be nice; however, we will only play Wisconsin in Madison, a place where we haven't won since 1998, and that game will be nationally televised as part of ESPN's Super Tuesday. Now, let's take a look at how each team in the Big Ten performed in their conference last year: Table 2: Big Ten Conference Standings, 2013-14 Team W-L PCT Michigan 15-3 0.833 Wisconsin 12-6 0.667 Michigan State 12-6 0.667 Nebraska 11-7 0.611 Ohio State 10-8 0.556 Iowa 9-9 0.5 Maryland 9-9 0.5 Minnesota 8-10 0.444 Illinois 7-11 0.389 Indiana 7-11 0.389 Penn State 6-12 0.333 Northwestern 6-12 0.333 Purdue 5-13 0.278 Rutgers 5-13 0.278 Maryland and Rutgers are in italics because of course they weren't part of the conference last year; however, for the purposes of this analysis, let's lump their records in with the rest of the teams. After all, Maryland played in the ACC, which is always competitive, and Rutgers played in the American, which gave us the national champion. So while their former conference's RPIs may not have been as good as the Big Ten's, they still were in solid conferences and played some tough opponents; thus, I am not going to adjust or exclude their records for this analysis. The next thing I did was I took these conference records and plugged them into the scheduling matrix. I averaged the records of each opponent, giving double weights to the opponents that each team plays twice. If we factor in last year's results to this year's conference opponents, we find that Northwestern has the toughest conference schedule. Because a .500 Maryland team and a well below .500 Rutgers team have been added to the conference, this means that the average opponent records are not at .500, and they end up being closer to .486. Here's how it breaks down: Table 3: Average Record of Conference Opponents Team Conference Total Home Away Northwestern 0.528 0.512 0.543 Iowa 0.522 0.531 0.512 Illinois 0.506 0.469 0.543 Penn St 0.494 0.519 0.469 Rutgers 0.491 0.506 0.475 Minnesota 0.485 0.438 0.531 Indiana 0.482 0.488 0.475 Nebraska 0.482 0.463 0.500 Maryland 0.475 0.506 0.445 Purdue 0.475 0.500 0.451 Michigan St 0.475 0.469 0.481 Ohio St 0.475 0.500 0.451 Wisconsin 0.463 0.438 0.488 Michigan 0.454 0.494 0.414 So, good luck to Northwestern on getting that first NCAA Tournament trip. Not helping the Wildcats' cause is that they're the only team to face home-and-homes against Michigan, Michigan State, and Wisconsin. Meanwhile, last year's Big Ten champs face a relatively easy road, especially in their away games, as they only face Indiana, Maryland, Penn State, and Purdue on the road. We also see some fairly large data discrepancies in home and away games for some teams, such as Illinois and Minnesota getting a manageable home schedule but having a tough road for away games. Now, let's look at the travel schedules for each team. This Mgoblog diary from last year talks about proposed football divisions, but it also shows distances from school to school, as well as average distances between each university. I used this chart to calculate the average distance each Big Ten team will travel during the 2014-15 season by adding the miles traveled for each road game then dividing by nine. To normalize the distances, I used the percentage of difference between the distance traveled for the games and the average distance to each Big Ten campus. Below are those results: Table 4: Comparing Game Travel Distances to Average Distance from Each Campus Team Average Game Distance Traveled Average Distance to Each Campus Average Game Distance compared to Average Overall Distance Percent of Distance Traveled for Games Compared to Average Wisconsin 494.22 440.00 54.22 12.3% Northwestern 386.11 371.00 15.11 4.1% Rutgers 759.00 750.00 9.00 1.2% Michigan St 413.00 410.00 3.00 0.7% Nebraska 687.56 722.00 -34.44 -4.8% Minnesota 615.67 647.00 -31.33 -4.8% Indiana 387.00 416.00 -29.00 -7.0% Maryland 608.00 666.00 -58.00 -8.7% Ohio State 380.78 419.00 -38.22 -9.1% Penn State 515.44 572.00 -56.56 -9.9% Purdue 331.78 375.00 -43.22 -11.5% Iowa 389.56 467.00 -77.44 -16.6% Michigan 333.00 402.00 -69.00 -17.2% Illinois 303.56 387.00 -83.44 -21.6% Big Ten Average 471.76 503.14 -31.38 -6.6% (source: mgoblog.com/diaries/team-travel-distances-proposed-divisions) So, only four out of 14 teams travel more than their average distance to other B1G campuses. As you can see, Wisconsin has a particularly nasty travel schedule, as Frank the Tank and company will travel about 12 percent more next season than their average distance to each B1G school. This includes away games to both of the two new schools as well as Penn State. Meanwhile, not only do the Wolverines not have to travel much, but they also have an easy away schedule, as seen above. And while Illinois is tied with Northwestern for the toughest away schedule, they also don't have to travel as much as the Wildcats, which gives them a bit of a reprieve. On average, teams will travel about 7 percent fewer miles than their average distance to Big Ten schools. This makes sense, because teams will only be traveling to 9 of the 13 campuses during the season. Indiana is about at the average traveling distance, as the Hoosiers only travel an average of 387 miles per away contest, even though their average distance to each B1G school is 416 miles. Finally, let's end this analysis by plotting the two different measurements together. This chart shows the away team conference opponents' record for each team (last column of Table 3) on the x-axis, while the percent distance that a team will travel throughout the 2014-15 season (last column of Table 4), compared to the average Big Ten school distance, is plotted on the y-axis (click to enlarge). Figure 1: Travel Amount in Terms of Opponent Records This scatter plot further demonstrates the scheduling disparities, along with the trends that we've seen from the earlier tables. Northwestern gets shafted with both a tough travel schedule and tough away schedule. Meanwhile, Michigan gets a soft away schedule and a manageable travel docket (no trips to Minnesota or Nebraska, which are further away from Ann Arbor than the east coast schools). However, we have to take this analysis with a grain of salt. Last year's conference champions Michigan have lost many of their players, as have Big Ten tournament champions Michigan State, whereas Wisconsin is projected to be at the top of the standings. Of course, we remember how much Indiana fell last season, whereas Nebrasketball exceeded all expectations. The volatility of the Big Ten schedule could eventually produce more parity, as teams might either improve from last season, or regress toward the mean. So, what can we learn from this analysis? I'd like to offer a few takeaways: |
Figures. Iranian Regime Is Just Like the Democrat Party – They Bus in Their Protesters Too! (Video) Protests continued against the brutal and corrupt Khamenei regime in cities across Iran on Saturday. Anti-government protests were planned in several Iranian cities today. (Listed in Persian) In Tehran the people are ripping down Khamenei posters. The regime staged their own protests on Saturday. State TV aired video of clerics and their families protesting in support of Ayatollah Khamenei in Mashhad. #Update25– Looks like #Ayatollah_Khamenei has decided to turn peaceful protests into a #CivilWar. This is state tv showing 10% of #Mashhad’s population(mostly clerics and families of SF)chanting against protesters and calling them provocateurs.#IranProtests #RegimeChange pic.twitter.com/6WvTegmZQV — Raman Ghavami (@Raman_Ghavami) December 30, 2017 The mullahs are busing in their supporters. (Just like Democrats!) Via Iranian American activist Banafshah Zand: |
National Geographic says that warm climates are good and cold climates are bad. The Vikings settled Greenland during a period of exceptional warmth, the same warm period that saw expanded agriculture and the construction of great cathedrals in Europe. By 1300, though, Greenland became much colder, and living there became ever more challenging. Changing Greenland – Viking Weather – National Geographic Magazine In the same paragraph they say that a warmer climate is a threat The demise of those tough, seafaring farmers offers an unsettling example of the threats climate change poses to even the most resourceful cultures. Meanwhile Greenland is frozen solid and stuck below freezing – on June 8 Vikings couldn’t survive now, because it is too cold to farm. But Michael Mann says there never was a Medieval Warm Period, and the climate is much warmer now. Nothing alarmists believe makes any sense, but they are afraid to think for themselves, because they believe other people can see the Emperor’s New Clothes. |
Carrie Aldrich wasn't sure if she should speak up. But when Bernie Sanders asked for stories about living on low wages, she felt compelled to take the microphone. (Dalton Bennett/The Washington Post) Carrie Aldrich wasn’t sure whether she should speak up. The 46-year-old from Alden, Iowa, suffers from a combination of depression and anxiety, and hundreds of people filled the event hall. Dozens of members of the local and national media stood on a riser in the back of the hall, cameras trained on the stage. It was a lot to take in. But when Bernie Sanders asked for volunteers to share their stories of living on $12,000 a year, she felt compelled to take the microphone. What followed was one of the most emotional moments of any political event in the 2016 cycle thus far. She told Sanders -- and the crowd, and the cameras -- how she struggled to get by on “probably less” than the $12,000 figure Sanders threw out. How she couldn’t afford to buy presents for her daughter. How she worked “three, four, five jobs sometimes, always minimum wage,” despite having a college degree. What she left unsaid at the time was that, now, she can’t work. The medication she takes for depression and anxiety affects her ability to work, and besides, working would invalidate her disability claim. "You learn to get by with what you have," she said in an interview Wednesday. "And you learn how to fix things. You basically just learn how to survive." Aldrich’s story left the Vermont senator and surging presidential candidate momentarily speechless. And the same was likely true for most people watching. But he eventually added, "It is not easy for people to stand up and say that, but the truth is that until millions of people who are experiencing what you guys are experiencing do say that, we don’t make change." That brief exchange at an Iowa Falls, Iowa, rally on Monday provided a window into one of the centerpieces of Sanders’s campaign: Closing the wage gap between the rich and the poor. At a rally in Iowa Falls, Iowa, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asked people to share what it is like to live on $12,000 a year. One woman who said she lives on less than $10,000 a year because of disabilities became emotional while sharing her experience. (Reuters) Sanders wants to raise the national minimum wage to $15 an hour – more than double the current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, set in 2009. Someone working 40 hours a week would make $31,200 before taxes on a $15-an-hour wage -- a substantial increase over the $15,080 they would pull in working for $7.25 an hour. Hillary Clinton, by contrast, calls for a $12-an-hour minimum wage, while Republican candidates are firmly against raising it. (Marco Rubio went as far as saying raising the minimum wage would be a "disaster" economically.) This didn’t make the final piece but here’s how she thought other candidates might have reacted to her story pic.twitter.com/ZSXwUrT3Ma — Dalton Bennett (@DDaltonBennett) January 27, 2016 Sanders has surged in both early primary state and national polls in recent weeks, in part because of his platform of economic change, especially for low-income Americans. "You can't live in dignity on $10,000 or less," he said. When Aldrich left the town hall event on Monday, the first thing she did was call her parents. She wanted to warn them that they might see her on TV and to apologize for “embarrassing” them. Little did she know, she’d soon get hundreds of messages of support from people who empathize with her situation -- one that is likely fairly common among minimum-wage workers. The kind of emotional connection Aldrich made with Sanders -- and evidently with other voters, too -- can be rare. But as Fix boss Chris Cillizza wrote on Monday, it is extremely valuable. "That's what I feel about their whole campaign," Aldrich said Wednesday, wearing a blue "Bernie for president" T-shirt. "With them, there's hope." The Sanders campaign has thrived on excitement and large crowds -- especially with young people -- but will need to turn that excitement into votes once primaries begin. The more of an emotional connection Sanders makes with his supporters, the more of them are likely to turn out starting at Monday's caucuses. Dalton Bennett contributed to this post. |
SM Entertainment has revealed that the fourth “SMTOWN LIVE” world tour will begin in Seoul, South Korea on August 15th at the Seoul World Cup Stadium. Tickets will be available through Gmarket . The concert tour is expected to hit major cities around the world, with performances from Girls’ Generation, BoA, TVXQ, SHINee, f(x), EXO, and others. The third SMTOWN tour ended in August of last year with an encore performance in Tokyo. The concert tour also reached Anaheim in the United States, Hsinchu in Taiwan, Seoul, Jakarta, Singapore, Bangkok, and Beijing. Source: Sports DongA Written by: bhost909@soshified Have a news item that you think Soshified should know about? Leave us a tip or e-mail us at tip@soshified.com. Follow us on Twitter – http://twitter.com/soshified – for the latest on Girls’ Generation. |
By John Schroyer If anyone knows the Illinois medical marijuana scene, it’s Bob Morgan. Morgan was appointed by former Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn while he was still in office to oversee the implementation of the state’s MMJ program, which Quinn signed into law in 2013. Morgan stepped down from the post in May 2015 and moved into private practice with a Chicago law firm. In his new role, he still works closely with the cannabis industry, but not just in Illinois – he also does consulting work with companies in up-and-coming markets, such as Maryland and Hawaii. Marijuana Business Daily spoke to Morgan recently about the challenges facing MMJ companies in Illinois and whether the program will prove viable in the long run. What do you make of the back and forth between the state panel that has recommended twice now expanding the qualifying condition list and the reticence from the health commissioner to do so? On one hand, the advisory board is functioning as intended. There’s reasoned medical judgment, there’s review of research studies and there’s consideration of individual patient testimony. Yet there’s a lot of disappointment in the outright rejection of additions that were proposed to the health department. The state has suggested that we need more time to evaluate the success of the program, but I’m skeptical that we’ll see a different result in the second round of this consideration. I think expansion of the program is more likely to come from legislative action – as opposed to the way it’s working now, from the advisory board. I think that we have time, and there’s a possibility before the program expires at the end of 2017 to expand the medical conditions. The real question is what mechanism we use to do that. I would like to see the program expand. We’ve seen so much change in the industry, even just from the day the law went into effect almost two years ago, in terms of research, public support an specific examples of hundreds of people in the country and in Illinois that are benefiting from the program. One of the ongoing questions in Illinois – and Minnesota as well – is the relatively small number of patients who have registered so far. Is the Illinois program viable at this point with so few patients? That’s a really big question for the industry right now. When you look at other medical marijuana programs around the country, the vast majority of their patient populations – when they’ve had successful medical cannabis programs – generally speaking come from the category of chronic pain, which is missing from Illinois’ law. That’s a big bulk of the population that could be benefiting from medical cannabis. There’s also the lack of (post-traumatic stress disorder), which is another category that states have or are adding, and it’s another that Illinois doesn’t have in their law. So our patient population is low, and I’d love to see that continue to increase and make sure that those that are eligible actually get to participate. But even right now, with the conditions as they are, there are hundreds of thousands of people in Illinois that suffer from those conditions. So my bigger issue is making sure that those that could benefit from cannabis have access to it. In a worst-case scenario, if conditions such as chronic pain or PTSD aren’t added to the list by the time the program sunsets, what’s going to happen to companies that have invested a lot to get into the Illinois market? Are they going to be able to survive over the next year? I think the medical cannabis program is here to stay in Illinois. There are a lot of lives already being helped by medical cannabis, even in the last month. Hundreds of jobs are being created, and there’s more and more public support for the program. To me, there’s no question that the program is going to survive, and businesses certainly were aware that it would be a few years before they recovered the big bulk of money they spent on developing their facilities. And my sense is that businesses, while concerned about it, certainly know that it’ll be a long haul and a long play as opposed to a short-term gain. So I think the industry is going to survive. It’s going to expand and change over time, but the manner in which it expands and changes, that’s one of the big questions that’s going to be answered. What makes you so optimistic that the program will be renewed? For one thing, there’s really no precedent nationally of a state going in the opposite direction (and folding it entire medical marijuana program). Politically and legislatively, I think the support is already there for continuing the program. Getting a law passed to do that is a different story. The question for the state is, ‘What does the first six months, 12 months look like? What are the things we can change to make it better?’ And then continue to evaluate that as the sunset approaches at the end of 2017. Everything that’s happened so far suggests that this is a program Illinois can manage, and manage safely, and manage in a way that can help people that are suffering. And those are really strong indicators of where the state is going to go. Any words of advice for businesses in the state that may be struggling? Illinois issued licenses to these growers and dispensaries based on some of the best applications and the best models in the country for a cannabis business. The financial situation will improve, the number of patients will grow, and if they continue to do what they’re doing right now, which is enriching patients’ lives, I think the rest is going to take care of itself. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. John Schroyer can be reached at [email protected] |
On Saturday night Vermont jam quartet Twiddle concluded a brief Thanksgiving Run with their second of two performances at Paradise Rock Club in Boston. The band busted out a Daft Punk song, debuted a The Outhere Brothers cover and encored with “Eyes Of The World” at the Paradise. Twiddle opened with the instrumental “Blueberry Tumble” before embarking on a “Gatsby The Great” that spanned 25 minutes and contained “Divided Sky” (Phish) and “Too Many Puppies” teases. The first set continued with a “Too Many Puppies” sandwich on “Second Wind” bread and concluded with “Apples.” Saturday’s second set featured Twiddle’s first version of the Daft Punk classic “Robot Rock” since New Year’s Eve within their own “The Box.” Mihali Savoulidis & Co. also worked a debut cover of The Outhere Brothers’ “Boom Boom Boom” into “The Box.” For the encore, the quartet ended the night with their version of the Grateful Dead’s “Eyes Of The World.” Full show audio has surfaced and can be streamed below. Full Show Audio (Taped by Taper Chris) Setlist (via uTwiddle) Set One: Blueberry Tumble, Gatsby The Great[1], Second Wind > Too Many Puppies > Second Wind > Apples Set Two: Indigo Trigger > Wasabi Eruption -> The Box > Robot Rock > The Box > Boom Boom Boom[2] > The Box, Five, Every Soul Encore: Eyes Of The World Show Notes: This show was a part of the 2016 Thanksgiving Tour. This was the second of a two-night run at the Paradise Rock Club. The Jauntee and lespecial opened the show. “Robot Rock” was last performed on 2015-12-31 (92 shows). |
Previous | Next The Plumber That Can't Posted at: 2009-07-21 09:40:44 Original ad: I NEED CASH! I am a handyman and can do all kinds of work. I do plumbing, dry wall, electric, general construction, and any other job you need done! Email or call From Dan Gibson to *************@********.org Hello, Your handyman skills are needed. I have a problem I was hoping you would be able to help me with. Last night, when I was throwing up, I accidentally dropped my phone in the toilet and flushed it. It is a small phone, so I am pretty sure it made its way to my septic tank in the backyard. I need to get this phone back. It has an irreplaceable picture of my friend Tim hooking up with a fat chick, and I need this picture so I can taunt him with it for the rest of his life. I will hire you to sift through my septic tank to find the phone. It is a 1250 gallon septic tank, and has not been drained in a while. On the plus side, I will let you keep anything you find that is not my phone. There is probably a ton of spare change that was accidentally flushed, and maybe some other treasures. The pay for this job could potentially be huge. Please let me know when you can help. I am free all week. Just contact me via e-mail, because my phone obviously is in a world of shit (no pun intended) Thanks, Dan From ivan ******* to Me you must be out of your fucking mind. From Dan Gibson to ivan ******* So is that a yes? Your handyman ad said that you did plumbing. Dan From ivan ******* to Me yeah but did it say that i swim through tanks of fucking shit? no. you couldnt pay me a thousand dollars to do that. From Dan Gibson to ivan ******* Well I just thought that was implied with "I do plumbing." I didn't realize it meant that you didn't take jobs that you are too scared to do. I just remembered, a while ago, my ex-wife's engagement ring was accidentally flushed when I was nailing her on the toilet. If you find it, it is yours. It is only a cubic zirconia (fooled her, ha ha!), but it is still probably worth about $50. I also just flushed some air fresheners down the toilet, to freshen up the septic tank for you. Are you going to help me now or what? From ivan ******* to Me Wow You sound like a real classy guy. you dont need a handyman what you need is a fucking septic tank expert with a death wish. fuck off. From Dan Gibson to ivan ******* Nah, I think I just need a REAL handyman, not some pussy who says he does plumbing but then backs out when he finds out that the job is too hard. It isn't even a hard job, so I don't know what your problem is. Hell, my 10-year-old son could do this. In fact, he has done this before. I'd ask him to do it again but the ex took my kids and moved to Arizona. Will you hurry up and do the job? The phone is still ringing when I call it from the house, but the battery life will not last that long. I think I can even hear it when I stand outside over my septic tank. 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Kingdom Hearts 3, the 10th installment in the Kingdom Hearts series and the final game in its current storyline, will launch for PlayStation 4, Square Enix announced today during Sony's E3 press conference. Tetsuya Nomura acknowledged Kingdom Hearts 3 was in development shortly after the release of 2010 PlayStation Portable title Kingdom Heats: Birth by Sleep. The first Kingdom Hearts launched in 2002 for PlayStation 2. The games focus on a young boy named Sora, Mickey Mouse and their friends as they travel through worlds that mashup elements and characters from Final Fantasy games and classic Disney films. The series' games, both numbered installments and spin-off games contributing to the series' branching storylines, have also been released on Nintendo DS and 3DS as well as PlayStation Portable. The latest title, Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, launched last summer for the 3DS and set up the plot for the final game. |
Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho says it is “fantastic” that Arsenal are rewarding Arsene Wenger with a new contract despite their lack of silverware in recent years. • Lythell: Jose making Wenger nervous • McNicholas: Sloppy Arsenal escape loss • Wenger drops transfer hint Gunners chief executive Ivan Gazidis said this week that Wenger, whose current deal is due to expire at the end of the season, will extend his 17-year stay at the club. Mourinho, who has underlined the importance of stability and spoken of his desire to remain at Stamford Bridge long-term, said he believes that is the right decision, in spite of Arsenal’s failure to win a trophy since 2005 FA Cup. The Blues boss told the media: “I’m happy that a club like Arsenal trusts the manager so much, gives him a new contract even without knowing if they are going to win the title. “I think it’s fantastic to give that stability and that example. Maybe others will follow it. It’s a good thing. I think he’s one of the best managers in the game, and the fact that, in the last years, he couldn’t win a trophy doesn’t change what I think about him. I’m happy for him.” Mourinho has recently appeared eager to reignite a war of words with Wenger that dates back to his previous spell in charge of Chelsea. In 2005, the Portuguese memorably described the Frenchman as a “voyeur” after the Arsenal boss had repeatedly spoken about the Blues. In response to that remark, Wenger threatened legal action and said: “When you give success to stupid people, it makes them more stupid sometimes and not more intelligent.” Despite further sniping between the pair in subsequent years, Wenger insisted last month that their relationship was now “respectful” and that there was no “personal battle.” However, there has been further conflict in recent days, with Wenger questioning the fairness of Chelsea’s decision to sell Juan Mata to Manchester United midway through the season and Mourinho hitting back by accusing his counterpart of constantly complaining. The Portuguese also claimed that the Gunners, who could be overtaken as Premier League leaders on Wednesday night, “always” have the “best days to play” fixtures, prompting Wenger to reply: “In the last five years, all the objective studies that have been made have shown that Arsenal have less rest than any other team at the top level in the top four. That’s facts -- nothing to do with my opinion. “I don’t live with opinions, I live with facts. The facts are not depending on me, not depending on Mourinho, just on objective analysis.” |
Andrew Wiggins will workout for the Bucks and Sixers before visiting the Cavs. (Jesse D. Garrabrant/Getty Images) Andrew Wiggins will workout for the Bucks and Sixers before visiting the Cavs. (Jesse D. Garrabrant/Getty Images) The Cleveland Cavaliers will look to name a new head coach in the next week or so before the organization hosts likely lottery pick Andrew Wiggins for a workout that will be held in the days leading up to the draft on June 26, according to Chad Ford of ESPN. The 19-year-old former Kansas standout is scheduled to work out for the Bucks in Santa Barbara next week and then he will visit the Sixers the following weekend. The Bucks and Sixers have the No. 2 and 3 picks in this year's draft, respectively. MAHONEY: Reports: Derek Fisher accepts Knicks job, finalizing five-year, $25 million contract As previously reported, the Cavs will soon give second interviews to head coaching candidates Tyronn Lue and Alvin Gentry to fill the vacancy left following the firing of Mike Brown after a 33-49 season in which the Cavs failed to make the playoffs. Wiggins is widely expected to be a No. 1 overall pick in this year's draft, competing for the top spot with the likes of fellow former Jayhawk center Joel Embiid and Duke swingman Jabari Parker. Cleveland owns the first pick in the NBA draft for the third time in four years and the fourth time in the last 11 years, dating back to 2003 when the franchise selected a young local product by the name of Lebron James. Cavs will workout Wiggins closer to draft. Trying to get a new head coach in place before pivotal workouts. — Chad Ford (@chadfordinsider) June 9, 2014 |
By Thomas Beaton March 29, 2017 - The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has identified notable inefficiencies in the VA benefits appeals process which have resulted in an average processing wait time of three years. In its report on the issue, GAO also makes several suggestions for improving the process, including developing pilot programs and using more flexible modeling strategies. In 2015, more than 427,000 veterans waited three years or longer to complete their benefits appeals process. Of that number, 81,000 waited 5 or more years to complete that same process. Wait times are a significant administrative problem within the VA. When veterans seek care at a VA health facility, appointment times are often inconveniently high. GAO has repeatedly conducted research on ways the VA can improve administrative tasks for veteran services, including the process of disputing benefits decisions. Even though the Board of the VA had received approval to increase staffing throughout 2017, GAO reported that there would need to be a hiring surge in the year 2018 as well. Without a proper increase in staffing rates, veterans will experience an average wait time of eight years to complete the benefit appeals process. The VA modeled different options to increase staff levels that would help the health system meet demand, but GAO noted that the VA models relied on fixed estimates rather than possible variations, and did not include mitigation strategies for challenges involving recruiting, hiring, and training new employees. “For example, while VA has established a center for excellence in hiring to focus on recruitment and hiring, the agency has not finalized training or telework plans or otherwise mitigated space constraints that it encountered for hiring staff in fiscal year 2017,” GAO said. “Without a timely, detailed workforce plan, VA risks delays in hiring and preparing staff to help manage workloads as soon as possible.” The VA identified a veteran’s ability to submit new appeals evidence any time during an appeals process often created delays. The VA has developed new proposals to streamline this process with the help of veterans service organizations (VSOs). GAO found several gaps within the VA's attempt at reform. One point of concern stemmed from the VA plans to do this during a hiring surge and large-scale infrastructural redesign. GAO believes that the risk of the VA for getting overwhelmed would be extremely high. GAO also suggested that the VA should conduct pilot programs or similar testing efforts to ensure that new processes can actually improve efficiencies. Increased monitoring and transparent reporting on the reform process are advised as well, in order to inform Congress and the public on the health system’s progress. “Without a strategy for assessing the proposed new process that includes comprehensive measures, VA, the public, and Congress cannot know the extent to which the proposed process represents an improvement over the old process,” GAO said. The VA noted that its technology infrastructure is outdated and needs improvement. While the VA proposed new IT systems, GAO reported that the VA lacked a plan for how and when the new system will be implemented. “Without a detailed schedule, VA risks not having new systems aligned with potential changes in the appeals process when they are implemented,” GAO stated. GAO’s report concluded with five general recommendations that will make the VA’s attempts at reforming the benefits appeal process more feasible. The suggestions include applying sensitivity analyses when projecting staff needs, developing a more timely and detailed workforce plan, and developing a robust plan for monitoring process reform. Other suggestions involve developing a strategy for assessing process reform, and creating a schedule for IT improvements that takes into account plans for potential process reform. The VA agreed with GAO’s findings, officials stated in a press release. “Veterans are waiting far too long for decisions in our current appeals process,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. David J. Shulkin. “We have made bold changes to remove the bureaucratic red tape that has caused Veterans to wait an average of three years before they get a decision.” |
Samsung UN50J6300 50inch 1080p smart television I liked the tv of the bat it was well packaged and free from damage on arrival, at first there was a really good picture better than my previous 50" tv I replaced. But just recently I keep getting loss of half the picture and it also keeps pixelating alot. Other than that I have found the tv to be excellent I love being able to not have to have a blue-ray player hooked up to it as the tv being wireless I can watch shows and movies direct from Amazon, Netflix and even the internet. The problem with the picture I am not sure if it is the TV or my antenna in the attic as a tornado hit my house obviously casing damage 3 years ago and some junk got blown into the attic through the hatch that was blown of by the tornado the junk did damage my whole house fan so damage to my antenna is very possible as it is in the attic, anyhow I have bought a new antenna believing that is the problem. Here you have it a really good tv with a super sharp picture at a very good price.Read full review Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: New |
Who Is The Tea Party? Republicans By Another Name toggle caption Steve Yeater/Associated Press So who are exactly are these Tea Party people and what do they want? It's a question not only Republican Party leaders have been asking themselves and each other for a number of months; students of American politics have been seeking answers as well. One of the best outsider guides to the Tea Party movement is Jonathan Rauch, a contributing editor at National Journal and a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution. On Morning Edition Rauch, who has done a lot of deep reporting on the Tea Party, explained that a member of the movement is essentially someone who would've earlier identified as a Republican but now calls himself an independent despite being a conservative and voting pretty much exclusively for Republicans. In other words, they are the opposite of the Republicans In Name Only or the RINOs many Tea Partiers revile. They are Republicans Under Another Name (I know, RUAN doesn't really work as well as RINO but it's the best I could do for the time being.) An excerpt from Rauch's comments (if you want to listen, the ME audio is at the end of this post): Tea Partiers are white, bright and right on average. The minority presence is relatively small. I don’t think that’s because they’re racist. I don’t think they are. I think it’s because they’re conservative and conservatives tend to attract more white voters than minority voters. They are bright. They are well educated. Finally, they are, many of them debranded Republicans. That is to say they look and talk and sound like Republicans. They often vote like republicans. But many of them think of themselves as independents. That’s one reason they’re so unafraid to vote for Republican candidates in primaries who might lose to Democrats. They say it’s not about party and in their minds it really isn’t. Rauch has talked with Tea Party movement people and scholars of political movements and reported his findings in a National Journal piece that fills in a lot of details, such as they are. The big political challenge for the Tea Party, as Rauch points out, is how does the Tea Party change the policies of government, especially if its preferred candidates don't get elected in general elections in large numbers, or it doesn't have leaders who can speak authoritatively on the Tea Party's issues? As Rauch pointed out on Morning Edition and in his National Journal piece, enacting legislation takes compromise and having someone at the negotiating table. But many in the Tea Party apparently see this as the kind of impure, old-style politics that, to their minds, has gotten the country in so much fiscal trouble, with big deficits and debt. So the question remains, how does the Tea Party as it's currently organized (or disorganized as the case may be) become more than just a spoiler for the candidacies of establishment Republican Party candidates? Rauch says the Tea Party doesn't care as much about political gains as it does for cultural change. It wants to change the "hearts and minds" of Americans so they become more skeptical of government and more self-reliant, Rauch says. That seems like a tall order, especially with Baby Boomers entering the years when they will become more dependent on the federal government than ever because of Social Security and Medicare. |
A group of HIV positive chefs will run a first-of-its-kind pop-up restaurant to combat the stigma faced by people living with the illness. The pop-up is part of a campaign launched by Toronto-based hospital, Casey House, which is Canada’s only stand-alone hospital dedicated to caring for those living with HIV-AIDS. Canada's only stand-alone hospital dedicated to HIV-AIDS has doubled its capacity following a $38-million redevelopment project. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne says she hopes Toronto’s Casey House will be replicated around the world. (The Canadian Press) June’s HIV+ Eatery, named after Casey House’s founder June Callwood, will be open in Toronto Nov. 7 and Nov. 8 and is part of the campaign — called Break Bread Smash Stigma. A Leger Research Intelligence Group survey, conducted for Casey House, found only half of Canadians would knowingly eat food prepared by someone who is HIV positive. Casey House CEO Joanne Simons said the pop-restaurant will address the misconception that the illness can be spread through food preparation. Article Continued Below “Talking about food and contraction highlights the massive challenge that our clients experience every day,” she said. “We wanted to open up the public conversation to talk about the stigma associated with it and what has happening to HIV because the diagnosis rates are still extremely high. We want to challenge this notion around blame and shame.” Chef Matt Basile will work with the HIV positive chefs to develop the menu, train them and cook for the patrons. Casey House announced Wednesday the hospital has recently completed a $38-million redevelopment project which doubles its capacity so it can now care for 650 people through upgraded clinical services and community programs. Casey House CEO Joanne Simons says the facility, which was founded in 1988, is one of very few places where people living with HIV-AIDS can seek care without judgment. Casey House has doubled its capacity with the completion of a $38-million redevelopment project on Wednesday. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne praised the work of the Toronto hospital over the past three decades. ( Kathleen Wynne/Twitter ) “Casey House is very proud to be a leader in HIV-AIDS care,” she said, “boldly advocating on behalf of our clients to demand the dignity they deserve and challenging stigma.” Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne praised the work of Casey House over the past three decades. The facility is a model that should be replicated in other places around the world, she said. “This new hospital is ready to meet their complex needs with twice the capacity,” she said. “More people will be embraced in high quality care and all under one roof.” |
The major failure of the Republican healthcare plan, to repeal and replace Obamacare, should come as no surprise to any lucid observer. Congress, on both the Democratic and Republican sides of the aisle, has been moribund for decades, and its popularity among the citizenry of its members reflects this sad reality. But what is worse than simply the ineptitude and political sclerosis of the institution, is its abject dishonesty with the American people. Deceit and obstruction have become the order of the day. Take the case of the Republican lead House Intelligence Committee, which not only has, for gutless political reasons, gone off as has the Senate Intelligence Committee, on a Russian collusion jihad, but now is also conducting a sham of an investigation into the illegal and criminal mass surveillance of millions of Americans by our intelligence agencies and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). For months I labored on Capitol Hill, going door to door like a “thirty something” young attorney, in effect lobbying not just the House Intelligence Committee to interview my client, Dennis Montgomery, an NSA/CIA whistleblower about his intimate knowledge of this continuing unconstitutional mass surveillance, not just on millions of Americans without probable cause that they were in the act of committing crimes or communicating with terrorists, but also the chief justice of the Supreme Court, other justices, 156 judges, and even President Trump and his staff and family while he was a private businessman. I advised the committee that Montgomery, under grant of immunity, had turned over 47 hard drives with over 600 million pages of information, much of it classified, to FBI Director James Comey and his special agents for investigation. I advised further that Comey had appeared to “bury” the investigation, as it would show, according to Montgomery, that the FBI itself, under Comey and before that former Director Robert Mueller, orchestrated this illegal and constitutional mass surveillance. When I could not get a meeting to “meet” with Chairman Devin Nunes, I then wrote to each member of the committee, both Republican and Democrat, asking simply that any one or all of them interview Montgomery, as this was the potentially the biggest scandal in American history. Not one of them contacted me back (see www.freedomwatchusa.org). But now, in what has become a routine charade on Capitol Hill, the House Intelligence Committee is conducting an interview with former Obama United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power, and punting on its planned interview of Obama White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice, who has spurned Nunes and now says she will only testify to the compromised and friendlier Senate Intelligence Committee, run by Republican establishment Senator Richard Burr, who has basically deferred to the Minority Ranking Democrat Member Mark Warner in running what many perceive to be a bogus Russia investigation. Sure the alleged leaks by Power and Rice are serious and worthy of investigation, but why then not at least also talk to Montgomery, who was interviewed by Comey’s FBI special agents Walter Giardina and William Barnett for over three hours. Montgomery even agreed to be videotaped. Indeed, a few weeks ago I filed a lawsuit over Comey’s illegal surveillance and his obstruction of justice alleging that he buried the Montgomery investigation and this case is now progressing through the courts, with a preliminary injunction hearing to be set in August 2017. I have also asked the court to allow me to take the oral testimony of Comey himself, along with former Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former Obama Central Intelligence Director John Brennan, who Montgomery says also ordered the illegal mass surveillance. The answer is simple: the House Intelligence Committee, like the Senate Intelligence Committee, not to mention the House and Senate Judiciary Committees which I also approached, do not want to wade into this for likely fear that if they do the FBI and the intelligence agencies will smear them, like they have with President Trump, his family, and his associates, both in and out of the administration. These entities may have “dirt” which has been dug up on them. This of course could prove to be their political death knell. So “our” Congress goes merrily along, at great taxpayer expense, impressed with itself but doing virtually nothing on behalf of We the People. At some point in the not too distant future, the proverbial dam will break and We the People will again likely be at the barricades as we were in 1776. Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, is known for his strong public interest advocacy in furtherance of ethics in government and individual freedoms and liberties. To read more of his reports, Go Here Now. |
Los Angeles is getting a new contemporary art museum next year, and Wednesday Mayor Eric Garcetti joined its founders, Eli and Edythe Broad, for a hard hat tour of the construction. One big announcement was that the inaugural exhibition and permanent collection of 2,000 pieces of contemporary art at the Broad Museum will be open to the public at no charge. Future special events will be ticketed, and discounts will be available to members of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). The Broads are "providing at least $395 million to build and endow" their namesake museum, notes the L.A. Times. Once the giant Honeycomb on Bunker Hill opens in late 2014, visitors to the museum can visit the third-floor gallery that will be home to the Broad collections of artwork from the 1950s to the present, displayed in a column-free space. Downstairs, the first floor will showcase special exhibitions, to offer a total of over 50,000 square feet of gallery space. Of special note is the consideration to lighting, chiefly the use of skylights to draw in sunlight that will be filtered and diffused in order to offer prime lighting for viewing that does not damage the art. Once daylight fades, lighting inside the museum will automatically turn on to match the ideal brightness for checking out the artwork. Although the second floor will be a pass-through for visitors, glass walls will allow them to glimpse at artwork in storage that may soon end up on view in the galleries. One significant consideration is the parking garage, which will have three stories underground the museum. The design for the Broad was unveiled back in early 2011, several months after the Grand Avenue location was confirmed. Prior to selecting DTLA, the Broads were rumored to have considered Beverly Hills and Santa Monica for their mecca of modern art. Previously: Broad Reveals Plans for Giant Honeycomb on Bunker Hill Broad Strokes: Unveiling The Design For A New Art Museum Downtown L.A. is Getting a New Museum: Eli Broad Confirms Grand Avenue Location Bye Bye Beverly Hills: Broad Foundation Eyes SaMo for Museum |
The Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has a plan to conduct nuclear energy R&D using NuScale’s light water reactor technology. In doing so it will create a test bed on an international scale for advanced reactor designs. According to a report in the Idaho Falls Post Register for May4, 2017, 18 reactor design groups have expressed interest in using a proposed nuclear reactor test facility at the INL and two of them have indicated they are ready to move their test operations to the site as soon as one of the 12 planned NuScale 50 MW modules is available. A spokesman for NuScale, which plans to build up to 12 50 MW small modular reactor units at the Idaho site, told the newspaper the first unit for its customer UAMPS, is slated to begin operation in 2026. Last December NuScale submitted their SMR design to the NRC for design certification, which is expected to take three-to-four years to complete. The umbrella concept for the test platform is to use one or possibly two of the 12 units as part of the INL’s joint proposal with NuScale and UAMPS for a “Joint Use Modular Plant.” The idea is that one or two of the 50 MW units, built after the first unit is in revenue service, would serve as a platform to test different applications of the SMR’s capabilities. Some of the potential applications that have been discussed being tested including using grids of SMRs to support resilient power for communities so that if one unit is offline, the others keep churning out electricity. With large 1000 MW units, if they go offline, a lot of expensive replacement power has to be obtained right away. If it isn’t available because of demand, brownouts or blackouts can be the result. Some SMRs might also have as one of their primary purposes providing steam for district heating replacing coal fired units or for desalinization of sea water. The most intriguing idea is to apply the test SMRs to support development of advanced reactor designs. To that end Terrestrial Energy, a Canadian firm, is reported to be in discussions with the INL to do test work there to develop its molten salt reactor design. The firm wants to take advantage of the INL’s site with its infrastructure and the fact that environmental reviews for this kind of project were completed for the NuScale project. Having access to the lab’s scientists and engineers is also a big plus. This kind of work is usually done on a cost-reimbursable basis which means that Terrestrial Energy would have to pay for any costs associated with using the site and having access to a future SMR. To this end Terrestrial Energy has applied for a Department of Energy loan-guarantee. However, to date the company is still working off of Series A financing packages and has yet to book an investor or a consortium in the $100M or greater range which would be needed to proceed with a prototype. Nevertheless, the firm has said its time to market for its novel design would be sometime in the 2020s. It announced ambitious plans last January to submit its design to the NRC by 2019. In July 2016 Transatomic, a developer of an advanced nuclear reactor design, told this blog it also has approached the INL for possible use of test facilities there and to explore the potential to build its first prototype at the site. Transatomic has received a grant from the GAIN program at the INL for work on the specialized fuel that would be needed for its reactor design. The problem facing both Terrestrial Energy and Transatomic is that new reactor technologies must prove to utilities that they can be operated at a profit within the constraints of existing market realities or they will not be adopted. This requires extensive testing of designs and development of cost estimates that will attract equity investors and customers. The Idaho test facility, if built, may be able to speed up the process. It will need help from the Department of Energy as will the developers in public / private partnerships to succeed. SMR Policy Paper Calls for Strong Government Role A consortium of SMR developers has spelled out the elements of a commercial deployment program needed to stimulate new SMR generation sufficient for self-sustaining deployment. The program should be available through a combination of the following investment mechanisms: (full details here) Production Tax Credits Power Purchase Agreements Loan Guarantees SMR investment tax credit DOE research, development, and demonstration of innovative SMR capabilities DOE and DOD programs to develop the requirements and specifications for SMR-Powered Secure and Reliable microgrids SMR Trade Group Urges DOE to Use Their Reactors for Grid Stability SMR Start asks DOE to level playing field for small, advanced reactors Nuclear’s unique combination of benefits includes energy security, grid stability SMRs can load-follow, acting in concert with intermittent renewables The indisputable fact is that the nation’s electrical grid cannot run 100% on renewable energy. Both solar and wind are intermittent, and in order to keep the electrical grid stable, there has to be baseload supply/generation. So far this stability has been provided by large 1000 MW nuclear reactors, as well as gas and coal fired conventional power plants. The industry consortium of small modular reactor (SMR) developers and customers has written to Secretary of Energy Rick Perry’to support his request for a departmental study on the nation’s energy security and grid reliability. Their main pitch is that if you want grid stabilty, and CO2 emission free baseload power, SMRs are the way to go. Plus they are a lot cheaper than the the full size reactors. For instance, at $4,000/KW, a 50 MW SMR would cost only $200M. In a multi-unit facility, like the one planned by NuScale for its customer UAMPS, the revenue from the first unit pays for the second and so on. This means the customer is not in a “bet the company” profile waiting for a 1000 MW unit costing $4 billion to come online. The challenge for SMR vendors is to get enough orders to shift production from a complex supply chain and one-at-a-time fabrication to a factory production line to achieve economies of scale. These facts are most likely unknown to the new energy secretary who’s background as a career politician in Texas hasn’t instilled much confidence in the industry, although it won’t say that in public. So starting with the obvious, the in May 2 letter the SMR Start consortium highlighted the role that nuclear energy plays in securing the nation’s baseload power diversity and grid stability. “Nuclear energy is reliable baseload power that generates nearly 20 percent of U.S. electricity and is a major reason we benefit from affordable electricity prices today,” the letter said. Perry’s memo to his staff expressed concerns about the potential erosion of the diversity of critical baseload resources, and asked for a 60-day study into how federal policy interventions may be distorting wholesale electricity markets. He also asked whether some attributes of baseload power sources that strengthen grid reliability are being adequately valued and compensated in wholesale electricity markets, and the extent to which “market-distorting” federal subsidies may “boost one form of energy at the expense of others.” This last item is clearly aimed at the need to value the zero carbon emissions profile of the nation’s nuclear fleet. A number of otherwise fully operational nucler reactors have closed due to market conditions that undercut their ability to operate at a profit. They include reactors in Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Vermont, among others. SMR Start’s letter points out that with regard to nuclear energy, the markets are not fully valuing its unique combination of benefits, including “grid reliability, on-site fuel supply, technology diversity, carbon-free generation and long-term price stability.” The letter recommends that the U.S. Department of Energy implement policy solutions to “level the playing field” for the deployment of new reactors, as well as to preserve existing nuclear facilities. This means rate structures have to be set up that will provide confidence for investors to put up the money to developa and deploy new SMRs for commercial use. SMRs, which are expected to begin operating in the mid-2020s, will feature “the ability to better match new generation capacity with electric demand growth, enhance grid reliability through load following in areas with high penetration of intermittent renewables, and the ability to be deployed in diverse applications.” “Federal support for SMRs will continue to be needed in 2018 and over the next several years in order to bring this technology to market in time to meet future energy demands.” SMR Start’s policy paper further recommends that DOE and the U.S. Department of Defense establish programs to develop SMR-powered microgrids that can power remote locations independent of the main grid, making them “less vulnerable” to natural phenomena and intentional acts. TVA Not Bullish on SMRs but Keeps Options Open The Knoxville News reports on May 2 that while TVA has filed an application for an Early Site Permit (ESP) for a small modular reactor at its Clinch River site, it does not feel the technology nor the utility are ready to move ahead with one. First, TVA says it doesn’t need new nuclear power generation capabilities. Second, it thinks the cost per kilowatt still isn’t competitive with gas fired plants and the expected operational costs would be too high. Third, the NRC has just started to evaluate NuScale’s design for safety, a process that could take three-to-four years. The quasi-governmental utility also has a problem with debt ceiling that makes it wary of taking on new capital intensive projects with unknown costs. According to the Knoxville News report, a TVA executive told the newspaper the utility is taking a wait-and-see attitude towards SMRs. He said that the utility has no commitment to build an SMR, but will seriously consider its options once it sees that there is a cost effective design available. For that to happen, he said, the industry would have to have shifted from one-at-a-time unit by unit construction to the production of whole reactor systems in factories. The design would have “to be self-contained and not need much of the infrastructure of a site built reactor.” TVA’s doesn’t specify what kind of SMR technology nor a preferred reactor vendor. NRC spokesman Scott Burnell told the newspaper the agency only requires that the application shows that the site is capable of supporting a “generic set of nuclear power plant characteristics.” China SMR Ready for Production (China Daily) The first pilot project to use China National Nuclear Corporation’s 125 MWe ACP100 small modular nuclear reactor has completed its preliminary design stage and is qualified for construction in Hainan province. The Linglong One is the first reactor of its kind in the world to have passed the safety review by the IAEA. ( October 2016 IAEA briefing slides PDF file on capabilities and expected uses) The company said that the ACP100, China’s first small modular reactor (SMR) developed by CNNC for practical use is expected to be built at the end of this year in the Changjiang Li autonomous county of Hainan. Qian Tianlin, general manager of China Nuclear New Energy Investment, said that small-scale nuclear reactor technology has reached a stage at which it can be used on a pilot basis. It can be used to generate heat for a residential district replacing coal-fired boilers and for grid stability in a mesh network. Qian said he expects mass production of the small modular reactors after the pilot project in Hainan is up and running, and for the technology to be exported globally. # # # |
An Oxford college might remove a statue of the 19th Century politician Cecil Rhodes giving in to a student anti-racism campaign. "The College does not share Cecil Rhodes's values or condone his racist views or actions." The students have claimed hat honouring Rhodes is not compatible with an “inclusive culture” at the university. Oriel College says it will launch a consultation on the statue’s future as it removed a plaque to the colonial politician. The college says it doesn’t “condone his racist views or actions”. A similar protest already took place in South Africa led by a group called Rhodes Must Fall. As a result a statue of Rhodes was attacked and then ultimately taken down at the University of Cape Town in April. Students argue Rhodes, who is often described as the founding father of apartheid, is a lasting symbol of an evil, colonial era. He was a staunch defender of colonial power in Africa. The College has the option to either leave the statue in place, add some information explaining the historical context, or to remove the statue completely. Rhodes attended Oriel College and left money to the college on his death in 1902, which funded the construction of a new building for Oriel on Oxford’s High Street. Rhodes also left money to establish the Rhodes Scholarships, which bring overseas students to Oxford, and past beneficiaries include former president Bill Clinton. The college admits that although his legacy includes the scholarships, his "values and world view stand in absolute contrast" to a modern university. "We are starting the process of consultation with Oxford City Council this week in advance of submitting a formal application for consent to remove the Rhodes plaque." Oriel College A statement from Oriel said: "The College does not share Cecil Rhodes's values or condone his racist views or actions. We commit to ensuring that acknowledgement of the historical fact of Rhodes's bequest to the College does not suggest celebration of his unacceptable views and actions, and we commit to placing any recognition of his bequest in a clear historical context. "We are starting the process of consultation with Oxford City Council this week in advance of submitting a formal application for consent to remove the Rhodes plaque. Its wording is a political tribute, and the College believes its continuing display on Oriel property is inconsistent with our principles." The college statement says that pending a decision on the statue itself, a plaque erected in his honour on a college building in 1906 will be taken down. But council consent has to be obtained and another stumbling block may be the fact that the statue is also in a college building with listed status, which raises questions about what could be changed. The argument in Oxford is part of an international movement by students to challenge university symbols which in their view promote a racist legacy. There has been a wave of protests in dozens of United States universities this autumn, many focusing on emblems which they accuse of racist links. Annie Teriba, a Rhodes Must Fall campaigner, said earlier this year: "There's a violence to having to walk past the statue every day on the way to your lectures, there's a violence to having to sit with paintings of former slave holders whilst writing your exams." |
If you’re going to punish athletes for bad behavior, don’t play favorites. On Wednesday, U.S. Soccer announced that it had terminated Hope Solo’s contract with the national team and banned her for six months. Her crime? Calling the Swedish national team “cowards” for their defensive style in eliminating the U.S. in the Olympics quarterfinals. From an outsider’s perspective, Solo’s punishment already seems a bit extreme. But even seasoned sports journalists are calling this as an unusual occurrence. Fox Sports analyst Clay Travis wrote on his blog, Outkick the Coverage: “This is hardly an egregious error in post-game commentary. Solo praised her own team and their style of play and denigrated the opponent’s style of play, saying she believed the better team lost and explaining why that was the case. She was brutally honest with her opinion. Isn’t this what we want athletes to do when they’re asked questions, be as honest as possible with us about their opinions of what happened in a game?” According to U.S. Soccer, which declined Fortune’s invitation to comment for this story, the decision to cut Solo also related to her past behavior. “Taking into consideration the past incidents involving Hope, as well as the private conversations we’ve had requiring her to conduct herself in a manner befitting a U.S. national team member, U.S. Soccer determined this is the appropriate disciplinary action,” said U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati in a statement. Subscribe to the Broadsheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the world’s most powerful women. It’s true that Solo has been a controversial figure. On the one hand, she is a vocal champion for women’s equality in professional sports: She was one of the members of the national team to file a federal complaint against U.S. Soccer for wage discrimination. However, she also has a history of being verbally—and allegedly physically—abusive. In 2014, she was accused of a fourth-degree domestic violence offense in an incident involving her nephew and half-sister. That case has yet to be resolved. And this isn’t her first warning: In early 2015, she was suspended by U.S. Soccer for 30 days by after she and her husband were stopped in a U.S. team van that he was driving in Los Angeles. (He received a DUI and served 3 days in jail). Violent behavior—no matter how seemingly minor—should not be acceptable in any sport or from any athlete. But just compare Solo’s behavior in Rio to what other athletes—male athletes—have said and done recently. Top of mind, of course, is U.S. swimmer Ryan Lochte, who has yet to be punished for fabricating a story about a robbery at gunpoint. Thus far, the approach in his case has been mostly, “boys will be boys.” It’s not U.S. Soccer’s responsibility to discipline Lochte, but there have been other instances with male athletes which the organization has all but swept under the rug. In 2009, Team USA player Michael Bradley delivered a rant about “all the f—ing experts in America, everybody who thinks they know about soccer” after a FIFA Confederation Cup game. He was not punished, according to Vice‘s Leander Schaerlaeckens. Schaerlaeckens also points to an instance in which Clint Dempsey accosted a referee in a 2015 U.S. Open Cup game (run by U.S. Soccer), after which he was barred for just three games—though suspended from that particular tournament for two years. “But that sentence, conveniently, was served in Major League Soccer and up by the time the national team returned to action. He was stripped of his captaincy, but he was nevertheless called up for the Gold Cup without question.” U.S. professional leagues are also notorious for letting athletes off easy: A review of domestic violence and sexual assault allegedly perpetrated by athletes in MLB, the NFL and the NBA from the beginning of 2010 through the end of 2014 shows that of 64 reported incidents, only seven players were punished by their league, and only two players were punished by their team, according to a report in Harvard Law School’s sports and entertainment law journal. Granted, none of these examples is an apples-to-apples comparison to the Solo situation (a record of bad behavior, an offense on an international stage). But when comparing her punishment to that of other male athletes, something doesn’t quite feel right. Kobe Bryant, who was accused of rape in 2003, went on to have a long and illustrious career. Compare that to being kicked off your sport’s national team. The player, for her part, has not apologized for her comments. Instead, she responded defiantly to the federation’s announcement, issuing a not-so-subtle reminder that she is a world-class athlete and a champion for women in sports. “My entire career, I have only wanted the best for this team, for the players and the women’s game,” Solo told Sports Illustrated. “And I will continue to pursue these causes with the same unrelenting passion with which I play the game.” |
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Kansas City Chiefs racked up 537 yards of offense against the New England Patriots. Center Mitch Morse says that game plan won't matter all that much against the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday. "I think each week holds its own challenges in regard to completely changing game plans," Morse said. "We're completely flushing the Patriots game and having a whole new mentality to execute the game plan this week." The Chiefs face a radically different defensive scheme from the Eagles, but that is OK — the offensive line is hoping to build a brand of being both versatile and adaptable. Right tackle Mitchell Schwartz believes the group possesses the right blend of size, strength and speed to adopt what scheme works best for each opponent. "You want to get good with something and make that your identity, but you also want to be able to mix it up and be able to do some alternate things and I think that's what we have the ability to do," Schwartz said. The Chiefs return essentially the same line that struggled to find an identity a year ago. The team averaged just 343 yards per game, ranking 20th in the NFL. An injury to rookie left guard Parker Ehinger clipped the running game. The team averaged 4.4 yards per rush with Ehinger in the lineup, but the team average just 4 yards per carry after a torn ACL ended his season. Converted tackle Bryan Witzmann is at left guard until Ehinger can return. Last week's game marked his first NFL regular-season game at guard. "I thought it went well," Witzmann. "There are still a lot of things to work on and improve though." The Eagles present a much different test than New England. "New England drops eight a lot, doesn't rush the tackle as much with true defensive-end rush types," Witzmann said. "It's a big difference. You go from probably five one-on-one blocks to 40 or something this week. It's a big difference." Perhaps the biggest burdens will fall on right guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, who draws the assignment opposite Fletcher Cox. The fate of quarterback Alex Smith rests on his pass protection. "I think that's going to be huge, just playing with anticipation about what they're going to do," Duvernay-Tardif said. "It's not overly complicated defense in terms of blitzes and rushes but what they do they do it really well so, have a plan in mind to go against those guys and have a plan to defeat what they do best." One way the Chiefs plan countering the Eagles pass-rushing relies on running the ball with rookie Kareem Hunt in the backfield. Hunt rushed for 148 yards on 17 carries in his regular-season debut last week. "He's got the speed to run deep and down the middle he can run between the tackles," Schwartz said. "It's good to have a guy like that because then you don't show any sort of tendency when the back can do whatever." Morse said that running the ball pulls the Eagles out of their comfort zone of blitzing the quarterback. "They have a rushing the passer mentality," Morse said. "We've got to get them out of that by running the ball a little bit. It'll be a great test this week and we're looking forward to it." Duvernay-Tardif believes that a winning performance against the Eagles will help the Chiefs' offensive line earn recognition that so far eludes it. "I think if we're able to go out there this weekend and run the ball, good movement on the line of scrimmage, people are going to respect us even more," Duvernay-Tardif said." ___ More AP NFL: http://pro32.ap.org and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL |
I wasn’t gonna post this but this rehearsal was so dope! And super epic!!! I didn’t have much time to put this together and was on such a short notice 😩 This was the first day of rehearsals and i still had to fill in 32 other dancers for the set, but i just want to give credit to the 12 principle dancers of the shoot! You guys worked super hard and was beyond professional for the entire project and i greatly appreciate how focused and dedicated you all were 🙌🏽🌟🙏🏽 Also a huge shout to @boakwon For learning her parts the day before during an intense 3 hour private with me & @ijakuh 🙌🏽 Here’s a clip of me putting it all together and the dancers finally meeting, rehearsing, and dancing with Boa for the first time! 🙌🏽🔥 Y’all did that!! #behindethescene NO EDITS …. THANK YOU FOR WATCHING, Please leave your feedback as I’m always looking to grow and make things better 👍🏽😊 I’ll also post part 2 if you guys like. 🙏🏽 thanks again everyone ! ____________ 🎤 ARTIST: @boakwon 🎬Director: @bennyboom 🕺🏽Choreographer/Creative Director: @awilliams_ent ___________ Male DANCERS: @jwicks247 @dion_deniis @jaygotthemoves @kingkayakdanca @ijakuh @raymundlagdamen ______________ Female DANCERS: @belibelz @_katelynashleyn @alora_tonielle @lifeofqueee @genessyc_ @danielle_medici _______________ #awilliamsent #boakwon #alonzowilliamschoreography #boa #jazz #jazzclub #bennyboom #nyc #bts #creativedirector #choreographer #dancer #teamboa #boakwonfans #boakwon #newvideo #newmusic #kpop #kpopqueen #kpopdancecover #kpopsensation #kpopqueen #kpopqueens A post shared by Alonzo Williams (@awilliams_ent) on Dec 27, 2017 at 8:05pm PST |
Last night, Laci Green tweeted the following: the most valuable class i have *ever* taken was logical deduction. basically a 101 on how to objectively evaluate information & arguments. — Laci Green (@gogreen18) June 20, 2017 I totally and completely agree, which is why, before she wrote this tweet, my previous blog post was on the two most commonly misunderstood informal fallacies. I thought, then, about discussing deductive fallacies, but I didn’t think it was necessary. Honestly, I thought most people learned about them pretty well around 9th grade, if not before. Apparently, no, as we’ll see. And hardly anything in this blog post is gonna make sense if I don’t explain it, so let me give a lesson (or, if you had a decent education, a quick refresher) on the most basic type of deductive argument. A quick primer on deductive syllogisms Here is a basic valid deductive argument: If it rains, I will bring an umbrella. It is raining. Therefore, I will bring an umbrella. The conclusion (“Therefore, I will bring an umbrella”) follows from premise one, or the “Major Premise” (“If it rains, I will bring an umbrella”) and the conditions of the Minor Premise (“It is raining”). Another way to state the form of this argument, or deductive “syllogism,” is: Major Premise: If A (it rains), then B (I will bring an umbrella). Minor Premise: A (it’s raining). Conclusion: Therefore, B (I will bring an umbrella). Or, to reduce it further: Major Premise: If A, then B. Minor Premise: A. Conclusion: Therefore, B. OK, so that’s logical reasoning. As long as the Major Premise and Minor Premise are true and you’re using that exact basic format, the Conclusion follows. But we throw a monkey in the wrench when we make the Minor Premise “B” instead of “A.” Like this: If A, then B. B. Therefore A. Let’s see how it looks when we put the terms back in: If it’s raining (A), I will bring an umbrella (B). I will bring an umbrella (B). Therefore, it’s raining. There’s something “off” in the reasoning there, right? The fact that if it’s raining, you’ll bring an umbrella doesn’t mean that just because you have an umbrella, it’s raining, right? So that reasoning doesn’t work. It’s “invalid.” This reasoning is invalid, as well. If A, then B. Not A. Therefore, not B (which carries the implication that if B is true, the Major Premise is invalid). And you can see this doesn’t work, rather clearly, when we put the terms back in: If it’s raining, I will bring an umbrella. It’s not raining. Therefore, I won’t bring an umbrella (which carries the implication that if you do bring an umbrella, the Major Premise “If it’s raining, I will bring an umbrella” is invalid). This invalid logic would also be frustrating, right? Like, if you told your friend, “If it’s raining, I will bring an umbrella,” and your friend says, “Oh, so you think that just because you’re bringing an umbrella, it’s gonna rain, eh? That’s really arrogant of you. Who do you think you are, Rainman?” You aren’t saying that if you bring an umbrella it’s gonna rain. You’re saying that if it rains, you’ll bring an umbrella. It’s important to get that straight. That’s a fundamental building block of deductive logic. It can get more complex from there, but you have to know that to get started. Now, because we’re going to go over some arguments you might disagree with, I’m going to make another distinction. You can disagree with the truth of an argument and say that it’s unsound, but if it still follows the rules of logic it’s valid. In logic, soundness refers to the truth of the argument, and validity refers to whether or not it is logically consistent. I’ll demonstrate this with a couple syllogisms: Syllogism 1: Major Premise: If I can see the horizon (A), the world is flat (B). Minor Premise: I can see the horizon (A). Conclusion: Therefore, the world is flat (B). Syllogism 2: Major Premise: If I can see the horizon (A), the world is flat (B). Minor Premise: The world is flat (B). Conclusion: Therefore, I can see the horizon (A). Both of these lines of reasoning are factually untrue, obviously. So we would say they both aren’t sound. We wouldn’t, however, say they both aren’t valid, because the logic of syllogism 1 (If A, then B. A. Therefore, B) checks out; all the terms are technically presented correctly and in the right place. Syllogism 2, on the other hand, is not only factually wrong and thus unsound due to its Minor Premise; it is also invalid due to the fact that the Minor Premise refers to “B” as opposed to “A.” Again, “Soundness” refers to the truth of the statement, “Validity” refers to whether or not the argument is in the right logical form. And if you make the rookie mistake of putting “B” or “Not A” instead of “A” in the Minor Premise category, you’ve shown that you fundamentally don’t understand the Major Premise, and make having a discussion very difficult…like that annoying friend who thinks that what you actually meant is that every time you brought your umbrella, it rained. If you got this, awesome! If not, just keep reading. It’ll all come together in a bit. Let’s apply all that stuff to the “real world” OK, so let’s apply this to something practical. The below YouTube video, made by controversial YouTuber Riley J. Dennis: I’m going to summarize her Major Premises here: Major Premise: If you want to call people the n-word but can’t because you’re afraid of political correctness (A), you’ll can call them “thugs” instead (B). Major Premise: If you want to say you hate people of color but can’t because you’re afraid of political correctness (A), just say you’re in support of national security instead (B). Major Premise: If you want to encourage a harassment campaign against someone but can’t do it directly because it’s “politically incorrect” (A), just use a faux disclaimer and then encourage all the harassment you like (B). Major Premise: If you want to label feminists “feminazis” but can’t because of political correctness (A), just call them “feminist extremists” instead (B). Major Premise: If you want to express your hate for trans people but can’t say “I hate trans people” due to political correctness (A), just say you wouldn’t date trans people instead (B). Major Premise: If you think the white race is superior but can’t say so due to political correctness (A), you can just say that racism doesn’t exist while still stating that people of color are ruining our country (B). Major Premise: If you want to support thee alt-right but can’t do it openly because it’s politically incorrect (A), say you’re a centrist while ignoring or constantly challenging the left and giving a platform to the right that encourages them to express themselves freely without critique (B). Now, you may or may not agree that all of these premises are sound. But if you’re going to attack them, you have to understand their format, lest you make a blatantly illogical attack. So, going back to to the umbrella example: when you say, “If it rains (A), I will bring my umbrella (B),” you aren’t saying that every time you bring your umbrella (B), it will rain (A); that vice-versa twist would be a fundamental misunderstanding of your statement. By the same token, when Riley says, “If you want to call people the n-word but can’t because you’re afraid of political correctness (A), you’ll can call them “thugs” instead (B),” she is not arguing that if you use the word “thugs” (B) you secretly want to use the n-word (A); that vice-versa twist would be a fundamental misunderstanding of her argument. Neither, in going down the list of Major Premises, is Riley saying that everyone who supports national security (B) hates people of color (A), or that all anti-harassment statements (B) are shields for people who want to harass (A), or that everyone who uses the label “feminist extremists” (B) secretly wants to label all feminists feminazis (A), or that all people who say they won’t date trans people (B) are transphobic (A), or that everyone who doesn’t think racism exists (B) thinks the white race is superior (A), or that everyone who is a centrist (B) is secretly a part of the alt-right (A). Whether Riley thinks any of that or not, and whether you agree with Riley Major Premises or not, that’s simply not what Riley’s saying. They are invalid reversals of her Major Premises that really have nothing to do with her Major Premises at all. I’m not making, as of yet, a point about so-called “SJWS” vs “anti-SJWS” here. This is not about how sound her arguments are, yet, but about how someone would rebut them in an logically valid way. I’m trying to nail down the minimum understanding that is needed for disagreement to occur and a real conversation to happen. The worst thing you could possibly do, logically speaking, is mix up the terms. It derails the argument, creating straw men. Let’s make this even more concrete. Concerning Riley’s first Major Premise, “If you want to call people the n-word but can’t because you’re afraid of political correctness (A), you’ll can call them “thugs” instead (B)” — if you say, “I am not a racist, and I refer to criminals as ‘thugs,’ so Riley is wrong,” you’ve made a logically invalid move. Like this: Riley’s Major Premise: If I want to call people the n-word but can’t because you’re afraid of political correctness (A), I’ll can call them “thugs” instead (B). Major Premise: If it is raining (A), I will bring an umbrella (B). Minor Premise (misstated): I do not want to call people the n-word (Not A). Minor Premise (misstated): It is not raining (Not A). Conclusion (misunderstanding Major Premise): Therefore, if the premise is right, I won’t use the word “thugs.” Conclusion (misunderstanding Major Premise): Therefore, if the premise is right, I will not be bringing an umbrella. Bad rejection of argument: “I call people thugs, and would never say the n-word! Therefore, Riley’s Major Premise is wrong!” Bad rejection of argument: “You are carrying an umbrella, and it is not raining! Therefore, your Major Premise is wrong!” It’s basic logic. But a lot of people don’t know basic logic, and are easily taken in by mistatatements of the Minor Premise and, by extension, the Conclusion. People who know logic know this, and they know bad logic can take time to unravel, and so they use this to dishonestly (or ignorantly) deconstruct the argument. Take a recent video that Blaire White made in response to Riley Dennis. She has the same “If A, then B, not A, therefore not B — and yet B is true, so the Major Premise is false” faulty reasoning I broke down above. It may seem like a slightly complex formula if you haven’t seen it in action before, but it is a pretty simple formula, nonetheless, and you can rinse, lather, and repeat this (as we’ve just seen) with a lot of premises if the audience doesn’t get smart and realize what you’re doing. Here is her video rebuttal to Riley’s video: After disarmingly agreeing with Riley on the first point, she then states the following: Riley, what if people really do believe in national security? I mean, it’s just a crazy thought, but I think that one day, if you step outside of your…bubble, I’m sure that you’ll find there is a legitimate argument for national security that doesn’t involve racism. But I’m sure it’s easier to just call it racism than actually argue against it. …….. National security does matter. It’s actually one of the few functions of government that I personally believe in. And that doesn’t make me racist. Riley J. Dennis’s Major Premise: If you want to say you hate people of color but can’t because you’re afraid of political correctness (A), just say you’re in support of national security instead (B). Major Premise: If it is raining (A), I will bring an umbrella (B). Blaire White’s Minor Premise (misstated): I do not hate people of color (Not A). Minor Premise (misstated): It is not raining (Not A). Conclusion (misunderstanding of Major Premise): Therefore, if the Major Premise is correct, I wouldn’t be saying that I support national security (Therefore, Not B). Conclusion (misunderstanding Major Premise): Therefore, if the Major Premise is correct, I will not be bringing an umbrella (Therefore, Not B). Bad rejection of argument: “I support national security, and I am not racist! Therefore, Riley’s Major Premise is wrong!” Bad rejection of argument: “You are carrying an umbrella, and it is not raining! Therefore, your Major Premise is wrong!” Do you see the flaw? It’s exactly the one we exposed above. Here, let me show you: That’s the formula. That’s it. The honest, logical response, of course, would be to show that the Major Premise is wrong by stating that you can’t (or usually can’t) effectively cover up your racist attitudes with the words “national security.” That’s would be the counterargument. Of course you can advocate for national security and not be racist — that’s not a counterargument, though, because the Major Premise never stated otherwise. And I’d say Blaire White’s bad logic here was a fluke, but she does it again. In response to Riley’s Major Premise “If you want to encourage a harassment campaign against someone but can’t do it directly because it’s ‘politically incorrect’ (A), just use a faux disclaimer and then encourage all the harassment you like (B)” Blaire White states the following: So even someone telling their followers not to harass you isn’t good enough? I mean, it must be tough assuming the worst possible intentions from everybody. Believe in national security? You’re racist. Tell people to be nice and not harass me? That’s harassment. What’s fascinating is that she seems to know her argument is weak. Obviously, you can tell people not to harass someone while encouraging them to harass that person. “Don’t harass her, but Jenny is a stuck up, rude, mean, girl who could use a punch in the face” is a way to do it. And of course telling people not to harass isn’t harassment. Telling people not to harass while bullying them and giving them a ton of irrelevant insults that you know your fans will chase after is using the “don’t harass” encouragement as a cover for harassment. I think people do this, but I’ll not waste time going over the evidence here, as I’ve already given a pretty good example of someone who made a video entitled “Dick nosed female comedian strives for world record in double standards!” and complimented several rather disturbing commenters who called her the c-word…while at the same time putting up a brief anti-harassment post at the beginning of the video. He literally said people shouldn’t harass her at the beginning of his video, and then complimented the fans who did in the video (you can read about this episode in the bottom half of this article). So, anyways, this argument is weak…but she nails it in by continuing to mischaracterize Riley’s argument with the straw man “believe in national security? You’re racist” which, logically speaking, is simply an invalid characterization of Riley’s Major Premise. And Blaire White then manipulates the audience into hating Riley so much due to the straw man of extremism she created that many of them out-of-hand reject an argument Riley made that actually, in the real world, has real merit. Then, in answer to Riley’s Major Premise, “If you want to express your hate for trans people but can’t say ‘I hate trans people’ due to political correctness (A), just say you wouldn’t date trans people instead (B)” Blaire White says: I don’t understand how you can even thing those two things are contradictory. Why would she say they’re contradictory? Deciding to say you don’t want to date trans people in order to cover up your transphobia is a process, a system, not a contradiction. But Blaire White has already conditioned her audience to illogically break it down like this: Riley’s Major Premise: If you want to express your hate for trans people but can’t say “I hate trans people” due to political correctness (A), just say you wouldn’t date trans people instead (B). Blaire White’s Minor Premise (misstated and implied): Many people do not hate trans people (Not A). Conclusion (misunderstanding of Major Premise, implied): Therefore, if the Major Premise is correct, none of these people would say they don’t date trans people (Therefore, Not B — notice, here is where the contradiction comes in, where a switch of the terms creates the straw man that you cannot be unhateful of trans people and at the same time say you don’t want to date trans people — an argument Riley didn’t make in this video). Bad rejection of argument: Many of the people who do not hate trans people also say they don’t date trans people. That’s not a contradiction, and Riley’s Major Premise says that it is, so it’s wrong! It’s a bit stunning, actually. Blaire White has the whole formula down to a sentence. She’s conditioned the audience to accept this mode of reasoning, and now she can just use shorthand for it. And in the process, she’s made Riley even more unlikable, even though she’s completely misrepresenting Riley’s argument to do so through some formulaic logical slight of hand. The honest way to rebut Riley’s premise, of course, would be to show that you couldn’t effectively express a politically correct hatred of trans people by stating you don’t want to date them. That’s a more difficult argument, though. Rebutting by saying “just because you say you don’t want to date trans people, doesn’t mean you’re transphobic” is completely missing the point of the Major Premise…in a way stunningly similar to the way Blaire White has done it before. And, perhaps thinking that people may be sympathetic to trans people as a larger marginalized group, Blaire White goes the next step, later in this rebuttal, by indicating that Riley is saying that people who don’t want to date her specifically are transphobic, which makes a more unlikable straw man argument and, at the same time, is even more different from what Riley Dennis was saying — which was, again that you can express a hatred for trans people in a politically correct way by saying you wouldn’t date them, NOT that not wanting to date Riley Dennis (or any trans person, for that matter) is in and of itself proof positive that you are transphobic. Blaire repeats these mischaracterizations in her video several times. And you can disagree with my pro-social-justice stance all you want, because the above is not really about a stance; it’s about bad logic. I’d appreciate a good argument. But…make it a good one. Don’t make such obvious mischaracterizations through blatant disregard for basic logic. 4 Places Where Blaire White Is Factually Wrong OK, so the above was mostly about logic. Now, real quick, now that you’ve watched a video by Blaire White (if you clicked “play” and gave her another view — my apologies, it seemed the best way to demonstrate what I meant), let me attempt some additional detox. 1. Not that it’s relevant, but she indicates people won’t date Riley J. Dennis. For the record, she had a girlfriend fairly recently and, to the best of my knowledge (I’m sure you’ll correct me if I’m wrong) still does. 2. She says nobody says that racism doesn’t exist. Wrong. See this, with view count, like ratio, and comments. 3. She indicates that environmental racism is nonsense. No, it’s definitely a thing. Two seconds of research will tell you that it’s when people of color are put in bad environmental conditions because their color makes them a low priority. Flint, Michigan is a good example, according to this case study. Honestly, the fact that Blaire White thinks that not knowing what the term means is a good enough rebuttal is astonishing to me. 4. She says that we (I guess people labeled “SJWs”) are terrified of having our ideas challenged. Um, no. When I challenged TJ Kirk (The Amazing Atheist) to a debate (I did, not him) on whether his claim that the statement “black culture is a victim cult” is racist, he backed out, not me. And then he tweeted this: |
Hail Mary Forgive me, Mary, if I do not hail you as Queen of Heaven, if I hesitate to praise you as Mediatrix or salute you as Co-Redemptrix. Allow me to greet you humbly by the humble name your mother gave you. Mary, a peasant child. A poor girl from a little village. Mary, in whom the joy of heaven came down to dwell. Mary, the little hinge on which the hopes of all the ages turn. I greet you, Mary! If I do not adore your perpetual virginity, I will instead contemplate your perpetual humility, for all riches were laid up in your poverty. If I do not venerate your immaculate conception, I will strive nonetheless to imitate your immaculate fidelity, for through your faith the knot of human faithlessness has been undone. Full of grace I believe – I try to believe – in grace. I hope for it. I look for it like watchmen for the morning. I stake my life on something that has never appeared to me. A grace that is always, like my death, just out of reach – near, far, approaching, never yet. I believe, or hope, that grace is coming for me. I believe because I do not know. I believe because I have not seen. But you, Mary, have seen grace and have known it in your body. In you grace became flesh. The grace you knew was as real as a baby's kicks, as real as blood and birth. Even when I cannot quite believe in grace for myself, I will believe in grace for you. Even when grace is hidden from me, I will believe that you have known it, that all the grace the world will ever need has dwelt in you. The Lord is with thee I greet you, Mary, with love for you who bore the one I love. He is with me only because he was with you. He wears my nature because he clothed himself in yours. Blessed art thou amongst women For as long as men have had the power of speech they have brought curses and laid them at the feet of women (the women they love). God started it, acting like a man that day, cursing Eve and all her daughters. I have cursed a few myself. Forgive me, Mary, but I too am a man, a son of Adam. To curse a woman is as natural to me as making love. Sometimes the two things are the same. But man and woman are blessed in you as at their first creation. In you the sabbath comes again: the maker’s blessing: rest. And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus Your body is the little door through which God stooped to enter the small house of my life. God sought me out and found me. Because I could not find the way to God, God sought and found you, Mary, and through you came to visit me in my grief. Holy Mary O Mary, the world has been profaned before my eyes. I had ceased to believe that sanctity was possible. I had ceased to believe that anything was holy. I am sorry, Mary, but I am more than twice your age when you conceived, and all the holiness I ever knew as a child has been worn out by time. Yet a holy flame burns in your mind, and the whole world's darkness is defenceless before one light. Mary, I will call you holy in hope for the day when all things will be sanctified, when all minds will be light and not darkness. Until then, I will follow the small flame of your life that leads me to your Son. Mother of God Your womb, Mary, nourished in silence the Word that nourishes all worlds. From your blood God took blood into his veins, from your flesh he took flesh. God came forth looking just like you, your spitting image, with the blood of all your ancestors running in his veins. Pray for us sinners Pray for me, Mary. Not because your Son is deaf to my cries but because he hears so well. Because each cry of mine echoes yours, you who brought God crying into the world and watched him grow and treasured all these things within your heart. You who stood by at the hour of his passion, broken by the grief of all the world laid on him. You whom he called woman. Your heart was broken by him first. Let the cry of my heart ascend, mingled with yours, to your God and mine. Now and at the hour of our death At the hour of your Son’s passion you looked into the face you loved and saw the union of love and death written there – God’s love, the whole world’s death. You who have seen the secret of my dying, pray for me now. Now in the hour of my grief. Now when death's shadow lies across my heart. May the mystery of my dying be made clear in the light of your Son, the only one who ever truly died because he truly (ever) lived. Amen If ever your Son should forget me, Mary, take his hand and place it on your abdomen and remind him that he once dwelt there, bearing your flesh (my flesh), your blood (and mine), a stranger no more to grief (my grief and yours). Remind him, holy Mary, that in your body God has already said the one Amen to every human prayer. |
STANFORD, Calif. - No. 26 Stanford (17-6, 6-1 Pac-12) will be making its 36th all-time NCAA Tournament appearance when first round competition gets underway at campus sites next weekend. The Cardinal will square off against No. 40 Tennessee (14-12, 5-7 SEC) on May 8 in Durham, N.C., for its NCAA Tournament opener. The next edition of the rankings, which will be used throughout the postseason, will be released on Friday. Duke, ranked No. 9 in the country but the tournament’s No. 10 overall seed, will host first and second competition on May 8-9. The Blue Devils will square off against South Carolina State in the opening round. Friday, May 8 (First Round): No. 26 Stanford (17-6, 6-1 Pac-12) vs. No. 40 Tennessee Volunteers (14-12, 5-7 SEC) - 7 a.m. PT Friday, May 8 (First Round): No. 9 Duke (22-6, 8-4 ACC) vs. South Carolina State (14-4, 4-0 MEAC) - 10 a.m. PT Saturday, May 9 (Second Round): First-round winners - 10 a.m. PT Stanford will open NCAA Tournament play on the road for the third consecutive season. The Cardinal has dropped its first-round match in each of the last two seasons after back-to-back NCAA quarterfinal efforts in 2011-12. Ranked between No. 24-43 throughout the season, Stanford completed one of its best seasons in recent memory, clinching a share of the Pac-12 regular-season championship for the first time since 2010. The Cardinal also reached the Pac-12 Tournament final for the first time in school history, falling 4-3 to USC. Prior to a loss against California in the regular-season finale, Stanford had won 10 consecutive matches, its longest winning streak since ripping off 13 straight victories in 2011. In addition to its surprising Pac-12 regular-season finish, the Cardinal defeated UCLA and USC at home and owns two victories against California. Stanford’s six losses have all come against teams ranked among the top-30. Making this year’s campaign even more impressive, the Cardinal showcases a singles lineup featuring three freshmen, led by rookie Tom Fawcett’s team-leading 26-9 overall record. Stanford owns a 103-20 all-time record in the postseason. The Cardinal has won 17 NCAA championships, including 15 since the NCAA Tournament went to its present format in 1977. The most recent crown came back in 2000, when Stanford blanked VCU 4-0. |
Millennials have been blamed for so many things. And rightly so. They're a generation possessed by destroying everything in their path. SEE ALSO: Meet the one phone created exclusively for millennials There's no shortage of essays that have figured out that millennials are responsible for ruining everything. Here's a list of all of the things that millennials have destroyed so far. The Olympics Image: tim de waele/Corbis via Getty Images In June, NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke said, "We wake up someday and the ratings are down 20 percent. If that happens, my prediction would be that millennials had been in a Facebook bubble or a Snapchat bubble and the Olympics have come, and they didn’t know it." And because the primetime viewership was down 25 percent for the coveted 18-49 age group compared to the 2012 games in London, fingers are pointed at millennials. However, Gizmodo suggested that the way people watch TV is so different now that millennials aren't to blame, but rather NBC must take responsibility for failing to see how most people consume content today. But more than Ryan Lochte, more than green water and paved over regions of Brazil, Millennials are what ruined the 2016 Olympics. Diamonds Image: david livingston/Getty Images The diamond industry's been cutting its prices down due to the fact that fewer millennials are buying diamonds. Is it because diamonds can come from unethical origins, as The Daily Beast suggests? Or, is it because diamonds are too expensive, and millennials can't afford them? We're a generation in which side-hustles are required just so we can pay our rent. Of course diamonds aren't our best friend. $20 off an Uber ride discounts already are. But that explanation might be too obvious. The decline is because millennials hate diamonds and gotta get them gone. Bar soap Image: Ross Hailey/MCT via Getty Images Sales for bars of soap are down among people ages 18 to 24, which means millennials are at it once again, hellbent on destroying yet another outdated industry. Bar soap leaves a weird residue on your skin, doesn't work seamlessly with a loofah (millennials love to exfoliate as an extension of constant efforts to clarify their brands) and doesn't fit the on-the-go lifestyle of a millennial. Beyond that, millennials just wanted to pick something that baby boomers loved. Something simple and easily forgotten, but will make people go nuts once it's gone. Vacation time Image: Oli Scarff/Getty Images Say it with me! "Millennials! Hate! Vacations!" And so, looking at a nation of people working very hard, millennials thought, "Let's destroy it." After meeting in their headquarters in an obscure speakeasy in Brooklyn, millennials decided they hated vacations so much that no one should be able to take them. Sure, the conditions they're working under are tough, they earn little pay and aren't given many vacation days, yet they aren't interested in taking them; not so they impress their supervisors, but just so they can stop vacations from the inside. Great Britain Image: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images Still confused about Brexit? Well, I bet it makes sense now that you know it was the result of millennials. While the majority of millennial voters wanted to stay in the EU, of all age groups, millennials had the worst voter turnout. Millennials wanted to create a sense of mystery (it's why they'll never show their full body on their Snap Story) so they lied to say they support Britain then just didn't vote, when obviously, the wanted to leave all along so they could destroy Britain. The workforce Image: oli scarff/Getty Images Millennials aren't lazy; they're conniving. They're not opting to freelance due to a lack of available jobs, it's because they want to put an end to the workforce. No more offices, no more 9-5 for everyone. They'll ask for praises and raises, not in order to survive, but in order to shut down the workforce for good. Every millennial just wants to sit at home all day with an HBO Go password and free rent, and they won't stop until they've achieved that reality. Marriage Image: Getty Images Millennials aren't getting married. You might guess it's due to a desire to avoid the expensive costs of marriage, but that's not it. It's because millennials want to destroy every traditional value held by this country. So, even if two people are totally in love and want to get married, they won't. Because the only thing stronger than their love for each other is their hatred for things Baby Boomers hold in esteem. Trees Image: karen bleier/AFP/Getty Images Millennials enjoy reading physical copies of books, not because of their support for the publishing industry, lack of interest in e-readers or any of the science that suggests your brain builds a map of information. And because they like books, they're contributing to de-forestation. And of course, that's not it. It's because they want to kill trees but don't want to just cut them all down themselves, because, as we've already discussed, they don't want to be in the workforce. The American Dream Image: graphica arts/Getty Images 48 percent of millennials think the American Dream is dead. The other 52 percent think they just haven't officially killed it yet. This is not because of the horrible financial conditions under which they've become adults, it is because they know that in order to take down America, they're going to need to destroy its dream. The hangout sitcom Image: NBC via Getty Images Apparently, millennials have stopped watching a bunch of people sit around and talk about their problems on TV. This is because millennials don't want anyone to take the night off and have a laugh while hanging out with their favorite television characters. Millennials want you to listen to their own problems instead. In their quest to do that, they've decided to ruin the hangout sitcom. Although the thinkpiece has not yet been written, it is common knowledge that millennials hate Ross Gellar. Sex Image: mariana silvia eliano/Getty Images Beloved by Baby Boomers and the reason for their existence, millennials figured out that the final way to destroy everything would be to just stop having sex. So they don't. Reports show that sex among millennials is way down compared to previous generations, but those numbers are probably fabricated. No millennial has ever had any kind of sex. |
Mirko Cro Cop knows his MMA career is winding down. But there are a few more things he wants to accomplish before he steps away for good. The legendary striker was intrigued by the idea of signing with the UFC because of the potential losses he could avenge in rematches. Gabriel Gonzaga was at the top of the list. Cro Cop will get his chance to get Gonzaga back for a stunning knockout in 2007 in the main event of UFC Fight Night 64 on April 11 in Krakow, Poland. "It was one of the fights I will never forget, and I just want a rematch with him," Cro Cop told Ariel Helwani on Monday's edition of The MMA Hour. "I can't say I will beat him, but I will die trying. That's how I feel. I feel good right now. There are a few things I still want to do and definitely fighting Gabriel Gonzaga is one of them." Cro Cop (30-11-2, 1 NC), the former PRIDE grand prix winner and K-1 champion, would have gotten a UFC heavyweight title shot with a winner over Gonzaga at UFC 70 on April 21, 2007. Most people know what happened next -- the Croatian star was knocked out with his own trademark move: a left head kick. After that, Cro Cop, now 40, had a mediocre run in the UFC, going 3-6. He calls the defeat against Gonzaga the worst of his storied career. "I really believe that I'm a better fighter than Gabriel Gonzaga," Cro Cop said. "I don't want to be a big mouth and I respect him. He's a great fighter. But I will do my best, definitely. He will do his best. We are going to perform a great show and the fans will be happy." Cro Cop, whose real last name is Filipovic, is coming off two straight TKO wins over Satoshi Ishii in Japan. The latter came via a left head kick as he looked like the Cro Cop of old. Since leaving the UFC in 2011, Cro Cop is 3-1. He said he feels healthier than ever and during his UFC career he was saddled by numerous injuries -- including eight total surgeries. "I'm training with a smile on my face," Cro Cop said. "This is what I want to do. No big mystery. No big philosophy. This is my job and I love to do it." Cro Cop said he signed a three-fight deal with the UFC, intending to earn rematches with men who defeated him in the past. Junior dos Santos, Frank Mir, Roy Nelson and Brendan Schaub are all fighters on the UFC's heavyweight roster who have knocked him off. Cro Cop said this will be his final run in combat sports and his kickboxing career is already over. "Even if I fail, which I don't think I will, I know I tried," Cro Cop said. "That's how I function. That's how I think. That's me. That's my life philosophy." He feels that way about the fight with Gonzaga, which will take place in the UFC's Poland debut. But Cro Cop is confident. "I already studied all his fights after we fought," he said. "No big surprises. I know exactly what he's going to do. Things will be different this time." Cro Cop said he has no trouble watching the first fight now -- it doesn't bother him. And he doesn't spend much time wondering what would have happened if he got that title shot against Randy Couture. It's water under the bridge for the iconic fighter, but it's a bridge Cro Cop wants very badly to cross again. "I really want that victory [against Gonzaga] more than anything," he said. "Believe me. More than anything." |
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